82 Deer and Antelope of North America 



order. To be able to ride through woods and 

 over rough country at full speed, rifle or shot- 

 gun in hand, and then to leap off and shoot at a 

 running object, is to show that one has the quali- 

 ties which made the cavalry of Forrest so formi- 

 dable in the Civil War. There could be no better 

 training for the mounted rifleman, the most effi- 

 cient type of modern soldier. 



By far the easiest way to kill the whitetail is 

 in one or other of certain methods which entail 

 very little work or skill on the part of the hunter. 

 The most noxious of these, crusting in the deep 

 snows, has already been spoken of. No sports- 

 man worthy of the name would ever follow so 

 butcherly a method. Fire hunting must also 

 normally be ruled out. It is always mere murder 

 if carried on by a man who sits up at a lick, and 

 is not much better where the hunter walks through 

 the fields — not to mention the fact that on such 

 a walk he is quite as apt to kill stock as to kill a 

 deer. But fire hunting from a boat, or jacking, 

 as it is called, though it entails absolutely no skill 

 in the hunter, and though it is, and ought to be, 

 forbidden, as it can best be carried on in the 

 season when nursing does are particularly apt to 

 be the victims, nevertheless has a certain charm 

 of its own. The first deer I ever killed, when 

 a boy, was obtained in this way, and I have 

 always been glad to have had the experience, 



