Virginia Deer 
other could be so welcome a returner as the wild deer, even if he 
does prove in a way destructive. 
The deep snows and severe weather of 1898-9 yielded good 
opportunities for noting their custom of yarding. 
In February when out on my snow-shoes I came upon one of 
these yards in the birch woods within a mile of the farm house where 
I write; a series of deep irregular paths marking out a loose net-work 
over about an acre of buried stumps and blackberry bushes. It had 
already been abandoned a day or two when | found it, a straight path 
leading off toward the northwest showing the most recent tracks. 
The yard had evidently been made and inhabited by a lone doe, 
possibly two or three with their fawns, the tracks all being alike and 
of small size. 
In many places where the snow was only two or three feet deep 
they had tunnelled along beneath the heavy laden undergrowth for 
short distances. Again I found narrow open paths, five feet or more 
in depth, with almost perpendicular sides. Apparently they had fed 
almost altogether upon the ground growths under the snow, the 
twigs beside the paths showing little signs of having been 
browsed upon. 
Four strands of barbed wire proved no obstacle to them, they 
passed under the bottom wire as freely as a fox or dog would do. 
Once or twice during the winter I found the trail of what must have 
been an unusually large stag in the swamps and young pine growths 
near there and along the borders of cultivated fields; his big hoof- 
prints with their widespread dew claws were separated by astonish- 
ingly long intervals at times. 
To go out into the forest with the fixed intention of killing 
anything so beautiful and harmless as a deer seems brutal and _heart- 
less enough any way you care to look at the matter. Yet the kindest 
hearted of men do so every fall, and though they may learn to hate 
themselves for every deer they have shot, they cannot give it up, and 
look forward just as eagerly to the next year’s shooting, for there is no 
other sport to be compared to deer-stalking in the autumn woods just 
after a rain in the night, when the west wind is rising to dry 
the leaves and prevent the sound of a breaking twig from carrying too 
far. Deer-stalking is leisurely work. You move quietly along among 
the trees, keeping your face to the wind and watching the ground for 
fresh tracks. When you find tracks that lead you toward the 
wind you follow them as noiselessly as possible, endeavoring to 
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