18 THE STILL-HUNTER. 



of deer. Besides all this there is sometimes a caprice 

 about their movements that will overturn all calcula- 

 tions even when based upon the most reliable data. 

 Sometimes deer will shift hundreds of miles 'on the 

 approach of winter, as they do in Northern Wisconsin 

 and that part of Michigan lying north of it. Yet in 

 other places of apparently the same character they 

 move little or not at all. In places their migrations 

 are very regular, in others so irregular as to appear 

 quite accidental, occurring only at intervals of several 

 years, often without apparent cause. In general they 

 are regular. The snow-belts of mountains they are 

 quite apt to forsake in winter for the warmer or barer 

 foot-hills or valleys below, sometimes going many 

 miles away into the lowland ranges, sometimes linger- 

 ing around the mountains' feet, sometimes returning 

 early in the spring to the high ranges, sometimes re- 

 maining in the low ground for the greater part of the 

 summer. Even when in the high mountains their 

 movements will vary. Sometimes they will keep 

 along the highest ridges on which timber or brush is 

 to be found, descending only at night to the little 

 meadows or valleys below to water and feed; while 

 at other times they will be most numerous half-way 

 .down the mountain, and are frequently more plenty, 

 even in summer, in the foot-hills than in the high 

 ground. Sometimes they will be found most plenty 

 in thick brush; and again the thick brush will be al- 

 most bare of them and they will be found in the 

 gulches and breaks of comparatively open ground. 

 Sometimes they will be most numerous in the depths 

 of the heaviest timber, sometimes on the edge of it 

 where it breaks into scrub oak, hazel and other brush, 

 sometimes in the long grass of the sloughs on the 



