NELSON] _ TRAPS AND SNARES 119 
cealed hunter; when they were near enough he would spring up and 
discharge his arrows; this would distract their attention from the first 
man, who in the meantime had also concealed himself. In running to 
escape from the hunter who had just discharged his arrows, the game 
would frequently circle within shot of the other man and become so 
confused as to run wildly back and forth, approaching each man in 
turn several times before the survivors regained their wits sufficiently 
to make their escape. 
Another method was to close the lower end of a rocky pass through 
which the deer were accustomed to travel, and then make a drive from 
the open valley and inclose an entire herd at once, when they were 
killed with lances and arrows. The people said that in cases of this 
kind they were accustomed to kill every deer thus inclosed, with- 
out regard to number, and that frequently such large numbers were 
killed that they were unabie to utilize them, and they were left where 
they fell. A 
Deer were also snared with strong nooses of rawhide, which were 
tied to stout bushes and held open by light strings of grass or sinew con- 
necting them with other bushes, or with small 
stakes planted in the ground. In feeding, the 
deer would entang'e tkeir antlers or thrust in 
their heads, so that they were held or strangled 
by the nooses closing around their necks. 
Another method practiced by the young men 
in early summer, when the fawns were born, was 
to look for them, and when a fawn only a few 
days old was found they would run it down. 
The hunters considered this sport to be a great y 
test of agility and endurance, for instead of — ria, 31-Model of a deer 
shooting the fawn with arrows, as might readily SHEE 
have been done, it was a matter of pride to pursue the animal until 
it became so tired and its feet so tender that it stopped and permitted 
itself to be captured. 
At the time of my visit to Point Barrow in 1881, reindeer were still 
common in the low mountains to the south and southeast of that place, 
but it had become very easy to obtain breech-loading guns and ammu- 
nition from the whalers, and the people were destroying the deer very 
rapidly. One old man and his son, it was claimed, had nearly five 
hundred skins in storage, and others had an abundance of them. 
Dall’s sheep were also killed in large numbers by these people and 
by the Eskimo of Kowak river, judging from the number of skins seen 
among them. 
Figure 34 shows a model of a deer snare from the lower Yukon; it 
consists of two straight sticks, to the larger of which the end of the 
snare is firmly attached, while the outer side of the loop is lightly held 
by a smaller stick which serves to keep the snare in place. 
