Hogdeer are often put up when pigsticking in grass, and give capital runs.
Major FitzHerbert had a quaint bit of sport in 1874. He slipped a brace of dogs at a stag and rode after them; in his own words:
The stag made for the river, and as the ground got more and more open the bitch caught sight of him, made a rush and soon got up to him; she laid hold and pulled him over, but as the dog would not help her, the stag shook her off and went away again. When she came up to him again, he stood at bay with head down and bristles raised like a miniature red deer of Landseer’s, but broke away when I came up. Once he charged the bitch and knocked her over: he stood at bay two or three times, but I never could get a spear into him for fear of hurting the dogs; at last one time as he was breaking bay I came up, and he charged me with such force as to break one of his horns clean off against the spear; however, I stuck him in the spine and rolled him over.
The fawns are always spotted. The stags seem very irregular in shedding their horns, and deformed heads are not uncommon.
_Native names: ‘Chital,’ ‘Chitra’; the Stag ‘Jhank’_
About the beauty of the skin of this beast, the writer heard a story of a man who was taking such particular pains to preserve the hide of a stag he had shot that his companion asked him what he wanted it for, adding, ‘It’s only a chital.’ ‘Yes,’ returned the other, ‘it may be only a chital on the banks of the Nerbudda, but I am going to send it home, and it will be a leopard at Northampton.’
The horns are of the rusine type, but the brow antler has a more graceful forward curve than in the sambur, and the anterior terminal point is always longer than the posterior. Small false points are also frequently thrown out at the base of the brow antler.
Chital are often shot off elephants, but the sport is not to be compared to stalking them; and as chital always seem to select the loveliest scenery in the forest for their abode, a morning or evening stroll after them is most enjoyable, or, if the heat is too great to render a long walk pleasant, a shot may often be obtained in the evening by watching a glade where the young grass is springing up after a forest fire. There must, however, be water in the vicinity, as chital are rarely found at any great distance from it.