Cruisings in the Cascades / A Narrative of Travel, Exploration, Amateur Photography, / Hunting, and Fishing

by G. O. Shields

On such a morning, and amid such a scene of natural loveliness, I left the train at Junction City, on the Wisconsin Central Railway, started on a three-mile jaunt to a logging camp, for a day or two on a deer roundup. I reached my destination at nine o'clock. The men had long since gone to their work, but the "boss" had returned to camp to attend to some business in hand, and, welcoming me with the generous hospitality that is always shown by these sturdy sons of the forest to strangers, bade me make myself at home as long as I cared to stay. To my inquiry as to the presence of game in the vicinity, he said there was plenty of it, and that the men saw one or more deer nearly every day while going to or returning from their work, which was only a mile away.

I lost no time in getting out and entering an old slashing to the east of the camp where the foreman said signs were plentiful. I had not gone more than half a mile, when, turning to the left, on an old logging road, I saw several fresh tracks of deer that had been feeding there that morning. It was now eleven o'clock in the forenoon and I had no hope of finding the game on foot at that late hour, but depended entirely upon jumping a deer from its bed and upon having to risk, in all probability, a running shot. I moved very cautiously, however, and was on the qui vive for any straggler that might perchance be moving. Every foot of ground that came within the scope of my vision was carefully scanned and every sound or movement of leaf or shrub, no matter how slight, received the most careful attention, during long and frequent pauses, before proceeding on my way.

I followed the road through various turns, along the bed of a slight ravine, and as I rounded one of its abrupt bends that gave me a view of a considerable expanse of hill-side, I stopped again to reconnoitre. The ground was covered with a dense growth of weeds, raspberry briers, and wild-cherry bushes that had sprung up since the timber had been cut off, all of which had been stricken by recent frosts, and dried by subsequent sun and wind. In these dry weeds I saw a slight movement, and on careful examination was able to distinguish a faint outline of a doe, standing partially behind a large stump, a hundred yards away. Her head and shoulders were entirely hidden by the stump, and I had to step back some distance before I could get sight of a vital part to shoot at. As her shoulder came in view I knelt on my right knee, rested my left elbow on my left knee, and, drawing a fine bead on her shoulder, fired. She dropped in her tracks. My aim was a little higher than I intended, and the bullet, passing through her shoulder blades high up, severed the spine between them on its way, killing her as suddenly as if it had entered the brain. At the report of the rifle a young buck bounded out of the brush near by and waved me a vaunting farewell as he disappeared over the ridge, not giving me even a fair running shot. I dressed the doe and went back to camp for dinner, the welcome notes of the huge old tin horn, floating in musical cadence through the forest, summoning me at that moment to that much needed repast.

After dinner I went out on another old unused logging road, leading to the south, and, following it a few hundred yards, branched off to another which led to the southwest. A number of fallen trees, lying across these, gave me frequent opportunities to mount their prostrate trunks and look over large tracts of surrounding country. In thus sauntering and looking I had spent an hour or more when, on passing an unusually dense clump of tall dry weeds that stood near the road, I was startled by a sudden crashing and rattling among them, and an instant later two large does broke cover at the farther side and started across a narrow open space. But before they reached the farther side of it the voice of my Winchester express was reverberating among the lofty pines, and a cloud of smoke hung between me and where I had last seen them. I sprang to one side to avoid this, but they had both disappeared in the thicket, and I could still hear one of them crashing away toward the green woods. I felt sure that I had hit the other, and, going to where I had last seen her, I found blood, hair, and several small bits of flesh on the ground and the neighboring weeds. Following the trail a distance of fifty feet, I found her lying dead with her throat cut, and, in fact, a considerable portion of it shot away. The express bullet, driven by a heavy charge of powder, has such a high velocity that when it strikes flesh it invariably makes a big hole in it. One hind leg was also broken squarely off at the knee and the bone protruded through the skin.

I stood pondering and puzzling over this strange phenomenon. How in the name of wonder could one bullet break her hind leg and cut her throat? I stooped down and examined the wound. To my surprise, I found that it had not been made with a bullet at all. The joint was dislocated and the skin torn away until the disjointed member hung only by a narrow segment. Then the mystery was deeper than ever. What could possibly have caused this violent and terrible wound? It had been made after I shot, for at that time the agile creature was bounding over logs and through clumps of brush with all the grace and airiness of her sylph-like nature. I turned, took up her back track, and, following it thirty or forty feet, came to a fallen tamarack sapling about six inches in diameter, that laid up about a foot from the ground. The track showed that the poor creature, in one of her frantic leaps, just after being hit, came down with her fore feet on one side of this pole and her hind feet on the other; that one hind foot had slipped on the soft earth and slid under the pole to her knee, and that the next bound had brought it up against the pole in the form of a lever—much as a logger would place his handspike under it in attempting to throw it out of his way—and the pole, being far too long and heavy to yield to her strength, the leg had been snapped short off.

I describe this incident merely as one of the many strange and mysterious ones that come under the observation of woodsmen, and not with any desire to give pain to sensitive and sympathetic readers.

The beautiful animal did not suffer long from this hurt, however, for she was dead when I reached her, within perhaps three or four minutes after I fired the fatal shot. I saved her head and had it mounted and it hangs beside that of the buck whose taking off has been described and whose throat was also neatly severed by the bullet. They were two remarkable shots.

After dressing this deer I returned to the old burn in which I had killed the doe in the morning, and took a stand on a high, flat-top stump, which commanded a good view of a large tract of surrounding country. I felt certain that the young buck that was with her when I killed her would come back toward night to look up his companion, for he probably did not realize that she was dead. I stood within thirty yards of her carcass and for an hour kept a close watch in every direction, turning slowly from one position to another, so that any game that came in sight could not detect the movement and would, if seeing me at all, consider me one of the numerous old high stumps with which the landscape was marked. Toward sundown a large, handsome buck came out of the green woods half a mile away, walking deliberately toward me. I could see only a proud head and spreading antlers, and an occasional glimpse of his silvery-gray back as he marched with stately but cautious tread through the dry weeds. He stopped frequently to look and listen for danger, or the coy maidens of his kind, of whom he was in search. Oh, how I longed for a shot at him! With bated breath and throbbing heart I watched his slow progress across the open country. But, alas! the wind (what little there was) was wrong. When within about 200 yards of me he scented me and bounded squarely sidewise as though a rattlesnake had bitten him, uttering at the same time one of those peculiarly thrilling whistles that might have been heard in the stillness of the evening a mile or more. He struck a picturesque attitude and scanned the country in every direction, trying to locate the danger but could not. After a few seconds he made another high bound, stopped, and whistled again. I stood perfectly still, and he could make nothing animate out of the inanimate objects about him. He leaped hither and thither, snorted, whistled, and sniffed the air as we have seen a wild colt do when liberated in a pasture field after long confinement in his stall.

Although still unable to satisfy himself as to the whereabouts of his foe, he finally seemed to decide that that was not a healthy neighborhood for him, and, taking his back trail, started to get out of it by a series of twenty-foot leaps. I was tempted to hazard a shot at him, but could see such a small portion of his body when standing that the chances were against making a hit. Besides, as already stated, I felt sure of a shot at shorter range by keeping still. I watched and listened closely in every direction. The sun had gone down. Night was silently wrapping her somber mantle over the vast wilderness, and the only sounds that broke the oppressive stillness were the occasional croakings of the raven as he winged his stately flight to his rookery, and the low, solemn sighing of the autumn breezes through the pine tops. I was benumbed with cold, and was tempted to desert my post and make a run for camp. I raised my rifle to my shoulder to see if I could yet see the sights, for stars were beginning to sparkle in the firmament. Yes; the little gold bead at the muzzle still gleamed in the twilight, with all the brilliancy of one of the lamps of heaven. I turned to take a last look in the direction of the carcass of my morning's kill, and—imagine my astonishment if you can—there stood the young buck, licking the body of his fallen mate! How he ever got there through all those brush and weeds without my hearing or seeing him will always remain a profound mystery to me. But a ball from my express entering his shoulder and passing out at his flank laid him dead by the side of his companion, and completed the best score I ever made on deer—three in one day—and I had fired but three shots in all.