Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 5, 1911. 
r VOL. LXXVII.—No. 6. 
1 No. 127 Franklin St., New York. 
A FAVORITE HAUNT OF THE WHITE-TAIL DEER. 
The Art of Still-Hunting 
By PAUL BRANDRETH 
T O become a good still-lumter you must first 
find an efficient teacher. Otherwise you 
will blunder through mazes of inexperi¬ 
ence, and during many years, laboriously and 
painfully learn that which under proper direc¬ 
tion would have cost you infinitely fewer disap¬ 
pointments at about one half the expenditure of 
time. Do not be led to imagine, however, that 
still-hunting, even under the guidance of a prac¬ 
ticed hand, is easy of acquirement, and I speak 
principally of hunting the white-tail or Virginia 
deer. Unless you have the instinct born in you, 
keen eyesight, love of the wilderness, and above 
all a large bump of perseverance, you will fail 
more often than you will succeed. For still¬ 
hunting is an art in every sense of the word. 
\ou must first feel the latent talent in your 
veins, and then seek to develop it under the 
tutelage of one whose hunting wisdom is para¬ 
mount. 
If you do this—assuming that you are quali¬ 
fied as far as the previous attributes are con¬ 
cerned—you will be sure to progress. Gradu¬ 
ally you will store up a knowledge of wood¬ 
craft which, coupled with actual experience, 
will help you to become a good still-hunter. 
Certain tyros of your acquaintance will tell 
you, perhaps, that the art of still-hunting has 
been greatly exaggerated, and that in reality 
nothing is less difficult of accomplishment. 
Well, let them think so. From their stand¬ 
point this may be true. Once or twice in their 
lives they may have shouldered a rifle, w; Iked 
a few miles, and through sheer good luck 
stumbled over and bagged a deer. No wonder 
they consider it easy! But old hunters ate of 
a far different opinion. They know that of all 
the wary individuals that go to make up the 
various branches of the deer family, no other 
displays greater cunning in eluding pursuit than 
does the white-tail. He is a shadow lurking 
in a shadow; a flash of white through the green, 
an echoing snort heard in the far distance. Al¬ 
ways he is keen, vigilant, watchful, carefully 
testing the wind with his wonderful nose; con¬ 
scious of the fall of a leaf. Out of twenty-five 
animals you will perhaps find one “fool deer.” 
I mean the kind that stand around waiting to be 
shot. The other twenty-four will inavriably 
assume fleeting and visionary proportions. 
A variety of methods are exploited in hunting 
the white-tail. In the Adirondacks you can 
shoot him from a boat, or on a runway, or by 
watching an old “burning” or fallow, where he 
comes to feed toward nightfall. The distract¬ 
ing sagacity that so completely baffles the still- 
lumter you may never know, but neither will 
you experience the tax on nerve, muscle and 
eyesight which leaves you tired out but happy 
at the close of a long day’s hunting. For to 
bag a deer after any one of the above methods 
has always seemed to me like catching speckled 
trout with bait. It is good fun and requires 
considerable skill, but almost anybody can do 
it. Not every one, however, can cast a fly, and 
the man who goes deer shooting is not always 
a good still-hunter. 
By this, however, I do not mean to decry in 
the smallest possible manner the use of bait or 
the practice of watching on a runway and 
shooting from a boat. All are legitimate meth¬ 
ods, and no one has a right to gainsay them, 
