2. “On Red Deer, and their Ways,” by the Hon. J. W. Fortescue.

Abstract.

The rapid increase of the various species of Deer that have been acclimatized in the New Zealand mountains, renders it interesting and important that exact information should be made known respecting their habits. The author having enjoyed special facilities for acquiring such information, was led to communicate his observations to the Society.

Hinds consort with stags in their second year, and as a rule produce but one calf at a time; though there are instances of twins. The calves till four months old are white spotted. Male calves begin to grow horns in their second year, and as a rule have, till eight or nine years, larger horns every year. The age of a deer cannot be proved from his horns alone. Injury tells directly on the growth of the horns. Castration of a male calf stops the growth of the horns. Partial castration has no such effect. Castration of a stag causes the horns to be soft and to remain cased in the velvet.

Deer may often be distinguished in their sex by the manner of picking up their food, as in the case of turnips and growing corn. Both sexes of deer bite at a turnip till it comes out of the ground; but a stag has the stronger neck, so uproots them the quickest. A stag takes half an ear of corn, a hind the whole.

The slot, or footprint, of a stag differs from that of the hind, being broader at the heel and blunter at the toe. As a rule, the older the stag the blunter the toes, and the broader the heel. It is often difficult to distinguish between the slots of the hinds and of young male deer.

Generally speaking, all deer tend in extreme old age to revert to the appearance of their youth. The horns grow smaller, and in some cases the slot and body also. The points of the horns also are blunt and ill developed.

The shooting season for stags should begin when the new grown horn is fully developed, i.e. when the stag has shed the velvet, and should cease at the beginning of the rutting season. When stags begin to bell, or bellow, the rutting season has commenced. Hinds may be shot from the end of the rutting season for about three months, after which time they are too heavy in calf to be of much value, though barren hinds may be shot even in the spring.

Sir James Hector would like to ask Mr. Fortescue, as an expert on the subject, whether the chief use of the antlers was not so much for fighting, as for facilitating the progress of the stag through dense woods. He had considerable experience with the Wapiti, in North America, and found that by throwing up the head, thereby placing the horns along the back, the animals were enabled to go forward with great rapidity and follow the hinds. He asked this, as it had been stated at a previous meeting of the Society that the antlers tended to entangle the deer.

Mr Fortescue said that Sir James Hector was quite correct in stating that the antlers assisted the stags in penetrating dense forests.

Mr. Higginson also bore out this statement from his experience in India.