ANOTHER KIND OF OPEN GROUND. 193 



for comfortable walking, yet it is too thick to walk 

 through without touching it. Much of it is dry and 

 brittle, and cracks and snaps at the least touch. The 

 ground, too, is more or less carpeted with sun- 

 dried grass and flowers of various kinds that crackle 

 under the lightest tread of the softest moccasins. 

 With the utmost care you can use you still make such 

 a noise that in the woods where we began hunting 

 you would see .not a tail the live-long day. 



It would indeed be useless to hunt such noisy 

 ground as this in the woods. The best still-hunters 

 of the Eastern woods will almost invariably refuse to 

 hunt when, as they say, "the woods are too noisy." 

 We have already seen one reason why your noise is 

 not so apt to alarm deer on open ground the greater 

 distances, more wind, and the absence of trees. But 

 beyond all these it is evident that these deer do not 

 start from noise as quickly as timber-deer do. That 

 is, all do not. If they did, it would be impossible to 

 get many close shots on such open ground as is 

 brushy enough to contain many deer. The hunter 

 soon finds this out, and hence is apt to conclude that 

 since he cannot go quietly anyhow, and as the deer 

 do not mind noise, there is no use in trying to walk 

 quietly. Once in a while we meet a man foolish 

 enough to think that the more noise he makes the 

 better, as if the deer needed flushing like quail. 



All this proceeds from hasty reasoning from care- 

 lessly gathered premises. While it is true that many 

 of the deer do not run from a noise that would send a 

 timber-deer flying before you got sight of him at all 

 and here I refer not to the skulkers, but to those 

 that intend to run but wait a while to see what makes 

 the noise it is equally true that many others do run 



