CARIACUS VIRdlNIANUS. ^33 



affords, works cautiously toward it. The branches are reached 

 but no live thing is seen, and his eyes are bent in other directions 

 ^hen,— m?.s//, crash, under his very nose, and he is deluged with 

 a shower of snow that, for the moment, completely blinds him. He 

 may, or he may not, get his eyes open in time to catch a vanish- 

 ing glimpse of the affrighted Deer, and, now that it is too late, 

 discovers the bed of his would-be victim under the fallen tree-top, 



at his very feet. 



The hunter rarely sees the whole outline of a Deer in still- 

 hunting. The forests are so thick, and the evergreens so loaded 

 with snow, that an object is not commonly visible at any great 

 distance, and a part of the leg or a patch of hair constitute the 

 target usually presented to his eye. He sometimes fires directly 

 at what he sees, and sometimes "allows a trifle" aiming a little 

 ahead or a little behind, as the case may be. If severely wounded, 

 without being killed outright, the animal is generally left for 

 several hours, or until the next day; for if pursued it would con- 

 tinue to run as long as its strength held out ; while, on the other 

 hand, if left alone it soon lies down and will probably never rise 

 again. Judge Caton says: " But few animals will go so far and 

 so fast, after receiving a mortal wound, as a Virginia Deer," * and 

 I have myself followed a buck, shot through both lungs with a 44 

 calibre rifle-ball, more than a mile and a half through the woods ! 



In localities where Deer are abundant an expert still-hunter 

 frequently kills two or three in a single day, but such hunts are 

 very laborious, for the track often leads many miles, in a tortuous 

 course, over hard-wood ridges, across stretches of spruce and 

 hemlock, and through dense balsam and cedar swamps. It is a 

 long distance to camp, but thitherward, at nightfall, the weary 

 hunter wends his way. His course lies through a swamp in which 

 the evergreens grow so near together that the eye is unable to 

 penetrate farther than a few paces in any direction, and are so 



* Loc. Cit., p. 383- 



