138 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING. 
and brought him to the ground, but he was up again in 
a moment, and would have been off, had not Smith lodged 
a dose of buckshot in his body. On receiving this, he 
wheeled about once or twice, as if he were dazed, then 
swayed and staggered, and finally fell in a lump. 
When we approached him we found he was full grown, 
and the doctor said he was one of the finest stags he had 
ever seen. 
* Yes,” exclaimed Smith, “‘and you and I made him 
stag around nicely, didn’t we? ” 
“* Pillbox looked at him in a melancholy manner, as if 
he were sorry that a man should be troubled with such a 
mania, but he said nothing, and turning to me he pointed 
out where the bullet had entered the heart. 
«¢«This bart’s bowed down with weight of woe’ just 
now,” said Smith, pointing to the same hole, and assum- 
ing the air of an undertaker. 
“That shot of mine would have killed him, had you 
not fired,” answered the doctor; ‘‘so Vl claim first 
blood, for luck, for nothing can stand a dose of lead in 
the heart. The shock to the system alone would have 
scared him to death, for it was severe enough to kill a 
cow, let alone a deer.” 
“‘T know that,” responded Smith; ‘‘you may claim 
him, for I know that nothing can cow that hart like a 
dose of lead in the right ventricle.” 
** Go to blazes with your old puns!” shouted Pillbox; 
“one might think you had just come out of a lunatic 
asylum for punsters.”’ 
This display of assumed choler caused us to laugh 
heartily, and actually silenced Smith, for he did not at- 
tempt to make a pun for fifteen or twenty minutes; but 
when I bagged a badger, it was too much for him, and, 
on saying that I would not have killed it did I not want 
it for a specimen, he, in a slow and solemn tone, said: 
“JT can understand how bad-ger must have felt when 
