An avid outdoors man, he hiked the Katahdin region of Northern Maine long before it had trails.

His adventures were featured in many outdoor sporting stories by Edmund Ware Smith; which Day also illustrated.

[5][4] Known for his humor, Day created witty editorial cartoons for the Portland Press Herald, Lewiston Sun Journal, and Waterville Sentinel.

But Walt Disney intended to base the character for the film adaptation on a mule deer from Arrowhead, California.

[4] Unpersuaded, Disney reportedly said, "Prove it,"[6] and sent Day to Maine with a list of scenic images specific to the landscape to photograph: hazelnuts, marsh grass, oak leaves, pine cones, birch bark, low-bush and high-bush blueberries, red maple, and speckled alder trees.

[6] Day ultimately swayed Disney, who gave the green light for Bambi to be a white-tail deer.

And so up there in the Katahdin wild, when I took a shot – well, if it was only a short of a burnt tree, or some great webby root grasping at rockly soil, or a lichen like a colored shell wedged into a rough bark – I had to consider that Disney might say to me, 'What does that say to you?

'"[6] Since Disney animators had never seen a live white-tail deer, Day arranged with the Maine Department of Economic Development to have two four-month-old orphaned fawns brought from the state to be sketched by the studio artists.

Displayed in the front window of the Day home on Bristol road in Damariscotta, some measuring six feet in length, both adults and children throughout the town gathered annually to view the dioramas.

Over the years, several units suffered damage due to being exposed to the elements; but relatives restored many of them to their original state.

[11] Day's son "Mac" continued his father's legacy by spending time with outdoor sporting friends known as "Jake's Rangers"; a group originally made famous in articles by Edmond Ware Smith in the magazine Field and Stream.