A New Year's Deer Hunt. 



where the deer had plowed up the snow and thrown it out in 

 sparkling heaps in front of their hoof tracks. And the next 

 set of tracks were sixteen feet beyond, while all the snow and 

 some of the berries were knocked from a low thorn-apple over 

 which they had bounded. A leaden chill displaced the warm 

 glow within, and, as I wondered how they could have known 

 I was about, I was troubled less about the disposal of my game. 

 It was no trouble to find fresh tracks and I was soon on the 

 trail of a buck and a doe that were straggling along nipping 

 buds and sprouts by the way. Here they separated and there 

 they came together again. Here they had stopped, and there 

 gone on, but nowhere could my sharpest search discover any- 

 thing like fur, though for over a mile I followed them in con- 

 stant expectation of at least a sight of them, if not a shot, for 

 the feeling grew upon me that even a sight of them would be 

 welcome. At last they crossed a slough and entered a dense 

 thicket of trees and underbrush. It was not probable that they 

 would leave it at this time of day unless frightened, and now 

 the problem was to get even a sight of them in the dense brush. 

 Creeping carefully through the hazel brush on the border of 

 the thicket. I stood behind a tree and peered into the brush 

 beyond, but saw nothing. Stepping on a fallen tree trunk, I 

 walked toward the brush end. As I neared the top, there came 

 a muffled crack of brush, faint, but unmistakable, and as I ran 

 along the log to get a better place to see from, there was a 

 thump on the ground and again the crack of brush louder than 

 before. Glossy as the coat of a seal rising from the water, 

 there arose over a log beyond a high curve of dark bluish gray. 

 Over the log it went, with the ease of dancing light, a whirl 

 of white flirting upward as it descended on the other side, while 

 almost beside it rose into the light of the rising sun another 

 curve of glistening gray. Over it went with the same flash 

 of white as it descended, and before it disappeared from sight, 

 the first deer rose again, the light glistening on his polished 

 horns. Deer running through down timber and low brush 

 make the most deceptive of all shots. They run with such ease 



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