2-982-537 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sporting Scenes in Canada - Deerstalking: the Death Jump, 1858. 'The common deer is still very plentiful in many districts of Western Canada...Dressed in a colour to match the trees or the snow, as the case may be, the hunter steals up to his game by a process of stalking from tree to tree, which, to be successfully carried out, requires the greatest vigilance, caution, and, in fact, all the requisites nearly that are conditional to success in any kind of hunting. The rifle is the only weapon for the still-hunter; but with it even a practised shot will sometimes miss his deer, the animal generally presenting a very small mark, owing to being covered to a great extent by the boles and branches of the trees. One great charm in this sport is the intense solitude of the grand old woods, the stillness of which in winter is rarely broken, except by the goblin laugh of the great black woodpecker, or by the cracking of the trees when the frost is intense...The hunter in the Sketch has just sent a bullet through the buck'. From "Illustrated London News", 1858.