CHAPTER XXII

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Two Cases of Buck Fever.

I have heard many hunters say that they had never had a case of buck fever, and that they could shoot at a deer with as little emotion under all circumstances as they could at a target. Now this is not the case with me, for the conditions under which I am working makes all the difference imaginable with my nervous system. I never saw but one place that I did not get the buck fever 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 going down a short sawtooth point or a short spur of the main ridge. The track had been made during the night when it was still snowing and in some places it was hard to follow the trail owing to so much snow falling. The track led down this spur in the direction of low hemlocks. I was working my way very carefully thinking that the deer had gone down into those low hemlocks to get shelter from the storm and were lying down in the thicket. The thicket was just over a little cone or ridge so that I could not see the surface of the ground and I was dead sure that I would catch my game lying in his bed.

In a moment a dozen deer came into sight as suddenly as though they had come up out of the ground and I was suddenly taken with one of the worst fevers that any man ever had. I at once began firing into the bunch. The deer seemingly did not notice the report of the gun but kept steadily on their trail. I knew the condition I was in and that I was shooting wide of the mark. I then singled out one of the largest deer, a good sized buck, and tried to pick out a spot on the back of his shoulders as though I was shooting at a target. I could not keep the gun within range of the deer by ten feet, so when I thought the gun had jumped into line, I pulled the trigger. The deer made no alteration in its course or speed but kept steadily bounding along. The deer were not more than forty yards from me. I dropped on one knee and leaned the gun across my knee, grabbed a handful of snow and jammed it into my face, then placed the gun to my face and began firing at the deer again with no better results.

When the bunch of deer were nearly a hundred yards away and they had all passed over the brow of the hill, except one large doe that was a little behind the rest, the fever left me as suddenly as it came on. I pulled the gun onto her and fired. She staggered, gave a lunge down the hill and fell dead. I could have told within an inch of where the ball struck her before I went to the deer. I could not have told within fifty feet of where my other shots went.

I followed my drove of deer a short distance to make sure that I had not wounded any of them and then I dragged the doe down into the hollow to dress and hang up. Pretty soon Mr. Corwin came to me and seeing only the one deer asked me if that was the only one I had killed with all that shooting. Mr. Corwin said that he had counted nine shots that I had fired. When I told him the story he had a hearty laugh of half an hour and said that I was lucky that I did not die in a fit.

Now boys, you who have never had the buck fever can laugh at me all you like, but those who are over fond of the chase and get the buck fever will sympathize with me. Had I been expecting and looking for this drove of deer at the time instead of only one deer I should not have been attacked with this case of buck fever.

Now, I will tell you of another case of buck fever from a cause entirely different from that just related. I was following the trail and there was just enough snow on the ground to make the best of still hunting. The wind was blowing just strong enough to make a noise in the tree tops overhead to drown any noise that the hunter might make by stepping on a dry limb, and every once in a while there would come a snow squall that would be so dense that you could see scarcely fifty feet.

I had trailed the doe along the side of the hill for some distance. She was feeding alone and I was working along very carefully, keeping along the ridge several yards above the trail, to always be on advantage ground. I had not seen the trail of any other deer during the morning although it was in the height of the mating season, or as us common folks call it, the running season. I was trailing the doe along through a small basin where the timber was nearly all hardwood, beech and maple, and the woods were very open. I was quite positive that the doe was not far in advance for she had just been feeding on some moss from a limb that had blown down from a tree and the tracks were very fresh. About this time one of those snow squalls had come up. I was standing by a large maple tree waiting for the squall to pass by so that I could look the ground over well before I went any farther.

After the squall had passed I looked the ground over closely but could see nothing of my deer. Forty or fifty yards farther along the side of the hill and below me there was a very large maple tree which had turned up by the roots. This tree hid from view a piece of ground close to the log. I could see that the trail led directly up to the tree. I could see a slight break in the snow on top of the log that I took to be made by the leg of the deer in jumping the log. I could see nothing of the trail beyond the tree so I worked very cautiously along until I could see past the root of the tree and as I suspected, there stood my game with head down, apparently asleep and standing broadside to me. I drew the gun onto a point just back of her shoulders and let go and the deer dropped almost in her tracks.

I cut the deer's throat and began to skin out the foreparts. I had only partly gotten my work done when another one of those snow squalls came along. I was bending over the deer, busy at work when I heard a slight noise, and straightened up to see what had caused it. I looked none too soon to save myself from a terrible thrust from the horns of a large buck deer, for as I straightened up the deer shot past me like a shot from a gun, barely missing me and landed some six or eight feet beyond me. I had stood my gun against the log 8 or 10 feet from me. I sprang for my gun but I was trembling so that I could do nothing and I could scarcely stand on my feet. The buck stood for a moment looking back over his shoulders. Every hair on his back stood up like the hair on the back of an angry dog and I well remember the color of his eyes which were as green as grass.

The deer stood and gazed at me for a moment then slowly walked off. The deer had gone some distance before I could control myself sufficiently to shoot. The buck had followed the trail of the doe up to the fallen tree and had caught me skinning her and it angered him. Instead of running off he was determined to attack me and the only thing that saved me from being severely hurt was my straightening up just at the right time to miss the thrust of the buck and the deer's missing me was what caused him to leave me.

This was the worst case of buck fever that I have ever had and I do not care to ever experience a case of that kind again.

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