He had expected to hear some shooting today, but not this far from any of the camps. Boys would be boys, and hunters were often the biggest boys of all. They got jittery waiting for the first day, and blasted away at tin cans and bottles with their deer rifles or the pistols they had brought into the woods for just such plinking. And of course they fired innumerable times if they hadn't been able to sight in their rifles before coming to the mountains. But they didn't sight them in two miles from the nearest deer camp, and they didn't fire only one shot from a high powered rifle. Ned Craig started walking in the direction of the shot. He rested his hand for a moment on the butt of the Ruger .357 revolver the Game Commission had issued him, thankful that he had never had to use it against a man and hoping that he never would. Fortunately, hunters were also like little boys when they got caught breaking the rules, chagrined, embarrassed, and a bit hostile. Sometimes they tried to talk Ned out of citing them, but only once had someone given him a hard time, and that had been years before.
