200 Deer of the Pacific Coast 



shades that the surface looks like velvet, here 

 brightly green where the sun strikes it, there 

 darkly blue where it sleeps in shade, but generally 

 a mass of sparkling light from the great number 

 of very small leaves. But the boulders that glisten 

 above it are nothing to those that lie below, and 

 in its natural state it is about the hardest com- 

 bination that man or dog is ever likely called to 

 encounter. 



Such is the chosen home of this deer, although 

 he loves the heavy timber of the mountains and 

 the dense jungles of the river bottoms quite as 

 well as any other deer. The only possible chance 

 a few years ago was to catch the game outside of 

 this, and even then it took a deadly rifle to make 

 sure of covering. For if the deer once got into 

 that heavy brush, a few yards of attempted track- 

 ing were generally enough for you, and if the day 

 were hot a few feet would often do. But there 

 was much of this that was low enough, so you 

 could see the head or even the back of a deer, 

 and from an early day much of the heavier stuff 

 was burned off, with openings of different sizes 

 here and there on which one could see almost 

 the whole of the body. 



The most interesting deer-hunting on this coast 

 used to be on the more open portions of such 

 ground and around the patches of chaparral, while 

 the heavy stuff that had been swept by fire, when 



