The ravine was thickly wooded, and extended far up the mountain, where it ended in a bare spot without trees.  To this place I went alone, leaving the crowd behind me with directions not to move till I was in my place, which instruction they most strictly followed.  After half an hour’s walk I arrived at the place I have named.  I had hardly time to regain my breath when I heard a row below me as if Bedlam had been let loose.  I loaded my gun with buckshot in one barrel and ball in the other, and remained as quiet as a mouse.  As the noise of the beaters and dogs approached me, I heard a crash in the bushes within about forty yards of me, and presently a magnificent stag as big as a cow came slowly out of the cover, looking behind him, evidently not expecting an enemy in front.  As soon as he was well clear of the bushes, I fired at him with buckshot and killed him dead.  I hardly had time to think, when, with a tremendous rush, two other large deer broke out of the wood straight at me at full gallop.  I fired a bullet at the foremost one, which turned back into the woods apparently wounded, and so it proved, for it ran among the beaters, evidently having lost its head, and was soon despatched among dogs, men and guns.  He was a stag also, and as I claimed to have shot him, I may say that I had the luck to shoot a brace of splendid stags right and left.  There is not a sportsman in Europe who would not have been delighted at such a chance of red deer like these; such as are not seen anywhere except in Asia Minor.  The largest one had nineteen points to his antlers, weighed when cleaned a hundred and fifteen okes, equal to three hundred and twenty pounds English measure, and certainly was the largest stag I have ever met with, either in Scotland or in Austria.  During the sixteen years that I have passed in the East I have only succeeded in killing four of these splendid animals.  This I attribute very much to the want of proper deerhounds, which unfortunately I have not been able to procure.

The crowd of beaters make so much noise that the deer slip away at the sides of the thick covers unseen, whereas dogs would drive them more in a straight line towards the shooters if they are properly posted.  In addition to this, it is always a great advantage when the hounds give tongue, and so warn the sportsman of the whereabouts of the game.  These hounds, called ‘colpoys,’ can be procured in Roumania and Hungary.  There is another description of deer found near the sea-coast in some parts of Asia Minor, which I will describe.  It is in fact the pure wild fallow deer that stocks the parks of Europe, and if I am rightly informed is only to be found wild in Asia Minor, and even there it is rare.