CHAPTER XXII

ADVICE TO YOUNG HUNTERS -- MODE OF ATTACKING
THE DEER -- THE HUNTING SEASON -- A LOVE OF
ADVENTURE -- HUNTING AS A PASTIME -- A CAU-
TION

PERHAPS after all the experience I have had in the wild woods and with the beasts that inhabit them, I can give some amateur sportsman a little information in regard to hunting, They do not already understand. If but a single one is benefited by my experience and the few suggestions I shall give, object will have be attained.

There are a few suggestion in which may sometimes be made quite available. The time to commence deer hunting is not until after the leaves begin to fall. The deer is then what hunters call the short blue. I go into the woods :at this time and commence hunting very slowly, with a deer just as he looks in the

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forest, fully pictured in my imagination, and when I see on, I stop instantly and never try to creep any closer, but shoot just where I am, for ten chances to one if you attempt to get nearer, you will soon find yourself further away. If I saw one walking along, then I would walk when it walked, and stop when it stopped, and keep following it in this manner until close enough to shoot. But if I saw it give the least sign that it either saw, or heard, or smelled me, then I would shoot, hit or miss, for then the chances are not likely to become more favorable, soon. When a deer just hears you he will run apiece and then stop and listen, very frequently he will stop within shooting distance. Sometimes they will run entirely out of sight, then they will stop and snort like a horse. Then I mimic them, standing perfectly still, and they will come to me, thinking they have heard a deer. In hunting, I always hold myself in readiness to shoot at a moment's warning.

When there are several together and I shoot one, the rest will all run, then I station myself within shooting distance of the place where the other fell, and watch. After awhile the others will return to see what has become of the missing deer. Then I shoot again, and often kill quite a number in this manner from a single stand-point.

Another way of finding them, is to go where they have run-ways, where they cross ridges, or

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streams, or roads and sit down and wait for them. Often more can be killed in a day in this way without traveling a single mile, than by traversing the woods constantly all day in search of them. The deer is a very timid animal, and very quick to hear the slightest sound, and will detect your footsteps in the brush much quicker than you can theirs, and after they see or hear you once, the chances for catching them are small. In the winter, when the snow is on the ground, I sometimes take a horse and attach a small bell to his neck, and start into the woods. When I find deer, I immediately leave the track and go off to one side, keeping the horse between myself and the deer until I come in sight of them. Then I stop behind the horse and shoot. I never ride when following a deer.

The deer have places in the woods where they go to lick, which hunters call deer-licks. There we go and make a scaffold up in the trees about fourteen or fifteen feet from the ground. Here we secrete ourselves until the deer come to drink, when we shoot them. It most frequently happens that they will come in the night, then we have candles that we fasten on the front of our hats, so that the light will fall on the sites of our guns, and then we can shoot as well as by daylight.

These few suggestions in regard to deer, may be of use to some of my young friends if followed out and although I want to see you successful

A WORD OF CAUTION.215

when you do hunt, yet I cannot advise any of you to follow hunting as a business, or depend upon it as a means of' maintenance. I know that the love of adventure is innate among men, and there probably is no other sport in the world so fascinating, and at the same time so healthful and innocent, as hunting, and if indulged in merely as a sport, where too much precious time is not squandered, it is an amusement commendable; but as a business, it is assuredly rather trifling. As a general thing the laboring man grows rich, while the hunter almost invariably remains poor; besides denying to his children the advantages of education, and failing to bring them up familiar with those regular habits of industry so essential to future usefulness and prosperity. The writer of this hasty sketch, has in some respects, been more fortunate than most hunters. Perhaps the reason is, most men who once acquire a passion for hunting will never follow anything else; but are like the Irishman who if he liked the business of making sugar, was going to follow it all the year. Well, now, hunting is like sugar making, only good in certain seasons, and the man who would make money by it, must pursue his business diligently during the proper season, and then have something definite and profitable to fill up the rest of the year.

I usually commenced my hunting in November and continued it until March; and from March

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until November I labored assiduously, either in clearing up my farm or raising the various products of the soil. In this way I have supported a large family and accumulated a little besides. I have never been in the habit of hiring anything done that I could reasonably do myself. Stormy days and long evenings, I have done my family shoemaking, and my own blacksmithing. I still hunt enough to supply my family most of the time with meat that I regard more wholesome than pork, and keep a fishing seine wherewith we are usually supplied with abundance of fresh fish. I am, from experience and observation, much opposed to the use of pork as food, though I have never yet entirely banished it from my table; but am persuaded that it is not suitable food for man. My oldest son is rather in advance of me on these questions of reform. He will not allow it to be used in his family at all, and uses no stronger drink upon his table than cold water.

As regards meat, I think there is no meat better, and at the same time equally healthful and free from all injurious effects, than venison. And I think it worth every man's time, that has a family, to kill a few deer every winter for meat, as wild turkeys and many kinds of wild meat are more wholesome than tame. In connection with what I have already said in regard to hunting as a source of profit, I will only add that every trade or kind of business is good

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in its proper place, But for the hunter, the farmer in the new country would never raise his crops; and but for the farmer, the hunter and mechanic would famish for bread. They mutually benefit each other. But to the ambitious young man who is anxious to husband his time, so as to make it of most account in laying up a store of' riches, honest, persevering industry is much more likely to secure for you such an end, than any other means you can ever adopt.