The whitetail deer is now, as it always has been, the most plentiful and most widely distributed of American big game. It holds its own in the land better than any other species, because it is by choice a dweller in the thick forests and swamps, the places around which the tide of civilization flows, leaving them as islets of refuge for the wild creatures which formerly haunted all the country. The range of the whitetail is from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Canadian to the Mexican borders, and somewhat to the north and far to the south of these limits. The animal shows a wide variability, both individually and locally, within these confines; from the hunter’s standpoint it is not necessary to try to determine exactly the weight that attaches to these local variations.

There is also a very considerable variation in habits. As compared with the mule-deer, the whitetail is not a lover of the mountains. As compared with the prongbuck, it is not a lover of the treeless plains. Yet in the Alleghanies and the Adirondacks, at certain seasons especially, and in some places at all seasons, it dwells high among the densely wooded mountains, wandering over their crests and sheer sides, and through the deep ravines; while in the old days there were parts of Texas and the Indian Territory where it was found in great herds far out on the prairie. Moreover, the peculiar nature of its chosen habitat, while generally enabling it to resist the onslaught of man longer than any of its fellows, sometimes exposes it to speedy extermination. To the westward of the rich bottom-lands and low prairies of the Mississippi Valley proper, when the dry plains country is reached, the natural conditions are much less favorable for whitetail than for other big game. The black bear, which in the East has almost precisely the same habitat as the whitetail, disappears entirely on the great plains, and reappears in the Rockies in regions which the whitetail does not reach. All over the great plains, into the foothills of the Rockies, the whitetail is found, but only in the thick timber of the river bottoms. Throughout the regions of the Upper Missouri and Upper Platte, the Big Horn, Powder, Yellowstone, and Cheyenne, over all of which I have hunted, the whitetail lives among the cottonwood groves and dense brush growth that fringe the river beds and here and there extend some distance up the mouths of the large creeks. In these places the whitetail and the mule-deer may exist in close proximity; but normally neither invades the haunts of the other.

Along the ordinary plains river, such as the Little Missouri, where I ranched for many years, there are three entirely different types of country through which a man passes as he travels away from the bed of the river. There is first the alluvial river bottom covered with cottonwood and box-elder, together with thick brush. These bottoms may be a mile or two across, or they may shrink to but a few score yards. After the extermination of the wapiti, which roamed everywhere, the only big game animal found in them was the whitetail deer. Beyond this level alluvial bottom the ground changes abruptly to bare, rugged hills or fantastically carved and shaped Bad Lands rising on either side of the river, the ravines, coulees, creeks, and canyons twisting through them in every direction. Here there are patches of ash, cedar, pine, and occasionally other trees, but the country is very rugged, and the cover very scanty. This is the home of the mule-deer, and, in the roughest and wildest parts, of the bighorn. The absolutely clear and sharply defined line of demarkation between this rough, hilly country, flanking the river, and the alluvial river bottom, serves as an equally clearly marked line of demarkation between the ranges of the whitetail and the mule-deer. This belt of broken country may be only a few hundred yards in width; or it may extend for a score of miles before it changes into the open prairies, the high plains proper. As soon as these are reached, the prongbuck’s domain begins.

As the plains country is passed, and the vast stretches of mountainous region entered, the river bottoms become narrower, and the plains on which the prongbuck is found become of very limited extent, shrinking to high valleys and plateaus, while the mass of rugged foothills and mountains add immensely to the area of the mule-deer’s habitat.

Given equal areas of country, of the three different types alluded to above, that in which the mule-deer is found offers the greatest chance of success to the rifle-bearing hunter, because there is enough cover to shield him and not enough to allow his quarry to escape by stealth and hiding. On the other hand, the thick river bottoms offer him the greatest difficulty. In consequence, where the areas of distribution of the different game animals are about equal, the mule-deer disappears first before the hunter, the prongbuck next, while the whitetail holds out the best of all. I saw this frequently on the Yellowstone, the Powder, and the Little Missouri. When the ranchmen first came into this country the mule-deer swarmed, and yielded a far more certain harvest to the hunter than did either the prongbuck or the whitetail. They were the first to be thinned out, the prongbuck lasting much better. The cowboys and small ranchmen, most of whom did not at the time have hounds, then followed the prongbuck; and this, in its turn, was killed out before the whitetail. But in other places a slight change in the conditions completely reversed the order of destruction. In parts of Wyoming and Montana the mountainous region where the mule-deer dwelt was of such vast extent, and the few river bottoms on which the whitetail were found were so easily hunted, that the whitetail was completely exterminated throughout large districts where the mule-deer continued to abound. Moreover, in these regions the table-lands and plains upon which the prongbuck was found were limited in extent, and although the prongbuck outlasted the whitetail, it vanished long before the herds of the mule-deer had been destroyed from among the neighboring mountains.

The whitetail was originally far less common in the forests of northern New England than was the moose, for in the deep snows the moose had a much better chance to escape from its brute foes and to withstand cold and starvation. But when man appeared upon the scene he followed the moose so much more eagerly than he followed the deer that the conditions were reversed and the moose was killed out. The moose thus vanished entirely from the Adirondacks, and almost entirely from Maine; but the excellent game laws of the latter State, and the honesty and efficiency with which they have been executed during the last twenty years, have resulted in an increase of moose during that time. During the same period the whitetail deer has increased to an even greater extent. It is doubtless now more plentiful in New York and New England than it was a quarter of a century ago. Stragglers are found in Connecticut, and, what is still more extraordinary, even occasionally come into wild parts of densely populated little Rhode Island—my authority for the last statement being Mr. C. Grant La Farge. Of all our wild game, the whitetail responds most quickly to the efforts for its protection, and except the wapiti, it thrives best in semi-domestication; in consequence, it has proved easy to preserve it, even in such places as Cape Cod in Massachusetts and Long Island in New York; while it has increased greatly in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, and has more than held its own in the Adirondacks. Mr. James R. Sheffield, of New York City, in the summer of 1899, spent several weeks on a fishing trip through northern Maine. He kept count of the moose and deer he saw, and came across no less than thirty-five of the former and over five hundred and sixty of the latter. In the most lonely parts of the forest deer were found by the score, feeding in broad daylight on the edges of the ponds. Deer are still plentiful in many parts of the Alleghany Mountains, from Pennsylvania southward, and also in the swamps and canebrakes of the South Atlantic and Gulf States.

Where the differences in habitat and climate are so great there are many changes of habits, and some of them of a noteworthy kind. Mr. John A. McIlhenny, of Avery’s Island, Louisiana, formerly a lieutenant in my regiment, lives in what is still a fine game country. His plantation is in the delta of the Mississippi, among the vast marshes, north of which lie the wooded swamps. Both the marshes and the swamps were formerly literally thronged with whitetail deer, and the animals are still plentiful in them. Mr. McIlhenny has done much deer-hunting, always using hounds. He informs me that the breeding times are unexpectedly different from those of the northern deer. In the North, in different localities, the rut takes place in October or November, and the fawns are dropped in May or June. In the Louisiana marshes around Avery’s Island the rut begins early in July and the fawns are dropped in February. In the swamps immediately north of these marshes the dates are fully a month later. The marshes are covered with tall reeds and grass and broken by bayous, while there are scattered over them what are called “islands” of firmer ground overgrown with timber. In this locality the deer live in the same neighborhood all the year round, just as, for instance, they do on Long Island. So on the Little Missouri, in the neighborhood of my ranch, they lived in exactly the same localities throughout the entire year. Occasionally they would shift from one river bottom to another, or go a few miles up or down stream because of scarcity of food. But there was no general shifting.

On the Little Missouri, in one place where they were not molested, I knew a particular doe and fawn with whose habits I became quite intimately acquainted. When the moon was full they fed chiefly by night, and spent most of the day lying in the thick brush. When there was little or no moon they would begin to feed early in the morning, then take a siesta, and then—what struck me as most curious of all—would go to a little willow-bordered pool about noon to drink, feeding for some time both before and after drinking. After another siesta they would come out late in the afternoon and feed until dark.

In the Adirondacks the deer often completely alter their habits at different seasons. Soon after the fawns are born they come down to the water’s edge, preferring the neighborhood of the lakes, but also haunting the stream banks. The next three months, during the hot weather, they keep very close to the water, and get a large proportion of their food by wading in after the lilies and other aquatic plants. Where they are much hunted, they only come to the water’s edge after dark, but in regions where they are little disturbed they are quite as often diurnal in their habits. I have seen dozens feeding in the neighborhood of a lake, some of them two or three hundred yards out in shallow places, up to their bellies; and this after sunrise, or two or three hours before sunset. Before September the deer cease coming to the water, and go back among the dense forests and on the mountains. There is no genuine migration, as in the case of the mule-deer, from one big tract to another, and no entire desertion of any locality. But the food supply which drew the animals to the water’s edge during the summer months shows signs of exhaustion toward fall; the delicate water-plants have vanished, the marsh-grass is dying, and the lilies are less succulent. An occasional deer still wanders along the shores or out into the lake, but most of them begin to roam the woods, eating the berries and the leaves and twig ends of the deciduous trees, and even of some of the conifers—although a whitetail is fond of grazing, especially upon the tips of the grass. I have seen moose feeding on the tough old lily stems and wading after them when the ice had skimmed the edges of the pool. But the whitetail has usually gone back into the woods long before freezing-time.

From Long Island south there is not enough snow to make the deer alter their habits in the winter. As soon as the rut is over, which in different localities may be from October to December, whitetail are apt to band together—more apt than at any other season, although even then they are often found singly or in small parties. While nursing, the does have been thin, and at the end of the rut the bucks are gaunt, with their necks swollen and distended. From that time on bucks and does alike put on flesh very rapidly in preparation for the winter. Where there is no snow, or not enough to interfere with their travelling, they continue to roam anywhere through the woods and across the natural pastures and meadows, eating twigs, buds, nuts, and the natural hay which is cured on the stalk.

In the Northern woods they form yards during the winter. These yards are generally found in a hardwood growth which offers a supply of winter food, and consist simply of a tangle of winding trails beaten out through the snow by the incessant passing and repassing of the animal. The yard merely enables the deer to move along the various paths in order to obtain food. If there are many deer together, the yards may connect by interlacing paths, so that a deer can run a considerable distance through them. Often, however, each deer will yard by itself, as food is the prime consideration, and a given locality may only have enough to support a single animal. When the snows grow deep the deer is wholly unable to move, once the yard is left, and hence it is absolutely at the mercy of a man on snowshoes, or of a cougar or a wolf, if found at such times. The man on snowshoes can move very comfortably; and the cougar and the wolf, although hampered by the snow, are not rendered helpless like the deer. I have myself scared a deer out of a yard, and seen it flounder helplessly in a great drift before it had gone thirty rods. When I came up close it ploughed its way a very short distance through the drifts, making tremendous leaps. But as the snow was over six feet deep, so that the deer sank below the level of the surface at each jump, and yet could not get its feet on the solid ground, it became so exhausted that it fell over on its side and bleated in terror as I came up. After looking at it I passed on. Hide-hunters and frontier settlers sometimes go out after the deer on snowshoes when there is a crust, and hence this method of killing is called crusting. It is simple butchery, for the deer cannot, as the moose does, cause its pursuer a chase which may last days. No self-respecting man would follow this method of hunting save from the necessity of having meat.

In very wild localities deer sometimes yard on the ice along the edges of lakes, eating off all the twigs and branches, whether of hardwood trees or of conifers, which they can reach.

At the beginning of the rut the does flee from the bucks, which follow them by scent at full speed. The whitetail buck rarely tries to form a herd of does, though he will sometimes gather two or three. The mere fact that his tactics necessitate a long and arduous chase after each individual doe prevents his organizing herds as the wapiti bull does. Sometimes two or three bucks will be found strung out one behind the other, following the same doe. The bucks wage desperate battle among themselves during this season, coming together with a clash, and then pushing and straining for an hour or two at a time, with their mouths open, until the weakest gives way. As soon as one abandons the fight he flees with all possible speed, and usually escapes unscathed. While head to head there is no opportunity for a disabling thrust, but if, in the effort to retreat, the beaten buck gets caught, he may be killed. Owing to the character of the antlers, whitetail bucks are peculiarly apt to get them interlocked in such a fight, and if the efforts of the two beasts fail to disentangle them, both ultimately perish by starvation. I have several times come across a pair of skulls with interlocked antlers. The same thing occurs, though far less frequently, to the mule-deer and even the wapiti.

The whitetail is the most beautiful and graceful of all our game animals when in motion. I have never been able to agree with Judge Caton that the mule-deer is clumsy and awkward in his gait. I suppose all such terms are relative. Compared to the moose or caribou the mule-deer is light and quick in his movements, and to me there is something very attractive in the poise and power with which one of the great bucks bounds off, all four legs striking the earth together and shooting the body upward and forward as if they were steel springs. But there can be no question as to the infinitely superior grace and beauty of the whitetail when he either trots or runs. The mule-deer and blacktail bound, as already described. The prongbuck gallops with an even gait, and so does the bighorn, when it happens to be caught on a flat; but the whitetail moves with an indescribable spring and buoyancy. If surprised close up, and much terrified, it simply runs away as hard as it can, at a gait not materially different from that of any other game animal under like circumstances, while its head is thrust forward and held down, and the tail is raised perpendicularly. But normally its mode of progression, whether it trots or gallops, is entirely unique. In trotting, the head and tail are both held erect, and the animal throws out its legs with a singularly proud and free motion, bringing the feet well up, while at every step there is an indescribable spring. In the canter or gallop the head and tail are also held erect, the flashing white brush being very conspicuous. Three or four low, long, marvellously springy bounds are taken, and then a great leap is made high in the air, which is succeeded by three or four low bounds, and then by another high leap. A whitetail going through the brush in this manner is a singularly beautiful sight. It has been my experience that they are not usually very much frightened by an ordinary slow track-hound, and I have seen a buck play along in front of one, alternately trotting and cantering, head and flag up, and evidently feeling very little fear.

To my mind the chase of the whitetail, as it must usually be carried on, offers less attraction than the chase of any other kind of our large game. But this is a mere matter of taste, and such men as Judge Caton and Mr. George Bird Grinnell have placed it above all others as a game animal. Personally I feel that the chase of any animal has in it two chief elements of attraction. The first is the chance given to be in the wilderness; to see the sights and hear the sounds of wild nature. The second is the demand made by the particular kind of chase upon the qualities of manliness and hardihood. As regards the first, some kinds of game, of course, lead the hunter into particularly remote and wild localities; and the farther one gets into the wilderness, the greater is the attraction of its lonely freedom. Yet to camp out at all implies some measure of this delight. The keen, fresh air, the breath of the pine forests, the glassy stillness of the lake at sunset, the glory of sunrise among the mountains, the shimmer of the endless prairies, the ceaseless rustle of the cottonwood leaves where the wagon is drawn up on the low bluff of the shrunken river—all these appeal intensely to any man, no matter what may be the game he happens to be following. But there is a wide variation, and indeed contrast, in the qualities called for in the chase itself, according as one quarry or another is sought.

The qualities that make a good soldier are, in large part, the qualities that make a good hunter. Most important of all is the ability to shift for one’s self, the mixture of hardihood and resourcefulness which enables a man to tramp all day in the right direction, and, when night comes, to make the best of whatever opportunities for shelter and warmth may be at hand. Skill in the use of the rifle is another trait; quickness in seeing game, another; ability to take advantage of cover, yet another; while patience, endurance, keenness of observation, resolution, good nerves, and instant readiness in an emergency, are all indispensable to a really good hunter.

If a man lives on a ranch, or is passing some weeks in a lodge in a game country, and starts out for two or three days, he will often do well to carry nothing whatever but a blanket, a frying-pan, some salt pork, and some hardtack. If the hunting-ground is such that he can use a wagon or a canoe, and the trip is not to be too long, he can carry about anything he chooses, including a tent, any amount of bedding, and if it is very cold, a small, portable stove, not to speak of elaborate cooking apparatus. If he goes with a pack-train, he will also be able to carry a good deal; but in such a case he must rely on the judgment of the trained packers, unless he is himself an expert in the diamond hitch. If it becomes necessary to go on foot for any length of time, he must be prepared to do genuine roughing, and must get along with the minimum of absolute necessities.

It is hardly necessary to point out that the hunter worthy of the name should be prepared to shift for himself in emergencies. A ranchman, or any other man whose business takes him much in the mountains and out on the great plains or among the forests, ought to be able to get along entirely on his own account. But this cannot usually be done by those whose existence is habitually more artificial. When a man who normally lives a rather over-civilized life, an over-luxurious life—especially in the great cities—gets off for a few weeks’ hunting, he cannot expect to accomplish much in the way of getting game without calling upon the services of a trained guide, woodsman, plainsman, or mountain man, whose life-work it has been to make himself an adept in all the craft of the wilderness. Until a man unused to wilderness life, even though a good sportsman, has actually tried it, he has no idea of the difficulties and hardships of shifting absolutely for himself, even for only two or three days. Not only will the local guide have the necessary knowledge as to precisely which one of two seemingly similar places is most apt to contain game; not only will he possess the skill in packing horses, or handling a canoe in rough water, or finding his way through the wilderness, which the amateur must lack; but even the things which the amateur does, the professional will do so much more easily and rapidly, as in the one case to leave, and in the other case not to leave, ample time for the hunting proper. Therefore the ordinary amateur sportsman, especially if he lives in a city, must count upon the services of trained men, possibly to help him in hunting, certainly to help him in travelling, cooking, pitching camp, and the like; and this he must do, if he expects to get good sport, no matter how hardy he may be, and no matter how just may be the pride he ought to take in his own craft, skill, and capacity to undergo fatigue and exposure. But while normally he must take advantage of the powers of others, he should certainly make a point of being able to shift for himself whenever the need arises; and he can only be sure of possessing this capacity by occasionally exercising it. It ought to be unnecessary to point out that the wilderness is not a place for those who are dependent upon luxuries, and above all for those who make a camping trip an excuse for debauchery. Neither the man who wants to take a French cook and champagne on a hunting trip, nor his equally objectionable though less wealthy brother who is chiefly concerned with filling and emptying a large whiskey jug, has any place whatever in the real life of the wilderness.

The chase of an animal should rank according as it calls for the exercise in a high degree of a large number of these qualities. The grizzly is almost our only dangerous game, and under certain conditions shooting the grizzly calls for considerable courage on the part of the hunter. Disregarding these comparatively rare occasions, the chase of mountain game, especially the bighorn, demands more hardihood, power of endurance, and moral and physical soundness than any other kind of sport, and so must come first. The wapiti and mule-deer rank next, for they too must be killed by stalking as a result of long tramps over very rough ground. To kill a moose by still hunting is a feat requiring a high degree of skill, and entailing severe fatigue. When game is followed on horseback, it means that the successful hunter must ride well and boldly.

The whitetail is occasionally found where it yields a very high quality of sport. But normally it lives in regions where it is extremely difficult to kill it legitimately, as the wapiti and mule-deer are killed, and yet comparatively easy to kill it under circumstances which make no demand for any particular prowess on the part of the hunter. It is far more difficult to still hunt successfully in the dense brushy timber frequented by the whitetail than in the open glades, the mountains, and the rocky hills, through which the wapiti and mule-deer wander. The difficulty arises, however, because the chief requirement is stealth, noiselessness. The man who goes out into the hills for a mule-deer must walk hard and far, must be able to bear fatigue, and possibly thirst and hunger, must have keen eyes, and be a good shot. He does not need to display the extraordinary power of stealthy advance which is necessary to the man who would creep up to and kill a whitetail in thick timber. Now, the qualities of hardihood and endurance are better than the quality of stealth, and though all three are necessary in both kinds of chase, yet it is the chase of the mule-deer which most develops the former, and the chase of the whitetail which most develops the latter. When the woods are bare and there is some snow on the ground, however, still hunting the whitetail becomes not only possible, but a singularly manly and attractive kind of sport. Where the whitetail can be followed with horse and hound, the sport is also of a very high order. To be able to ride through woods and over rough country at full speed, rifle or shotgun in hand, and then to leap off and shoot at a running object, is to show that one has the qualities which made the cavalry of Forrest so formidable in the Civil War. There could be no better training for the mounted rifleman, the most efficient type of modern soldier.

By far the easiest way to kill the whitetail is in one or other of certain methods which entail very little work or skill on the part of the hunter. The most noxious of these, crusting in the deep snows, has already been spoken of. No sportsman worthy of the name would ever follow so butcherly a method. Fire hunting must also normally be ruled out. It is always mere murder if carried on by a man who sits up at a lick, and is not much better where the hunter walks through the fields—not to mention the fact that on such a walk he is quite as apt to kill stock as to kill a deer. But fire hunting from a boat, or jacking, as it is called, though it entails absolutely no skill in the hunter, and though it is, and ought to be, forbidden, as it can best be carried on at the season when nursing does are particularly apt to be the victims, nevertheless has a certain charm of its own. The first deer I ever killed, when a boy, was obtained in this way, and I have always been glad to have had the experience, though I have never been willing to repeat it. I was at the time camped out in the Adirondacks.

Two or three of us, all boys of fifteen or sixteen, had been enjoying what was practically our first experience in camping out, having gone out with two guides, Hank Martin and Mose Sawyer, from Paul Smith’s on Lake St. Regis. My brother and cousin were fond of fishing and I was not, so I was deputed to try to bring in a deer. I had a double-barrelled 12–bore gun, French pinfire, with which I had industriously collected “specimens” on a trip to Egypt and Palestine and on Long Island; except for three or four enthralling but not over-successful days after woodcock and quail, I had done no game shooting. As to every healthy boy with a taste for outdoor life, the Northern forests were to me a veritable land of enchantment. We were encamped by a stream among the tall pines, and I had enjoyed everything; poling and paddling the boat, tramping through the woods, the cries of chickaree and chipmunk, of jay, woodpecker, chickadee, nuthatch, and cross-bill, which broke the forest stillness; and, above all, the great reaches of sombre woodland themselves. The heart-shaped footprints which showed where the deer had come down to drink and feed on the marshy edges of the water made my veins thrill; and the nights around the flickering camp-fire seemed filled with romance.

My first experiment in jacking was a failure. The jack, a bark lantern, was placed upon a stick in the bow of the boat, and I sat in a cramped huddle behind it, while Mose Sawyer plied the paddle with noiseless strength and skill in the stern. I proved unable to respond even to the very small demand made upon me, for when we actually did come upon a deer I failed to see it until it ran, when I missed it; and on the way back capped my misfortune by shooting a large owl which perched on a log projecting into the water, looking at the lantern with two glaring eyes.

All next day I was miserably conscious of the smothered disfavor of my associates, and when night fell was told I would have another chance to redeem myself. This time we started across a carry, the guide carrying the light boat, and launched it in a quiet little pond about a mile off. Dusk was just turning into darkness when we reached the edge of the little lake, which was perhaps a mile long by three-quarters of a mile across, with indented shores. We did not push off for half an hour or so, until it was entirely dark; and then for a couple of hours we saw no deer. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the ghostly, mysterious, absolutely silent night ride over the water. Not the faintest splash betrayed the work of the paddler. The boat glided stealthily alongshore, the glare of the lantern bringing out for one moment every detail of the forest growth on the banks, which the next second vanished into absolute blackness. Several times we saw muskrats swimming across the lane of light cut by the lantern through the darkness, and two or three times their sudden plunging and splashing caused my heart to leap. Once when we crossed the lake we came upon a loon floating buoyantly right out in the middle of it. It stayed until we were within ten yards, so that I could see the minute outlines of the feathers and every movement of the eye. Then it swam off, but made no cry. At last, while crossing the mouth of a bay we heard a splashing sound among the lilies inshore, which even my untrained ears recognized as different from any of the other noises we had yet heard, and a jarring motion of the paddle showed that the paddler wished me to be on the alert. Without any warning, the course of the boat was suddenly changed, and I was aware that we were moving stern foremost. Then we swung around, and I could soon make out that we were going down the little bay. The forest-covered banks narrowed; then the marsh at the end was lighted up, and on its hither edge, knee-deep among the water-lilies, appeared the figure of a yearling buck still in the red. It stood motionless, gazing at the light with a curiosity wholly unmixed with alarm, and at the shot wheeled and fell at the water’s edge. We made up our mind to return to camp that night, as it was before midnight. I carried the buck and the torch, and the guide the boat, and the mile walk over the dim trail, occasionally pitching forward across a stump or root, was a thing to be remembered. It was my first deer, and I was very glad to get it; but although only a boy, I had sense enough to realize that it was not an experience worth repeating. The paddler in such a case deserves considerable credit, but the shooter not a particle, even aside from the fact to which I have already alluded, that in too many cases such shooting results in the killing of nursing does. No matter how young a sportsman is, if he has a healthy mind, he will not long take pleasure in any method of hunting in which somebody else shows the skill and does the work so that his share is only nominal. The minute that sport is carried on on these terms it becomes a sham, and a sham is always detrimental to all who take part in it.

Whitetail are comparatively easily killed with hounds, and there are very many places where this is almost the only way they can be killed at all. Formerly in the Adirondacks this method of hunting was carried on under circumstances which rendered those who took part in it objects of deserved contempt. The sportsman stood in a boat while his guides put out one or two hounds in the chosen forest side. After a longer or shorter run the deer took to the water; for whitetail are excellent swimmers, and when pursued by hounds try to shake them off by wading up or down stream or by swimming across a pond, and, if tired, come to bay in some pool or rapid. Once the unfortunate deer was in the water, the guide rowed the boat after it. If it was yet early in the season, and the deer was still in the red summer coat, it would sink when shot, and therefore the guide would usually take hold of its tail before the would-be Nimrod butchered it. If the deer was in the blue, the carcass would float, so it was not necessary to do anything quite so palpably absurd. But such sport, so far as the man who did the shooting was concerned, had not one redeeming feature. The use of hounds has now been prohibited by law.

In regions where there are no lakes, and where the woods are thick, the shooters are stationed at runways by which it is supposed the deer may pass when the hounds are after them. Under such circumstances the man has to show the skill requisite to hit the running quarry, and if he uses the rifle, this means that he must possess a certain amount of address in handling the weapon. But no other quality is called for, and so even this method, though often the only possible one (and it may be necessary to return to it in the Adirondacks), can never rank high in the eyes of men who properly appreciate what big game hunting should be. It is the usual method of killing deer on Long Island, during the three or four days of each year when they can be legally hunted. The deer are found along the south and centre of the eastern half of the island; they were nearly exterminated a dozen years ago, but under good laws they have recently increased greatly. The extensive grounds of the various sportsmen’s clubs, and the forests of scrub-oak in the sparsely settled inland region, give them good harbors and sanctuaries. On the days when it is legal to shoot them, hundreds of hunters turn out from the neighborhood, and indeed from all the island and from New York. On such a day it is almost impossible to get any work done; for the sport is most democratic, and is shared by everybody. The hunters choose their position before dawn, lying in lines wherever deer are likely to pass, while the hounds are turned into every patch of thick cover. A most lively day follows, the fusillade being terrific; some men are invariably shot, and a goodly number of deer are killed, mostly by wily old hunters who kill ducks and quail for a living in the fall.

When the horse is used together with the hounds the conditions are changed. To ride a horse over rough country after game always implies hardihood and good horsemanship, and therefore makes the sport a worthy one. In very open country—in such country, for instance, as the whitetail formerly frequented both in Texas and the Indian Territory—the horseman could ride at the tail of the pack until the deer was fairly run down. But nowadays I know of no place where this is possible, for the whitetail’s haunts are such as to make it impracticable for any rider to keep directly behind the hounds. What he must do is to try to cut the game off by riding from point to point. He then leaps off the horse and watches his chance for a shot. This is the way in which Mr. McIlhenny has done most of his deer-hunting, in the neighborhood of his Louisiana plantation.

Around my ranch I very rarely tried to still-hunt whitetail, because it was always easier to get mule-deer or prongbuck, if I had time to go off for an all-day’s hunt. Occasionally, however, we would have at the ranch hounds, usually of the old black-and-tan Southern type, and then if we needed meat, and there was not time for a hunt back in the hills, we would turn out and hunt one or two of the river bottoms with these hounds. If I rode off to the prairies or the hills I went alone, but if the quarry was a whitetail, our chance of success depended upon our having a sufficient number of guns to watch the different passes and runways. Accordingly, my own share of the chase was usually limited to the fun of listening to the hounds, and of galloping at headlong speed from one point where I thought the deer would not pass to some other, which, as a matter of fact, it did not pass either. The redeeming feature of the situation was that if I did get a shot, I almost always got my deer. Under ordinary circumstances to merely wound a deer is worse than not hitting it; but when there are hounds along they are certain to bring the wounded animal to bay, and so on these hunts we usually got venison.

Of course, I occasionally got a whitetail when I was alone, whether with the hounds or without them. There were whitetail on the very bottom on which the ranch-house stood, as well as on the bottom opposite, and on those to the right and left up and down stream. Occasionally I have taken the hounds out alone, and then as they chevied the whitetail around the bottom, have endeavored by rapid running on foot or on horseback to get to some place from which I could obtain a shot. The deer knew perfectly well that the hounds could not overtake them, and they would usually do a great deal of sneaking round and round through the underbrush and cottonwoods before they finally made up their minds to leave the bottom. On one occasion a buck came sneaking down a game trail through the buck brush where I stood, going so low that I could just see the tips of his antlers, and though I made desperate efforts I was not able to get into a position from which I could obtain a shot. On another occasion, while I was looking intently into a wood through which I was certain a deer would pass, it deliberately took to the open ground behind me, and I did not see it until it was just vanishing. Normally, the end of my efforts was that the deer went off and the hounds disappeared after it, not to return for six or eight hours. Once or twice things favored me; I happened to take the right turn or go in the right direction, and the deer happened to blunder past me; and then I returned with venison for supper. Two or three times I shot deer about nightfall or at dawn, in the immediate neighborhood of the ranch, obtaining them by sneaking as noiselessly as possible along the cattle trails through the brush and timber, or by slipping along the edge of the river bank. Several times I saw deer while I was sitting on the piazza or on the doorstep of the ranch, and on one occasion I stepped back into the house, got the rifle, and dropped the animal from where I stood.

On yet other occasions I obtained whitetail which lived not on the river bottoms but among the big patches of brush and timber in the larger creeks. When they were found in such country I hunted them very much as I hunted the mule-deer, and usually shot one when I was expecting as much to see a mule-deer as a whitetail. When the game was plentiful I would often stay on my horse until the moment of obtaining the shot, especially if it was in the early morning or late evening. My method then was to ride slowly and quietly down the winding valleys and across the spurs, hugging the bank, so that, if deer were feeding in the open, I would get close up before either of us saw the other. Sometimes the deer would halt for a moment when it saw me, and sometimes it would bound instantly away. In either case my chance lay in the speed with which I could jump off the horse and take my shot. Even in favorable localities this method was of less avail with whitetail than mule-deer, because the former were so much more apt to skulk.

As soon as game became less plentiful my hunting had to be done on foot. My object was to be on the hunting-ground by dawn, or else to stay out there until it grew too dark to see the sights of my rifle. Often all I did was to keep moving as quietly as possible through likely ground, ever on the alert for the least trace of game; sometimes I would select a lookout and carefully scan a likely country to see if I could not detect something moving. On one occasion I obtained an old whitetail buck by the simple exercise of patience. I had twice found him in a broad basin, composed of several coulees, all running down to form the head of a big creek, and all of them well timbered. He dodged me on both occasions, and I made up my mind that I would spend a whole day in watching for him from a little natural ambush of sage-bush and cedar on a high point which overlooked the entire basin. I crept up to my ambush with the utmost caution early in the morning, and there I spent the entire day, with my lunch and a water-bottle, continually scanning the whole region most carefully with the glasses. The day passed less monotonously than it sounds, for every now and then I would catch a glimpse of wild life; once a fox, once a coyote, and once a badger; while the little chipmunks had a fine time playing all around me. At last, about mid-afternoon, I suddenly saw the buck come quietly out of the dense thicket in which he had made his midday bed, and deliberately walk up a hillside and lie down in a thin clump of ash where the sun could get at him—for it was in September, just before the rut began. There was no chance of stalking him in the place he had chosen, and all I could do was to wait. It was nearly sunset before he moved again, except that I occasionally saw him turn his head. Then he got up, and after carefully scrutinizing all the neighborhood, moved down into a patch of fairly thick brush, where I could see him standing and occasionally feeding, all the time moving slowly up the valley. I now slipped most cautiously back and trotted nearly a mile until I could come up behind one of the ridges bounding the valley in which he was. The wind had dropped and it was almost absolutely still when I crawled flat on my face to the crest, my hat in my left hand, my rifle in my right. There was a big sage-bush conveniently near, and under this I peered. There was a good deal of brush in the valley below, and if I had not known that the buck was there, I would never have discovered him. As it was, I watched for a quarter of an hour, and had about made up my mind that he must have gone somewhere else, when a slight movement nearly below me attracted my attention, and I caught a glimpse of him nearly three hundred yards off, moving quietly along by the side of a little dry watercourse which was right in the middle of the brush. I waited until he was well past, and then again slipped back with the utmost care, and ran on until I was nearly opposite the head of the coulee, when I again approached the ridge-line. Here there was no sage-bush, only tufts of tall grass, which were stirring in the little breeze which had just sprung up, fortunately in the right direction. Taking advantage of a slight inequality in the soil, I managed to get behind one of these tufts, and almost immediately saw the buck. Toward the head of the coulee the brush had become scanty and low, and he was now walking straight forward, evidently keeping a sharp lookout. The sun had just set. His course took him past me at a distance of eighty yards. When directly opposite I raised myself on my elbows, drawing up the rifle, which I had shoved ahead of me. The movement of course caught his eye at once; he halted for one second to look around and see what it was, and during that second I pulled the trigger. Away he went, his white flag switching desperately, and though he galloped over the hill, I felt he was mine. However, when I got to the top of the rise over which he had gone, I could not see him, and as there was a deep though narrow coulee filled with brush on the other side, I had a very ugly feeling that I might have lost him, in spite of the quantity of blood he had left along his trail. It was getting dark, and I plunged quickly into the coulee. Usually a wounded deer should not be followed until it has had time to grow stiff, but this was just one of the cases where the rule would have worked badly; in the first place, because darkness was coming on, and in the next place, because the animal was certain to die shortly, and all that I wanted was to see where he was. I followed his trail into the coulee, and expected to find that he had turned down it, but a hurried examination in the fading light showed me that he had taken the opposite course, and I scrambled hastily out on the other side, and trotted along, staring into the brush, and now and then shouting or throwing in a clod of earth. When nearly at the head there was a crackling in the brush, and out burst the wounded buck. He disappeared behind a clump of elms, but he had a hard hill to go up, and the effort was too much for him. When I next saw him he had halted, and before I could fire again down he came.

On another occasion I spied a whole herd of whitetail feeding in a natural meadow, right out in the open, in mid-afternoon, and was able to get up so close that when I finally shot a yearling buck (which was one of the deer farthest away from me, there being no big buck in the outfit), the remaining deer, all does and fawns, scattered in every direction, some galloping right past me in their panic. Once or twice I was able to perform a feat of which I had read, but in which I scarcely believed. This was, to creep up to a deer while feeding in the open, by watching when it shook its tail, and then remaining motionless. I cannot say whether the habit is a universal one, but on two occasions at least I was able thus to creep up to the feeding deer, because before lifting its head it invariably shook its tail, thereby warning me to stay without moving until it had lifted its head, scrutinized the landscape, and again lowered its head to graze. The eyesight of the whitetail, as compared with that of the pronghorn antelope, is poor. It notes whatever is in motion, but it seems unable to distinguish clearly anything that is not in motion. On the occasions in question no antelope that I have ever seen would have failed to notice me at once and to take alarm. But the whitetail, although it scrutinized me narrowly, while I lay motionless with my head toward it, seemed in each case to think that I must be harmless, and after a while it would go on feeding. In one instance the animal fed over a ridge and walked off before I could get a shot; in the other instance I killed it.

In 1894, on the last day I spent at the ranch, and with the last bullet I fired from my rifle, I killed a fine whitetail buck. I left the ranch-house early in the afternoon on my favorite pony, Muley, my foreman, Sylvane Ferris, riding with me. We forded the shallow river and rode up a long winding coulee, with belts of timber running down its bottom. After going a couple of miles, by sheer good luck we stumbled on three whitetail—a buck, a doe and a fawn. When we saw them they were trying to sneak off, and immediately my foreman galloped toward one end of the belt of timber in which they were, and started to ride down through it, while I ran Muley to the other end to intercept them. They were, of course, quite likely to break off to one side; but this happened to be one of the occasions when everything went right. When I reached the spot from which I covered the exits from the timber, I leaped off, and immediately afterward heard a shout from my foreman that told me the deer were on foot. Muley was a pet horse, and enjoyed immensely the gallop after game; but his nerves invariably failed him at the shot. On this occasion he stood snorting beside me, and finally, as the deer came in sight, away he tore—only to go about 200 yards, however, and stand and watch us, snorting, with his ears pricked forward until, when I needed him, I went for him. At the moment, however, I paid no heed to Muley, for a cracking in the brush told me the game was close, and I caught the shadowy outlines of the doe and the fawn as they scudded through the timber. By good luck, the buck, evidently flurried, came right on the edge of the woods next to me, and as he passed, running like a quarter-horse, I held well ahead of him and pulled trigger. The bullet broke his neck and down he went—a fine fellow with a handsome ten-point head, and fat as a prize sheep; for it was just before the rut. Then we rode home, and I sat in a rocking-chair on the ranch-house veranda, looking across the wide, sandy river bed at the strangely shaped buttes and the groves of shimmering cottonwoods until the sun went down and the frosty air bade me go in.