TRACKING ON BARE GROUND. 146 



CHAPTER XIII. 



TRACKING ON BARE GROUND. 



IN tracking deer upon bare ground a difficulty 

 meets us which is practically unknown in tracking 

 upon snow; namely, recognizing the footprints. On 

 snow one can generally watch the trail with an oc- 

 casional side glance of the most careless kind, keep- 

 ing all his attention directed toward catching first 

 sight of the game. But on bare ground not only is 

 keener sight necessary to detect the game, but a large 

 part of the attention so necessary for that purpose 

 has to be diverted toward finding and recognizing 

 the footprints of the trail. 



I have read some very weak stuff about the stupen- 

 dous difficulties of tracking upon bare ground. I 

 have read very able articles by eminent sportsmen in 

 our best magazines in which the tracking of a moose 

 weighing nearly a thousand pounds was depicted as 

 a vast and wondrous achievement, the ability to do 

 which was reserved to the gifted Indian and denied 

 to the poor Paleface. There are indeed some people 

 who could not track an elephant through a dew-cov- 

 ered clover-patch; but there is not a backwoods boy 

 of sixteen who ever has to hunt up a lost yearling calf 

 in the woods, not a young vaquero in California who 

 ever followed an animal over the rugged hills, who 

 would not laugh at those articles and declare the 

 author a gosling. The authors of such articles are, 



