384 THE DEER OF AMERICA. 



before he is overtaken. The best dog I ever owned for the still- 

 hunt was a pointer. Though not so fleet or so powerful as the 

 other, his fine nose and great sagacity compensated for all else. 

 He would take the track of the deer and follow it by the scent 

 just us fast or slow as directed, and as still as a cat. When he 

 brought a wounded deer to bay, he would give tongue as furi- 

 ously as one could desire, and hold bim at bay with great per- 

 tinacity : but of course he never seized the animal. 



Those early settlers often hunted the deer on horseback, and 

 may have thought the game was more easily approached thus 

 than on foot ; but my own experience has led me to a different 

 conclusion. The deer when thus hunted soon learned that the 

 inounted hunter was as dangerous as if on foot, while conceal- 

 ment was almost impossible. On the prairies the horse was 

 preferable, for concealment was difficult in either case. 



The mounted hunter in the event of success had the means of 

 taking home his game when captured. If the deer was too large 

 for him to lift to the horse's back, with a cord or the bough of 

 a tree he might be attached to the horse's tail, and thus drawn 

 home, and this was the usual practice of some who insisted that 

 a horse could draw the largest deer in that way, without the 

 least appearance of distress. 



When the pedestrian hunter killed his deer, he bled him and 

 removed the viscera, and then hung him in a tree beyond the 

 reach of the wolves, until he could come for him with the means 

 to remove him. This might seem a diflficult matter with a heavy 

 deer, but it is not so. Of course a long cord should be carried 

 in the pocket for the purpose. If the deer is too heavy to be 

 sustained by a sapling which the hunter is able to bend down, 

 he selects the largest he can manage near to a larger tree. The 

 sapling is bent down and fastened in that position. To it, ten 

 or twelve feet from the ground, the deer is attached by the heels. 

 The sapling is then allowed to spring back with the cord at- 

 tached near the top. This cord is then passed over a limb of the 

 larger tree, when a moderate pull will assist the small tree to 

 assume a vertical position and your deer is safely suspended. Of 

 course you must go as far from under the limb as possible to save 

 friction. In this way a man of moderate strength can hang the 

 largest deer quite beyond danger. 



Let me say here to the honor of frontiersmen, as well as sports- 

 men, that I never knew a deer thus left in the woods to be 

 stolen. I really believe a man who would not hesitate to steal 



