FOREST ANp StRSAM, 
163 
WiAg'Shooting Deer in Florida. 
Scarcely a bit of a shooter, and so inexperienced with 
gun or tield scouting of any kind as to doubt my ability 
to give real sportsmen a clear account of occurences, I 
cannot refrain from attempting to describe some deer 
shooting I saw while in Florida last winter and in which 
I took part, enough, at any rate, to make use of the 
pronoun we in telling of it. 
Methods of pursuit and capture of game seem to be 
governed by certain local peculiarities, induced ordinarily 
by unalterable natural environment, and will be' found 
usually to embody all such features as practical ex- 
perience has found to be most essential to succesvS and 
diversion. So, stalking deer or shooting them at long 
or short distances, standing, with rifled and improved 
bores of modern type, so conventionally the thing now- 
adays, does not obtain in the widespread, trackless waste 
of open, level pine forest which forms so large a part 
of the range and hunting grounds in Florida. To tramp 
wearily in flat, open woods under a Southern sun 
through rank growths of scrub with the ever present pos 
sibility of prowling rattler athwart the way, engaged in 
competitive "glimping" with such alert-sensed denizens 
of the jungle as deer, is 'occupation long since found 
profitless. Instead of this these Southern woods- 
searchers make use of smoothbores, and go forth 
mounted, counting only on getting shots at fleeing deer, 
whei^e all the chances of multiple pellets, as in use of 
buckshot, are of the essence of the undertaking. 
In the piny forest wilds of the Gulf Coast regio,n of 
northern Florida the elsewhere prevalent Southern cus- 
tom of mounted drivers, with dogs, beating the cover 
over given territory, sending the startled quarry along 
kncwn lines of flight to ambushed shooters, does not 
generally obtain. A very much more sportsmanlike prac- 
tice is in vogue. This method, called "jumping," is so 
arranged that the shooters, usually several in number, 
mounted on wonderfully sure-footed, wood-sensed, native 
horses, ride abreast, in line, at intervals apart far enough 
to avoid the impinge of 
misdirected buckshot. 
Following one or two 
slow-trailing, well-bro- 
ken dogs, and arousing 
or sponging the deer 
from their daylight lairs 
amid the tall grass and 
underbrush, they seek 
to fetch them down by 
shooting from the sad- 
dle while horse and deer 
^are both in motion, 
'while outriders on flanks 
of the line seek by dash- 
ing obliquelj' across 
.recognized lines of 
flight to intercept the 
flying prey, killing it 
from the saddle, while 
both pursued and pur 
suer are speeding full- 
bent through broken 
cover, through and over 
fallen timber and un- 
even surfaces. All this 
demands nerve force, ' 
workmanship and riding- 
skill of a high and dar- 
mg order—skill which 
comes to men only with repeated and earnest practice. 
Invited to accompany a party of four resident shoot- 
ers on a camping trip after deer down through the 
neighborhood of the Pin Hook Sinks across the St. 
Mark s River into Jefiferson county, twenty-five to thirty 
mdes southeast of the capital, I eagerly embraced the 
opportunity, when genial Dr, P., himself one of the 
party, of¥ered me a mount, from whose back, he de- 
clared, many choice heads of horns had been bowled 
over. 
Accompanied by a light covered camp wagon con- 
taining outfit, supplies and servants, we jogged com- 
pamonably away to the southeast, and bivouacked ere 
nightfall of our first day quite thirty miles away. 1 
listened to some excellent story telling and had some 
sapient suggestions from the Doctor before getting into 
my blanket as how properly to load my gun. The chief 
point seemed to be the use of just nine buckshot to a 
charge of a size of which my 12-gauge gun barrel should 
exactly chamber three. 
We breakfasted with the rising sun of the second day; 
then, promptly mounting, rode away through the un- 
pathed outspread of Cuban pine and palmetto. Be- 
hind us lazily trotted two paltry looking old hounds, 
as melancholy specimens of dejected dog flesh— or rather 
bone — as I remember ever to have seen. These two 
long-eared, loll-tongued worthies were respectively 
named Mark and Millie, and seemed to command a 
degree of confidence and respect from my four gentle- 
manly companions which their miserable hangdog ap- 
pearance scarcely seemed to me to warrant. 
Quite a mile from our camp a change occurred in the 
nature of surroundings. More open areas appeared. 
The timber was shorter, more scattered, with branching 
tops, and nearly all had a list to northwest, showing 
at some time severe wind pressure from an opposite 
direction. Extended swales of coarser and higher s<;dge3 
and salt marsh or fox grass stretched in irksome vellow- 
ishness away, mottled with stunted clumps of gallberry 
and palmetto scrub. The wind was light, but steady. 
With a directing wave of his arms to the right and left, 
indicating that the party deploy and take distances along 
a. line extending approximately north and south in those 
■directions, the Doctor forged ahead, facing up the wind. 
He. acting as a sort of guide center, we all swung out 
to our places, dressing on him, Mr; Donelson to the 
sotithward on my extreme right, myself next to the 
northward, say six rods removed. Then in succession 
at about like distances apart on my left rode the Doctor 
and thb Messrs. Hopkins. From a buckskin thong over 
the Doctor's broad shoulder hung a delicate looking, 
thinly scraped, amber-hued heifer's horn. Raising this 
little implement to his Hps, it gave forth a most pre- 
tentiotts, high-pitched scfueak or snort, or toot, if you 
will, and then in alternating crescendo and descr'escendo 
pulsations there floated out into wide wood spaces echo- 
ing vibrations, intensely inspiring, each graceful measure 
ol sound terminating in cadenza- most creditable to the 
good Doctor's technique. This was- my first cognizance 
of huiiter's horn vvinded in actual participation of the 
sport, and I experienced a nerve thrill, as novel as in- 
toxicating. But ahj the effect of that sound upon the 
two dead-alive old dogs, which had as yet dawdled so 
despondently along behind us. Up went their dropping 
heads, a pricked energy affected their pendent ears, tails 
rose to something like ambitious curls over their bony 
backs, and each with responsive whine and Icindling 
eye trotted to the fore. 
The drag was now on. The real thing had com- 
menced. At any moment something was liable to hap- 
pen, and there was 1, who had never fired a gun from 
a saddle, nor before even heard a horn wind, in the 
forefront of it all, loaded gun athwart saddle bow, my 
c*yes peeled like two Barietta onions, while my inner 
senses or nonsenses bubbled and fluttered in a very cy- 
clone of agitation and indecision, for what I Would or 
should do next I could not conjecture. Presently I 
discovered that Mr. Donelson, the rider on my right, had 
somewhat quickened the step of his gj-eat bay mare,' and 
that while bearing in toward my line of march he was 
intently eyeing Millie, then pottering in the sedge ahead 
of and between us. I saw at once marked change in 
movements of that formerly forlorn old creature. She 
seemed suddenly to have assumed a style and form, to 
have become a dog which might get about for a spurt, 
had she a mind to. Head held high, nose poked wind- 
ward, her once bleared old eyes ablaze, a nervous spasm 
had seized her bony tail, which wagged excitedly over 
her back. With sudden pause of her quickened move- 
ments, carefully, critically, she passed a discriminating, 
quivering nose along the twigs and over the star-shaped 
leaA^es of a sweet-gum bush. Quickly up and out was 
flung her necl< and pointed head, her long, thin jaws 
flew agape, and with a spasmodic jerk of her emaciated 
AN ANCIENT POWDER HORN. 
old body into a humped posture, she piped a clear, loud, 
.startling yelp, wonderfully alert, threatening and eager. 
Never before had opening cry of trailing dog greeted 
my attentive ear, and yet it seemed familiar; verily, I 
recognized it, and it magically rekindled embers of con- 
sumed memory, and never can I again forget it, nor 
how, when in deeper, mellower, longer-drawn cadence 
came corroborating tongue, I felt my barbaric hunter's 
blood suffuse and tingle my degenerate skin. Old 
Mark, working along, ten i:£)ds away, northward, caught 
the signal and came lunging through the cover. I felt 
that something must surely transpire immediately. To 
be ready for it, I caught up my reins with tightened 
giup and fell to wondering how I should manage to 
shoot from a moving hor.se in case game might sud- 
denly show up. 
"Steady! "Take it easy," rang out strong and clear 
in the Doctor's voice. 
When nearly up to Millie, Mark caught a token that 
transformed him at once. With quick flirt up the wind, 
his nepk and back bristling, he flung his tawny muzzle 
skyward and bellowed baritone announcement of having 
scent. Thunderingly came his . cry, alternately and in 
chorus with the sharper tones of old Millie, now thor- 
oughly aroused. 
"Look sharp for a double," sang the Doctor. 
I was doubly pestered what the deuce to do. To sit 
calmly astride and restrain your horse to a snail's 
pace, when every nerve fiber is a-tremble, when blood 
goes surging through you like a waterhead in a flushed 
sewer, during which pulsating time two hot-mouthed 
game-sensed dogs awake the echoes with their chase cry, 
and you are surrounded by expectant competitors, watch- 
ful of the chance which shall determine excellences, is: an 
ordeal calculated to slightly rattle a dummy. It made 
me fairly dizzy. With a mighty inward yearning I 
pulled myself together and maintained at least a sem- 
blance of self-possession. . 
The dogs now had it hot, and were getting along 
eastwardly with pace and torjgue that put a livelier mo- 
tion on us all to keep up. 
Rolling my bulging eyes in all directions in anxious 
expectation of something — anything which might hap- 
pen next — I saw the Messrs. Hopkins on left of line 
scudding away at half run toward swampy confines to 
the northeastward. What -coiild be the ' matter with 
them? Just then the frantic dogs, with some such 
harmonics as might characerize a delerious caliope, 
rushed toward the bushy dead top of a prostrate pine 
immediately in front of me,- possibly seven rods away. 
In a moment out of the screen of brown needles covering 
its limbs, like a great stone from a catapault, went with 
a bound the antlered form of a big buck. For just a 
second I was perhap,? a little out of shape; then I yanked 
iny gun up; and out in the general direction of the' high 
bounding beauty went whistling in quick succession two 
charges of "low moulds." A moment later a great white 
plume made defiant shake as it sailed over the palmetto, 
and humihatingly I realized that I had fired scarcely 
within a rod of my mark. But in a moment all con- 
sciousness of self was forgotten in seeing what Donelson 
was about. 
Evidently the buck, when he broke cover, had seen or 
known nothing of Donelson's presence to the south- 
west of him. Almost instantly thereafter he found him- 
self head on and close to this unexpected danger, and 
with an aleitness marvelously adroit he crouched, 
swerved, and with rapid sneaking movement headed 
back northwestwardly, and passed behind my' ppsition 
broadside on in easy range of my now empty gun. Then 
with an uprush and high leap, as he recommenced Jiis 
flight, a tremor seized his frame, the great armed head 
was thrown recklessly abaclc, and his quivering form 
bowled over dead. Report of Donelson's gun drew my 
eyes southward just in time to see him and Peggy, the 
big bay mare, go down in an ugly fall as they came 
careening over a lot of fallen logs. Reports of guns 
had sounded to the north of me soon after I had fired my 
two wild shots, but I had had no time to take note of them, 
and now, as I hurried toward where Donelson had fallen^ 
T was made aware of three other discharges in quick suc- 
cession further away to the northeastward, and caught 
the treble and countertones of crying dogs somewhere 
thereaway. 
Having reached the. scene of the tumble, I' saw the 
big mare, first on her feet, with a nasty snagged hurt 
across her face. Then arose Donelson, hatless, blood- 
smeared; he seemed to be spitting out sand and shattered 
teeth. Feeling about with his tongue for missing places 
and jagged stumps, he looked the picture of disgust. 
"Are you hurt, sir?" I cried. 
"Not seriously," he sputtered; "but I'm short the 
better part of my front teeth. Hang it! I had paid Dr. 
Shine only last week to fill two of them. ' It happened 
almost as I fired. My 
reins lay on her neck. 
In taking those last logs 
she tripped and we went 
nose first into that tus- 
sock of palmetto roots." 
It seemed that two 
deer, other than the one 
engaging the attention 
of Mr. Donelson and 
myself, -had gotten up 
in proximity ' to and 
abreast immediately af- 
ter the first starter. 
These had each drawn 
the fire of the Doctor, 
with no greater success 
for him than had at- 
tended my efTorts. 
Heading for the cy- 
press timber and swamp 
growth to the north- 
eastward, these had a 
little later on run afoul 
the Messrs. Hopkins, 
designedly stationed 
there with game-sensed 
intuition of the startled 
run. The rearmost, a 
,.,..1 . , . . prime four-year-old 
male, went down to their triple fire. 
"Eight shots, five from moving saddles, all at flying 
marks, and two kills," I exclaimed. 
"Besides one bad mash— eh, Donelson?" added the 
doctor. 
./'I" the^first kill. Doctor," I said. "I think the deer, 
lyjr. Donelson and Old Peggy were all . in mid air when 
the shot was delivered. The one was gracefully bucking 
a palmetto clump, while the other two were attempting- 
a sort of steeple bout over a log heap. His reins were 
down and his gun still up whep he took his header." 
'Likely enough," rejoined the old hunter. "Neither 
Jim nor his old mare has much sense of precaution 
when they hear a. dog open." 
Riding campward, I reflected that this, as far as I 
know, distinctively Floridian method of shooting deer 
practically while fljnng, is immensely mor.e sportful and 
nerve-straimng than any stalking or stand shooting with 
which I am familiar. .Astute game sense and those of 
locality and woodcraft are prerequisites. Strong, steady 
nerves, good horsemanship and skillful shooting are 
quite indispensable to success.. 
The nature of such occurence seemed to me second 
only in nerve and wnture to remembered coups de 
main attending cavalry experiences amid the sixties. 
Loiterer. 
Medi 
icine 
Fly. 
It was a warm, sultry night in August. The moon 
and stars were obscured by the great volumes of smoke 
which for days and weeks had been pouring over the 
•summits of the Rockies, caused by forest fires on the 
other side. We were camped for the night in the apex 
of a sh arp bend of the creek. The only timber in this 
bottom was two or three cottbnwood trees, and 6ne of 
them, a very giant, had long sirice been blown down, and 
from its bare, dry hmbs we now and then replenished 
our fire. Across the little creek, from the water's edge 
-rose -a steep bluff, on the top of which grew a few 
stunted pines. 
It was long past our" usual bed time, yet still we 
lingered by thei little camp-fire, talking of the happy 
days when we- hunted buffalo, and of adventures which 
can never again be experienced. .' 
"This place reminds me," saiS my comrade, "of the 
death of Medicine Fly. We w.f^e camped in just such 
a place as this, and it was fronj^the, top of such a cut- 
bank as that across the creelg.fthat the . Assinaboines 
fiired down on us." , . ' ■ ■ 
"Tell me the story," said I. "Who was Medichie Fly?" 
"Well," he continued, "as you know, I enlisted upfler 
