ON BIG GAME SHOOTING GENERALLY 15 



and not spoil the neck. If, when you kill, you are far from 

 home, and want to pack your venison home yourself, the 

 Indian fashion of packing and carrying is the simplest that 

 I know. It is done thus : 



After grallocking, skin your deer and cut off his head. 

 Skin well down the legs, cutting off the feet at the fetlock joint, 

 and spread the skin out with the hair downwards. Now cut 

 from a bush near by a stick about as thick as your thumb, 

 about three inches shorter than the width of the skin just 

 behind the forelegs. Lay this on the skin and stretch the skin 

 over it, driving in the points of the stick so as to hold the skin 

 taut at the width of the stick. Next cut two or three little holes 

 in the skin of each hind leg, and sew the two legs together by 

 pushing a small twig through alternate holes in the skin of either 

 leg. This will make the hind legs into a loop or handle. Now 

 cut up what meat you want into joints of convenient size, pack 

 them neatly on the skin behind the stick, fold up your pack 

 and bring the stick through your loop, so that the ends of it 

 overlap and hold against the loop ; put the loop over your 

 forehead or your shoulders, and there you are with a fairly con- 

 venient satchel full of meat on your back, the hairy side of the 

 skin against your coat, and a sufficiently soft strap of skin across 

 forehead or chest to carry the weight. All this can be done 

 on the spot with no more adjuncts than your skinning knife 

 and a bush to cut twigs from. The only difficulty is that the 

 head must be arranged as an extra pack or must be called for 

 on a subsequent occasion. 



But your beast, though down, may not be dead, and apart 

 from the caution already given to load before going up to a 

 fallen beast, there is another worth giving. Many a man has 

 lost his life by being too anxious to handle his prize. One 

 instance of a fine young fellow maimed for life by a panther 

 whose mate he had killed, and whom he was too anxious to 

 handle without sufficient investigation of the position, occurs to 

 me as I write, and an attempt of my own to turn over a wapiti 

 which was not quite dead elicited such a vigorous kick from the 



