258 THE OREGON SPORTSMAN 
calculate the distance, Crandall had a 30-30 and I had a new 32 special, 
and this was the first time I had ever used it upon game. We were both 
average good shots with a rifle, but as we observed each other’s shots 
we could see that we were undershooting our quarry and our shots 
were falling short. In all we shot twelve times. I shot five and Crandall 
seven. The deer through all this bombardment stood there with its 
head near a little fir tree and at the report of our rifles, it would turn 
its head from one side to the other and look back as if trying to deter- 
mine where the reports were coming from. Once when Crandall raised 
his gun to shoot he said, ‘‘Judge, I believe that deer is hitched to that 
tree.’? I don’t think either of us had the ‘‘buck ague,’’ but there is 
no disguising the fact that we were both a little bit too anxious to 
beat the other fellow to it and shot too quick and did not take the 
deliberation we should; a fault that is common to a good many deer 
hunters. At last one of us landed and the deer jumped up in the air 
and started to jump off. It soon put some trees between us and it and 
we had to stop firing. 
Going to where the deer was standing, we found quite a lot of 
blood on the snow. Following the tracks, we soon discovered that the 
deer was hit in the left hind leg. It was dragging this leg. As it was 
now getting dark we followed the tracks briskly, too briskly in facet. 
We should have given it time to lie down and get stiff, although being 
shot in the leg might not have made much difference. We found where 
it had lain down and had left quite a pool of blood. It got so dark 
that we could not follow the tracks, even in the deep snow, so we struck 
out for camp. Hanna and Dr. Biggers reported that while they had 
seen lots of old deer and cougar signs, they had not seen any fresh sigus. 
The evening was spent in getting supper and in getting our beds 
fixed up. Hanna performed the duties of chief chef assisted by Dr. 
Biggers; Crandall looked after his team and I had the enviable duty 
_ of carrying the water and assisting in washing and wiping the dishes. 
In performing the latter duties I am quite proficient, but I do not want 
my wife to know anything about it. 
After a bounteous supper of ham and eggs and fried potatoes, we 
spent the evening relating hunting experiences. The subject of conver- 
sation naturally drifted to the cougar. Dr. Biggers very vigorously 
maintained that the cougar was a coward by nature and would not 
attack a man. Others of us cited him to instances where the cougar 
had been known te atiack a person, but the doctor readily branded 
these stories as fabrieations. 
The next morning we got up just as it was breaking day and after 
eating our breakfast, we again set out, Crandall and I, to take up the 
wounded deer trail and Hanna and Biggers in another direction. It was 
not difficult for us to find the deer trail and the longer we followed 
if the more we came to the conclusion that the deer had kept traveling 
during the night. Our only hope of overtaking it was for it to have lain 
down and become stiff. The deer had made for the brakes of the 
Grande Ronde River. We followed the tracks, discovering here and 
there a spot of blood, until along about noon when we came across a cou- 
ple of men by the name of Young, two brothers who lived in that 
vicinity and who had hunted deer a great deal. They were following 
three deer and ran them down into a canyon just ahead of me. While I 
saw the deer yet they were out of the range of my gun and I didn’t get 
a shot. It was difficult for Crandall and me to follow the trail of the 
deer when we came to bare and rocky ground, but Walt Young was a 
regular Indian when it came to following tracks. He could discern the 
