Should a good stag break fairly near, it is advisable to allow it to pass well away before moving a muscle. For should the game be prematurely alarmed--say by your missing exactly upon the firing-line, or otherwise by its detecting your movement of preparation--that stag will instantly bounce back again into the beat. Then, assuming that the sportsman is a tyro, or subject to "emotions" or buck-fever, there is danger of his forgetting for one moment his precise permitted line of fire; in which case a perilous shot must result. Once allowed to pass _well outside_, the stag will usually continue on his course.
In this, as in every form of sport, "soft chances" occasionally occur. More often, the rifle will be directed at a galloping stag crashing through bush that conceals him up to the withers; or, it may be, bounding over inequalities of broken ground or brushwood, or among timber, at any distance up to 100 yards, sometimes 150, while, should he have touched a taint in the wind, his pace will be tremendous.
Although to casual view a plain of level contours this country is undulated to an extent that deceives a careless eye--the more accentuated by the monotone of cistus-scrub that appears so uniform. In reality there traverse the plain glens and gently graded hollows the less apt to be noticed, inasmuch as the scrub in moister dell grows higher.
Far through the marish green and still the watercourses sleep.
Inspiring moments are those when--before the beat has commenced--your eye catches on some far-away skyline the broad antlers of a stag. This animal has perhaps been on foot and alert, or maybe has taken the "wind" from the group of beaters wending a way to their points far beyond. For three seconds the antlers remain stationary, then vanish into some intervening glen. A glance around shows your next neighbour still busy completing his shelter--meritorious work if done in time--and you have strong suspicion that the man beyond will just now be lighting a cigarette! Such thoughts flash through one's mind; the dominant question that fills it is: "Where will that great stag reappear?" But few seconds are needed to solve it. Perhaps he dashes, harmless, upon the careless, perhaps upon the slow--lucky for him should either such event befall! On the other hand, those moments of glorious expectancy may resolve in a crash of brushwood hard by, in a clinking of cloven hoofs, and a noble hart with horns aback is bounding past your own ready post. What proportion, we inwardly inquire, of the stags that are killed by craftsmen has already, just before, offered first chance to the careless or the slovenly?