I followed the road through various turns, along the bed of a slight ravine, and as I rounded one of its abrupt bends that gave me a view of a considerable expanse of hill-side, I stopped again to reconnoitre. The ground was covered with a dense growth of weeds, raspberry briers, and wild-cherry bushes that had sprung up since the timber had been cut off, all of which had been stricken by recent frosts, and dried by subsequent sun and wind. In these dry weeds I saw a slight movement, and on careful examination was able to distinguish a faint outline of a doe, standing partially behind a large stump, a hundred yards away. Her head and shoulders were entirely hidden by the stump, and I had to step back some distance before I could get sight of a vital part to shoot at. As her shoulder came in view I knelt on my right knee, rested my left elbow on my left knee, and, drawing a fine bead on her shoulder, fired. She dropped in her tracks. My aim was a little higher than I intended, and the bullet, passing through her shoulder blades high up, severed the spine between them on its way, killing her as suddenly as if it had entered the brain. At the report of the rifle a young buck bounded out of the brush near by and waved me a vaunting farewell as he disappeared over the ridge, not giving me even a fair running shot. I dressed the doe and went back to camp for dinner, the welcome notes of the huge old tin horn, floating in musical cadence through the forest, summoning me at that moment to that much needed repast.
After dinner I went out on another old unused logging road, leading to the south, and, following it a few hundred yards, branched off to another which led to the southwest. A number of fallen trees, lying across these, gave me frequent opportunities to mount their prostrate trunks and look over large tracts of surrounding country. In thus sauntering and looking I had spent an hour or more when, on passing an unusually dense clump of tall dry weeds that stood near the road, I was startled by a sudden crashing and rattling among them, and an instant later two large does broke cover at the farther side and started across a narrow open space. But before they reached the farther side of it the voice of my Winchester express was reverberating among the lofty pines, and a cloud of smoke hung between me and where I had last seen them. I sprang to one side to avoid this, but they had both disappeared in the thicket, and I could still hear one of them crashing away toward the green woods. I felt sure that I had hit the other, and, going to where I had last seen her, I found blood, hair, and several small bits of flesh on the ground and the neighboring weeds. Following the trail a distance of fifty feet, I found her lying dead with her throat cut, and, in fact, a considerable portion of it shot away. The express bullet, driven by a heavy charge of powder, has such a high velocity that when it strikes flesh it invariably makes a big hole in it. One hind leg was also broken squarely off at the knee and the bone protruded through the skin.