38 THE STILL-HUNTER. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE SENSES OF THE GAME AND HUNTER. 



HAVING selected the ground upon which you are to 

 hunt you will probably, if left to yourself, go wander- 

 ing around the woods with your eyes fixed about fifty 

 yards ahead of you, expecting at every turn to see a 

 large calf-like object standing broadside to you in a 

 nice open spot, patiently awaiting your bullet dis- 

 tance twenty-five or thirty yards. 



The first thing you must do is to lay aside each and 

 every idea of how a wild deer looks that you have 

 ever derived from your imagination, from pictures 

 even by the best artists in the best magazines or 

 books, even when drawn by accomplished sportsmen. 

 No picture unless of immense size and made by a thor- 

 ough hunter who is also a thorough artist can convey 

 any notion of how a deer looks on his native heath 

 under the circumstances in which three fourths of the 

 time you will have to see him to get a shot. There 

 are of course cases in which a deer appears in the 

 woods just as he does in a picture. Such was often 

 the case in the olden days. But such is the exception 

 now. There is an occasional deer that is either a nat- 

 ural fool, or has never before seen a man, or that may 

 have dropped into a doze in the daytime and awakened 

 bewildered for an instant at your near approach, or, 

 owing to formation of ground, cannot make out the 



