232 THE DEER OF AMERICA. 



knowledge, and I trust the time is coming when sportsmen will 

 generally adopt this course. In this way, they will double the 

 pleasures of the chase, and when they meet in the camp or at the 

 club house, to recount their triumphs and compare their observa- 

 tions, they will enjoy an intellectual treat, far surpassing the 

 story of the simple score or the skillful shot. 



But let us return to the consideration of the spike buck. I re- 

 peat, so far as I know, we have no well authenticated, reliable 

 observations to justify the conclusion that these S23ike antlers are 

 ever grown upon adult animals. All we have on the subject is a 

 sort of general conjecture, founded no doubt upon exceptional 

 cases. 



Continued observations upon the young deer in my parks, have 

 enlightened me much on this subject. For several years, I really 

 persuaded myself that I had the true spike-antlered bucks, and 

 set myself to carefully note their peculiarities, and fondly believed 

 that I was about to add an important chapter to scientific knowl- 

 edge. But these careful and continued observations soon unde- 

 ceived and disappointed me. By marking the sjiike buck of one 

 year, which was as large as one feeding by his side, having two 

 or three tines on each antler, I found the next year that his ant- 

 lers were also branched, and my spike-antlered buck had become 

 a fine specimen of the ordinary kind. And then the early fawn 

 of the year before, dropped from a fully adult vigorous doe, 

 which had furnished him plenty of milk, had now grown to the 

 size of a medium adult, and had fine spike antlers, resembling in 

 all things his older brother of the preceding year now bearing 

 the pronged antlers. And so I anxiously pursued my observa- 

 tions for a number of years, ever looking in vain for a second 

 antler without prongs. Without this certain means of knowl- 

 edge, T should have believed that those large spike-antlered bucks 

 were more than yearlings and nearly adult. It is true the den- 

 tition might have undeceived me, but this I could not ascertain 

 while the animal was alive, and this test has probably been 

 rarely examined and carefully studied by those hunters, who 

 believe they have killed adult deer, with spike antlers. I feel 

 quite sure that they had not the means of accurately determining 

 the true ages of the wild deer which they had killed ; and what 

 I have already stated may serve to show how very liable all are 

 to be misled in relation to a point, upon a certain knowledge of 

 which the whole question depends. 



I think the evidence satisfactory to establish the fact, that in a 

 few instances female Virginia deer have been killed having small 



