258 THE STILL-HUNTER. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



TO MANAGE A DEER WHEN HIT. 



THE popular idea of the effect of a bullet upon a 

 deer or antelope is about like a woman's idea of the 

 effect of shooting in general; viz., instantaneous death 

 of the thing shot at. Few persons who have not 

 tried it would ever dream that after hours of pa- 

 tient toil, and a shot fired with perfect coolness and 

 accuracy, the glossy prize that you just now so fondly 

 imagined yours beyond a doubt may be suddenly 

 resolved into the most slippery intangibility on earth, 

 and that the hunt instead of ending has in reality only 

 commenced. Yet such with wild deer is the case 

 about one third of the time, and on open ground, 

 where longer shots must be taken than in the woods, 

 it may be so quite as often even with pretty tame 

 deer. 



This provoking feature is, moreover, becoming more 

 and more common. Time was in all the States of the 

 Union when a good cool shot armed with a rifle shoot- 

 ing a bullet scarcely larger than a pea could shoot a 

 hundred deer in succession without ten of them run- 

 ning over two hundred yards before falling dead. 

 And these ten would not go over four hundred or 

 five hundred yards. And the greater number would 

 fall either in their tracks or in sight of the hunter. 

 The reason of this is as simple as anything in the 

 world. Deer were then so tame that the great majority 



