At the report the deer bounded into the air as if a dynamite cartridge had exploded under him, and, lowering his head to a line with his body, started to run. There was none of those lofty, airy leaps now, no defiant waving to and fro of the white flag. That emblem was closely furled. His pride was broken and his sole object in life seemed to be to get out of the country as soon as possible. The course he had taken lay along the top of the ridge and I had a fine view of the run from start to finish. He at once began to waver in his course, turning slightly from left to right and from right to left. He stumbled and staggered like a blind horse. He ran crashing and smashing into the dead top of a fallen tree, breaking the dry limbs, some of them three or four inches in diameter, as if they had been rye straws. When he had gone as far into this labyrinth of branches as he could get, he sank to the ground as if exhausted, but suddenly rose again, extricated himself by a few desperate struggles to the right, and sped on. He ran squarely against a good-sized sapling with such force as to throw him prostrate upon his side. Still, his great vitality was not spent, and, struggling to his feet, he dashed on again. Next he ran against a log that lay up from the ground some three feet and was set back upon his haunches. He quickly recovered, took it in good shape, and now dashed into a clump of oak grubs that still held their dry leaves. Tearing and forcing his way through these, he forged ahead with all his remaining strength and plunged headlong into another fallen tree-top. In this he struggled, trying to force his way out until he sank upon the ground from sheer loss of blood and expired. From where he stood when I shot, to where he finally fell was about 300 yards.
I stepped the distance from where I stood to where the deer was when I fired and found it to be 267 yards. Taking up his trail, I found the ground copiously sprinkled with blood where he came down at the end of his first jump, and the leaves and brush were crimsoned with it from there to where he gave up the struggle. On coming up to him I found that my bullet had drifted slightly to the left, owing to the force of a strong wind which was blowing at the time, and cut his throat almost as neatly as I could have done it with my hunting-knife. The oesophagus was entirely severed and the thorax nearly so. His body was sadly bruised and lacerated by the terrible ordeal through which he had passed, and I concluded that he must have gone stone blind when the bullet struck him. In no other way can I account for his strange conduct. I saved his head and had it mounted as a memento of one of the most remarkable scratch shots I ever made.