STILL-HUNTING ON OPEN GROUND. 163 



when they once get in good brush with the intention 

 of hiding they will rarely move for anything but a 

 dog. Consequently you gain nothing in such ground 

 by making a noise in walking. For you can move 

 nothing that has intended to hide, but may move 

 several deer that would have known nothing of your 

 approach if you had kept still. It is impossible to 

 estimate the proportion of deer that will thus hide, as 

 in most cases we know nothing of them. A deer, too, 

 may hide to-day and let you pass within five yards of 

 him that to-morrow, on ground equally good, will 

 start two hundred yards from you and run a mile 

 without stopping. 



Nor do deer always confine this trick to dense 

 brush. On tolerably open ground where the only 

 brush consisted of isolated clumps of sumac and other 

 bushes fifteen or twenty feet, or even as many yards, 

 apart I have repeatedly known them lie without 

 moving in these clumps of bushes while I passed all 

 around them in their wind, sight, hearing, etc. A 

 thoroughly trained dog that can be trusted a few 

 yards from your heels is the best thing for such cases, 

 as often you cannot rouse the deer without kicking in 

 the very bush where it happens to be. There is no 

 reason why a well-bred pointer or setter cannot be 

 broken to point deer as well as birds. I broke a fox- 

 hound puppy to do it, and have seen him make as 

 fair a point as ever a dog made on a woodcock, except 

 that he sat up instead of straightening out. 



While you must always, in hunting such ground, 

 bear in mind the possibility of deer thus hiding, you 

 must still govern all your actions and movements by the 

 presumption that they will act as you have seen them do 

 in the woods. For this will be the greatest difficulty 



