WAITING FOR GAME IN THE FOREST. 127 



approaching" danger. Time so employed is therefore 

 seldom thrown away, and we feel confident that more 

 game is lost by hurrying forward over the ground, 

 than by any reasonable amount of watching and 

 waiting, when traversing localities where game is 

 likely to be come upon. In fact in the mornings and 

 evenings, when game is on the move, it is very often 

 an excellent plan to station oneself at some point of 

 vantage, where well-worn paths, or runways, show 

 that game frequently pass that way, and seating one- 

 self comfortably on a fallen log, to wait for game to 

 come to one, instead of going oneself in search of it. 

 All noise necessarily made in making a way through 

 the bushes, is thus avoided. This practice is very 

 generally adopted by those masters of the hunter's 

 craft, the North American Indians, who have a tho- 

 rough knowledge of the whole country, and an intimate 

 acquaintance with the habits of all game animals; they 

 are thus almost always able to select a stand where 

 game may be killed in this way; it therefore often 

 happens that the white hunter will range the woods 

 for an entire day without getting a shot, \vhile the 

 crafty redskin, without fatiguing himself in the least, 

 will bring home deer or other game, day after day, 

 as the result of his superior knowledge of wood-craft. 

 This constant success of the Indian hunter often oc- 

 casions no little surprise in the minds of Europeans 

 and others, who being unacquainted with such strata- 

 gems, are unable to understand how it comes to pass 

 that the red man, with very inferior weapons, is 

 usually uniformly successful, while the white man fully 

 furnished with all the newest means and appliances 

 of sport, and who is as a rule a much better shot, 



