The largest head I have seen was shot in 1892 near Cowitchan Lake, Vancouver Island. It measures along the beam from skull to extreme point 21 ins., and in span it is 19 ins. from tip to tip. A typical head appears in the illustration on the next page.
Mr. Rowland Ward records a head of this deer measuring 28⅝ ins. in length, with a span of 26 ins.
Guanaco
C. paludosus, C. columbianus
NOTE ON CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICAN BIG GAME
There is no lack of game either upon the Pampas or in the forests and along the river-beds of Central and South America, but as yet very few English sportsmen appear to have visited either the seas of grass or the luxuriant tropical forests of Patagonia, Paraguay and the Amazon. Admiral Kennedy, indeed, in his recent book, ‘Sporting Sketches in South America,’ is, I fancy, the first sportsman pure and simple who has visited these regions and described the sport to be found therein, and it is to be regretted that even he has not had the luck to secure specimens of all the principal beasts known in the country. Others have, of course, written of the Amazon and of the Pampas, but they have been naturalists, who cared more to secure a new mouse than mere trophies of the chase, however fine.
According to Admiral Kennedy, the game list of South America includes the guanaco, five kinds of deer, the ostrich or rhea, the jaguar, puma, tapir, wild cattle, and the wild pig. The last two species are, of course, representatives of domestic animals which have become wild, but, unless report belies them, there are wild cattle in the world (e.g. in the Galapagos Islands) which are as well worth hunting as the biggest buffaloes.
The jaguar, though a much larger beast than the puma (identical with the panther of the West), appears to be anything but a sporting beast, haunting river jungles and dense swamps, and being unable, according to Mr. Hudson (the ‘Naturalist on La Plata’) to hold his own even against his smaller cousin, the puma, who is described by the same authority as a ‘bold hunter,’ invariably preferring large to small game, which he kills as a tiger does, by dislocating the neck. The puma is, according to the same authority, a persistent persecutor of the jaguar. Both Mr. Hudson and Admiral Kennedy seem agreed that the puma is a very dangerous enemy to the guanaco, and a scourge to everything living upon the Pampas, except man and the gama (C. campestris), which protects itself as the skunk does, by its unpleasant smell. Mr. Hudson’s stories of the strange affection of the puma for man, although calculated to excite incredulity at first, coincide somewhat strangely with some of the Western stories of the panther (or puma) already narrated; but it must be borne in mind that the panther of the West does attack man in a few rare instances, according to the evidence of Mr. Perry.