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oil the runway system, as less destructive and more lively and full of 

 sport than the former. To me, with the glorious music of the dogs 

 ringing and re-echoing through the woods, there is more genuine sport 

 and more true skill required in striking a buck on the " full jump " 

 with a single bullet than in doing the same thing in any other style. 



No hunter with whom I have spoken, nor any book which I have 

 read, has given me a satisfactory account of what becomes of all the cast 

 off horns of our common deer. I am aware of their being gnawed and 

 eaten up by mice and other rodents ; but during the period when the 

 horns are falling off, from the first to the sixth or seventh of January, 

 it is a very rare occurrence to find the horn of a deer, and much more 

 unusual to discover both horns together. Some of the knowing ones 

 say that the deer buries his horns, others that he drops them in water, 

 and others still, that the does eat them. No proof has, however, been 

 adduced that any one of these conjectures is correct. Although it is 

 a common thing to find the she! antlers of the wapiti on the prairies 

 and in other places, the whereabouts of the cast off" horns of the 

 Virginian deer has not yet been discovered. This is a point in natural 

 history upon which we still want ligLt. It is a strange and mysteiious 

 provision in the economy of nature that the periodical growth of a deer's 

 horns — even the ponderous antlers of the moose or the wapiti — should 

 involve only an extraordinary forcing process of little more than four 

 months. Shortly after the dropping oflf of the horns the new ones 

 beo'in to appear. The growth is slow at first until the setting in of the 

 warm spring weather, when it is exceedingly rapid. About the middle 

 of August they are full-grown, when they are covered with a soft, 

 velvety skin, which the animal gets rid of by rubbing them against 

 small trees, never against large ones. About the first of October, some- 

 times earlier in the season, the velvet has disappeai-ed, and the new 

 antlers may then be seen in all their hardness and beauty. The animal 

 may then be said to be in his finest condition and at his heaviest weight. 

 A male Cariacus virginianiis is seldom seen on the fii'st day of January 

 with his horns on, and never that I am aware of, after the fifth of the 

 same month. It is a well known fact, however, that the moosa does 

 not lose his horns until later in the season. I have seen the head of a 

 moose killed in January of the ])iesent year with horns still on, and 



