TRACKING ON BARE GROUND. 155 



still no child's play. As long as you have to grope 

 your way from track to track it will be too slow. You 

 must study the ground until you can see tracks almost 

 stick out from it, and see the line of the trail yards 

 and rods ahead. 



The besetting sin of most trackers when upon bare 

 ground is allowing the trail to take too much of their 

 attention. And often while they are looking at the 

 trail the game is looking at them. 



Sometimes it may be best to skip the whole of the 

 trail, using its direction only as a general guide ; as 

 where you find it leading from a spring toward some 

 brushy basin upon the mountain-side, which is a fa- 

 vorite resort for deer during the day. And sometimes 

 if you find a fresh trail coming down from such a 

 place to a spring, but can find no trail returning, it 

 may even be worth while to back-track the incoming 

 trail, as the deer may have returned to the basin by 

 a roundabout way, over ground or through brush 

 where it is too hard to follow them. The size and 

 character of the basin and the quantity of .other good 

 lying-down places must determine such questions. 



Sometimes you get personally acquainted with a 

 certain deer or set of deer so that you not only know 

 them by sight, but know their tracks at once ; know 

 where they will keep, where they will run if started, 

 where they will be to-morrow if started to-day, etc. 

 You come to know them perfectly, but there is always 

 something the matter when you find them. They 

 are too far, or jumping too high, or or well, in 

 short you have not yet got them. The tracks of such 

 deer are a pretty sure guide to their whereabouts 

 without adhering to the tracks themselves. 



