Deer of the River Bottoms. 107 



would in all likelihood start up wind. In a minute or 

 two Ferris came on the bed where he had passed the 

 night, and which he had evidently just left ; a shout 

 informed me that the game was on foot, and immedi- 

 ately afterward the crackling and snapping of the branches 

 were heard as the deer rushed through them. I ran as 

 rapidly and quietly as possible toward the place where 

 the sounds seemed to indicate that he would break 

 cover, stopping under a small tree. A minute after- 

 ward he appeared, some thirty yards off on the edge of 

 the thicket, and halted for a second to look round 

 before going into the open. Only his head and antlers 

 were visible above the bushes which hid from view the 

 rest of his body. He turned his head sharply toward 

 me as I raised the rifle, and the bullet went fairly into 

 his throat, just under the jaw, breaking his neck, and 

 bringing him down in his tracks with hardly a kick. 

 He was a fine buck of eight points, unusually fat, con- 

 sidering that the rutting season was just over. We 

 dressed it at once, and, as the house was so near, de- 

 termined we would drag it there over the snow our- 

 selves, without going back for a horse. Each took an 

 antler, and the body slipped along very easily ; but so 

 intense was the cold that we had to keep shifting sides 

 all the time, the hand which grasped the horn becoming 

 numb almost immediately. 



White-tail are very canny, and know perfectly well 

 what threatens danger and what does not. Their larger, 

 and to my mind nobler, relation, the black-tail, is if 

 any thing easier to approach and kill, and yet is by no 



