The horns are shed annually but very irregularly, stags without horns, in the velvet, and with matured horns, being often met with in the same day. This is attributable to the deer breeding all the year round instead of having a definite rutting season, the shedding of horns varying with the age of the stag. This is more noticeable in the forests along the foot of the Himalayas than in Central India, where, though still irregular, the bulk of the stags have their horns ripe in January and shed them about July.
Jerdon was of opinion that there were two species of spotted deer, the smaller of the two being found in Southern India; but Sterndale quotes McMaster to the effect that the spotted deer found in Orissa are more than usually large. As far as the writer has been able to judge, the stags in Central India have finer heads than those in the Doon and Terai.
When stalking in forest the sportsman should bear in mind that if he comes suddenly on game his best chance of avoiding detection is to stand motionless. If he attempts to crouch the movement will draw attention at once, whereas if he stands still, and his clothes are of the right colour, he may very likely be mistaken for the stump of a tree.
XXV. SWAMP DEER (Rucervus Duvaucelli)
Native names: ‘Gōn,’ ‘Gond,’ ‘Barasingha,’ ‘Maha’; in Central India, ‘Goen’ or ‘Goenjak’ (male); ‘Gaoni’ (female) (Sterndale)
This deer avoids heavy forest and is nearly always found in the swamps and open grassy plains near rivers. Colonel Erskine, the Commissioner of Kumaon, writes of it:
I have shot numbers of these deer, but all in the swampy Terai country in the north of Oudh bordering on Nepal, and in that part of the Pilibhit district on the same frontier. I have never heard of it much to the west of the Pilibhit district. I should think Haldwani, at the foot of the Naini Tal hill, was well beyond the western limit of the tracts which it frequents; it is found in the swamps and high grass on the edges of the swamps and rivers, and on the islands in the rivers, along the forest country at the foot of the Himalayas, from the places I have mentioned, eastwards as far as Assam and Bhotan, and along the Barhamputra river down to the Sunderbands of Bengal. It is also known in the Central Provinces near Mundla and along the tributaries of the Nerbudda.
Kinloch says that it used to be found on the islands in the Indus, but is now almost extinct there. By all accounts it seems to prefer the neighbourhood of Sál forest.
Rucervus Duvaucelli