306 THE STILL-HUNTER. 



aloft at least two feet, and often three feet or more, 

 at every blow of his springy legs upon the ground. 

 The Virginia or white-tailed deer runs indeed with 

 a graceful canter, but still rises fully the width of his 

 body at every spring. And here arises the great 

 source of misses on deer running straight away. If 

 the deer is at any distance over thirty or forty yards, 

 allowance must be made for this motion. But the 

 tendency is to hold the sights upon the body and fire 

 when it shows the most conspicuously; to wit, when 

 it is in the air. The consequence is that the ball 

 whizzes through the space the deer has just left in its 

 descent. Sometimes, however, one will fire when the 

 deer is on the ground, in which case the ball gets 

 there as the deer is rising, and either misses it en- 

 tirely or hits a leg. 



The ball should be fired at the point of space the 

 deer will occupy when the ball reaches him. This 

 will always involve some guesswork, because it is im- 

 possible always to calculate the right distance to fire 

 ahead, and it is also impossible to hit with certainty 

 a blank point of space, even if you do know its exact 

 distance from the mark. Try shooting a yard to one 

 side of a bull's-eye at a hundred yards on clean snow, 

 and see what kind of a score you will make as com- 

 pared with what you could make at the mark, and 

 you will at once see another reason why wing-shoot- 

 ing with the rifle will always be quite a puzzle. 



The best point at which to fire is the point at which 

 the deer will reach the ground in his descent. And 

 this can be calculated with much more precision than 

 would at first be supposed possible, although it cer- 

 tainly involves much guesswork. The way it can be 

 done most successfully I believe to be the following: 



