128 THE STILL-HUNTER. 



where they had no business to be, came directly 

 into his sight. 



Two hundred yards more of your second circle 

 brings you to another object of peculiar, often pain- 

 ful, interest to anxious hunters two more sets of 

 long jumps where two yearlings have scattered the 

 snow, leaves, and dirt with their plunging hoofs. In 

 the excitement of your circle business you quite over- 

 looked the little matter of wind, and they probably 

 smelt you. Or they may have been stampeded by the 

 running of the other one, for he must have passed 

 somewhere near here. And the running of a deer will 

 nearly always alarm every deer within hearing of the 

 sound of his hoofs. So generally will they take alarm 

 from any other animal. 



By the time your circle is nearly completed you find 

 that the doe and two fawns have left the ridges and 

 gone across a flat creek-bottom. This does not, how- 

 ever, prove your circle enterprise a profitable one, for 

 you could easily have discovered this in time without 

 throwing away the prospects you had for a shot at the 

 other three deer. 



You follow the trail of the doe and fawns across 

 the creek, where it turns and goes up the creek-bot- 

 tom some twenty or thirty yards from the creek. 

 Thus far they have been walking along nearly to- 

 gether, and at an ordinary pace. But now the trails 

 are separating and the steps get shorter and more ir- 

 regular. Here one has wandered off a few rods to 

 one side ; here another has stopped at a bush and 

 nibbled a few twigs ; there the old one has been trav- 

 eling rather aimlessly around and through a patch 

 of black-haws. All these signs tell you to be very 

 careful, for they may be within sight at this instant, 



