LOOKING FOR DEER LYING DOWN. 77 



ridges, along hill-sides, or in valleys, it is also quite 

 easy to see them; as in much of the ground that deer 

 frequent in California and countries of similar moun- 

 tain formation, before they are hunted too much. But 

 in the Eastern States a deer will now be rarely or 

 never found lying by day in such a place. 



You must be careful, therefore, how you waste much 

 time in trying to see deer in bed. Where the ground 

 is very rocky, brushy, or covered with windfalls, if 

 there is no snow, or even if there is snow unless the 

 ground is quite rolling, it will not be worth while to 

 try to see them so. In such case your object should 

 generally be to get over the greatest amount of ground 

 with the least noise, depending entirely upon starting 

 one close enough for a shot. And even on ground 

 where deer can be seen you must strain your eyes to 

 the utmost, for it is even then no very easy matter to 

 see one in bed. 



Very rarely does a deer lie twice in the same bed. 

 A fat old buck late in summer or in early fall, before 

 he begins to roam much, will sometimes do it. Any 

 deer may sometimes lie for several days on a piece of 

 a few acres, though roaming a mile or more away from 

 it at night. Fawns and does, as well as barren does 

 and yearlings, will sometimes lie twice in the same 

 bush and even in the very same bed of the day before 

 or beside it. But the rule is very decidedly the other 

 way. Though deer often keep for years in the same 

 orbit of a mile or so in diameter, they change their 

 special whereabouts so often that as a rule it will 

 never be worth while to hunt around old beds; and 

 when you have started a deer from a particular bed 

 you need not, as a rule, expect to find him either there 



