I was sure that there was no deer dead when I came to the place where they have shot. I decided that no deer had been killed and, I should take all possible advantage of the situation to trail the deer. And I ran to get hold of the possible place where I could approach the deer without being spotted.



Tracks and an occasional empty shell in the snow showed where the men had first sighted the deer and opened up at a range of about five hundred yards. The only gun in the party which was capable of throwing a bullet that distance with any chance of a hit was a .30/30, and with such a gun equipped with open sights, and sighted in for two hundred yards or less, any fatal hit would be the result of an accident. As it was, the initial shooting failed to drive the deer to cover and they permitted the men to approach to a point about two hundred yards nearer and to fire the other eight or ten shots that finally caused the deer to take cover in the woods.

When I came to the place where the last shooting had occurred, I decided that no deer had been killed and, since all of the others had apparently gone into the woods leaving all of the crossings open, that it was up to me to take all possible advantage of the situation. I would not have time to reach the crossing to the north in case the deer decided to use that route, so I headed for the nearer to the south. The contour of the land was such that I was able to approach without being seen to a point which was about seventy-five yards from the place where this trail emerged from the woods.

When I reached a position where I was forced to expose myself, there was a doe standing in the field near the woods looking out over the crossing, apparently undecided about chancing the open territory. I shot her and, as she dropped, several other deer showed their flags as they retreated from the edge of the woods. I did not follow them, but did a quick job of woods-dressing the dead doe and headed for the other southern crossing. I met another hunter who had been attracted by the shooting and we arrived in sight of the crossing in time to see three deer cross, but not in time to shoot at them. After a time I left the hunt and returned to the place where I had shot the doe, only to find that some other hunter had dragged her to his car and had gone.

The first mistake which these men made was shooting at the deer when they were out of effective range. (The bullets from one of the guns, a .38/55, struck the snow at a point which was less than half the distance between the hunters and the deer.) Their second mistake was their all following the tracks instead of trying to get into position on their probable course. (I found later that one of the men abandoned the chase before they ever took up the trail because he had used all of his ammunition.)

When I exposed myself and saw a doe I shot and others also came out from the wood, but I did not follow them. And what surprised me was that the hunter had dragged the doe to his car and has gone when I came back to the place where I have shot it. These hunters were not well equipped and were not well aware of the ways of hunting deer and they went away with somebody's bag.

Some mistakes can be avoided if a hunter can use the strategy to kill the deer at the first shot, and in order to achieve this, a hunter must know the distance where he has to shoot the deer according to the type of the gun that he use. So, the hunter must know the ability of the gun before he goes for hunting, and equip himself with a proper gun.