132 THE STILL-HUNTER. 



rarely be long enough, nor will they generally be close 

 enough, for anything like a certain shot. This applies 

 to the latter deer only when they have once been 

 started. Deer that are not very wild seldom or never 

 have the trick of watching back upon their track be- 

 fore being started. 



You passed a fresh track of a big buck a few mo- 

 ments ago that led toward the slash. He has gone 

 there to rest a bit after his morning travels. You had 

 better try him, for " anybody can kill a buck in run- 

 ning-time." At least that is what they say. 



You start off upon his track with much more care 

 than you did upon the trail of the others. But this is 

 only time wasted. The woods here are quite open for 

 several hundred yards, and as far as you can see there 

 are no windfalls, brush-patches, or brushy ridges. 

 There is no probability that he has stopped anywhere 

 along such ground as this when, if you remember the 

 woods as you should do, the old slash is less than half 

 a mile in the direction the track is leading. 



Reaching the slash } r ou find the trail winds over a 

 ridge and down into a little basin. You look very 

 long and carefully into the basin, thoroughly inspect- 

 ing all the brush it contains. Seeing nothing, you 

 descend and follow the trail across it and up the end 

 of a ridge that juts into it. On the point of this ridge, 

 in a clump of low briers, you find a large, fresh, warm 

 bed, with the well-known long jumps leading away 

 from it. 



Now stoop low in this bed and you can still see 

 every step of the way you came for a hundred and 

 fifty or two hundred yards back. While your eyes 

 were intently fixed upon the track he saw you and 

 departed. 



