CHAPTER XXVII.
DEER HUNTING IN WISCONSIN.
ORTHERN Wisconsin is one vast and almost unbroken deer range. It is penetrated by several railroads, along the immediate lines of which are a few small farms and some fair-sized towns and villages; but on going a few miles back from these roads, in almost any direction, one passes the confines of civilization and enters a wilderness that is broken only by the numerous logging camps, and these as a rule are occupied only in winter. Thousands of acres of these pine lands have been chopped over, and the old slashings, having grown up to brush, brambles, and briars of various kinds, furnish excellent cover and feeding grounds for Cervus Virginianus.
True, it is difficult to see the game at any great distance in these thickets, unless the hunter take his stand on a high stump or log and wait until the deer come in sight. This is a favorite and very successful method of hunting with many who know how to choose location and time of day. But adjacent to these slashings are usually large tracts of open woods, frequently hardwood ridges, through which the game passes at intervals while moving from one feeding ground to another. In such localities a deer may be seen at a considerable distance, and shots are often taken at 150 to 200 yards.
I remember one of my first trips to these hunting grounds, many years ago, before I knew how to sneak on the game, and before I had gained sufficient control of my nerves to be able to stop a deer while vaulting over a fallen tree trunk, turning suddenly from left to right and vice versa, as a wary old buck will frequently do when fleeing from a hunter. I stopped at a hotel in Merrill, on the Wisconsin Valley Division of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway, and, having learned something of the nature of the surrounding country by a hasty tramp in the afternoon, I got up the next morning and started at four o'clock to what seemed to be a favorable piece of ground. By daylight I was on the margin of a large slash that, since being chopped off, had burned over and then grown up to brush and weeds. There were many blackened trunks of trees lying everywhere, and some still standing that had been scorched and roasted in the great conflagration that had swept over the country, but had not been entirely consumed. These latter, stripped of bark and limbs, looked like gloomy monuments placed there to mark the resting places of their hapless fellows, and the whole aspect of the landscape in the gray of dawn was weird and chilly in the extreme. There was scarcely a breath of air stirring, and by listening intently I could hear the rustling of dry leaves and the occasional snapping of twigs in various directions, that indicated the near presence of the game and set my blood tingling and my nerves twitching.
So soon as there was sufficient light to show the front sight of my rifle against a gray stump fifty yards away, I started to move, as cautiously as I knew how, toward a clump of wild-cherry bushes that I had seen moving and from which came slight but suspicious sounds. When within thirty yards of it I stepped on a stick that snapped, and simultaneously with the sound a monster buck leaped high in the air, and landing twenty feet away, uttered a shrill whistle and stopped, with his head thrown up, to try and locate the danger. I brought my rifle to my shoulder with a convulsive jerk, pointed it at him and fired without thinking of the sights, and of course scored an ignominious miss.
Well, I wish every friend I have on earth could have been there at that moment. That whole tract of country, as far as I could see, seemed alive with deer. Thrash! Crash! Bumpety-bump! Phew! Phew!
There was jumping, thrashing through the brush, whistling, flipping and flapping of white flags, and the air seemed full of glistening gray coats. The buck I had shot at sailed away, and was soon followed in his flight by a doe and two fawns. A doe and fawn went in another direction, three fawns in another, two does and a buck in another, and so on ad infinitum.