It was Margery Burton who thought of that.
"Yes. And that's really the best sort of hunting, I think. If you've ever seen a deer, and had it look at you with its big, soft eyes, I don't see how you can kill it. It's almost as hard to get a good picture of e deer as it is to kill it—in fact, I think it's harder, because you have to get so much closer to it And it's awfully good fun at night.
"You go to one of their runways, and settle down with your camera and a flashlight powder, and then when the deer comes, if you're very quick, you can get a really beautiful picture. The deer may be a little frightened, but he isn't hurt, and you have a picture that you can keep for years and show to people. And an experienced hunter will tell you that any time you can get close enough to a deer to get a good flashlight picture of him you could easily have killed him."
"Why is it so very hard to do that?"
"Well, for lots of reasons. You have to figure on the wind—because if the wind is blowing away from you and toward the deer he can smell you long before he's in sight, and off he goes, afraid to come any nearer."
"But how can you tell where a deer will be?"
"They have regular runways—just as we have trails. And at night they come down to the lake to drink. So you can station yourself on one of those runways, and be pretty sure that sooner or later a deer will come along."
The morning passed quickly and happily. To the girls who had never before been in that country, there seemed to be an unending number of new discoveries. Timid as the deer might be, there was nothing nervous about the squirrels and chipmunks which abounded in the woods near the lake, and as soon as they saw the girls they came running about, so that there were often half a dozen or more begging noisily for dainties to afford them a change from their diet of nuts, sitting up, and chattering prettily as they got the morsels that were tossed to them.
"I never saw them so tame, even at home," said Bessie, surprised. "We had plenty of them there, but I suppose they were wilder because the boys used to shoot them. They don't do that here, I suppose?"
"No; the people who hunt around here go in for bigger game. They would think they were wasting their time if they bothered to shoot chipmunks and squirrels."