Many hunters in relating their experiences tell us how careful they were to hunt against the wind, to approach their game. While it is well enough to have the wind against one if the game is in sight or driven toward one, I consider it more judicious to make the wind serve me. Having located an animal in a thicket, I select a stump or some other elevation to windward which allows the widest possible view, and simply wait long enough to allow the wind to inform my quarry of my presence. It will not require long for the game to take the hint and get up—often affording a shot by this means alone—to leave the premises. Very few are the instances that an old buck goes straight away and gives me no chance to see him, because in that case he would have to cross my trail, and to do that the wind, or rather my scent, does not frighten him enough; and if he goes out at the side which is untainted by any scent of man, he is usually my meat—if he is up to my standard. If the thicket is too big, the smoke of a pipe will often do wonders. The biggest buck I ever shot, became my victim through the assistance of a smudge—the thicket in that instance being about ten acres in extent. The diagram (p. 130) will illustrate the method better than words could. I have used it with success on many animals, and even on a wounded bear.
During snowless times no one can know with certainty if a deer is in a certain thicket, and the method has to be employed at random where there are enough signs to make it likely that a buck is near.
In hunting against the wind in open forests more game is passed than many hunters would suppose. The animals see the man, note that he will pass them, and hide by getting as near to the ground as possible. If they scent him after he has passed, they evidently realize that the danger is over, though some, mostly the younger, inexperienced animals, then sneak off. Where game is very wild it is often in such localities as I have mentioned only possible to approach them with the wind by outdistancing the latter, because a big game animal at rest depends on its nose to save it from danger in the direction from which the wind comes, and on its eyes to watch the side from which it can get no other warning.
Desirable game is often located on slopes, and can be shot from an opposite slope if only it can be made to move around slowly, the latter being important, as shots in such cases have usually to be fired at long distance, and the ability to hit running game at three hundred or four hundred yards is not possessed by everybody.
An imitation of the lamenting cry of a jack-rabbit serves me best in such cases, though it has often saved the game I was after, because it has attracted a wolf, or a cat; and I would rather kill one "varmint" than half a dozen bucks, which last can at best elude a man who knows how to track for but a limited length of time.
HUNTING WITH THE WIND
The stand is at 2 if the hunter is alone, and uses only his scent or pipe smoke to drive the deer out of the thicket. If a smudge is used for this purpose, as is necessary in big thickets, the stand is at 1, and if the hunter has a companion, one stands at 1, and the other at 2. A smudge should be made distant enough from the thicket—about at 3—to give the hunter time to go around, and take his stand at 1.
The sketch of leaps of wounded animals apply to all of our hoofed game except bighorn sheep. In any case, where one of them has been fired at, the trail should be followed for at least two hundred yards, as often an animal that goes away with the bounds of an apparently sound creature, will announce its distress through the placing of its feet, a sure indication to the tracker that he will be able to get his victim at the trail's end.