Another time I was hunting down state, with my trusty .38/55. This is one of the most dependable guns I ever owned. It has never failed me, except one time when I broke the loading gate, and another time when I tried some reloaded fodder?loaded with home-made black powder. It is best not to fool with such stuff unless you know what you're doing. Black powder fouls up everything.
I had hunted all morning without a bit of success and, since I was near home when noon came, I went to the house for lunch. I had some "little ones" around at that time, and I jacked the cartridge out of the barrel when I took the gun inside. However, I left the cartridges in the magazine. After eating, I went in another direction, thinking deer might be in that locality.
I hadn't gone far, following a game trail up over a ridge, when I detected motion in the trail ahead. I stopped and awaited developments. A big doe and fawn came down trail towards me. Now in a case like this, I like to wait and see what the deer will do. In this instance, I knew well enough that the doe would keep coming until she saw me, then would swing broadside and stop for a short time until she had positively identified me. While I waited, I considered how lucky I was to find my deer so near the road and with a downhill haul all the way. The doe came to a point within a hundred feet of me before she saw me. When she did, things happened as I expected, and I swung the gun so that the sights were lined on her shoulder. I squeezed the trigger, and nothing happened except the click of the hammer on the firing pin. I had forgotten to jack a cartridge into the barrel when leaving the house.
At the click of the gun, the doe took off through the brush. She made a half circle around me at a distance that never exceeded two hundred feet, always in sight through the trees. I fired six shots at her without ruffling a hair on her hide. Such slight things will upset the nervous system of most of us and I had a serious case of buck fever at that time. Oh well! There is always another deer. Speaking of unsuccessful morning hunting, three of us had such a morning some years ago in the woods of our Somerset County.
There had been a heavy, damp snow during the night. It stuck to the trees so the woods were very quiet?you know that such stuff on trees will absorb any sound a hunter might make. These conditions make ideal hunting, if a man doesn't mind a little snow down his neck; but the deer seldom move about on their own. A hunter must stalk their beds or kick them out in order to have a track to follow'if he expects to do much. We hunted all morning without finding a track. By noon, we were soaked to the skin and ready to call it a day. Leaving the woods we went to a farmer's house, where we'd left the car. The farmer invited us in to dry out and eat our lunch. We were thirty miles from home and hated to leave without a deer.
There is always another day to come back for hunting if the first attempt doesn't come successfully.
Hunters are human and it is reasonable to expect them to make an occasional mistake in identifying game in the woods. Quite a few moose are killed every year, and, while some of these kills are deliberate, some of them are killed as deer by men who do not know the difference or by men who do not take the time to identify their target. There is no excuse in either case. Aside from the difference in size, moose and deer have different shapes, colors and actions that should make identification easy.
Dogs and foxes have nearly fooled me several times and, while I never have shot at any of these animals in mistake for deer, it would take but little imagination to change a large fox into a small deer if the setting were right. These and other animals can be easily mistaken for deer by the amateur who is so "keyed up" that he expects to see a deer at all times and isn't exactly sure of what he is looking for.
It is to prevent these mistakes that I recommend the study of lithographic prints of the picture deer. I have seen living picture deer on a few occasions and they are an unforgettable sight. When seen at the edge of a field in the early morning sun and with an evergreen background, they are a sight to thrill the heart of any hunter. They are seldom seen under these conditions and when they are it seems a shame to destroy so beautiful a picture. Usually the deer which the hunter sees is nothing but a ghostly shadow drifting across a shaded woods road or, more often, a dodging, bouncing streak of white as the animal seeks safety in flight with its white flag upraised to give the hunter a target which is well above and behind the one he wants to hit.
The instantaneous identification of deer in the woods or fields is almost impossible, until one has hunted for years and seen them under many conditions, for each deer is usually seen in a different setting and from a different angle with different lighting conditions. Without this experience, any animal with the camouflage of the white-tailed would be hard to identify anywhere in its natural wild setting, and many things other than deer are likely to resemble these animals more than the real thing. Fixing the picture deer in the mind is a sort of negative identification method. Anything which resembles the picture is a deer; and other objects which could be, might be; but such objects call for better identification before shooting.
In my own case, I have always been right when I was sure at the first glance that the object I had sighted was a deer; but when I have seen an object which I thought might have been a deer and had to take a second look for positive identification, I have been mistaken more than half of the time, for the object was something other than a deer. Of course, the hunter will seldom mistake anything else for a running deer (with the possible exception of dogs and red foxes) and most of the objects which he mistakes for standing deer are, more or less, the products of his imagination.
It is to prevent the mistake of shooting it is very recommended to study of lithographic prints of the picture deer. The instantaneous identification of deer in the woods or fields is almost impossible, until one has hunted for years and seen them under many conditions, for each deer is usually seen in a different setting and from a different angle with different lighting conditions.
Without this experience, any animal with the camouflage of the white-tailed would be hard to identify anywhere in its natural wild setting, and many things other than deer are likely to resemble these animals more than the real thing.
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