The hunting still life offered here is Heinrich Kley’s earliest preserved work and an outstanding document of his academic mastery. It was made during his first years of study under his teacher Ferdinand Keller. "An arrangement of fir branches mounted on a gray wall, various hunting utensils and trophies are shown in the foreground. A spear strides across the painting in portrait format from lower right to upper left forming a triangular composition with a rifle depicted in opposite direction. Other requisites, a palm of an antler, a horn, a velvet pouch, a peacock's feather and a headfirst mountain cock with spread inner wings are presented in an opulent decorative manner. Not only the complex composition is particularly well done, the illustration of the picture’s individual elements is likewise felicitous. The young artist successfully manages to depict reduced perspectives and renders different materials in their characteristic manner with great poise by means of just a few richly differentiated colors applied onto the canvas - depending on the object - in either pastose or diaphanous manner. All in all the painting is a document of the artist’s great feel for compositions, an exact power of observation and great craftmanship." (Alexander Kunkel, in: see lit., p. 24)