**

Seventy-eight-point Whitetail killed in Texas.

Spread, 261⁄2 inches.

From photograph by their owner, Mr. Albert Friedrich,
of San Antonio, Texas.

on his becoming restless we removed him to a distance. A Deer pursued by dogs ran near the spot where we were standing, without having observed us."

It seems to class all motionless objects down-wind as mere features of the landscape. The hunters take advantage of this weakness to stalk the animal when it is in the open. They run toward it without concealment as long as it is grazing, but the moment it shows by shaking its tail that it is about to raise its head they "freeze"-crouching low and still. The Deer takes its customary look around and lowers its head to feed again, whereupon they repeat the open approach, and thus continue until within easy shot.

I have heard of this trick often and have several times proved it a failure with Antelope. I never tried it on Whitetail Deer, but did it with complete success on a pair of Red Deer in Europe some years ago.

"The Deer is the most silent of animals and scarcely possesses any notes of recognition. The fawn has a gentle bleat that might be heard by the keen ears of its mother at the distance, probably, of a hundred yards. We have never heard the voice of the female beyond a mere murmur when calling her young, except when shot, when she often bleats like a calf in pain. The buck when suddenly started sometimes utters a snort, and we have at night heard him emitting a shrill whistling sound, not unlike that of a Chamois of the Alps, that could be heard the distance of half a mile."

In riding through the woods at night in the vicinity of Deer we have often heard them stamp their feet, the bucks on such occasions giving a loud snort, then bounding off for a few yards and again repeating the stamping and snorting, which appear to be nocturnal habits. (Aud. and Bach.)

They have also a louder, coarser snort or challenge, as noted later. Mr. Franklin T. Payne describes some Park bucks that he shipped as "bawling with rage when captured." (Rec., May, 1898.)

"In all our experience, extending over about forty years, we have never but once heard a Deer make use of the voice when seeking a lost mate. This occurred when upon one occasion, having shot at and scattered a band of stags, one of the number, not having seen or scented us, turned back, evidently seeking his leader, and passed close by, making a low, muttering noise like that sometimes uttered by the domestic ram." (A. Y. Walton, F. & S., June 15, 1895.)

snow that hides their food, that robs them of their speed, that brings them easily within the power of the cougar on his snowshoes; and the human cougar, who, similarly equipped for skimming over the drifts, is mentally as sanguinary and improvident. The wolves rank high in the list of foes. They have long played seesaw havoc with the Deer in the north. The Deer came in with the settlers on the upper Ottawa. The wolves followed because in the Deer they found their winter support. In the summer the Deer were safe among the countless lakes, and the wolves subsisted on what small stuff they could pick up in the woods. But winter robbed the Deer of the water safe-havens, and then the wolves could run them down by the trick of relay chasing; thus they wintered well.

But wintering well meant increasing; the wolves be

came so numerous

Michigan and Wisconsin during the winter generally feed along the edge of a swamp under thick hemlocks where there is plenty of ground hemlock, and the wolves generally come in on them from two ways and drive them towards the swamp, and they will nearly always kill them within 40 rods of where they start." This is readily understood in country where Deer and other game animals abound. The wolf knows very well that the Deer is far fleeter than himself and if he fails in that first dash, it

that they destroyed their own support, and starvation, followed by extinction, was their lot. Again the Deer recovered locally or drifted in from other regions, and again the wolves increased to repeat their own destruction. This has been the history of the Deer population along most of our frontier where winter is accompanied by deep snow. If we could exterminate the grey wolf we should solve half the question of Deer supply; but there is no evidence that we shall ever succeed in doing so. I find that Mr. E. T. Merrill, after much experience in Deer and wolf country, discredits the stories of wolves running down Deer. He says:*

"I have not yet seen the race between wolves and a Deer that lasted over ten Either the Deer gets to water or some clearing or road where the wolves will not follow, or else he is killed at once. Very often they drag a Deer down within a few jumps of where he starts. Deer in *Sports Afield, March, 1900, p. 299.

is easier for him to go elsewhere and try to surprise or trap another Deer. But when desperately hungry in regions where Deer are not so plentiful the wolves will stick to the one they start and follow to a finish, be it never so far. I have heard the accounts of many old Ontario hunters that entirely support this belief. These views, it will be seen, do not oppose those of Mr. Merrill.

In my own journal I find an instance in point, related to me by Mr. Gordon Wright, of Carberry, Manitoba. During the winter of 1865 he was shantying at Sturgeon Lake, Ontario. One Sunday he and some companions strolled out on the ice of the lake to look at the logs there. They heard the hunting cry of wolves, then a Deer (a female) darted from the woods to the open ice. Her sides were heaving, her tongue out and her legs cut with the slight crust on the snow. Evidently she was hardpressed and had run for some time. She was coming toward them, but one of the men gave a shout which caused her to sheer off. A minute later six timber wolves appeared, galloping on her trail, heads low, tails horizontal, and howling continuously. They were uttering their hunting cry, but as soon as they saw her they broke into a louder, different note, left the trail and made straight for their prey. Five of the wolves were abreast and one that seemed

much darker was behind. Within half a mile they overtook the Deer and pulled her down; all seemed to seize her at once. For a few moments she bleated like a sheep in distress; after that the only sound was the snarling and crunching of the wolves as they feasted. Within fifteen minutes nothing was left of the victim but hair and some of the larger bones, the wolves fighting among themselves for even these. Then they scattered, each going a mile or so, no two in the same direction, and those that remained in sight, curled up there on the open lake to sleep. This happened about ten in the morning within three hundred yards of several witnesses.

Mosquitoes, ticks and deerflies are to be listed among the foes of the Deer. The mosquitoes bother them just as they do us. At times they avoid these plagues by sinking themselves in the mud and water. Blue ticks of the Ixodes species are a wellknown pest. Mr. G. M. Martin tells me that in the Adirondacks during June and July, he has often seen such hanging on the Deer's leg, sucking their blood. They do not torment them much, but must be a great drain when present in numbers. The deerflies (Estrus), however, are the most annoying of their small enemies.

Catesby says (1731): "Near the sea the Deer are always lean and ill-tasted, and subject to botts breeding in the head and throat." The hunters assure me that this same complaint is found in the north. The worm is known to be the larva of the gadfly, or deerfly.

Many a man on first seeing Deer dash through the dangerous mazy wreck of a storm-track has wondered how they could escape with their lives. As a matter of fact, they suffer many accidents in their haste. I suppose that not one adult Deer in ten but will show by the scars on legs and belly that it has been snagged many times. One of the strangest cases of the sort is recorded from Montana by Mr. R. C. Fisk.* He shot a doe Whitetail that had driven into her body a "fir branch over a foot long and over half an inch thickness." It had entered between the fourth and fifth ribs on the right side, missed the right lung, pierced the top of the diaphragm and the point of the liver and rested against the under side of the *Outdoor Life, December, 1898.

back bone. "That the animal met with this accident while it was yet young," says Mr. Fisk, "I am thoroughly convinced, for the end at the ribs had been entirely drawn into the opening of the heart and lungs and had thoroughly healed on the outside. The skin which I now have shows only the faintest trace of a scar.

"There was not a particle of pus or inflammatory matter of any kind; in fact, the limb, covered as it was with the white skin, exactly resembled one of the long bones of the leg. The animal was healthy and fat and the meat was fine.”

The ordinary gait of the Deer is a low smooth bounding, with an occasional high jump. This low bounding is, at its best, I should estimate, according to our scale of speed as set forth in the Antelope, about twenty-seven or twenty-eight miles an hour. The ease with which they cover great spaces is marvellous. I have known a buck clear a four-foot log and fifteen feet of ground in one leap. The high jump taken occasionally is like the spy-hop of jack-rabbits and springbok, for purpose of observation.

In the water the Whitetail are very much at home. They can go so fast that a canoeman must race to overtake them, which means that they go for the time being at over four miles an hour. They are so confident of their power that they invariably make for the water when hunted to extremity. There are many cases on record of Deer so pushed, boldly striking out into the open sea, trusting to luck for finding another shore.

There is a record* of a Deer captured at

*F. & S., Dec. 6, 1883.

sea near Portland, Me., five miles from shore, and another of one taken a mile and a half from Sachuest Point, R. I., as it was swimming at full speed away from land. In regions where there is plenty of open water the Deer have little to fear from wolves and nothing at all from unaided dogs. A Deer in summer swims low, little more than the head showing, and when shot usually sinks. In late fall it swims much higher, the back showing. This is due partly to the recently acquired fat which has added more to its bulk than to its weight, but chiefly to the growth of the coat, each hair of which is a little barrel of air adding its flotation to the Deer. As Merriam says: "When

Right feet of Pig.

pit." In some open glade he digs a hole in which the rain collects. This he paws and messes till it is what our backwoodsmen would call a regular "dope." With this he plentifully besmears himself, rolling and grovelling in it like a hog that has only partly learned how to wallow. This habit we have seen repeated in our Moose and Wapiti, but it finds an even better development in the Whitetailed Deer.

All our ruminants have a great fondness for salt. They doubtless need it for a tonic and eagerly seek out anything of a salty nature that they can find in their native range. A great variety of soluble minerals seem to satisfy this craving. Merriam calls attention to a place in the Adirondacks where "the Deer had licked the clay, possibly obtaining a trifle of potash, alumina and iron derived from sulphates, decomposing pyrites."

Why they need it, or how often, or whether any individuals form a "habit" and so injure themselves, has not yet been ascertained.

Her

How large is the home locality of a Whitetail? Smaller probably than that of any other of the family in America. A Moose or Mule Blacktail may pass all summer on a square mile, but a doe Whitetail "is usually found in the same range, or drive, as it is called, and often not fifty yards from the place where it was started before." (Aud. and Bach.) These same

naturalists remark with surprise on their finding a band of Deer that bedded at one place and fed nightly at another "nearly two miles off," and a third case of Deer that daily covered four or five miles between bed and board. These, however, are very exceptional.

All the Ottawa guides that I have consulted agree with me in giving to the individual Whitetail a very limited range. In the Rockies I know that two or three hundred acres will often provide a sufficient homeland for a whole family of them the year around, for the Whitetail, unlike the Wapiti or the Mule Deer, seems to be entirely non-migratory.

thick cover, perhaps a fallen tree-top, and there the young are born. They vary in number, according to the age and vigor of the mother. "The first time she has one fawn. If in good order, she has two the following year. A very large and healthy doe often produces three, and we were

If we begin in the early spring to follow the life of the Whitetail on its Northern range, we shall find that in the month of January the does and bucks are still in company, although according to Audubon and Bachman, it is only during the mating season that the sexes herd together. Many exceptions indeed will be found to their general statement. I think that both males and females are found in the Deer yards throughout the winter and the young bucks may follow their mothers all the year round.

But the melting snow sets all free again. The older bucks go off in twos or threes; the does go their own way in small groups, accompanied by their young of the year before.

All winter they have fed on twigs, moss, evergreens, and dry grass; now the new vegetation affords many changes of nutritious diet, they begin to grow fatter, and the unborn young develop fast. The winter coat begins to drop out and a general sleekness comes on young and old. May sees the doe a renovated being, and usually also sees her alone, for now her six months' gestation is nearing its end. Some day about the middle of the month she slinks quietly into a

present at Goose Creek when an immense one, killed by J. W. Audubon, was ascertained on being opened, to contain four large and wellformed fawns. The average number of fawns in Carolina is two, and the cases where three are produced are nearly as numerous as those in which young does have only one at the birth." (Aud. & Bach., "Quad. N. Am.," p. 226.) I have never heard of anyone seeing a doe actually accompanied by four fawns, or even three. And this recalls a fact that I have often noted. The aver age number of embryonic young found in

Sheep tracks, front and hind, different sized sheep.

اررد

Buck and Doe.