120 THE DEER OF AMERICA. 
body is rather short and round. Its legs, too, are short and rather 
stout, but by no means clumsy. The position in which the tail 
is curved adds much to its appearance. This is only drooping 
instead of being closely depressed when at ease, as is the case 
with all the other deer. 
Cervus Virginianus varies very much in size, even in the 
same latitude, though as a general rule they are larger at the 
north than in their southern range. About forty years ago I 
saw the carcass of one in the Chicago market, which I was cred- 
ibly informed weighed two hundred pounds. Many years ago 
I killed one near the entrance to Deer Park, in Lasalle County, 
Illinois, which I mention elsewhere, which three stout men found 
a heavy lift to put into the end of the wagon, though it was so 
poor as to be unfit for the table. He must have weighed more 
than two hundred pounds. As he was leaping through the brush 
when I shot him, he looked like a large elk, though the excite- 
ment of the moment no doubt magnified him in my eyes. In 
the fall of 1876, I shot a buck in northeastern Wisconsin, which 
was judged by several experienced hunters to weigh nearly two 
hundred and fifty pounds. Four of our Indians came from camp 
but would not undertake to carry him in (not more than a third 
of a mile), although we were very anxious to have it done. They 
dressed him on the spot and made four loads of him. The chief 
Indian remarked that one might hunt a lifetime and not see such 
a deer as that, and I deem myself to have been exceedingly for- 
tunate in having met two such deer and bagged them both with 
dead shots. Even a deer cannot travel after the bone of ,the 
neck is torn to pieces with a bullet, or the vertebra is severed at 
the top of the shoulder. 
The largest Common Deer of which I have any authentic ac- 
count was killed in Michigan, and weighed before he was 
dressed, two hundred and forty-six pounds. But such speci- 
mens are rarely met with. It is much more common to meet 
adults that will not exceed eighty pounds in weight, and the 
average weight may be set down at not more than one hundred 
pounds. The guesses of hunters often give much larger weights. 
These deer differ very much in form and proportions. Some 
have long legs and long slim bodies, while others have short legs 
and short bodies. This has been so observable among those in my 
grounds, that I have sometimes been inclined to class them into 
varieties, transmitting these peculiarities to their offspring. Since, 
however, nearly all of those taken wild have disappeared, and 
