HUNTING IN THE OPEN AND IN TIMBER. 221 



of impatience fast blazing up in your vitals. The 

 only remedy is patience. He surely cannot smell you 

 on account of the wind, and he cannot possibly make 

 out what you are if you only keep still. 



Suddenly he turns half around and scratches his 

 neck with his hoof. Now throw your rifle into posi- 

 tion for a shot; for he acts as though he were done 

 feeding, and if he starts on a walk he may go some 

 distance before he stops. Again he straightens up 

 and looks around, and through an opening the morn- 

 ing sun shines on his beamy coat and polished horns. 

 And now I guess you had better try him, though it is 

 a long shot for unsteady nerves. 



The rifle cracks, and the buck gives a convulsive 

 start, and as a distinct spat of the ball comes back on 

 the air he breaks for the chapparal, no longer on the 

 beautiful ricochet gait we have seen before, but on a 

 regular race-horse gallop. The hissing lead flies be- 

 hind him fast as you can send it from your repeater, 

 and you begin to reflect on the fleeting nature of 

 earthly pleasures, when his gait begins to change to 

 the lumbering gallop of a cow, and in a second he 

 wavers, staggers, and then goes plunging down head 

 first to the ground, shot through the heart. 



Such is the hunting in the oak cafions of Southern 

 California, and probably on all similar ground in any 

 part of the Union. If not disturbed, the deer prefer 

 these valleys and shady groves with the side cafions 

 and gulches to the hills on either side. But if hunted 

 or disturbed much they soon go back into the chap- 

 paral by day, where it is quite useless to follow them. 

 And sometimes, as in spring and early summer, the 

 majority will keep pretty close in the chapparal all 

 the time, and make few tracks outside. 



