Virginia Deer 



other could be so welcome a returner as the wild deer, even if he 

 does prove in a way destructive. 



The deep snows and severe weather of 1898-9 yielded good 

 opportunities for noting their custom of yarding. 



In February when out on my snow-shoes I came upon one of 

 these yards in the birch woods within a mile of the farm house where 

 I write; a series of deep irregular paths marking out a loose net-work 

 over about an acre of buried stumps and blackberry bushes. It had 

 already been abandoned a day or two when I found it, a straight path 

 leading off toward the northwest showing the most recent tracks. 

 The yard had evidently been made and inhabited by a lone doe, 

 possibly two or three with their fawns, the tracks all being alike and 

 of small size. 



In many places where the snow was only two or three feet deep 

 they had tunnelled along beneath the heavy laden undergrowth for 

 short distances. Again I found narrow open paths, five feet or more 

 in depth, with almost perpendicular sides. Apparently the}' had fed 

 almost altogether upon the ground growths under the snow, the 

 twigs beside the paths showing little signs of having been 

 browsed upon. 



Four strands of barbed wire proved no obstacle to them, they 

 passed under the bottom wire as freely as a fox or dog would do. 

 Once or twice during the winter I found the trail of what must have 

 been an unusually large stag in the swamps and young pine growths 

 near there and along the borders of cultivated fields; his big hoof- 

 prints with their widespread dew claws were separated by astonish- 

 ingly long intervals at times. 



To go out into the forest with the fixed intention of killing 

 anything so beautiful and harmless as a deer seems brutal and heart- 

 less enough any way you care to look at the matter. Yet the kindest 

 hearted of men do so every fall, and though they may learn to hate 

 themselves for every deer they have shot, they cannot give it up, and 

 look forward just as eagerly to the next year's shooting, for there is no 

 other sport to be compared to deer-stalking in the autumn woods just 

 after a rain in the night, when the west wind is rising to dry 

 the leaves and prevent the sound of a breaking twig from carrying too 

 far. Deer-stalking is leisurely work. You move quietly along among 

 the trees, keeping your face to the wind and watching the ground for 

 fresh tracks. When you find tracks that lead you toward the 

 wind you follow them as noiselessly as possible, endeavoring to 



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