Camping and woodcraft - Scoutmastercg.com

MARKSMANSHIP IN THE WOODS i8iServe your apprenticeship under a guide. He canteach you more in a week than you could learn byyourself in a year. There are, however, two booksthat every beginner ought to study before he goes tothe woods: Van Dyke's Still Hunter and Brunner'sTracks and Tracking/, both of them far and awayahead of anything else on their respective subjects.Don't try to memorize, but read and re-read untilthe lessons have soaked in. They will make itmuch easier for you to understand your guidesmovements and directions (but don't quote yourbook-learning to him, or to anybody else).After you have learned something of woodcraftby actual experience in company, make a practice ofgoing alone and putting it to the proof. In stillhunting,two men working together make four timesas much noise as one w^ould by himself. They morethan double the risk of alarming the game by theirscent, as they seldom will be right together. Andeach relies too much on the other. "Tom mayjump one to me" is a thought that has spoiled manyYou don't want any Tom toa hunt (and hunter) .think about: you w^ant to think deer, if that is whatyou are after.. , . ,What To Look For.—Wild animals in thesky,or somewhere with a broad sheet of water forwoods do not look at all like the same species do incaptivity or in picture-books. Only at rare intervalsdoes one see a buck in the open posed like Landseer's"Stag at Bay," and when he does, the pictureis altogether different. The buck's coloration blendswith his surroundings. You never see him in starkrelief unless he be on a ridge, outlined against thea background. Nor does he carry his head erect,unless suspicious, startled, challenging, or browsingen branches that hang above him.A deer is always hard to see unless he be out mthe open, or in the water, or on the jump. Generallyits body is half hidden, or more than half, by underbrushor intervening trees. So what you w^ant tolook for is not an animal as a whole, but for spots of