October, 1919 
FOREST A X D S T R E A M 
521 
French Creek Roadside on the way to the hunting country 
white-tailed buck I ever saw, standing 
broadside, looking at me, and just about 
ready to run. I knew I must shoot 
quickly, and pulled the instant the bead 
rose to the point of the shoulder. I could 
not be sure he flinched at the shot, but, 
at any rate, he and a medium-sized doe 
that jumped from the ground, ran at top 
speed over a ridge fifty yards farther 
away, as my second bullet snipped off 
some pine boughs three inches above their 
backs. Almost instantly the doe returned 
on the track. 
Going to the point where the doe 
turned back, I found the big buck had 
gone down, and lay dead at the bottom 
of the steep slope, nearly 100 feet below. 
He would have weighed close to 200 
pounds, but I managed to hang him up 
after a fashion by sliding my gambrel 
stick out along a half-fallen sapling. 
Coming into camp at sundown, I found 
the boy clearing away the snow to put 
up the tent. With a big fire of pitch 
logs in front, the stove going in the tent, 
and a warm supper of potatoes and 
onions stewed in a frying-pan, warm 
dutch-oven bread, fried deer liver, with 
plenty of flour gravy, and hot coffee in 
big tin cups, it was a memorable occa- 
sion. 
The boys had come upon the tracks 
of three deer in an open short-pine coun- 
try, and were looking at them in an 
effort to determine which way they led, 
when Ben saw the deer running on the 
opposite hill-side. Ben was new at the 
business, and seemed unable to obtain a 
satisfactory sight on the desired game. 
“Shoot! Shoot!” my brother ex- 
claimed, as he banged away, and shot 
again, a? the last white-tail went into 
the brush. Reaching the spot where the 
deer disappeared, they found a small 
spike buck half buried in the snow. The 
heavy bullet had struck back of the 
shoulder, grazing the point of the heart. 
After dressing and hanging the deer to 
the limb of a dead tree, they took the 
track of the others. When they had fol- 
lowed them for a mile, during which the 
deer had not stopped running, they came 
across two new tracks, which had evi- 
dently been made during the night. 
Working slowly along, one at either side 
of the tracks, they followed the new trail. 
Slipping noiselessly along for half a 
mile, they found the game had gone up 
the slope of a jack-pine covered ridge. 
As they came to the top, a crashing 
of brush told them the deer were going 
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 554) 
Typical Black Hills scenery. The trail led through many little forests of lordly fir trees where the Whitetail deer love to hide 
