April 18. 1908.] 
FOREST AND STREAM 
609 
sand yards long by five hundred wide, with here 
and there a big patch of snow, making an ideal 
summer retreat for the deer; but although the 
glasses were used, both long and well, not a 
living thing was to be seen. 
“Nothing doing,” said E., as he rose and 
walked down on the other side, “we might as well 
take a look into the-” He stopped suddenly 
as F. grasped him by the arm, and pointing over 
to the right, exclaimed, “There they are!” Sure 
enough some five hundred yards away, among 
the stones, where they probably had been lying 
down, we saw some half a dozen deer slowly 
picking their way among the boulders up the 
mountain side. 
“Well, I’ll be darned,” said E.—he has a habit 
of running over into English when excited, hav¬ 
ing been in the United States some twenty 
years. Then turning to me, he said, “Chris, you 
run along the slide and up on top of the edge of 
the mountain, and intercept the deer, while F. 
and I go into the bottom. Now hump your¬ 
self!” And “hump” myself I did, jumping from 
boulder to boulder, varying in size from a fair 
sized cottage down to a potato. I had not 
gone half way, hower, before a more moderate 
gait had to be taken, as I was pretty nearly 
done up. The perspiration was streaming from 
every pore, breath coming in short gasps and 
the heart beating like a trip-hammer, so that 
I realized that I was in no condition for shoot¬ 
ing. At last the top was reached, and I looked 
around to get the lay of the land. The ridge 
and the =tatue of Lot’s wife did not stand more 
quiet than I did. At last the head disappeared, 
and so did I—behind a convenient stone. This 
was a case where my gray clothes proved my 
salvation. He probably thought it looked sus¬ 
picious, but seeing no motion,' made up his 
mind I was some big stone. 
I laid behind my stone only a few minutes, 
but it seemed ages to me. Had I frightened 
them and they had turned back? Or worse 
yet, maybe they had, after all, found some way 
down on the outside? I had nearly made up my 
mind they had escaped, when they appeared, 
some seventy-five yards away, coming toward 
me at a canter, two bucks, a doe, a yearling and 
a fawn. I was in rather a trying situation, as 
I did not dare to shoot until they had passed 
the slide, which they did at a distance of thirty 
yards from me, and then somehow or other I 
did not feel a bit inclined to shoot, they looked 
so pretty, but hardening my feelings, I got a 
bead on one of the bucks behind the shoulder 
and pressed the trigger. At the report they 
bunched together, and went at a pretty lively 
gait. Throwing in another cartridge, I drew a 
bead on the other, but, forgetting the con¬ 
founded military trigger, shot under, the bullet 
hitting the stones with a ping. The animals 
were now running wildly along and the third 
shot went over, and then they disappeared be¬ 
hind some stones. Running along to get sight 
of them again, I saw about two hundred yards 
away three standing side by side with tails to¬ 
THE PTARMIGAN HUT IN WINTER. 
was about forty yards across with small flat 
stones, making good going. The other side 
was quite steep with big boulders, except right 
where I stood. Here a slide had gone, making 
it possible for the deer to go down, but no¬ 
where else between me and the bottom of the 
pocket could they get down, and away from me, 
and up they could not go, as the mountains 
were steep. As I stood there looking around 
I heard the sharp crack of the rifle from the 
bottom, just a single shot, and as I turned that 
way I caught sight of the head and neck of a 
buck, silhouetted against the sky, some hun¬ 
dred and fifty yards away. He did not move for 
about half a minute, as he stood looking at me, 
ward me. Selecting the middle one I fired, but 
the only result so far as I could see was some 
tails disappearing in the distance. 
There are moments when a fellow cannot 
find words strong enough to express his feel¬ 
ings, and this was the case with me now. Some¬ 
how all feelings of pity had been swept away, 
and there was only the chagrin of having had 
the deer within thirty yards and nothing to 
show. What will my partners say? At the 
thought of them I felt like sneaking quietly 
back to the hut, take my duffle and make a 
break for home. As I was walking along with 
thoughts like these, my eyes caught sight of 
something that made me stop and rub them; 
there only twenty yards off lay a round, sleek 
buck with antlers in the velvet, stone dead. It 
was a four-year-old, and the bullet had gone in 
back of the shoulder, ranging forward and out 
by the neck on the other side. This improved 
matters a good deal and in a satisfied frame of 
mind I sat down on a stone to take a smoke. 
I was just lighting the pipe, when my eye 
caught sight of the hindleg of a deer, sticking 
out from behind a boulder some twenty yards 
off. Talk about eyes sticking out, mine must 
have stuck out about a foot. I did not come to 
my senses until the match burned my fingers, 
and then went over to investigate. It was the 
other buck, and as he had been struck in the 
rear, the bullet going right “long ships” and out 
through the neck—it must have been my last 
shot. 
As I was examining my last find, the fawn 
came around, stopping a short distance off and 
looking at me in open-eyed wonder, for it was 
probably the first time it had seen a human be¬ 
ing. When I cried to him to go and find his 
mother he took my advice and disappeared in a 
hurry. After looking to see if any more deer 
were lying around, but without success, I went 
back and found my partners busy skinning a fat 
barren doe which F. had shot. It seems she had 
been taking an after-dinner snooze among the 
rocks and got left. She gave F. a pretty side 
shot at two hundred yards, this being the single 
shot I heard. 
E. wore a happy grin as he was skinning 
away; he has a habit of drawing his mouth over 
toward the right ear when pleased, and now I 
thought it was getting dangerously near. 
After covering the meat with heavy stones, 
to protect it from ravens and wolverines, we 
did the same with mine, after taking out the in¬ 
testines, but left the hides on, as it was already 
getting dark. Then we made tracks for the hut, 
where we had a solid supper of fresh meat and 
bouillon. 
There was a jolly trio in the old hut that night 
and it got late, or rather early, before we turned 
in. F., however, was very restless, turning and 
twisting around, giving me an occasional kick 
in the head, and as a mouse had gotten into my 
sleeping bag, where I felt it crawling over my 
hands a couple times in her search for the 
opening, it was a rather restless night. In the 
morning I guyed F. about the nightmare, but 
he claimed he had hardly shut his eyes as he 
felt like suffocating. This was easy to explain, 
as a red hot stove, lots of wet clothing being 
up -to dry, and three men smoking like furnaces 
in a little 6x10 hut tends to make the atmos¬ 
phere rather close. 
As the weather was thick and snowing, we 
hung around the hut all forenoon, in the after¬ 
noon going after the meat; but as my deer had 
to be skinned and cut up, it got rather late be¬ 
fore we got through, and to make matters worse 
a regular blizzard started in. making the skin¬ 
ning a rather chilly job and getting the meat 
down over the slippery boulders without break¬ 
ing a leg was worse yet. Next morning the 
remainder of the meat was brought down, and 
in the afternoon we ran across a bunch of eight 
deer with a very big buck. They had been 
frightened, however, and were on the move, so 
although we trailed them for several miles, it 
was out of the question to get a shot. It was 
rather tantalizing, however, to look at that big 
