One evening in early April Bud read one of the lists that Gramps had left on the kitchen table:
Old Yellowfoot knows more about hunters than they do about him.
He will not be spooked and he cannot be driven.
Don't expect to find him where such a buck might logically be found, but don't overlook hunting him there. He does the unexpected.
If the weather's mild, look for him in the heights, especially Hagerman's Knob, Eagle Hill and Justin's Bluff.
If there's plenty of snow, he'll be in the lowlands. (Though I've yet to find him in Dockerty's Swamp during deer season, Bud and me will look for him there.)
Old Yellowfoot's one of the very few deer I've ever run across who's smart enough to work against the wind instead of running before it. I'm sure he does this the better to locate hunters.
Hunt thickets close to farms. I've a hunch he's hung out in them more than once while we looked for him in the deep woods.
He will never cross an open space if he can help it, and he always can.
Then glancing once more at the list, Bud returned to his own figuring. He frowned and nibbled the eraser of his pencil as he looked at the sheets of paper scattered on the table in front of him, and finally arranged them in a neat sheaf and started over them again.
He knew pretty well what Gram and Gramps had paid for his pen of White Wyandottes, and the price was high. They were the best chickens that could be bought and, in terms of what they would bring in the market, the cockerel was worth any two dozen run-of-the-mill chickens and each of the pullets was worth any dozen. But expensive as the White Wyandottes had been, so far they had been anything but a bonanza.
Fed according to a formula worked out by Bud and the agriculture teacher at the Haleyville Consolidated School, the pullets had averaged more eggs for each bird than the pullets in Gramps' flock, and the cost of feeding them had been less. But Bud's pleasure at this proof that scientifically fed chickens did more for less money was somewhat diminished by the fact that until the past few weeks his chickens had produced only undersized pullets' eggs. When he accepted such eggs at all, Pat Haley would never pay more than twenty-seven cents a dozen. Gram used the surplus eggs in cooking, and Bud had taken his pay in feed rather than cash. He still owed Gramps sixty-nine cents for feed, and even though Gramps had told him not to worry, Bud couldn't help it, for after wintering his flock he was sixty-nine cents in debt, and now there were fresh problems.