LET US GO AFIELD 



the drivers. Shoot downhill or into the flank of the 

 next hill never into the free air. 



The height of the art is to kill your deer clean 

 with your first or second shot; but as a matter of 

 fact, in actual hunting conditions, most amateurs 

 worry down their deer in the chance-medley, hap- 

 hazard work of rapid rifle fire. In some way they 

 get the range better after a while. 



The common cause of missing is, of course, over- 

 shooting. Here comes in the astonishing faculty 

 a buck deer has for disturbing the entire nervous 

 system of an able-bodied man. Unless he has the 

 coolness of the natural hunter he is apt to bang 

 away without getting down into his hind sight. 

 This is why as many deer are wounded as are killed. 

 Of course, a hunter with cold nerve does not take 

 all sorts of chances ; but if a deer passes him in good 

 view under a hundred and fifty yards he simply 

 kills it that is all. The man who gets rattled will 

 miss many shots at forty or fifty yards and have 

 many of them to miss too; for sometimes a deer 

 will break cover astonishingly close at hand. 



Watching for deer on a stand at dawn of a No- 

 vember morning in the North is cold work, the more 

 so since it is forbidden to move round very much. 

 If the top of your stump seems cold you might cover 

 it with a bunch of dried fern or bracken. A hunter 



250 



