CARIACUS VIRGIN I ANUS. 
3 5 
affords, works cautiously toward it. The branches are reached 
but no live thing is seen, and his eyes are bent in other directions 
when, — - crash , 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 maybe. 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, fudge 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 jtwo or three in a single day, but such hunts are 
very laborious, for the track often leads many miles, in a tortuous 
course, over harcl-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. 
