At Close Range 



The same provision guards animals, such as 

 deer and caribou, which build no dens but leave 

 their helpless young on the ground. Two or three 

 times, after finding a fawn in the woods, I have 

 tested his concealment by means of my young 

 dog's nose; and I may add that Rab will point 

 a deer as stanchly as he points a grouse or wood- 

 cock, for he is still in the happy, irresponsible 

 stage when everything that lives in the woods is 

 game to him. So long as the fawn remains mo- 

 tionless where his mother hid him, the dog must 

 be almost on top of him before pointing or showing 

 any sign of game. But if the little fellow runs 

 or even rises to his feet at our approach (fawns 

 are apt to do this as they grow older), the dog 

 seems to catch the scent after the first motion; 

 he begins to cat-foot, his nose up as in following 

 an air trail, and steadies to a point while he is 

 still many yards away from where the fawn was 

 hiding. 



The nose of a wolf is keener than that of any 

 dog I ever knew; yet I once trailed a pack of 

 wolves that passed within sixteen measured feet 

 of where two deer were sleeping in a hole in the 

 snow. The wolves were hunting, too, for they 

 killed and partially ate a buck a little farther on; 

 but the trail said that they had passed close to 

 these sleeping deer without detecting them. 



[223] 



