Chapter XX.
Deer Forests and Grouse Shooting.
The red-deer of the Highland mountains form the subject of a branch of sport largely used as a means of recreation and recuperation by many of our most busy and often overworked statesmen, soldiers, and commercial and professional men.
The red-deer is indigenous in the northern parts of Scotland, as it used to be throughout the kingdom. There are so few obstructions that I believe it would be possible for these wild deer to roam if they pleased from the north of Caithness to the south of Argyleshire, but as a rule the deer attach themselves to particular localities. Their numbers do not increase rapidly, even under favourable circumstances. The antiquity of the red-deer in Gairloch is proved by their cast-off horns having been found deep in peat bogs, where they must have lain many centuries ([Part III., chap. v.]).
Deer are said to have been scarce in Gairloch in former times, when, notwithstanding rigorous penal statutes to the contrary, there was much poaching. In the reign of James I. (1424), there was an enactment that "alsoone as onie Stalker may be convict of slauchter of Deare, he sall paie to the King fourtie shillings; and the halders and mainteiners of them sall paie ten poundis;" and there were statutes of a similar character in almost every succeeding reign, the penalties becoming more serious as time went on. Since the time when the present system of letting deer forests was introduced, the number of deer in Gairloch has greatly increased.
A considerable part of the hill ground is now under deer, or, to use the popular but (to the uninitiated) misleading expression, is "forested." This word is supposed by some to be a corruption from the Gaelic word fridh, which they say was originally synonymous with the English "free;" not meaning that forests were free and open to the public (for nothing was less so under the old Scots acts), but signifying that the ground had been "freed from," or made clear of, cattle and sheep. If this were so, the word "forest" as thus used would of course have nothing whatever to do with trees. But the better opinion seems to be that the Gaelic word fridh always meant a forest in the usual acceptation of the English word, and so was really covered with wood. The forests of timber which formerly clothed the Highlands have been previously mentioned, and the causes of their disappearance in recent times have been discussed ([page 74]). It was mostly the woodland that was kept unpastured, and so became the resort of wild animals, including deer. The fridh was most strictly preserved, and exactly corresponded to the "forest" of the old Scots acts. In a Scots act of 1535, prohibiting the intrusion of "gudes, nolt, scheepe, horse, meires, or uther cattle," into "forrestes" reserved for "wild beastes and hunting," the "forrestes" are classed with "haned wooddes." Now "hained" is a Scotch word still in use; on the Borders they constantly speak of a grass field being "hained" when the stock are withdrawn from it, either to take a hay crop from it or to rest it. If fridh (Anglicè, forest) was in 1535 considered equivalent to a "hained" wood, it appears unlikely that it ever meant a "free" wood. In any case, there is abundant evidence that for at least nearly five centuries deer forests have been private hunting grounds strictly protected by the legislature.
The deer forests of Gairloch are to a great extent unsuitable for sheep. The recently formed deer forests have been constituted by putting the sheep off what were previously sheep farms. It may surprise some readers to learn that in this part of the Highlands, as well as in many other parts, it generally requires at least ten acres of hill ground to support one sheep.
There are the following deer forests within the parish of Gairloch:—
| South-west of Loch Maree. | - | Kenlochewe. | |
| Flowerdale. | |||
| Shieldaig. | |||
| North-east of Loch Maree. | - | Letterewe. | |
| Ardlair. | |||
| Kernsary (new). |