07 Dec




















only found the bodies of 1 1 per cent, of calves, but calves Per centa s e of * dead. die in all sorts of places, also their flat lean bodies soon decay, are eaten by other deer and disappear. For our first recorded 5 years we found 25 per cent, of dead calves. We have fully recognized this in constructing our series of stags ^ eac l calves and hinds. We take the percentage of death for knobbers (year- lings) at 5 per cent., but we find very few dead knobbers. Three in one year is our highest find. I may remark that Murchison, the forester, does not remember seeing a dead two-year-old stag. We take the death-rate of stags at 3 per cent, a year after passing the year of " knobberhood " till they are 12 years old, O f Stags that so 100 calves reared up to February produce 56 stags of 12 r< j acl1 I2 y ears years old. Excluding sheep ground, Ardfin (no data), and also Tarbert, we find the yearly death rate of stags on Forest for 1 1 years recorded 4! per cent. For the last 6 years it has been much less, viz., 2.\ per cent. For the first 5 years recorded it was 6| per cent, (out of our first 7 years we have records of 5 only). More than half the dead stags are old wasters. For example, 1888 and 1889 combined in Forest and - . . , Wasted Stags Tarbert together result is 42 dead stags, of which 32 were con- principally sidered wasters. Thirty-two of these stags died on Forest, 10 on found dead - Tarbert (an extraordinary number this was of wasters). There- fore I think we are quite safe (/.<?., over the mark) in taking the yearly stag mortality at 3 per cent, till their prime, viz., 12 years' old. We think we find very nearly all the dead stags, though

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