BUCK FEVER. MIMIC BATTLES. 61 



All this was to be done, it had beeii explained to me as 

 being the Neophyte, but at the last the deer itself 

 might fail to perform its part of the drama. There's many 

 a slip, I was told, between a deer and a shot. Sometimes 

 the deer has grow n wise through experience, and in its 

 small brain reasons thai if a candle explodes and roars and 

 stints the innocent spectator with a stray buck-shot one 

 night, it may do so another night, and is not to be trusted 

 to approach: and the deer betakes it to its legs and show-, 

 no globes of lire at all. Hut an unsophisticated deer is very 

 curious, and. possibly, would know good and evil, and 

 upon seeing a bright light, and nothing more, stares and 

 stands, it he hears no noise and does not smell the foe, 

 until the hunter approaches to within fifty, forty, thirty 

 feet. Then then- is nothing to do but to keep one's nerves 

 steady, silently raise and aim the gun, and pull the trigger. 

 If, however, the Bonier is new to the experience, he i- 

 likely to be more nervous than the deer is, to forget to 

 shoot, sometimes, or to shake as in an ague fit, and to 

 commit indi-eribable blunders, -in other words, to have "the 

 buck fever. " So that, after all, "jacking deer " is not such 

 a one sided affair as at first it would seem to be. 



Meanwhile, we had withdrawn to the hut. and refilled and 

 lighted our pipes. A quartette of us, seated like so many 

 tailors on the blanket spread couch, were, with joke and 

 laughter and -Hatches of song and whistled airs, fighting the 

 mimie battle of "kings" and "queens " and "knaves." 

 Nothing more fearful was done in these battles than that 

 "clubs" smashed "hearts," the vulgar " spade " won 



