78 THE STILL-HUNTER. 



or very near by it for two or three or four days and 

 often more. 



One of the most natural blunders a beginner will 

 make is to spend the middle of the day hunting around 

 the oak ridges or wherever he sees the most tracks, 

 when in fact most of the deer are half a mile or a mile 

 away. I have already noticed the distinction between 

 night-beds and day-beds, and between ground where 

 deer feed and where they go to lie down. You must 

 bear this ever in mind or you may lose much time in 

 hunting where your game was two or three hours or 

 more ago and a half-mile or more from where it now is. 



Let us therefore leave the ridges, as it is ten o'clock 

 and the majority of the deer are now lying down. Half 

 a mile to the north are some very brushy ridges and 

 windfalls, and just beyond them is a large piece of 

 ground from which the pine has been cut out. This 

 is known to the woodsmen and hunters as a "slash" 

 or "chopping." A pine "slash" is about as rough a 

 piece of ground as is possibly consistent with still- 

 hunting. It is covered in all directions with tree-tops, 

 logs too small or too broken by falling to make good 

 lumber, small brush and trees crushed by the larger 

 ones, stumps and branches of all sizes, and the whole 

 is well covered with briers, saplings, and brush. But 

 there is no other ground that the deer so loves to lie 

 down in during the cool bright days of autumn and 

 the sunny days of winter. 



Here is a large windfall just ahead. It will bear in- 

 spection. Mounting one of the huge fallen trunks on 

 the outside, we see nothing but great shafts of timber 

 lying headlong in ruinous confusion, mixed through- 

 out with great upturned roots, crushed tops, and shat- 

 tered limbs, and throughout all a rank growth of 



