Oct. is, 1904.I 
FOREST AND STREAM, 
Red Letter Days with the Deer. 
BY HORACE KENT TENNEY. 
I do not know the origin of the expression "red letter 
days," nor whether it really implies that certain days are 
rubricated on the pages of memory like some of those 
delightful old vellum books over which the monks used 
to work with the pen of nature's providing in the exercise 
of an art which was truly "scriptural." The old fellows 
who made the rubrics certainly had no "red letter days," 
as we understand the expression. Theirs were days of 
quiet monotony passed apart from the world — 
"Where storied windows, richly dight, 
Let in a dim, religious light;" 
and where time was marked by a round of duties from 
lauds to matins, and from matins to lauds. Perhaps they 
colored a little more brightly the initials of the songs 
for festival days, but they could not give the color of the 
page to the day itself, nor find in the dull round of 
monastic routine the counterpart of those glowing days 
which come to the Disciple of the Out of Doors. For to 
those who 
"Hear the call, good hunting all," 
the Red Gods bring now and then days the color of whose 
illuminations is never fading. 
These days are not always — and most happily is this so 
— those which, tested by the weight of creel or game bag, 
are most successful. But there are many who know and 
assert that the successful sportsman is not alone he who 
at the end of the day can show fur, feather or fin. And I 
am the more anxious to support this doctrine, as without 
it I cannot hope to be classed with the successful hunters. 
But it does sometimes happen that success in its most 
material form attends the efforts of the hunter whose 
game bag is habitually as light as his heart. It is of 
such a day that I write. 
The time was in the open season of November, when 
the deer hunter can say — 
"Here is no law in good green shaw," 
and can carry a rifle with a clear conscience. The place 
is immaterial, though it is perhaps proper to say that the 
broad expanse of Lake Superior, all blue and white like 
a Delft tile, lay only a few hundred yards to the north of 
the cabin where we spent the hours between dark and 
dawn. _ The day— from a still-hunter's standpoint — left 
everything to be desired. There was no snow, the woods 
were dry, so that everything crackled under foot and 
against the sides of your legs, and heralded your progress 
like that of "an army with banners." And there was the 
wind — not a steady, straight-blowing breeze, whose course 
you could note and make it an aid in your lethal purpose ; 
but a lusty, gusty tempest, which came and went from all 
quarters at once and whirled around in such varying 
courses that if a deer was to avoid scenting you, he would 
have to be very lively about it, and spend most of his time 
running in a circle. 
I had been out at daybreak and hunted industriously 
along an old logging road which ran— or would you say 
lumbered — through the woods along the course of a small 
inland lake. It was a fine place for deer, was that road, 
and the deer knew it as well as we did. It went straight 
into the heart of the forest, was far enough from the 
lake shore to leave good cover beiween it and the water, 
was wholly deserted, and scattered along it were numer- 
ous small choppings abounding in grass and "browse." 
To the north of it in the two-mile stretch to Lake Superior 
was good ranging ground, a true forest according to the 
definition which dear old John Manwood wrote in 1615 
in his "Forest Laws" : 
A Forest is a certain Territorie of wooddy grounds and fruitful 
pastures, privilidged for wild beasts and foules of Forest, Chase 
and Warren, to rest and abide in, in the safe protection of the 
King, for his princely delight and pleasure, which Territorie of 
ground so privilidged, is meered and bounded with unremoveable 
markes, meeres and boundaries either knowen by matter of record 
or by prescription; and also replenished by wilde beasts of 
venerie or chase, and with great coverts of Vert for the succour 
of the said wilde beasts to have their abode in." 
Into this "Territorie of wooddy ground" I entered with 
a stealthy step and a .38-55 Winchester, when the tree- 
tops were beginning to brighten with that pervading sug- 
gestion of light which is seen only at dawn. When the 
sun was throwing his long javelins of light between the 
trunks of the Norways I emerged at the other end, with- 
out having seen anything but a glimpse of a flashing white 
tail which reminded me of Burns' line — 
"Like the snowfall in the river, 
A moment white — then melts forever." 
Probably some mighty still-hunter will say, "If the 
woods were noisy you ought to have sat on a log and 
watched." Well, I have done that in my time, and — but 
that is another story. 
So I went back to breakfast. This sounds like a com- 
monplace statement of a very ordinary event, and sug- 
gests the idea of pork and potatoes served from a rusty 
frying pan and accompanied by that mess of hell-broth 
which the lumbering jack has been schooled to regard as 
coffee. But the fact was far otherwise. Our breakfasts 
and dinners were cooked by one who understood all the 
niceties of that noble art, and they appealed and minis- 
tered to the higher and better parts of our nature. 
It was our custom — and I commend it to others — to 
hunt from dawn until about nine o'clock; then return for 
breakfast, and after a slight interval of profitable idle- 
ness take to the woods again and hunt until dark, dining 
late in the evening. By this method we economized time 
when hunting was best, and took our meals in ease and 
comfort. 
In pursuance of this custom I started off in the middle 
of the morning intending to scout around some likely 
ground lying east of the camp, find a good place and 
watch during the latter part of the day. The wind was 
still of the eccentric and concentric character which I 
have described, and the time of day, the impossibility of 
moving quietly, and all the circumstances were so un- 
favorable that I had very little idea of seeing a deer, much 
less of getting a shot, though feeling pretty sure that 
several would probably see and hear me. So I proceeded 
somewhat carelessly. (Nota bene: Never proceed some- 
what carelessly; act as if you knew he was there all the 
time.) A mile or so of walking or strolling brought me 
to the end of a wide open space, which fronted on the big 
lake. On the south side of this was a jack pine thicket 
with an old road leading into it. Partly to get out of the 
wind and into the shelter of the jack pines, I took this 
road, which, as it left the clearing, went up the side of 
a short ridge. As I started up the slope it occurred to me 
that the hunting rules laid down by Mr. Van Dyke re- 
quired that I should crawl up to the top and peek over 
the ridge and not stalk up like a grenadier on a forlorn 
hope. I was about to follow this course when a beautiful 
pair of horns seemed suddenly to grow out of the top of 
the ridge._ They remained there motionless, with nothing 
else showing, and looking very much as if they were stuck 
in the sand. I realized that the buck and I were in about 
the same physical and mental situation : He could see 
enough of my cap to wonder what on earth it was, and I 
could see enough of his horns to make me wish he would 
raise his head about two inches. But he would not do it, 
and fearing that he would jump into the jack pines before 
I could "rush" him, I did a very foolish thing. The top 
of the ridge seemed to be pine needles and light stuff 
through which a ball would pass without serious deflec- 
tion, so I figured that there was a chance of shooting 
through it, and taking him at the base of the horns. Well, 
1 tried it. The pine needles flew into the air, the horns 
disappeared, and when I reached the ridge, which re- 
quired only about three jumps, the buck was at the latter 
end of a beautiful leap which took him out of sight. Then 
I sat down and berated myself soundly for my careless- 
ness, and vowed always to hunt, as the Spaniards say, 
"with beard on shoulder." 
After waiting for things to quiet down a bit, I started 
ahead, keeping that preternaturally sharp lookout which 
comes with the freshness of a good resolution. The road 
dipped down into a sort of amphitheater, with a steep hill 
on the opposite side, covered with thick second growth. 
A suspicious appearance in a maple thicket near the top 
of the hill made me stop, and I soon made out the outline 
of a doe's head and shoulders. The situation did not re- 
quire any tangent firing, and I dropped her in her tracks 
the first shot. 
This revived my spirits, which had been a good deal 
depressed by the incident of the horns on the ridge. I 
slid the doe down the hill to the roadway, where the 
team could reach her, and pushed on with fresh energy 
and an increased confidence in my ability to encompass 
the death of any deer who would give me half a chance. 
I started for the place where I had seen the buck's tail 
patterned against the underbrush, hoping for a chance to 
line the ivory sight upon some portion of his framework, 
instead of shooting by calculation at a place where he 
wasn't. 
A few steps brought me through the jackpines to a 
large plain which had been burned over about a year be- 
fore, and there, under a tree a couple of hundred yards 
away, stood the biggest buck I expect to see this side of 
the happy hunting grounds. Of course all the bucks you 
see alone are big fellows, but this was really one of 
nature's noblemen. He stood up like the traditional buck 
on an old powder flask, or like one of Landseer's stags, 
thick-necked, with wide, branching antlers. He was 
watching me in a stolid sort of fashion, not seeming half 
as interested as I was, but I realized that he was not a 
permanent fixture in the landscape, and that it behooved 
me to act quickly. So I drew for his shoulder, and cut 
loose. He gave a sort of lurch, whirled and jumped be- 
hind some fallen tree-tops, reappeared on the other side, 
headed for the sheltering jackpines and going like a tor- 
pedo boat. I pumped in another shot without apparent 
effect, and he was soon out of sight. 
The ground where he stood was covered with ashes 
and I could find no blood, and I could not tell whether he 
was wounded or not. It was useless to follow him so 
1 went back out of sight and waited the better part of an 
hour and then started to circle around the edge of the 
plain. _ Before long I jumped him in some poplars, and 
then into a brief minute was crowded all the emotions 
and experiences which I had imagined since I read "Deer- 
slayer ' as a boy. The exact order of events is not clear 
m my mmd even now. I know only that he started like a 
whirlwind; that I had him down at the second shot; 
that he got up and I knocked him over four times, each 
shot on the jump; that when it was over and his antlers 
were on the ground, I uncovered, 
"Took with forehead bare, 
The benediction of the air," 
and rejoiced aloud. For had I not killed a masterful 
buck, and killed him on the run? 
Truly that day was one to be marked with rubrics. 
As I sit by the fire-place on this day in February I can 
see the buck's_ head hanging on the wall. But I can also 
see the jackpine thicket and hear the wind from off 
Superior roaring in the tree-tops. 
Another day well worthy of the place which it holds 
in memory, may be called a red letter day, although its 
dominant color was white. We were in the same belt of 
woodland, and had been hunting about ten days. Rarely, 
indeed, do the fallen sons of Adam receive the blessing of 
such weather as we enjoyed on that trip. The tempera- 
ture was just right. Not the 
"Dull, hard bitterness of cold, 
That checked mid-vein the quickened race 
Of life-blood in the sharpened face;" 
but the keen-edged air which keys a man up to the full 
enjoyment of all that it brings to him. And over all was 
the glory of the snow. It fell every night; and each 
morning when we stepped out in the quiet starlight, the 
tracks of yesterday were obliterated, and we knew that 
every trace and track we saw was only a few hours old. 
To one whose skill in woodcraft is not equal to following 
the trail of a serpent on a rock, it brings a great and abid- 
ing sense of comfort to know, when he finds a track, that 
it is not prehistoric. We had made good use of the ad- 
vantage thus given us, and had a respectable show of 
bucks and does hanging up in that outstretched attitude 
which a deer exhibits when hung up by the gambrel joints. 
This gave us a placid feeling of contentment; for we 
knew that our stay-at-home friends could not rail at us as 
unskillful hunters, nor the envious critic assert that we 
had exceeded the limits of fair sport. And with this feel- 
ing we began to range the woods in rather a careless 
fashion, by the strict code of the still-hunter, keeping to- 
gether that we might enjoy together our love of the 
woods, whose beauty was changing and increasing with 
each new fall of snow. Our enjoyment was the keener 
that it was our first experience with heavy snow in the 
deep woods, though I am sure that for each of us 
"Age cannot wither, nor custom stale its infinite variety." 
As the end of our stay drew near, there was about ten 
inches of snow on the ground, and to be sure of getting 
the_ full enjoyment of it, we decided to leave the snug 
cabin where we were housed and spend our last night in 
the woods. There was underlying this plan a sort of 
pretense that by camping near a famous runway some 
three miles from the cabin we would have a better chance 
of securing a mighty buck. But we both understood that 
the real purpose was the fun of building the camp, and I 
think that a buck — unless perhaps he was "a stag of ten" 
— could have walked past our fire with impunity. 
We rolled up our blankets and a small assortment of 
provisions and utensils which I venture to think would 
not have provoked a derisive sniff from old Nessmuk 
himself. For shelter we took the fly of my Protean tent. 
(Those who do not know the Protean tent, made by a 
genius in Evanston, III, have lost much of the joy which 
this life holds for the initiated.) With the assistance of 
a tall Swede, whose courtesy was severely strained in 
keeping back the explosive expression of his opinion of 
our plan, we transported the outfit to the selected spot, 
and set to work making a local habitation. 
The spot which we had chosen was specially adapted to 
the purposes of a small camp. Indeed^, the silent forces 
of nature had evidently been working for ages with a 
view to that final consummation. It was in a wide, high 
valley which ran along between the shore of a lake and 
the shoulder of a hill which would have been a mountain 
if it had been large enough. A trail led through the val- 
ley from the lake to a rocky spur which was well called 
by the descriptive name of The Fortress; from there it 
went onward to yet other regions of delight. Cris-cross- 
mg the trail about a mile from the lake was a little run- 
let not large enough to brawl noisily over its stones, but 
just large enough to make a sort of subdued "sussurus," 
which was clearly for the exclusive benefit of the man 
who slept with his ear to the ground. 
A little to one side of this rill was an out-cropping of 
rock, one side of which was straight and about four feet 
high— a ready-made back for a woodland fire-place. Op- 
posite this, and at a distance nicely calculated to be within 
proper range of the firing line, we cleared away the snow 
to make a place for the tent. This tent was a small affair, 
seven feet square on the ground, open toward the fire, 
and tapering up from three sides to the top of the single 
pole which supported it. With the snow banked up 
around the bottom it blended in with the general white 
of the landscape, seeming a part of the wilderness, and not 
an outpost of civilization. 
The setting of the tent was a small matter, and soon 
acomphshed, but the building of the fire was one of more 
serious moment, involving not only the use of ax and 
muscle, but a nice and judicious discrimination in the 
choice of wood and the arrangement of logs. For this 
was to be not a little "friendship fire," nor yet a conical 
pile of sticks, like that over which an Indian cowers, re- 
ceiving that subtle aroma which gives to the gentle' red 
man one of his most noticeable characteristics. We 
planned a white man's fire— a noble array of logs piled 
with that spendthrift prodigality impossible except in the 
forest; one which would last throughout the night, and 
m the cold gray of the dawn still glow and radiate a 
genial warmth. So with the help of our friendly Swede 
we cut down a stately birch and a couple of hemlocks, the 
latter yielding both fuel and bedding. The first blow of 
the ax gave me a new experience. 
The steady snowfall of the past week had covered the 
trees, and as there had been very little wind, every branch 
drooped with its accumulated burden. An ax stroke on 
the trunk of a tree whose limbs are waiting a chance to 
dislodge their covering of snow produces an immediate 
result quite surprising until you have tried it. When you 
have tried it once you do not try it again; you stand dis- 
creetly to one side and throw sticks at the lower branches 
until they are cleared. Then you sneak up and hit the 
trunk a good lusty thwack with the ax, and stand quickly 
from under. After that you can chop in comfort 
The fire was an artistic creation, in the building of 
which was much joy. We laid a couple of stout birch logs 
