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 
f _ Tknow. 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 intoa 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 toa 
fallen beast, there is another worth giving. Many a man has 
lost his life by being too anxious to handle his prize. One 
nce of a fine young fellow maimed for life by a panther 
hose mate he had killed, and whom he was too anxious to 
3 handle without sufficient investigation of the position, occurs to 
"me as I write, and an attempt of my own to turn over a wapiti 
ich was not quite dead elicited such a vigorous kick from the 
