The Still Hunter

Front matter

The Still-Hunter Theodore Strong Van Dyke

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE I. Introduction..... Se SCNe e ce ase “Eta F) II. To find Good Hunting-ground........ ..eeseee apie 442) III, Examining the Ground, Signs, etc..:..... neces ETA IV. The Senses of the Game and Hunter........ bp CIOS 38 V. The Daily Life of Deer and Antelope........... ... 50 VI. Looking for Deer that are on Foot.........s.esesos. 58 VII. Looking for Deer Lying Down............ Bey k} VIII. The First Sight of Game................ gis cess ns ea Alo IX. The First Shot at a Deer.............. Mussisias cbc > OO AE RUNNING TMG, ee eree vad eneee ole dine cap aoe. come 1 IIS AL Hunting On SNOW.: a: essee seese tunics nees cle « BR Sep BEY) XII. The Surest Way to Track Deer when very Wild..... 135 XIII. Tracking on Bare Ground ...........0.ecccscsecees 145 XIV. Still-hunting on Open Ground................e.000- 156 AV. a Deer on OpeniGround -rarase olde eis otto es siewis.s 167 XVI. A Day in the Table-lands........ Series Wes weasel s 176 XVII. Another Kind of Open Ground .................065 192 XVIII. The Still-hunter’s Cardinal Virtue.................. 204 XIX. Hunting in the Open and in Timber Combined...... 214 XX. Subordinate Principles.............cceccceeccees so BPE XXI. Two or more Persons Hunting in Company. Hunttng On MOTpenaCkess a.r 5 seks cua is ss seston eee. « 232

. Special Modes of Hunting. The Cow-bell and Tiring

6 CONTENTS.

Introduction

STILL-HUNTING, the most scientific of all things pertaining to hunting, has hitherto been almost confined to the. backwoodsman or frontiersman, and has been little enjoyed by those born and reared at any distance from facilities for learning practically the ways of the wild woods and plains. Thousands of our best shots with the shot-gun are men born and bred in the city.. But of the thousands who enjoy the still-hunt the majority are backwoodsmen. One great reason of this is that the art is one requiring for proficiency more life in the forest than the average city man can spend there. But another great reason has been the almost utter lack of any information or instruction upon the subject. For this, the greatest and most important branch of the whole art of hunting has, I may safely say, been totally neglected by the great body of writers upon field-sports. Most attempts in that line have been like “ The Deer- Stalkers” of Frank Forrester—a short fancy sketch, not intended to convey any instruction. And where the subject has been touched upon at all in works on hunting, the information given has been so extremely general in its nature and form of expression, and so utterly lacking in qualifications and exceptions quite as essential as the rules themselves, that to a beginner in the woods it is of little more use than the maps in a child’s atlas are to a tourist. Consequently he who would single-handed and alone outgeneral the bounding beauties of the forest and plain, and with a single ball trip their wily feet, is nearly always compelled to work out his own knowledge of how to do it. And this he must generally do, as I had to do it, by a long series of mortifying failures.

I have spent too many days alone in the depths of the forest primeval and on the mountain’s shaggy breast not to know full well that printed precepts are poor substitutes for Nature’s wild school of objectteaching. Yet from that same life I have learned another thing quite as true; namely, that while instruction cannot carry one bodily to the desired goal, it can nevertheless clear the road of hundreds of stumps and fallen logs, cut away a vast amount of tangled brush, and bridge many a Serbonian bog.

Not without hesitation have I undertaken to explore this “dark continent” of the world of field-sports. At this day a writer upon almost any other subject has the roads, paths, blaze-marks, and charts of a dozen or more explorers before him. I have nothing to follow; the only work upon deer, that of Judge Caton, thorough and fine as it is, deals only with the anatomy, physiology, and natural history of deer; all those habits which it is essential for the still-hunter to thoroughly understand being as much beyond the scope of his work as the part he has treated

INTRODUCTION. 9 of is beyond the scope of this work. The same is the case with the part upon rifles and shooting; nearly everything in print on the subject pertaining only to target-rifles and target-shooting. Besides this dearth of pioneers to clear the road, the habits of large game generally, and of deer especially, vary so much with climate, elevation, and character of country, quality, distribution, and quantity of food, amount and nature of the disturbance to which the game may be subjected, and other causes, that there can be no man who thoroughly understands still-hunting in every part of the United States. Moreover, the deer is so irregular in some of its movements, so difficult to observe closely, and so quick to change many of its habits after a little persecution or change in methods of hunting, that it is not probable that any one person thoroughly understands the animal even in any one State. And I have heard the very best and oldest hunters of my acquaintance say that they were continually learning something new about deer. But there is still enough that is both universal and certain to carry the learner over far the greater part of the difficulties and save him many an aching limb and sinking heart. |

To impart this is, however, no easy task for any one. Unfortunately those who best know in practice the rules of hunting are almost necessarily deficient in power to lay out and finish in the details a treatise on a subject so extensive and recondite. The “old hunter” to whom the learner must now resort for his advice knows practically a great deal; but between what he knows and what he can oy will tell there is a difference as wide as it is provoking. Even if he were never so well disposed to impart his knowledge, it would require at least fifty long and elaborate lectures of several hours each for him to do so in his language. Moreover, the average “old hunter” or Leatherstocking is full of wrong theories, which he either does not follow in the field or, if he does, he succeeds in spite of them by virtue of his other qualifications. The stock of nonsensical theories held by the old-time country “old hunter” with the old single shot-gun is nothing to the mass of absurdities that a very successful old Leatherstocking can dispense on the subject of deer-hunting, rifles, and rifle-shooting. So that unless constantly by his side in the field—a thing to which any good hunter will seriously object —the beginner can learn little from him. I have had to work out almost every particle of my information from a mine of stubborn ore. And I flatter myself ' that I can save to those who will take the pains to study—not merely read—this work, at least two thirds of the labor, vexation, and disappointment through which I was compelled to flounder; though I started in with keen eyes, tireless feet, unflagging hope, and years of experience in all branches of hunting with the shot-gun, beginning even in childhood.

To be exhaustive without being exhausting is one of the most delicate tasks ever set a didactic writer. To avoid being tedious I have intentionally omitted—

ist. All that part of the natural history and habits of our game which does not bear directly upon the question of how to find and shoot it; such as its birth, nurture, growth, and shedding of horns, all of which may be found in other and better books—such as Judge Caton’s.

2d. A large mass of vague and unreliable theories held about hunting and shooting even by successful

INTRODUCTION. . 11 hunters. We are never so wise as when we know what itis that we do not know. There are many movements of game that it is impossible to reduce to rule, in which the animal seems governed only by the caprice of the passing moment. As there are doctors who will never admit ignorance upon any point, but will explain to you at once, like the physicians in the plays of Moliére, the efficient causes of the most slippery phenomena, so there are hosts of hunters who have ever on their tongue’s end an exact explanation of every movement of a deer. Agreeing with Sir William Hamilton that “contented ignorance is better than presumptuous wisdom,” I have omitted all such dubious theories.

3d. Everything that can be safely intrusted to the beginner’s common-sense; though I have been cautious about presuming too much upon this.

The art of still-hunting deer carries with it nearly the whole art of still-hunting other large American game. Asa good and accomplished lawyer has only a few special points of practice to learn in transplanting himself from State to State,.so the thorough still-hunter will go from deer to antelope, elk, or other game, already equipped with five sixths of the knowledge necessary to hunt them. And this very knowledge will, as it does in the case of the lawyer, enable him to learn the rest in one fourth of the time in which a beginner could do it. Consequently a large portion of this work applies to antelope also without special reference.

It is a common idea that shooting game with a rifle does not call for a very high degree of skill with it, or for very much knowledge of the principles of shooting. That considerable game is killed by very ordinary shooting is true. But it is equally true that as much game is lost by bad shooting as by bad hunting. And it is quite as true that bad shooting is as much due to downright, solid ignorance of the rifle, the principles of projectiles, and the use of the rifle in the field as distinguished from its use at the ‘target, as to nervousness, excitement, want of practice, and all other causes put together. The extent of this ignorance, even among very successful hunters, is amazing; their success being due to their good hunting, energy, and perseverance, and in spite of their poor shooting. I therefore deem a treatise on the hunting-rifle: and its use in the field an indispensable part of any work on still-hunting. And since this information cannot be found to any valuable extent in any other work on shooting that I have seen, I have treated the subject quite fully, omitting however, out of regard for the reader’s patience, much that can be trusted to his intelligence and much that may be found in works on the rifle and on target-shooting.

It is to be expected that many hunters, and good ones too, will differ from many of my views. Among even the best and most intelligent sportsmen there is much disagreement on even the simplest points. It is therefore vain for any one to expect indorsement upon every point from the man who declares that a gun is safest with the hammer resting on the cap; who thinks a slow twist makes a “slow ball,” a quick twist a “quick ball,” a gain twist a “strong ball;” who sincerely believes that his rifle shoots on a level line for two hundred yards; who talks of putting a ball in the heart of a running deer at three hundred

INTRODUCTION, 18 yards as a matter of course, and discourses about knocking a deer down “in his tracks” as he would knock down a cabbage-head with a club. It is also impossible for any writer upon field-sports to .avoid occasional mistakes. There are others, doubtléss, who would make less thanI do. But they do not write. And from the length of time the world has waited for such a book it is fair to presume that they do not intend to write. Therefore take this as the best you can get, and bear lightly on its infirmities.

Some will think I have been too fond of repetition. But there are principles which cannot otherwise be understood ŝz their practical extent. The great trouble is to make one understand in the concrete what he knows well enough in the abstract. Other principles require repetition in their different applications, requiring contemplation under different points of view. Many will think that I have been too fond of analysis, have drawn distinctions too fine, and have been too lavish with refinements and caution, Undoubtedly deer may be killed in large numbers without heeding one half the advice I give. There are still parts of our country where deer are yet so plenty and tame that any one who can shoot at all can kill some. Often when concentrated by deep snows, fires, or other causes, and enfeebled by starvation, the wildest of deer or antelope may fall easy victims to any one of brute strength and brute heart. Even when deer are scarce, wild, and in full strength the veriest blockhead may occasionally stumble over one and kill it with a shot-gun. And in almost any place where the ground or brush does not make too much noise beneath the feet, if there are any deer at all, brute endurance in getting over ground enough, assisted by brute perseverance, will bring success.

But from all this we can draw only one conclusion; namely, that the greater the success one has by careless or unscientific methods, the better it would be and the more ease and pleasure he would have in it by doing it scientifically. And to put the beginner on the very best track, I have treated, throughout this work, of deer very wild. This is rendered the more necessary by the fact that in nearly all places the deer of to-day is not the deer of thirty years ago ; in many places not even the deer of ten years ago. Deer become more wary as hunters increase, They change their habits to suit new styles of hunting and fire-arms. And these tendencies have been so transmitted by descent that the average six-months-old fawn of to-day is a far more delicate article to handle than were most of the mighty old bucks on which the Leatherstocking “old hunter” of thirty years ago won his name and fame.

It is quite common to hear still-hunting denounced as “pot-hunting” by the advocates of driving deer with hounds. That the market-hunter is almost always a still-hunter is unfortunately true. It is also a sad truth that the man who murders woodcock in May for Delmonico’s epicures possesses a breech-loader. But this hardly makes the use of the breech-loader pot-hunting. I have seen it stated that a still-hunter on snow was certain to secure the deer that he once took the track of. All this savors of sour grapes. No man who ever had any experience in still-hunting ever committed such stuff to paper. But to correct at the outset any misapprehension I will say that, with whatever proficiency in still-hunting

INTRODUCTION. 15 any mortal ever reaches, with all the advantages of snow, ground, wind, and sun in his favor, many a deer will, in the very climax of triumphant assurance, slip through his fingers like the thread of a beautiful dream.

Chapter II. To Find Good Hunting-ground

Mucu has been written about the essential qualities of a good deer-hunter, the only effect of which is to deter from attempting it many a man who might easily enjoy still-hunting, or “deer-stalking” as our English cousins call it. To make a good professional hunter who shall kill a large number of deer in a season, and do it on all kinds of ground and in all kinds of weather, does undoubtedly require such physical and other qualities as are mentioned by Stonehenge, Forrester, and others. But on the other hand any man of sufficient savoir faire, strength, and energy to make a respectable bag of quail or woodcock in any of the Eastern States, whether he be bred in the backwoods or in Fifth Avenue, whether a knight of the trigger or only a carpet-knight, can by study and practice make a fair amateur still-hunter ; that is, one who can go where deer or antelope are moderately plenty and kill, not great quantities, but enough for good sport and quite as much as any man has any

business to kill. ' We will leave the equipment for hunting for future consideration; and, supposing you already prepared, let us see where we are to find our game.

To find ground where deer are plenty enough for good sport is still an easy matter even at the present rate of destruction. And there need be no fear that

TO FIND GOOD HUNTING-GROUND. 17 they will soon be too scarce. The days of the market’s lofty prerogative are numbered. The American people are fast awaking to the fact that the true question before them is not, Why should not he who kills game have a right to sell it? not, Why should not he who cannot hunt his own game have a right to buy it? They are fast awaking to see that a far higher question than either of those imperiously demands an immediate answer. That question is, Shall we have game for those who are able to hunt it for themselves, who need the health-giving medicine of the woods far more than epicures need their palates tickled, or shall we have game for none? Shall we have game for our own people forever under close restrictions, or shall our woods become a cheerless blank in order that the present generation of epicures in New York and Boston may wax fat for a few years? And when America awakes from sleep she spends little time in yawning and rubbing her eyes.

The deer is still found in nearly every State in the Union, though in many is not now plenty enough for still-hunting unless upọn snow. In Canada and the northern tier of States in the Great West, in nearly all the Territories, in most of the Southern and Southwestern States, and on the Pacific coast it is still quite abundant in large tracts of country. But it is quite impossible to lay down any reliable rule for finding where deer are abundant, for there is no other kind of game whose movements and habits are so influenced by locality, climate, season, elevation and shape of ground, quality, quantity, and distribution of food, amount and nature of hunting to which they are exposed, as well as by snow, flies, scarcity of water, timber, brush, etc., as arẹ the movements and habits of deer. Besides all this there is sometimes a caprice about their movements that will overturn all calcula- . tions even when based upon the most reliable data. Sometimes deer will shift hundreds of miles ‘on the approach of winter, as they do in Northern Wisconsin and that part of Michigan lying north of it. Yet in other places of apparently the same character they move little or not at all. In places their migrations are very regular, in others so irregular as to appear quite accidental, occurring only at intervals of several years, often without apparent cause. In general they are regular. The snow-belts of mountains they are quite apt to forsake in winter for the warmer or barer foot-hills or valleys below, sometimes going many miles away into the lowland ranges, sometimes lingering around the mountains’ feet, sometimes returning early in the spring to the high ranges, sometimes remaining in the low ground for the greater part of the summer. Even when in the high mountains their movements will vary. Sometimes they will keep along the highest ridges on which timber or brush is to be found, descending only at night to the little meadows or valleys below to water and feed; while at other times they will be most numerous half-way .down the mountain, and are frequently more plenty, even in summer, in the foot-hills than in the high ground. Sometimes they will be found most plenty in thick brush; and again the thick brush will be almost bare of them and they will be found in the gulches and breaks of comparatively open ground.” Sometimes they will be most numerous in the depths of the heaviest timber, sometimes on the edge of it where it breaks into scrub oak, hazel and other brush, sometimes in the long grass of the sloughs on the

TO FIND GOOD HUNTING-GROUND. 19 prairie. Often they will be most plenty in the dense undergrowth of river bottoms, and again in the high bluffy lands along them; sometimes in the heaviest swamps and places abounding in lakes or ponds ; sometimes in the valleys and low ravines, and again mainly on the ridges and points. By all this I mean that the greater part of the deer will be in such places, and not that they are exclusively on such ground; for ina country abounding in deer generally more or less will be found on nearly all kinds of ground and at every season, except perhapg on the mountain-tops in case of deep snows in winter. The habits of deer in regard to shifting will often vary very much in the same section of country. In some parts of Southern California fully three fourths of the deer on a certain range will leave it for another range. In other parts the same deer will always be found on the same old circle where you have found them for years, and if killed out there will be few or none to be found there for a year or two.

While antelope generally have a far more extensive daily or weekly range than deer, they are less apt to shift from section to section for any cause but snow. Some of the bands yet remaining in San Diego County, Cal., stay on their old range through the severest drouths, clinging to their native plain long after horses and cattle have been starved out upon it, refusing to leave it though there be good feed in other sections not far away. But it must not be inferred that the antelope in all sections retains this love for his native heath. Such may be the case, but a few instances do not prove it. And all through the study of still-hunting you cannot be too careful how you draw conclusions from a few instances, and especially about the migratory movements of deer.

The plain truth is that there is no trustworthy rule by which to decide in what section deer or antelope are plenty enough to afford good sport. The only reliance is on—

1st. General reputation of a range.

2d. Information from those hunting or living upon it.

3d. Personal inspection of the range.

When a certain section has the reputation of being a good deer-range, such reputation is not apt to be baseless, But when you reack it you will probably have to decide for yourself whether it will reward you to hunt it. And probably you will have to decide for yourself upon which part the most game is likely to be found; for though few sources of information are more reliable than general reputation of a range few are more unreliable than specia/ information about it. The opinion of persons who are not hunters is bad enough about almost any kind of game, but almost worthless about deer. Some people are always seeing some wonderful thing, while others never see anything beyond their immediate business. One man will declare that “the woods is lined with ’em” because he occasionally sees one or two along the road or near a spring, taking them, of course, every time for different deer, or because he sees a few tracks in his turnip-patch, counting unconsciously a deer to every track, as is usual with most persons not hunters, and with too many that are. Another dogmatically assures you that “deer are mighty scurse” because he does not see some every time he goes smashing through dry leaves and dead sticks with hobnailed stogey boots to look for his cattle in the woods.

The opinion even of good hunters is very unreliable.

_ e

TO FIND GOOD HUNTING-GROUND. 21

Unless they are hunting they know little about what part of the range the deer are actually most plenty upon. And if theyare hunting, a stranger can scarcely expect them to introduce him to their best preserves. That is a little thicker cream than can be reasonably expected to rise on even the richest milk of human kindness. Yet there are many hunters capable of just such weakness whose hearts open at once towards the genial, gentlemanly stranger who gives himself no airs and makes no pretensions. And right here it is my duty to say that if you are out for only two or three days’ hunt, if your object be only to kill a deer for the sake of saying you have killed one, and you do not intend to continue still-hunting, the very best thing you can do is to entwine yourself around the heart of such a hunter and, if necessary, pay him a fair price to work you up a good shot. If you cannot do this and have little time or patience to spend, you had better go home and leave deer alone, for the chances are that, that even with all the advice that any one can give, you will be deeply disappointed.

There is scarcely any kind of ground on which deer may not sometimes be found in considerable numbers, provided it be somewhat broken and contain some cover, brush or trees. The deer loves cover and will have it. He loves browse and will have it, though he will be sometimes miles away from it. He loves ground more or less rough, and will rarely be found away from it unless there are extra inducements elsewhere, in the line of brush, long grass, or other good food and cover. Asa rule, he loves water; though he belongs to that class of animals that will drink water if conveniently obtained, but can go without it entirely, even in the hottest summer weather, like the valley quail of Southern California. The deer will, however, often go a long distance for water, and this fact, combined with the fact that he can and often will go without it, makes the water question somewhat unreliable in determining his whereabouts. __ A kind of ground that in some parts of the country will never contain a deer may in other sections afford good sport. Yonder wide stretch of plain that looks so bare to the eye, and is so far away from timber or hills that in Minnesota or Wisconsin a huntet would not look at it, may in Southern California, Arizona, or Mexico contain numbers of deer in those gulches, cuts, gullies, and creek bottoms where from a distance the shrubbery looks too thin and sparse for even a jack-rabbit to live in. Yonder mountain, that even through the glass seems only a frowning mass of castle, crag, and boulder, may on inspection yield many a deer stowed away in its little brushy ravines or plateaus. And yonder wavy sea of stony ground, so utterly bare of grass, so bare even of brush except in the ravines, so bare of water that you cannot camp there, may at. times afford you good sport.

` Hence it is about as puzzling to say where deer may not be found as to say where they may be.

There is not so much difficulty about the antelope. There seems, indeed, to be no kind of ground too poor for him to live on and keep, too, in fair condition, though, unlike the deer, he lives mainly on grass in-_ stead of browse. Though he loves the plains, he has no objection to high rolling hills if they are not too brushy. But he hates brush and timber; and though he will occasionally go into thin brush or into very open timber, he need never be sought where either one is thick or extensive.

TO FIND GOOD HUNTING-GROUND. 23

As a rule, good deer and antelope hunting must be sought in pretty wild sections; and generally the wilder they are the better. This rule, again, has its exceptions, and they must not be forgotten. Many tracts of howling wilderness and many undisturbed and . Splendid mountain-sides are almost entirely bare of deer at all times, though all the conditions of good deer-range exist. On the other hand, many a tract that has been settled for years and contains two or three or four settlers’ cabins to the square mile will ` often contain deer enough for excellent sport. It is much the same with antelope; many a fine plain having been bare of them within the memory of the oldest Indians, others having a band or two that care nothing for its settlements, except to keep just out of shot, remaining on their old haunts until, one by one, they fade away before the relentless rifle.