Our stand was a hardwood ridge where deer often passed on their way to the lake, and we had been sitting there hardly an hour when I saw a young spikebuck coming down the runway. The next moment there was a gasping “Oh, there’s a deer!” from the man who had been warned to keep mentally still. Then began the inevitable tinkering with the camera, which had been thrice prepared and was still as unready as all its kind. More than once I had sat in that precise spot while deer passed at a distance of three or four yards without noticing me; but now the little buck caught an uneasy motion and halted with head high and eyes flashing. If ever there was a chance for a wonderful picture, he offered it; but he did not like the focusing, or whatever it was, and after endless delay the camera clicked on a white flag bobbing among the shadows, where it looked in the negative like a smear of sunlight.
The camera reminds me of another way of approaching deer, a way often followed by summer campers; namely, by chasing the swimming animal in a canoe. I have but one word to say of such a method, and that is, Don’t! When a deer is [[190]]crossing broad water you can get as close to him as you will; you can take a grip on him and let him tow your canoe, as thoughtless people sometimes do, encouraged by their guides; but I suggest that it would be much better to shoot the creature and have done with it.
A deer’s powers are very delicately balanced; he is nervous, high strung, easily upset. Even on land, where he can distance you in a moment, he begins to worry if he finds you holding steadily to his trail; and I have known a young deer to become so flustered after he had been jumped and followed a few times that he began to act in most erratic fashion, and was very easily approached. When you chase him in the water, and he finds that he cannot get away from you, he may give up and drown, as a rabbit submits without a struggle when a weasel rises in front of him; but a vigorous deer is more apt to become highly excited, to struggle wildly, to waste ten times as much energy as would keep him afloat, to jump his heart action at a dangerous rate; and then a very little more will finish him as surely as a bullet in the brain.
Twice have I seen deer thus killed by thoughtless campers, the last victim being a splendid buck full grown. Two men saw him swimming an arm of Moosehead Lake, and launched a canoe with no unkinder purpose than to turn him back to shore, [[191]]so that a party of sportsmen there might get a picture of him. The buck labored mightily; but the paddles were swift, and wherever he turned the danger appeared close in front of him. Suddenly he rose in the water, pawing the air, and heaved over on his side. When the canoe reached him he was dead; and the surprising thing is that dissection revealed no ruptured blood-vessel nor any other visible cause of his death. It was probably a matter of heart paralysis. Such an ending was unusual, I know; but undoubtedly many of these overwrought animals reach shore exhausted, spent to the limit, and lie down in the first good cover, never to rise again.
Moose and caribou are stronger swimmers than deer, and of tougher fiber; but it is still dangerous, I think, to chase them in the water. Once I saw a canoe following close behind a cow and a calf moose, the canoeists yelling wildly to hurry up the pace. Had they thought to look once into the eyes of the struggling brutes, they might have learned something which they ought to know. As the calf lagged farther and farther behind, the mother turned to come between him and the canoe, and remained there trying to urge and push the little fellow along. So they reached shallow water at last, found their footing, and plunged into the cover. The canoe turned away, and no doubt the [[192]]incident was soon forgotten. I never saw the canoemen again, but I saw one of the moose. A few days later, in passing through the woods on that side of the lake, I found the calf stretched out dead where he had fallen, not fifty yards from the water’s edge.
Perhaps another “don’t” should here be memorized for the happy occasion when you find a fawn or a little cub in the woods, and are moved most kindly to pet him. If the mother is half-tame, or has lived near a clearing long enough to lose distrust of the man-scent, it may do no harm to treat her fawn or cub as you would a puppy; but to handle any wild little creature is to do him an injury. Until a fawn is strong enough to travel the rough country in which he was born, the doe often leaves him hidden in the woods, where he lies so close and still that you may pass without seeing him. Once you discover him, however, and he knows that he is seen, his beautiful eyes begin to question you with a great wonder. He has no fear of you whatever (this while he is very young, or before he begins to follow his mother); he will sometimes follow you when you go away, and he is such a lovable creature, so innocent and so appealing, that it is hard to keep your hands from him. Let him sniff your palm if he will, or lick it with his rough tongue for the faint taste of salt; [[193]]but as you value his life don’t pet him or leave the scent of you on his delicate skin. A wild mother knows her own by the sense of smell chiefly; if she finds the startling man-scent where she expected a familiar odor, she becomes instantly alarmed, and then the little one is a stranger to her or a source of violent anger.
So innocent and so appealing that it is hard to keep your hands from him.
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