Quickly suiting the action to the resolve, he sent a bullet crashing through the brain of one of the larger ones. The animal leaped into the air and fell dead. Its companions rushed upon it and fiercely tore its body to pieces. Finding that his first shot was ineffective for rescue and quickly deciding on a theory different from that which prompted the first shot, he sent a bullet into the abdomen, of one of the sitting and waiting animals. This always produces a stinging, writhing and painful wound. The animal struck, leaped into the air, wheeled around several times, and then, with a dismal and alarming howl, started off, his companions with him, on that "long gallop that can tire the hound's deep hate and the hunter's fire." My friend, thus fortunately relieved from his imprisonment, quickly descended from his perch and hastened with anxious steps to his horses--and then to his home. The most valuable and useful of all the game family to man, and especially to the pioneer, was and is the deer. Without venison the table of the pioneer would be lacking in one of life's choicest and most sustaining food. Of beef, pork and mutton, in any of their various forms, he had none. The rifle was his purveyor; a table furnished with delicious venison, the realization. Deer are everywhere to be found in this State, and especially in the wooded country west of the dividing-ridge of the Cascade Mountains. While he likes open ridges and sunny coves as a roaming or feeding-ground, a dense thicket or sylvan bower is the deer's dormitory. I can say, without a breach of modesty, that I have been a great deer-hunter. I have found him in larger numbers on the islands of the Sound, than elsewhere. On one of these islands, Whidby, I found quite a number of pure white, and also spotted or, to use the popular expression, calico deer. Before this I had doubted somewhat the existance of the pure white deer; but while hunting on that island I came in view of a large five-pronged white buck, a spotted doe--his seeming companion--and two calico fawns. I saw them from ambush, and my first impression was to shoot the buck; but I hesitated, and finally concluded not to do it. After observing them for some time, I alarmed them and they disappeared in the contiguous woods. After their departure, I went to the ranch of a pioneer-friend, and I found that he had in a small park a pure white buck and five does--some spotted, and others of the ordinary color. I learned from him that the progeny of the buck in a great majority of cases was of the usual color--sometimes calico, but rarely pure white. I tried to purchase the only pure white fawn--offering fifty dollars for it--but he refused.