Remember that sambur are not prolific; they seldom have more than one fawn, and that it is four years before the young stag assumes his complete shape of horn, and that he has still three or four years to live before he can have a pair of antlers worth preserving. He has quite sufficient chances against his attaining an age of seven or eight years, without having to run the risk of being shot down by the rifle bullet whilst still in his immature state.
Shooting hinds is quite unpardonable, the venison being not worth eating.
XXIII. HOGDEER (Axis porcinus)
Native name: generally ‘Para’
Kinloch aptly describes this deer as the rabbit of Indian battues. It is a long-bodied rather heavily built beast on short legs with horns like a small sambur, the brow antlers coming straight up from the burr at an acute angle without the handsome curve of those of the spotted deer. The stags are reddish brown, their hair coarse and thick, their tails rather long and exactly of the sambur type, their ears round, not pointed like a spotted deer. When galloping through the grass the hogdeer carries its head low, its horns laid back on the neck, and its rump high. It is found throughout the high grass swamps at the foot of the Himalayas and on the islands and banks of the big rivers. High grass and plenty of water are its chief requisites. It expends through Assam to Burmah, and is also found in Ceylon.
Hogdeer shooting
It is usually shot when beating the large tracts of grass in the Doon and Terai with a line of elephants, and affords pretty snap shooting from a howdah when better game is not expected. The does will squat in the grass till the elephants almost kick them up, but the way to get the best stags is to go well ahead of the line on a flank, or, if possible, post yourself on foot so as to command a nullah leading from one patch of grass to another, or the dry sandy channel separating two islands. This, however, is a matter of some risk, as, if hogdeer are plentiful, the firing from the line becomes fast and furious, and unless you are on an elephant the guns in the line cannot see where you are. Shooting from a howdah is an art which requires practice, and many a good rifle-shot on foot finds himself missing hideously when he first tries shooting off an elephant. A very sound rule is, never to put your head down on the stock, but keep it well up, look hard at the beast’s shoulder and see as much of its body as possible over the muzzle of the rifle: the range is generally short and nearly all misses go high. Shooting hogdeer from elephant has been likened, with some confusion of ideas, to shooting rabbits from a pitching collier in a gale of wind in the Bay of Biscay.
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: