ver when deer hunting and
that was in Trinity and Humboldt counties, California. There I saw
deer so thick and tame that it was no more exciting than it would be
to go into a drove of sheep in a pasture and shoot sheep. If by
chance you failed to hit the deer the first shot it was only a matter
of a few minutes when you would have another opportunity to kill your
deer. So there was no cause to get the fever, but such has not been
the case in Eastern States, for many years at least.

About 1880, a man by the name of Corwin and I were camping on the
Jersey Shore turnpike in Pennsylvania. We had just gone into camp and
as I usually make it a point to first get plenty of wood cut for the
camp at night, so that when I come home in the evening I will not
have to go out and cut wood, I had been cutting wood and fixing up
all day until four o'clock in the afternoon, when I suggested to Mr.
Corwin that we go out and see if we could find some signs and locate
the deer so that we would know where to look for them early the next
morning. We followed down a ridge for some distance without seeing
any signs of deer but about the time that it was getting dark so that
we could not see very good and we were about to go to camp, we came
onto a trail of a number of deer. As it was so dark we left the trail
and went to camp being careful not to start or alarm the deer. The
next morning when we got up we found that a snow had fallen of some 8
or 10 inches and knowing that this snow would cover the trail of the
deer so deep that there would be no following it until we could start
them out of their beds, we concluded that one of us should go down
the ridge opposite or west of the ridge where we had found the trail
of the deer. It was decided that I should take the ridge opposite
where the deer were thought to be, and Mr. Corwin was to warn me by
firing two shots in rapid succession if he started the deer without
getting a shot at them.

I was familiar with the woods and knew about where the deer would run
when started up from any particular point. I had gone down the ridge
until I thought that I was below the point where the deer would have
crossed had they done so during the night, or if Mr. Corwin should
start them. I had neither heard anything from Mr. Corwin nor seen
anything of the deer trail. I had given up hope of Mr. Corwin
starting the deer so they would be likely to come my way.

I had struck the trail of a single deer that was go