American Lion, and Deer Hunting: 111 



" Pray, friend, what have you killed P'^ for to say, " what 

 have you shot at ?" might imply the possibility of his having 

 missed, and so might hurt his feelings. " Nothing but a buck.'" 

 " And where is it .?" " Oh ! it has taken a jump or so, but T 

 settled it, and Avill soon be with it. My ball struck, and must 

 have gone through his heart." We arrive at the spot where 

 the animal had laid itself down among" the grass in a thicket of 

 grape-vines, sumachs, and spruce bushes, where it intended to 

 repose during the middle of the day. The place is covered 

 with blood, the hoofs of the deer have left deep prints in the 

 ground, as it bounced in the agonies produced by its wound ; 

 but the blood that has gushed from its side discloses the 

 course which it has taken. We soon reach the spot. There 

 lies the buck, its tongue out, its eye dim, its breath exhausted 

 ■ — it is dead. The hunter draws his knife, cuts the buck's 

 throat almost asunder, and prepares to skin it. For this pur- 

 pose he hangs it upon the branch of a tree. When the skin is 

 removed he cuts off the hams, and, abandoning the rest of the 

 carcass to the wolves and vultures, reloads his gun, flings the 

 venison, enclosed by the skin, upon his back, secures it with a 

 strap, and walks off in search of more game, well knowing 

 that, in the immediate neighbourhood, another at least is to be 

 found. 



Had the weather been warmer, the hunter would have sought 

 for the buck along the shadowy side of the hills. Had it been 

 the spring season, he would have led us through some thick cane 

 brake, to the margin of some remote lake, where you would 

 have seen the deer immersed to his head in the water; to save 

 his body from the tormenting attacks of moschettoes. Had 

 winter overspread the earth with a covering of snow, he would 

 have searched the low damp woods, where the mosses and lichens, 

 on which at that period the deer feeds, abound, the trees being 

 generally crusted with them for several feet from the ground. 

 At one time, he might have marked the places where the deer 

 clears the velvet from his horns by rubbing them against the low 

 stems of bushes, and where he frequently scrapes the earth with 

 his fore hoofs ; at another, he would have betaken himself to 

 places where persimonsand crab apples abound, as beneath these 

 trees it frequently stops to munch their fruits. During early 



