TO MANAGE A DEER WHEN HIT. 259 



would either stand and look at the hunter without 

 running at all, or if they did run would go only a few 

 yards and stop. The greater number would stand 

 broadside to the hunter inside of seventy yards' dis- 

 tance; the hunter was a cool deliberate shot; the rifle 

 was perfect in its accuracy to that distance; and 

 therefore the ball was always, like the stock of the 

 Credit Mobilier, " placed where it would do the most 

 good." And deer were then so plenty that the hunter 

 was sure of one or more such shots in a very short 

 time. So easy was it then to pick such shots that the 

 old-time hunter rarely thought of such a thing as 

 shooting at a deer much beyond a hundred yards, or 

 at one running, or at one that showed only the rear 

 half of his body. He nearly always waited for a sure 

 shot at the point of the shoulder or just behind it, 

 reaching the heart almost invariably; though he 

 often shot deer in the head. 



But it is scarcely necessary to say that that day is 

 past. There are yet a few places where deer are still 

 tame. But the deer of the period is not an animal in 

 which a ball can be placed where you wish to place it. 

 And the antelope of the period is still less so, as he 

 must be shot at longer distances, and on more or less 

 windy plains that affect the aim of the hunter and the 

 flight of the ball. Not only are the wildest regions of 

 our country now penetrated by hunters, but since the 

 general use of breech-loading rifles many of them 

 poor ones, many of the best ones being kept so dirty 

 and rusty that they will hit nothing, all of them tend- 

 ing by their rapidity of fire to make careless shooting 

 the rule there is five times the amount of shooting at 

 and scaring game that there used to be from an equal 

 number of hunters carrying rifles that never threw 



