DEER TRACKING. 185 

circumstances in such cases. If a settler, far from any market, 
with a family of little ones, sees their faces pale for want of 
such nourishment, goes beyond his field and brings in a deer, 
he is not to be condemned. If the trapper, far beyond civiliza- 
tion, finds his stock of food has run out through unforseen 
circumstances, and he can shoot down a deer or caribou, and 
takes care of it, consuming it for food, the law might also 
excuse him. 
But those fellows that start out for what they call fun, on 
the first suitable crust, find a family of deer confined to a few 
paths, over an acre or less of feeding ground, hemmed in by 
the sharp crust on the deep snow, growing poorer every day, 
being obliged to feed from the stumps of the sprouts from 
which they fed at the first of their yarding up, confined until 
they had eaten all their browse within reach, and now gnaw- 
ing the maple bark and even eating cedar boughs, perhaps 
unable to get to the brook they love so well, which may not 
be but a little way from them, and not a particle of fat upon 
their thin, shrunken bodies, their mournful eyes saying to the 
hunters, ‘‘ we are poor and famished for want of suitable 
food, even the more thirsty from eating snow these many days. 
Pray do not kill us now, you can see we are not fit for food, 
and our skins are worth nothing, for they are so thin, that 
they would shed the thick hair at each shake. Please allow 
us to live until the crust is made thicker and harder after the 
rain, which we know is coming soon, when we will walk 
away carefully upon the top of it to a new feeding chance by 
the clear brook, and not be so famished. We will promise 
to get real round and fat by next October, then if you get one 
of us, it will not be so heartlessly cruel.” 
But these men will not see their mild, pleading eyes; they 
