Forest Neighbors: Life Stories of Wild Animals

by William Davenport Hulbert

And now he is well started down the runway of life, and we must leave him to travel by himself for two or three years. He ranged the woods far and near, and came to know them as a man knows his own house; but no matter what places he visited, the old haunts that his mother had shown him were the best of all, as the deer have learned by the experience of generation after generation. He always came back again to the Glimmerglass, and as the seasons went by I often saw his broad, spreading hoof-print on the sandy beach where they two had so often walked in that first summer. He evidently had plenty of company, and was probably enjoying life, for all around were other foot-prints that were narrow and delicately pointed, as a deer's should be. Some of them, of course, were his own, left by his three perfect feet; but others were those of his friends and acquaintances, and it is quite possible that some of the tiniest and daintiest were made by his children.

That beach is a delightful place for a promenade on a summer night, and besides the deer-tracks one can sometimes find there the trails of the waddling porcupines, the broad, heavy print left by a black bear as he goes shambling by, and the handwriting of many another of the woods-people. Strange and interesting scenes must often be enacted on the smooth, hard sand that lies between the woods and the water, and it is a pity that the show always comes to a sudden close if any would-be spectators appear, and that we never see anything but the foot-prints of the performers.

With each recurring hunting season the Buck and the other deer that made their homes around the Glimmerglass were driven away for a time. A few stayed, or at least remained as near as they dared; but compared with summer the neighborhood was almost depopulated. And in his fourth year, in spite of all his efforts to keep out of harm's way, the Buck came very near losing his life at the hands of a man who had really learned how to hunt—not one of the farmers who went ramming about the woods, shooting at everything in sight, and making noise enough to startle even the porcupines.

One afternoon, late in the autumn, the judge left his court-room in Detroit and started for his house. He bought an evening paper as he boarded the street-car; and, as Fate would have it, the first thing that met his eye as he unfolded it was the forecast for upper Michigan: "Colder; slight snow-fall; light northerly winds." The judge folded the paper again and put it in his pocket, and all the rest of the way home he was dreaming of things that he had seen before—of the white and silent woods, of deer-tracks in the inch-deep snow, of the long still-hunt under dripping branches and gray November skies, of a huge buck feeding unconcernedly beneath the beech-trees, of nutty venison steaks broiling on the coals, and, finally, of another pair of antlers for his dining-room. Court had adjourned for three days, and that night he took the train for the north. And while he travelled, the snow came down softly and silently, melting at first as fast as it fell, and then, as the cold grew sharper, clothing the woods in a thin, white robe, the first gift of the coming winter.

Next day the Buck was lying behind a fallen tree, chewing his cud, when the breeze brought him a whiff of an unpleasant human odor. He jumped up and hurried away, and the judge heard him crash through the bushes, and searched until he had found his trail. An hour later, as the Buck was nosing for beechnuts in the snow, a rifle cracked and a bullet went zipping by and carried off the very tip of his left antler. He dropped his white flag and was off like a shot.

Chase a wounded deer, and he will run for miles; leave him alone, and if he is badly hurt he will soon lie down. The chances are that he will never get up again. The judge knew that the Buck was hit, for he had seen his tail come down. But was he hit hard? There was no blood on the trail, and the judge decided to follow.

The Buck hurried on, but before long his leaps began to grow shorter. After a mile or so he stopped, looked back, and listened. The woods were very, very still, and for all that he could see or hear there was not the least sign of danger. Yet he was afraid, and in a few minutes he pushed on again, though not as rapidly as before. As the short afternoon wore away he travelled still more slowly, and his stops were longer and more frequent. And at last, just before sunset, as he stood and watched for the enemy who might or might not be on his trail, he heard a twig snap, and saw a dark form slip behind a tree. This time he ran as he had never run before in all his life.

The judge spent the night at the nearest lumber-camp, and the next morning he was out again as soon as he could see, following his own trail back to where he had left that of the Buck. On the way he crossed the tracks of two other deer, but they had no temptations for him. He wanted to solve the mystery of that spreading hoof-print, and to make sure that his shot had not been a clean miss. And now began a day which was without precedent in the Buck's whole history. Those woods are not the best in the world for a deer who has to play hide-and-seek with a man, for there are few bare ridges or half-wooded slopes from which he can look back to see if anyone is following him. Even the glades and the open cranberry swamps are small and infrequent. An almost unbroken forest sweeps away in every direction, and everywhere there is cover for the still-hunter. And when the ground is carpeted with snow an inch and a half deep, as it was then, and at every step a deer must leave behind him a trail as plain as a turnpike road, then it is not strange if he feels that he has run up against a decidedly tough proposition. Eyes, ears, and nose are all on the alert, and all doing their level best, but what eye can penetrate the cedar swamp beyond a few yards; or what ear can always catch the tread of a moccasin on the moss and the snow before it comes within rifle range; or what nose, no matter how delicate, can detect anything but what happens to lie in its owner's path, or what the wind chooses to bring it? Many a foe had crossed the Buck's trail in the course of his life; but none had ever followed him like this—silently and relentlessly—slowly, but without a moment's pause. A few leaps were always enough to put the judge out of sight, and half an hour's run left him far behind; but in a little while he was there again, creeping cautiously through the undergrowth, and peering this way and that for a glimpse of a plump, round, blue-gray body. Once he fired before the deer knew that he was at hand, and if a hanging twig had not turned the bullet a trifle from its course, the still-hunt would have ended then and there.

But late in the afternoon the Buck thought that he had really shaken his pursuer off, and the judge was beginning to think so, too. They had not seen each other for two or three hours, the day was nearly over, and there were signs of a change in the weather. If the Buck could hold out till nightfall, and then the snow should melt before morning, he would be comparatively safe.

In his fear of the enemy lurking in the rear, he had forgotten all other dangers; and without quite realizing what he was doing he had come back to the Glimmerglass, and was tramping once more up and down the old familiar runways. Presently he came upon a huge maple, lying prostrate on the ground. He walked around its great bushy head and down toward its foot; and there he found a broad, saucer-shaped hollow, left when the tree was torn up by the roots in some wild gale. On one side rose a mass of earth, straight as a stone wall and four or five feet in height; and against its foot lay one of the most tempting beds of dead leaves that he had ever seen, free from snow, dry as a whistle, soft and downy. The sight of it was too much for him. He was very weary, his limbs fairly ached with fatigue, and for the last hour his spread hoof had given him a good deal of pain. His enemy was nowhere in sight, and in spite of his misgivings he sank down on the couch with a sigh of comfort, and began to chew his cud.