124 THE STILL-HUNTER. 



than upon bare ground, it also gives the deer pre- 

 cisely the same advantage over you, an advantage 

 which you cannot in heavy timber avoid by all the 

 white clothes and hats you can invent. 



2d. That though snow deadens the sharpness or dis- 

 tinctness of sounds, yet dull sounds, like the crushing 

 of dead or rotten sticks beneath the foot, will be con- 

 veyed along the ground as well as ever, and perhaps 

 even better if the snow be wet. 



3d. That it may make an entirely new noise by 

 grinding or packing under your foot when deep and 

 dry, unless you work your foot into it toe first; or 

 when a little stiff or crusty from thaw or rain, it may 

 make a noise worse than any it hides. And both 

 these new noises being conveyed along the ground, and 

 being unmistakable in their character, will frighten a 

 wild deer farther and more effectually than any other 

 kind of noise. And in no respect must any of the 

 caution to be observed in hunting on bare ground be 

 relaxed. 



Not only is it a great pleasure to work up a trail, 

 but where deer are scarce it is often essential to suc- 

 cess. And as hunting on snow without tracking does 

 not materially differ from what we have already been 

 over, we will pass at once to tracking. 



About all the descriptions of tracking deer that it 

 has ever been my lot to see were nothing but exag- 

 gerated rabbit-hunts, such as when a boy I used to 

 take before breakfast on the first " tracking-snow" of 

 the season. They all depict a man sneaking along on 

 the trail until he comes up with the deer, which he 

 knocks over as a matter of course. The deer is big- 

 ger than a rabbit; its distance from the hunter is a 

 few yards greater than the distance the rabbit gener- 



