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Virginia Deer — Part 2
Images coming soon.
To go out into the forest with the fixed intention of killing anything so beautiful and harmless as a deer seems brutal and heartless enough any way you care to look at the matter. Yet the kindest hearted of men do so every fall, and though they may learn to hate themselves for every deer they have shot, they cannot give it up, and look forward just as eagerly to the next year's shooting, for there is no other sport to be compared to deer-stalking in the autumn woods just after a rain in the night, when the west wind is rising to dry the leaves and prevent the sound of a breaking twig from carrying too far. Deer-stalking is leisurely work. You move quietly along among the trees, keeping your face to the wind and watching the ground for fresh tracks. When you find tracks that lead you toward the wind you follow them as noiselessly as possible, endeavoring to learn from their appearance just how long since the deer that made them preceded you; when in wet places the water has not yet settled in the foot-prints, it is time to look sharply ahead among the trees for a glimpse of your quarry. Deer usually wander about feeding all the morning, following a more or less direct course according to the lay of the land. Along the foot of a ridge by the edge of a swamp is a favourite feeding ground of theirs, and they like to trace the windings of a trout brook between low hills. In the middle of the day they lie down to rest in the lee of a thick clump of evergreen, where they can watch their tracks for any enemy that may be following them. Before lying down they make a practice of going back a little distance on their tracks to make sure that they are not followed. So when you have been tracking them all the morning and toward noon perceive three tracks ahead of you in place of one, you may feel pretty certain the deer you are after is resting in some thick clump not many rods ahead. But unless there is snow on the ground to enable you to see the tracks a long way in front of you, you will hardly notice the back tracks before you have come so close as to alarm your game and send it flying off among the trees, showing you just the white flash of tail as he disappears. If not badly frightened, however, he will probably not run very far before stopping to look back at you, choosing, if possible, a thickly wooded knoll or a hummock at the edge of the swamp and here you may perhaps get a shot at him if you will make a slight detour and approach him from one side; to follow him directly would be useless, for he is earnestly watching his back tracks, and is certain to see you long before you can possibly see him.
Varieties of the Virginia Deer
One or other form of Virginia or white-tailed deer is found in nearly every part of the United States. They are all geographic variations of the same stock and they exhibit differences in direct proportion to the effect produced by the peculiar climate and surroundings in which they live. Whether they shade gradually into one another as their ranges approach, or whether differentiation has gone further and they are to be regarded as different "species" are questions that have not yet been definitely settled in many cases. Without considering the fine technical points of difference, the described forms are as follows.
1. Virginia Deer. Odocoileus virginianus (Boddaert). Southern States north of Florida and Louisiana to the Middle States.
2. Northern Deer. O. virginianus borealis Miller. Rather larger and grayer.
3. Banner-tailed Deer. O. virginianus macrourus (Rafinesque). Smaller and paler coloured.
4. Florida Deer. O. osceola Bangs. Very small, and exceedingly dark coloured, about one quarter smaller than the Virginia deer.
5. Louisiana Deer. O. louisianae G. Allen. Similar but larger.
6. Texan or Fan-tailed Deer. O. texensis (Mearns). A small very pale deer with small antiers.
7. Arizona Deer. O. couesi (Rothrock). Small and pale in colour but with no black edgings to the ears.
8. White-tailed Deer. O. leucurus (Douglass). Similar to the banner-tail.