STALKING DEER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 December 1940, Page 6

STALKING DEER

MASTERTON OFFICER VISITS SCOTLAND EXPERIENCES ON “INVERMARK.” GAME BIRDS ALSO PLENTIFUL.

Writing from Kent, England, “where the planes come down and the bombs land,” Lieut. H. V.. Donald, a son of Mr and Mrs V. E. Donald, of Masterton, describes a visit to Scotland in the course of which he enjoyed some deer stalking on “Invermark,” one of the best shooting forests in Scotland. The property belongs to Lord Dalhousie, whose father sent a herd of deer to New Zealand. Lieut. Donald goes on to say: “I told the present Lord Dalhousie that it was quite probable that we had some of the heads that originated from that herd on our wall at home and he was extremely interested. The shooting party first day consisted of Mr Simon Ramsay, brother of Lord Dalhousie, and a captain in the Black Watch, Lord John Hope, and myself, together with a stalker each whose job it was to show us the lay of the land and pick out the biggest beast

for us to shoot. Old Alex, my stalker, was a dour old Scotsman of 64, still wonderfully agile and as sly and cunning as a fox. It was great to watch him crawling through the heather, down the burns and across open faces in full view of the deer but with such little movement that he was not noticed by even the most alert of the hinds; and to watch him gralloch a stag which had been shot was a revelation. God help any Hun paratrooper that lands up that way and falls into old Alex’s hands. That day I was lucky enough to get the only two stags that were shot, a nine and a ten-pointer, being very small according to our standards but quite large according to theirs. The heads are so poor that they shoot according to the size of the beast; a 15-stoner being of good average weight. The whole beast is carted in to the local butcher and is sold at 3d per lb, and they take about 100 stags per year off the place. Unfortunately foi- the herd they take the largest beasts and leave the poorer heads so they cannot expect to get any big heads when there is nothing to breed from. “The next day we went out Lord Dalhousie came too, which gave us four rifles. I started off by wounding a stag which I followed for about three hours without any success, thus wasting a great deal of valuable time as we did not start out in the hills till nearly eleven o’clock. The stalker and I wandered round then for some

time without seeing anything and eventually mot up with Lord John Hope and his stalker who had had no luck either. Shortly after that we got one each from a small herd, and when we were nearing home we looked into a large corrie where we saw between 250 and 300 deer scattered about in herds of thirty or forty. They had all congregated there out of the wind which was rather bitter that day and, using our glasses, we could see Mr Simon Ramsay in the process of stalking a good stag, so that we were forced to wait up on the tops (only about 3000 ft) freezing so that we wouldn’t spoil the stalk. Presently several shots rang out and one herd made off up the hill in our direction. We frantically hurried into positions from which we could shoot as they went past and managed to get the only two beasts in the herd that were worth shooting, one each, and when we arrived back at the lodge we found that the tally was nine which was a very good day indeed. After that we went to Lord Dalhousie’s place, Brechin Castle, to dinner, and dined in an enormous hall lit solely with candles, the walls being hung with beautiful tapestries and huge oil paintings. The two butlers gave us an excellent dinner which we finished off with a bottle of kummell which had been in the castle for over a hundred years and was in excellent condition. Next day I went after partridges with Mrs Stansfeld’s father, getting five brace only as there weren’t many about, there is more game on “Invermark” than I have ever seen in my life and I thought at the time how thoroughly you would enjoy yourself on those hills with a shotgun.

“Besides deer, of which there are hundreds, the place abounds with grouse, blue mountain hares, rabbits and a few other varieties of game birds. With seven guns they once took 4(15 brace of grouse oil’ that place not to get a day there. After it had in one day, and I was rather unlucky all been arranged they found that they could not get enough beaters, 'rite way they work it, is to shoot from five different lines of butts each with