STILL-HUNTING ON OPEN GROUND. 159 



sure to concentrate the game when the nuts or fruits 

 are ripe. 



Even at the risk of being considered tedious, I have 

 tried to force upon the learner the extreme importance 

 of seeing a deer before he sees the hunter, and the 

 extreme difficulty, in the majority of cases, of doing this. 

 If the learner thinks me tedious, I know not what he 

 will think of experience if he waits for that to force 

 this truth upon him. Now in open ground this im- 

 portance and this difficulty are not a whit less than in 

 timber. Where deer are very plenty the wider and 

 longer range of view may enable one to see something 

 sooner than in the woods; but where they are only 

 moderately plenty, or at all scarce, it generally be- 

 comes, in such open ground as is worth hunting at 

 all, quite as difficult to see them as it is in the woods. 

 And often, as in case of the chapparal deer, it is even 

 more difficult. 



To see deer well in open ground involves not only 

 all the care and acuteness of sight necessary in the 

 woods, but needs some special care. 



Some natural mistakes are often made by the hunter 

 trained in the woods when he first tries the open 

 ground. 



ist. He does not look far enough away. 



2d. He does not look close enough by. 



3d. He forgets that the advantage he has of wide 

 range of vision is enjoyed also by his game. 



He is apt to be scanning the ground too much from 

 one hundred to two hundred yards away, and lets a 

 little dark or brown spot of life on a hill-side half or 

 three quarters of a mile away entirely escape his eye. 

 And many a deer standing in brush within fifty yards 

 of him may either stand still and let him pass by, 



