UNNING- TIME. 115 



a tedious task to track them unless the track be 

 very fresh and it be quite late in the morning. You 

 have doubtless on your last few hunts noticed places 

 where the ground had been pawed and scraped bare 

 in spots two feet or more in diameter, and that on 

 this bare spot were unmistakable tracks of a big hoof. 

 You saw, too, some bushes that had been bent, 

 twisted, and broken by horns, very different in appear- 

 ance from the marks you saw some time since of 

 frayed bark on sapling brush, etc., and which was 

 done by the buck rubbing the velvet from his horns 

 late in summer. The brush now looks as if worsted 

 in a fight with a pair of horns. And such is the case. 



These signs show the beginning of " running-time." 

 But as yet there is no difference of which you can 

 take advantage. 



Though a doe is still occasionally seen in company 

 with a buck, the majority of them now keep away 

 from him. And he spends a large portion of his time 

 traveling about in search of them. This he generally 

 does on a walk and with head well down. At first he 

 does this only early in the morning and late in the 

 evening. But as the season advances his ardor in- 

 creases, and for ten or twelve days he follows them, 

 often on a half-walk and half-trot, varied at times 

 with a clumsy gallop very different from the graceful 

 canter with which he vacates the vicinity of danger. 

 And at the height of this time he often spends the 

 greater part of the day in this amusement. 



During the height of the season it is no uncommon 

 thing for a doe to be pursued by three or four and 

 even more bucks, one after the other. They are not 

 together, but a short distance apart. Generally the 

 biggest one is ahead, and the procession tapers off to 



