The Mule- deer 205 



much noise, and kicking here and there. Then 

 I circled it, but there was no track going out, 

 while the one going in was plain enough ; and 

 I had been all the time in such plain sight that 

 the game could not have gone out without my 

 seeing. Then I tried tracking the deer around 

 in the brush. The tracks multiplied all the time, 

 showing plainly that the beast was sneaking 

 around in the cover. After spending about an 

 hour in the cover and an hour on the hillside 

 above, waiting for the deer to move, I gave up. 

 If this is not shrewdness, what is ? The amount 

 or quality of the noise you make does not change 

 the case in the slightest. You may sometimes 

 start one by getting to the windward, but gener- 

 ally not, for when the deer is playing this game 

 it knows perfectly well that you are a man, and a 

 man that will finally get tired. Often, instead of 

 sneaking, they will lie still until you almost tread 

 on them and then dash into a little gulch or 

 around some rock or through a bunch of dense 

 brush that gives you not a second of time to 

 shoot, and then they are gone forever. Several 

 times I have been close enough to breathe the 

 dust raised from the dry ground by their plung- 

 ing feet. A friend riding along a hillside trail in 

 dense brush one day, just ahead of me, saw one 

 lying under a manzanita with head down and 

 eyes up watching him. As his rifle was lying 



