The Corvallis Times, October 31, 1903
One day in the early part of this week there was an unusual amount of shooting heard in the vicinity of Elliot hill three miles below town. The bombardment was occasioned by the presence of a deer in the neighborhood and the apparently inordinate appetite of the residents for fresh venison. They were out with every conceivable form of firearm and whichever way the deer ran for safety it was confronted by a man behind a loaded gun or pistol, with one exception. The animal had been chased and harassed for hours. It was well nigh exhausted when it espied a man, who, for some unaccountable reason was without a gun. This person was Julius Abraham, and to him the deer went, seemingly for protection. But it proved to be a case of misplaced confidence, because Julius, too, was hungry for venison. He sprang upon the confiding animal with the fierceness of a tiger, and as it essayed to escape the onslaught Julius laid a firm hold upon its tail with his left hand. The presence of extreme danger nerved the flagging energy of the deer and it ran at a rapid pace down the hillside, Julius meantime making desperate efforts to secure his pocketknife with the disengaged hand. However, this was a difficult undertaking more particularly as he was compelled by the speed of the deer to take unaccustomed strides.
In time from the dark ages to the present a tail hold with a down hill pull is all the advantage that a contestant would have the hardihood to ask, but these were, not the exact conditions in Abraham’s encounter with the deer. He unmistakably had secured the coveted hold, but the deer had possessed itself of the other favored position, which proved to be much the better situation. Incidentally this shows in the affairs of men the extreme advantage of a “pull,” and the irresistability of a down-hill pull whatever the hold.
But there is an end of every inspiring spectacle of this kind and when the star actor in the drama had covered about two hundred yards of linear measurement the hair of the tail slipped. With it the hand of Julius also slipped, and his momentum carried him sprawling and tumbling after the manner of a character in the familiar legend of Jack and Jill. When Julius arose uninjured he glanced at the tuft of hair he still held firmly in his hand, being scarcely able to realize that the deer had escaped him. He then watched the flight of the animal until it fell mortally wounded by a chance shot from the rifle of George Linderman.
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