HUNTING ON SNOW. 127 



it now? If the deer are still on these ridges you 

 need not follow their tracks at all, but look for them 

 just as you would do if the ridges were bare, as in 

 your previous hunts. Your chances of seeing them in 

 that way are quite good enough. And by the amount 

 and variety of tracks you see there are other deer 

 about, and some are probably feeding on the ridges 

 this very minute. Never mind the tracks now, but 

 slip around to the leeward of the breeze that you see 

 is just beginning to sift down a little fine snow from 

 the tree-tops above. Do not lose the advantage of 

 the wind for the sake of following tracks now. You 

 can follow those tracks in two hours as well as you 

 can now; and if the deer have gone away to lie down 

 or lounge, they will then be little farther away than 

 they now are. Keep to the leeward and remain on 

 these ridges at least an hour more. 



But your anxiety to follow them is too great, and 

 you start on a circle to find their trail again. In five 

 minutes the circle is completed. Yet your stock of 

 information on the subject of those three deer remains 

 unchanged. You find only confusion worse con- 

 founded, a complete network of trails. You should 

 have made your circle four or five times as large as 

 you did make it. 



You see this mistake, and set out upon a much 

 larger circle than before. And while doing this, one 

 of the first things you discover is a series of long 

 jumps down a ridge to the left. Following these 

 back as before advised, to find how you lost that 

 deer, you find that he was feeding just over a ridge 

 only a hundred yards from where you began your 

 first circle, and that by the time that circle was half 

 completed, you with your eyes fixed upon the ground, 



