On soft moccasined feet they stole about in the evening with a bull's-eye lantern fastened on the head of one of them for a "jack." Several times they surprised the wolves, and shone the animals' eyes like the scattered embers of a camp fire.
Thorpe learned to shoot at a deer's shoulders rather than his heart, how to tell when the animal had sustained a mortal hurt from the way it leaped and the white of its tail.

He even made progress in the difficult art of still hunting, where the man matches his senses against those of the creatures of the forest,--and sometimes wins.

He soon knew better than to cut the animal's throat, and learned from Hines that a single stab at a certain point of the chest was much better for the purposes of bleeding.

And, what is more, he learned not to over-shoot down hill.
Besides these things Jackson taught him many other, minor, details of woodcraft.

Soon the young man could interpret the thousands of signs, so insignificant in appearance and so important in reality, which tell the history of the woods.