HUNTING ON SNOW. 129 



though they may also have gone on half a mile or 

 more. On the way to lie down deer will often stop 

 an hour or two in such a place to browse and stand 

 around a while. That is what these have been doing, 

 and as it is yet early they may yet be here. 



Priding yourself upon your caution and acuteness 

 you move quietly along, with rifle ready and eyes 

 piercing every bush far into the distance, for some 

 three hundred yards. There on the other side of a 

 thin patch of wild-plum bushes you find that refresh- 

 ing sight with which your eyes are already so familiar, 

 the long-jumps. There are three sets of them, and 

 all beautifully long. At first you are inclined to ejac- 

 ulate ; but your chagrin yields at once to wonder, for 

 a glance into the brush shows you that they were all 

 on foot in it when they started. Yet the brush is so 

 thin that you can see plainly all through it, and you 

 recognize the plum-patch as one at which you looked 

 very keenly some two hundred yards back and thought 

 then that you could see distinctly through it. 



And you naturally wonder how they got started. 

 Well, when your head first arrived in sight of that 

 brush they were standing in there, two of them brows- 

 ing, the other looking back in the direction from 

 which they came. You have already been told of 

 what an advantage the animal that is at rest has over 

 the one that is moving. You have also learned that 

 an animal in brush can see out much better than one 

 outside can see in. And I must again remind you 

 that a deer standing still in brush is, even with the 

 aid of snow as a background, one of the hardest 

 things in the world to detect with the eye. 



But you cannot comprehend how they could have 

 run without your seeing them at all. If they saw 



