THE VIRGINIA DEER 143 



prairies only four miles awa}^ 1 will try the mallards 

 and the teal. 



There are lots of men who can sit by the table and 

 appreciate ever}'- play in a championship game of bill- 

 iards. There are few champion pla3-ers. 



JNIr. Van Dyke is one of the most accomplished deer- 

 stalkers in America, because he has always preferred 

 to follow the game without the guide, 



"From the first days I read about hunting moose," 

 he says, " I envied the Indian who found the game, and 

 felt contempt for the white machine that merely did 

 the mechanical part of pulling the trigger. Hunting 

 was always more of a charm than shooting, and game 

 that knew how to get away was always my first choice. 

 To be surrounded by scores of invisible spirits aware 

 of my presence while I was not keen enough to be 

 aware of theirs, to feel that I only was at fault, and 

 that the time would yet come when I could play in 

 the game without being laughed at, was to me the 

 loftiest form of pleasure in the pathless woods. The 

 remark of the settler with whom I w^as stopping, 

 'There's no use huntin' now ; the woods are too noisy,' 

 was only a spur to my ambition. That I could not 

 touch the dry leaves lightly enough to prevent a deer 

 from hearing me and running so far away that I could 

 not even see him or hear the thump of his feet, instead 

 of being a reason for stopping, was only the strongest 

 possible reason for keeping on. And after seeing 

 much of the best shooting of America, I must say 

 that the most charming of all days were those — eleven 

 successive days — I hunted from morning till night, 

 never out of sight of tracks made that very morning. 



