THE DEER I SHOULD NOT HAVE KILLED 153 



boweled it, buried the refuse, and left the thing 

 hanging on the tree; then we washed our bloody 

 arms and hands in a dark pool and cleaned the 

 blood off our knives with the brown dead leaves, 

 blazed the trees to the road and with a guilty 

 conscience I returned to the little hotel, returned the 

 rifle to its owner and sadly told him that if he 

 would walk out to a certain woodpile, then follow 

 a spot trail, he could shoot a buck. 



The next morning as we were on our way to 

 our distant camp we met a hunter proudly return- 

 ing with his only deer. It did not take long for 

 me to wash the gore off my bloody hands and 

 arms and to clean my hunting knife, but I shall 

 never rid myself of a feeling of guilt when I think 

 how unnecessary it was to kill that animal, and 

 how weak I was deliberately to kill a deer simply 

 because a man asked me to do it. That 

 deer was killed by me because of the friend- 

 ship for that man and the man wanted it for the 

 same reason an Indian would wish a scalp to put 

 in his belt, he wanted it as a "trophy" of 



HIS SKILL AS A HUNTER. 



Now please don't misunderstand my position. I 

 would not hesitate to purchase and kill 

 chickens or even cattle, if we needed them 

 for meat, neither would I think it wrong in 

 a game country to supply the camp kettle 

 with the necessary food from the abundance 

 which the forest offered, but / do not like to kill 



