Whitetailed Deer 



93 



T "D 



Fig. 30 — The snag. 

 Redrawn from R. C. Fisk's sketch. 



right lung, pierced the top of the diaphragm and the point 

 of the Hver, and rested against the under side of the backbone. 

 "That the animal met with this accident while it was yet 

 young [says Fisk] I am thoroughly convinced, for the end at 

 the ribs had been entirely 



drawn into the opening of 

 the heart and lungs, and 

 had thoroughly healed on 

 the outside. The skin, 

 which I now have, shows 

 only the faintest trace of a 

 scar. There was not a par- 

 ticle of pus or inflammatory 

 matter of any kind. In 

 fact, the branch, covered as 

 it was with the white skin, exactly resembled one of the long 

 bones of the leg. The animal was healthy and fat and the 

 meat was fine" (Fig. 30). 



The ordinary gait of the Deer is a low, smooth bounding, 

 with an occasional high jump. This low bounding is, at its 

 best, I should estimate (according to the scale of speed as set 

 forth in the Antelope), about twenty-seven or twenty-eight miles 

 an hour. The ease with which the animal covers great spaces 

 is marvellous. I have known a buck to clear a four-foot log and 

 fifteen feet of ground in one leap. The occasional high jump, 

 like the spy-hop of Jack-rabbit and springbok, is intended, 

 no doubt, for purpose of observation. 



In the water, Whitetailed Deer are very much at home, swim- 

 They can go so fast that a canoe-man must race to overtake ' 

 them; this means that they can swim for a time at four miles 

 an hour. They are, indeed, so confident of their swimming 

 powers that they invariably make for the water when hunted 

 to extremity. There are many cases on record of Deer so 

 pushed boldly striking out into the open sea, trusting to luck 

 for finding another shore. 



There is a record'" of a Whitetail Deer captured at sea 



*° Forest and Stream, December 6, 1883, p. 362. 



