214 ON THE EDGE OF THE WILDERNESS 
neolithic age. But nowadays it is not usually 
advisable to try such methods. Women have 
many weapons, from hatpins to sarcasm, and 
they have decreed more gentle and tactful ap- 
proaches. Which only means that a deer is a 
wild animal, after all, and a strong, virile, pugna- 
cious one, not the symbol of timidity and shyness 
he is generally pictured. 
With this conquest over the older leader, OY 
Buck supplanted him as the guiding spirit of the 
herd which began gradually to assemble as winter 
drew nearer, and to work over the plain, through 
the swamps, toward the steep wall of the big 
mountain. Often the herd scattered, the fawns 
keeping with the does, and always they wan- 
dered far each day in search of food, not because 
food was hard to find, but because it was better 
to nibble a little here and there, with a mile 
canter between bites; if one ate a full meal in one 
place, he paid for it with a stomachache, or at the 
least a lessening of muscular vigor and wind. In 
spite of his early bringing up, in confinement, 
OY Buck knew that as well as anybody. His 
nose, too, was as keen as any nose in the herd. 
