The still-hunter

Front matter

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Preface To Illustrated Edition

" The Still-Hunter " is written from experience acquired in hunting deer made extremely wild from continuous still-hunting by Indians, wolves, and a few white hunters who paid no more attention to the law. At any time of the year a deer was liable to be surprised. The effect was to develop to the highest degree those senses that are naturally acute enough to keep the novice wondering why he does, not see a deer where tracks are plenty. /

The very short open season and perfect freedom from annoyance that mark the present age, with the increased number of people camping on their range without harming them, will make deer extremely tame — in many cases so absurdly so that they will not be worth hunting. For it is not the number of the hunters, but the incessant nature of the persecution, that most affects the watchfulness of this game. To many the caution taught in this book will therefore seem overdrawn. But if deer continue worth hunting at all, the greater care will not only insure the best results, but bring the greatest pleasure in securing those results. You can afford to be careless only when lack of time forbids care.

Vl PREFACE TO ILLUSTRATED EDITION.

The fact that this edition is illustrated must not mislead the reader into ignoring the advice given in the text about taking his ideas of hunting from pictures. Those in this edition are no exception to the rule. Those by Mr. Rungius are from the standpoint occasionally reached by the most finished skill, and so intensely satisfactory after long and careful work.

Those by the author are maps or diagrams rather than pictures, and are from the standpoint he knows too well the novice is bound to occupy. They are an attempt to give him what he most needs to know and what perplexes him the longest, — a vital conception of the cold reality that takes the place of the bright rainbow of expectation. He wants to know, above all else, why it is he cannot even see a deer. He can understand why he may miss one — but the idea of not evefi seeing one, at any distance, even far out of shot, is something he never dreamed of.

Consider that about one hundred men are annually killed in the United States by mistake for a deer, — something that happens in no other country, and with no other game even here. How could this be if pictures of hunting bore any resemblance to the reality ? Why, it simply could not. If it did, it could not be a picture ; for it would need too much study with a lot of explanation. When the requirements of art cut it down to a mere pleasing effect, such as every true picture must be, it is so simple as to be a positive hindrance to the novice who takes his ideas from it. It makes him waste his time looking for deer in full outline in nice open places, while many a spot or mere shade, in the very places where he

PREFACE TO ILLUSTRATED EDITION. vii

does not look, slips away without his suspecting its existence.

The sketches by the author are no exception to the warning he has given. In many of them the deer is still several times too large, small as it is. The reason is that a deer, as generally seen on the ground where you should be looking for him, would be invisible in a picture the size of this page, even if taken with the finest camera, selected light, and time exposure. If standing beside the man with the rifle, a novice would seldom see the deer at which he was aiming, unless it were in motion. And even the expert will fail so often that, when he sees a comrade raise the rifle, he stands perfectly still, instead of craning his neck or moving in any way to see it. He knows the chances are so many against his seeing it, and the danger of the deer's running at the slightest motion are so great, that he patiently awaits the result of the shot without trying to see the game.

In order to make the game visible at all, I have had to leave off most all the timber and much of the brush. The novice has only to imagine it back again to see how his troubles are increased. It is a sound rule of art that the background must not compete in interest with the figures. But in the picture you have to consider with the rifle on your shoulder the background does compete, and nearly all the time is the victor. A picture must be all unity and simpUcity. But in the gallery where Nature hangs her pictures of the deer all is complexity and diversity, even on the most open ground on which you are likely to hunt. The background is the picture; man and viii PREFACE TO ILLUSTRATED EDITION,

deer are mere needles in a haystack. If such a picture could be comprehended at a glance, the hunter would be but a vulgar butcher, without the excuse of the professional butcher at the shambles. Any representation of it that could be taken at a glance would have no instructive value, though it might be highly pleasing as a work of art. The fact that it is so puzzling is all that makes still-hunting the deer such a great attraction for so many who care nothing for much larger game. And when you have so far mastered it as to get an occasional view, such as Mr. Rungius has given, you will say it is the deepest and most enduring of all the charms the land beyond the pavement has to offer.

T. S. VAN DYKE.

November, 1903.

Contents

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I. Introduction 7

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 backvv'oodsmen. 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 in.struction. 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 *o 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 -vith the anatomy, physiology, and natural history of deer; all those habits which it \z essential for the still-hunter to thoroughly understand being as much beyond the scope of his work as the part he has treated

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 or 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 it is 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 Cn the plays of Moliere, 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. As a 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. 13

/ards 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, doubtless, who would make less than I 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 in 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 anyone 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

Much 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 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 upon 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 are the movements and habits of deer. Besides all this there is sometimes a caprice about their movements that will overturn all calculations 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 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 in a country abounding in deer generally more or less will be found on nearly all kinds of ground and at every season, except perhaps 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 —

ist. 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 reach 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 \.\\dsv special 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.

Unless they are hunting they know little about what part of the range the deer are actually most plenty upon. And if they are 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.