----.--•••••

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A RANCHMAN

THEODORE ROO

erst*

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XTbe Sagamore Series
The Works of

Theodore Roosevelt

In 15 volumes, each containing frontispiece
16°, cloth per volume . . . 50 cents
Paper, per volume .... 35 cents

i. American Ideals.

a. Administration— Civil Service.

3. The Wilderness Hunter.

4. Hunting the Grisly.

5. Hunting Trips of a Ranchman.

6. Hunting Trips on the Plains and in the Mountains,

7. The Rough Riders.*

8. The Winning of the West. Part I.

9. The Winning of the West. Part II.

10. The Winning of the West. Part III.

11. The Winning of the West. Part IV.

12. The Winning of the West. Part V.

13. The Winning of the West. Part VI.

14. The Naval War of 1812. Part I.— Events of 1812-13.

15. The Naval War of 1812. Part II.— Events of 1814-15.
* Published under arrangement with Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons.

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

New York and London

Hunting Trips of a
Ranchman

Sketches of Sport on the Northern
Cattle Plains

Theodore Roosevelt

merican Ideals," 4t The Wilderne
The Winning of the West," etc.

{

Author of " American Ideals," " The Wilderness Hunter,"

G. P. Putnam's Sons

New York and London

1900

COPYRIGHT, 1885

BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

TO THAT
KEENEST OF SPORTSMEN

AND
TRUEST OF FRIENDS

MY BROTHER
ELLIOTT ROOSEVELT

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

RANCHING IN THE BAD LANDS.

The northern cattle plains — Stock-raising —
Cowboys, their dress and character — My
ranches in the Bad Lands of the Little Mis-
souri— Indoor amusements — Books — Pack-
rats — Birds — Ranch life — The round-up —
Indians — Ephemeral nature of ranch life —
Foes of the stockmen— Wolves, their rav-
ages—Fighting with dogs— Cougar — My
brother kills one— One killed by blood-
hounds— The chase one of the chief pleasures
of ranch life— Hunters and cowboys— Weap-
ons—Dress— Hunting-horses— Target-shoot-
ing and game shooting 9

CHAPTER II.

WATER-FOWL.

Stalking wild geese with rifle — Another goose
killed in early morning — Snow-goose shot
with rifle from beaver meadow— Description
of plains beaver— Its rapid extinction-
Ducks— Not plenty on cattle plains— Teal—
Duck-shooting in course of wagon trip to

5

6 CONTENTS

eastward — Mallards and wild geese in corn-
fields—Eagle and ducks—Curlews— Noisiness
and curiosity— Grass plover — Skunks. . 76

CHAPTER III.

THE GROUSE OF THE NORTHERN CATTLE PLAINS.

Rifle and shot-gun — Sharp-tailed prairie fowl —
Not often regularly pursued — Killed for pot —
Booming in spring — Their young — A day
after them with shot-gun in August — At that
time easy to kill— Change of habits in fall —
Increased wariness— Shooting in snow-
storm from edge of canyon— Killing them
with rifle in early morning— Trip after them
made by my brother and myself — Sage-fowl —
The grouse of the desert— Habits— Good
food — Shooting them — Jack-rabbit — An ac-
count of a trip made by my brother, in Texas,
after wild turkey — Shooting them from the
roosts—Coursing them with greyhounds . 112

CHAPTER IV.

THE DEER OF THE RIVER BOTTOMS.

The White-tail deer best known of American
large game — The most difficult to extermi-
nate— A buck killed in light snow about
Christmas-time — The species very canny —
Two " tame fawns"— Habits of deer— Pets-
Method of still-hunting the white-tail —
Habits contrasted with those of antelope —

CONTENTS

Wagon trip to the westward— Heavy cloud-
burst—Buck shot while hunting on horse-
back—Moonlight ride 17

CHAPTER V.

THE BLACK-TAIL DEER.

The black-tail and white-tail deer compared —
Different zones where game are found —
Hunting on horseback and on foot— Still-
hunting — Anecdotes — Rapid extermina-
tion—First buck shot— Buck shot from
hiding-place— Different qualities required in
hunting different kinds of game— Still-hunt-
ing the black-tail a most noble form of sport —
Dress required— Character of habitat— Bad
Lands — Best time for shooting, at dusk —
Difficult aiming— Large buck killed in late
evening— Fighting capacity of bucks— Ap-
pearance of black-tail— Difficult to see and
to hit— Indians poor shots— Riding to hounds
-Tracking— Hunting in fall weather— Three
killed in a day's hunting on foot— A hunt on
horseback— Pony turns a somersault— Two
bucks killed by one ball at very long range . 210

CHAPTER I

RANCHING IN THE BAD
LANDS

THE great middle plains of the United
States, parts of which are still scantily
peopled by men of Mexican parentage,
while other parts have been but recently
won from the warlike tribes of Horse In-
dians, now form a broad pastoral belt,
stretching in a north and south line from
British America to the Rio Grande.
Throughout this great belt of grazing land
almost the only industry is stock-raising,
which is here engaged in on a really gigantic
scale; and it is already nearly covered with
the ranches of the stockmen, except on those
isolated tracts (often themselves of great
extent) from which the red men look hope-
lessly and sullenly out upon their old hunt-

9

io HUNTING TRIPS

ing-grounds, now roaiaed over by the count-
less herds of long-horned cattle. The north-
ern portion of this belt is that which has been
most lately thrown open to the whites ; and it
is with this part only that we have to do.

The northern cattle plains occupy the basin
of the Upper Missouri ; that is, they occupy
all of the land drained by the tributaries of
that river, and by the river itself, before it
takes its long trend to the southeast. They
stretch from the rich wheat farms of Central
Dakota to the Rocky Mountains, and south-
ward to the Black Hills and the Big Horn
chain, thus including all of Montana, North-
ern Wyoming, and extreme Western Da-
kota. The character of this rolling, broken,
plains country is everywhere much the same.
It is a high, nearly treeless region, of light
rainfall, crossed by streams which are some-
times rapid torrents and sometimes merely
strings of shallow pools. In places it
stretches out into deserts of alkali and sage
brush, or into nearly level prairies of short
grass, extending for many miles without a

OF A RANCHMAN n

break ; elsewhere there are rolling hills, some-
times of considerable height; and in other
places the ground is rent and -broken into the
most fantastic shapes, partly by volcanic ac-
tion and partly by the action of water in a
dry climate. These latter portions form the
famous Bad Lands. Cotton-wood trees
fringe the streams or stand in groves on the
alluvial bottoms of the rivers; and some of
the steep hills and canyon sides are clad with
pines or stunted cedars. In the early spring,
when the young blades first sprout, the land
looks green and bright; but during the rest
of the year there is no such appearance of
freshness, for the short bunch grass is almost
brown, and the gray-green sage bush, bitter
and withered-looking, abounds everywhere,
and gives a peculiarly barren aspect to the
landscape.

It is but little over half a dozen years since
these lands were won from the Indians.
They were their only remaining great hunt-
ing-grounds, and towards the end of the last
decade all of the northern plains tribes went

12 HUNTING TRIPS

on the war-path in a final desperate effort to
preserve them. After bloody fighting and
protracted campaigns they were defeated,
and the country thrown open to the whites,
while the building of the Northern Pacific
Railroad gave immigration an immense im-
petus. There were great quantities of game,
especially buffalo, and the hunters who
thronged in to pursue the huge herds of the
latter were the rough forerunners of civili-
zation. No longer dreading the Indians,
and having the railway on which to transport
the robes, they followed the buffalo in season
and out, until in 1883 the herds were practi-
cally destroyed. But meanwhile the cattle-
men formed the vanguard of the white set-
tlers. Already the hardy southern stockmen
had pressed up with their wild-looking herds
to the very border of the dangerous land, and
even into it, trusting to luck and their own
prowess for their safety ; and the instant the
danger was even partially removed, their cat-
tle swarmed northward along the streams.
Some Eastern men, seeing the extent of the

OF A RANCHMAN 13

grazing country, brought stock out by the
railroad, and the short-horned beasts became
almost as plenty as the wilder-looking south-
ern steers. At the present time, indeed, the
cattle of these northern ranges show more
short-horn than long-horn blood.

Cattle-raising on the plains, as now carried
on, started in Texas, where the Americans
had learned it from the Mexicans whom they
dispossessed. It has only become a promi-
nent feature of Western life during the last
score of years. When the Civil War was
raging, there were hundreds of thousands of
bony, half wild steers and cows in Texas,
whose value had hitherto been' very slight ;
but toward the middle of the struggle they
became a most important source of food sup-
ply to both armies, and when the war had
ended, the profits of the business were widely
known and many men had gone into it. At
first the stock-raising was all done in Texas,
and the beef-steers, when ready for sale,
were annually driven north along what be-
came a regular cattle trail. Soon the men

I4 HUNTING TRIPS

of Kansas and Colorado began to start
ranches, and Texans who were getting
crowded out moved their herds north into
these lands, and afterward into Wyoming.
Large herds of yearling steers also were,
and still are, driven from the breeding ranch-
es of the south to some northern range, there
to be fattened for three years before selling.
The cattle trail led through great wastes,
and the scores of armed cow-boys who, under
one or two foremen, accompanied each herd,
had often to do battle with bands of hostile
Indians ; but this danger is now a thing of
the past, as, indeed, will soon be the case
with the cattle trail itself, for year by year the
grangers press steadily westward into it, and
when they have once settled in a place, will
not permit the cattle to be driven across it.
In the northern country the ranches vary
greatly in size ; on some there may be but a
few hundred head, on others ten times as
many thousand. The land is still in great
part unsurveyed, and is hardly anywhere
fenced in, the cattle roaming over it at will.

OF A RANCHMAN 15

The small ranches are often quite close to
one another, say within a couple of miles;
but the home ranch of a big outfit will not
have another building within ten or twenty
miles of it, or, indeed, if the country is dry,
not within fifty. The ranch-house may be
only a mud dugout, or a " shack " made of
logs stuck upright into the ground; more
often it is a fair-sized, well-made building of
hewn logs, divided into several rooms.
Around it are grouped the other buildings —
log-stables, cow-sheds, and hay-ricks, an out-
house in which to store things, and on large
ranches another house in which the cowboys
sleep. The strongly made, circular horse-
corral, with a snubbing-post in the middle,
stands close by; the larger cow-corral, in
which the stock is branded, may be some dis-
tance off. A small patch of ground is usu-
ally enclosed as a vegetable garden, and a
very large one, with water in it, as a pasture
to be used only in special cases. All the
work is done on horseback, and the quantity
of ponies is thus of necessity very great,

1 6 HUNTING TRIPS

some of the large outfits numbering them by
hundreds ; on my own ranch there are eighty.
Most of them are small, wiry beasts, not very
speedy, but with good bottom, and able to
pick up a living under the most adverse cir-
cumstances. There are usually a few large,
fine horses kept for the special use of the
ranchman or foremen. The best are those
from Oregon; most of them come from
Texas, and many are bought from the In-
dians. They are broken in a very rough
manner, and many are in consequence vi-
cious brutes, with the detestable habit of
bucking. Of this habit I have a perfect
dread, and, if I can help it, never get on
a confirmed bucker. The horse puts his
head down between his forefeet, arches
his back, and with stiff legs gives a
succession of jarring jumps, often " chang-
ing ends " as he does so. Even if a
man can keep his seat, the performance gives
him about as uncomfortable a shaking up as
can be imagined.

The cattle rove free over the hills and prai-

OF A RANCHMAN 17

ries, picking up their own living even in win-
ter, all the animals of each herd having
certain distinctive brands on them. But lit-
tle attempt is made to keep them within
definite bounds, and they wander whither
they wish, except that the ranchmen gener-
ally combine to keep some of their cowboys
riding lines to prevent them straying away
altogether. The missing ones are generally
recovered in the annual round-ups, when the
calves are branded. These round-ups, in
which many outfits join together, and which
cover hundreds of miles of territory, are the
busiest period of the year for the stockmen,
who then, with their cowboys, work from
morning till night. In winter little is done
except a certain amount of line riding.

The cowboys form a class by themselves,
and are now quite as typical representatives
of the wilder side of Western life, as were a
few years ago the skin-clad hunters and
trappers. They are mostly of native birth,
and although there are among them wild
spirits from every land, yet the latter soon

1 8 HUNTING TRIPS

become undistinguishable from their Amer-
ican companions, for these plainsmen are far
from being so heterogeneous a people as is
commonly supposed. On the contrary, all
have a certain curious similarity to each
other ; existence in the west seems to put the
same stamp upon each and every one of them.
Sinewy, hardy, self-reliant, their life forces
them to be both daring and adventurous, and
the passing over their heads of a few years
leaves printed on their faces certain lines
which tell of dangers quietly fronted and
hardships uncomplainingly endured. They
are far from being as lawless as they are
described; though they sometimes cut queer
antics when, after many months of lonely
life, they come into a frontier town in which
drinking and gambling are the only recog-
nized forms of amusement, and where pleas-
ure and vice are considered synonymous
terms. On the round-ups, or when a number
get together, there is much boisterous, often
foul-mouthed mirth; but they are rather si-
lent, self-contained men when with strangers,

OF A RANCHMAN 19

and are frank and hospitable to a degree.
The Texans are perhaps the best at the actual
cowboy work. They are absolutely fearless
riders and understand well the habits of the
half wild cattle, being unequalled in those
most trying times when, for instance, the
cattle are stampeded by a thunder-storm at
night, while in the use of the rope they are
only excelled by the Mexicans. On the other
hand, they are prone to drink, and when
drunk, to shoot. Many Kansans, and others
from the northern States, have also taken up
the life of late years, and though these
scarcely reach, in point of skill and dash, the
standard of the southerners, who may be
said to be born in the saddle, yet they are to
the full as resolute and even more trust-
worthy. My own foremen were originally
eastern backwoodsmen.

The cowboy's dress is both picturesque
and serviceable, and, like many of the terms
of his pursuit, is partly of Hispano-Mexican
origin. It consists of a broad felt hat, a
flannel shirt, with a bright silk handkerchief

20 HUNTING TRIPS

loosely knotted round the neck, trousers
tucked into high-heeled boots, and a pair of
leather " shaps " (chaperajos) or heavy rid-
ing overalls. Great spurs and a large-calibre
revolver complete the costume. For horse
gear there is a cruel curb bit, and a very
strong, heavy saddle with high pommel and
cantle. This saddle seems needlessly
weighty, but the work is so rough as to make
strength the first requisite. A small pack is
usually carried behind it ; also saddle pockets,
or small saddle-bags; and there are leather
strings wherewith to fasten the loops of the
raw-hide lariat. The pommel has to be
stout, as one end of the lariat is twisted
round it when work is to be done, and
the strain upon it is tremendous when
a vigorous steer has been roped, or
when, as is often the case, a wagon
gets stuck and the team has to be helped out
by one of the riders hauling from the saddle.
A ranchman or foreman dresses precisely like
the cowboys, except that the materials are
finer, the saddle leather being handsomely

OF A RANCHMAN 21

carved, the spurs, bit, and revolver silver-
mounted, the shaps of seal-skin, etc. The
revolver was formerly a necessity, to protect
the owner from Indians and other human
foes ; this is still the case in a few places, but,
as a rule, it is now carried merely from habit,
or to kill rattlesnakes, or on the chance of
falling in with a wolf or coyote, while not
unfrequently it is used to add game to the
cowboy's not too varied bill of fare.

A cowboy is always a good and bold rider,
but his seat in the saddle is not at all lik$ that
of one of our eastern or southern fox-hunt-
ers. The stirrups are so long that the man
stands almost erect in them, from his head
to his feet being a nearly straight line. It is
difficult to compare the horsemanship of a
western plainsman with that of an eastern
or southern cross-country rider. In follow-
ing hounds over fences and high walls, on a
spirited horse needing very careful humor-
ing, the latter would certainly excel ; but he
would find it hard work to sit a bucking
horse like a cowboy, or to imitate the head-

22 HUNTING TRIPS

long dash with which one will cut out a cow
marked with his own brand from a herd of
several hundred others, or will follow at full
speed the twistings and doublings of a re-
fractory steer over ground where an eastern
horse would hardly keep its feet walking.

My own ranches, the Elkhorn and the
Chimney Butte, lie along the eastern border
of the cattle country, where the Little Mis-
souri flows through the heart of the Bad
Lands. This, like most other plains rivers,
has 3 broad, shallow bed, through which in
times of freshets runs a muddy torrent, that
neither man nor beast can pass ; at other
seasons of the year it is very shallow, spread-
ing out into pools, between which the trick-
ling water may be but a few inches deep.
Even then, however, it is not always easy to
cross, for the bottom is filled with quicksands
and mud-holes. The river flows in long
sigmoid curves through an alluvial valley
of no great width. The amount of this allu-
vial land enclosed by a single bend is called
a bottom, which may be either covered with

OF A RANCHMAN 23

cotton-wood trees or else be simply a great
grass meadow. From the edges of the val-
ley the land rises abruptly in steep high
buttes whose crests are sharp and jagged.
This broken country extends back from the
river for many miles, and has been called al-
ways, by Indians, French voyageurs, and
American trappers alike, the " Bad Lands/'
partly from its dreary and forbidding aspect
and partly from the difficulty experienced in
travelling through it. Every few miles it
is crossed by creeks which open into the Lit-
tle Missouri, of which they are simply repe-
titions in miniature, except that during most
of the year they are almost dry, some of
them having in their beds here and there a
never-failing spring or muddy alkaline-water
hole. From these creeks run coulies, or nar-
row, winding valleys, through which water
flows when the snow melts; their bottoms
contain patches of brush, and they lead back
into the heart of the Bad Lands. Some of
the buttes spread out into level plateaus,
many miles in extent ; others form chains, or

24 HUNTING TRIPS

rise as steep isolated masses. Some are of
volcanic origin, being composed of masses
of scoria; the others, of sandstone or clay,
are worn by water into the most fantastic
shapes. In coloring they are as bizarre as in
form. Among the level, parallel strata
which make up the land are some of coal.
When a coal vein gets on fire it makes what
is called a burning mine, and the clay above
it is turned into brick; so that where water
wears away the side of a hill sharp streaks
of black and red are seen across it, mingled
with the grays, purples, and browns. Some
of the buttes are overgrown with gnarled,
stunted cedars or small pines, and they are
all cleft through and riven in every direction
by deep narrow ravines, or by canyons with
perpendicular sides.

In spite of their look of savage desolation,
the Bad Lands make a good cattle country,
for there is plenty of nourishing grass and
excellent shelter from the winter storms.
The cattle keep close to them in the cold
months, while in the summer time they

OF A RANCHMAN 25

wander out on the broad prairies stretching
back of them, or come down to the river
bottoms.

My home ranch-house stands on the river
brink. From the low, long veranda, shaded
by leafy cotton- woods, one looks across sand
bars and shallows to a strip of meadowland,
behind which rises a line of sheer cliffs and
grassy plateaus. This veranda is a pleasant
place in the summer evenings when a cool
breeze stirs along the river and blows in the
faces of the tired men, who loll back in their
rocking-chairs (what true American does not
enjoy a rocking-chair?), book in hand —
though they do not often read the books, but
rock gently to and fro, gazing sleepily out
at the weird-looking buttes opposite, until
their sharp outlines grow indistinct and pur-
ple in the after-glow of the sunset. The
story-high house of hewn logs is clean and
neat, with many rooms, so that one can be
alone if one wishes to. The nights in sum-
mer are cool and pleasant, and there are
plenty of bear-skins and buffalo robes,

26 HUNTING TRIPS

trophies of our own skill, with which to bid
defiance to the bitter cold of winter. In
summer time we are not much within doors,
for we rise before dawn and work hard"
enough to be willing to go to bed soon after
nightfall. The long winter evenings are
spent sitting round the hearthstone, while
the pine logs roar and crackle, and the men
play checkers or chess, in the fire light. The
rifles stand in the corners of the room or rest
across the elk antlers which jut out from over
the fireplace. From the deer horns ranged
along the walls and thrust into the beams
and rafters hang heavy overcoats of wolf-
skin or coon-skin, and otter-fur or beaver-
fur caps and gauntlets. Rough board shelves
hold a number of books, without which some
of the evenings would be long indeed. No
ranchman who loves sport can afford to be
without Van Dyke's " Still Hunter/' Dodge's
"Plains of the Great West," or Caton's
" Deer and Antelope of America " ; and
Coues' " Birds of the Northwest " will be
valued if he cares at all for natural history.

OF A RANCHMAN 27

A western plainsman is reminded every day,
by the names of the prominent landmarks
among which he rides, that the country was
known to men who spoke French long before
any of his own kinsfolk came to it, and hence
he reads with a double interest Parkman's
histories of the early Canadians. As for
Irving, Hawthorne, Cooper, Lowell, and the
other standbys, I suppose no man, east or
west, would willingly be long without them ;
while for lighter reading there are dreamy
Ike Marvel, Burroughs* breezy pages, and
the quaint, pathetic character-sketches of the
Southern writers — Cable, Craddock, Macon,
Joel Chandler Harris, and sweet Sherwood
Bonner. And when one is in the Bad Lands
he feels as if they somehow look just exactly
as Poe's tales and poems sound.

By the way, my books have some rather
unexpected foes, in the shape of the pack
rats. These are larger than our house rats,
with soft gray fur, big eyes, and bushy tails,
like a squirrel's ; they are rather pretty beasts
and very tame, often coming into the shacks

28 HUNTING TRIPS

and log-cabins of the settlers. Woodmen
and plainsmen, in their limited vocabulary,
make great use of the verb " pack/' which
means to carry, more properly to carry on
one's back; and these rats were christened
pack rats, on account of their curious and in-
veterate habit of dragging off to their holes
every object they can possibly move. From
the hole of one, underneath the wall of a hut,
I saw taken a small revolver, a hunting-knife,
two books, a fork, a small bag, and a tin cup.
The little shack mice are much more common
than the rats, and among them there is a wee
pocket-mouse, with pouches on the outside of
its little cheeks.

In the spring, when the thickets are green,
the hermit thrushes sing sweetly in them;
when it is moonlight, the voluble, cheery
notes of the thrashers or brown thrushes
can be heard all night long. One of our
sweetest, loudest songsters is the meadow-
lark ; this I could hardly get used to at first,
for it looks exactly like the eastern meadow-
lark, which utters nothing but a harsh, dis-

OF A RANCHMAN 29

agreeable chatter. But the plains air seems
to give it a voice, and it will perch on the top
of a bush or tree and sing for hours in rich,
bubbling tones. Out on the prairie there are
several kinds of plains sparrows which sing
very brightly, one of them hovering in the
air all the time, like a bobolink. Sometimes
in the early morning, when crossing the open,
grassy plateaus, I have heard the prince of
them all, the Missouri skylark. The skylark
sings on the wing, soaring over head and
mounting in spiral curves until it can hardly
be seen, while its bright, tender strains never
cease for a moment. I have sat on my horse
and listened to one singing for a quarter of
an hour at a time without stopping. There
is another bird also which sings on the wing,
though I have not seen the habit put down in
the books. One bleak March day, when
snow covered the ground and the shaggy
ponies crowded about the empty corral, a
flock of snow-buntings came familiarly
round the cow-shed, clamoring over the
ridge-pole and roof. Every few moments

3o HUNTING TRIPS

one of them would mount into the air, hover-
ing about with quivering wings and warbling
a loud, merry song with some very sweet
notes. They were a most welcome little
group of guests, and we were sorry when,
after loitering around a day or two, they dis-
appeared toward their breeding haunts.

In the still fall nights, if we lie awake we
can listen to the clanging cries of the water-
fowl, as their flocks speed southward; and
in cold weather the coyotes occasionally
come near enough for us to hear their un-
canny wailing. The larger wolves, too, now
and then join in, with a kind of deep, dismal
howling ; but this melancholy sound is more
often heard when out camping than from
the ranch-house.

The charm of ranch life comes in its free-
dom, and the vigorous, open-air existence it
forces a man to lead. Except when hunting
in bad ground, the whole time away from
the house is spent in the saddle, and there
are so many ponies that a fresh one can al-
ways be had. These ponies are of every size

OF A RANCHMAN 31

and disposition, and rejoice -in names as dif-
ferent as their looks. Hackamore, Wire
Fence, Steel-Trap, War Cloud, Pinto, Buck-
skin, Circus, and Standing Jimmie are
among those that, as I write, are running
frantically round the corral in the vain effort
to avoid the rope, wielded by the dexterous
and sinewy hand of a broad-hatted cowboy.
A ranchman is kept busy most of the time,
but his hardest work comes during the
spring and fall round-ups, when the calves
are branded or the beeves gathered for
market. Our round-up district includes the
Beaver and Little Beaver creeks (both of
which always contain running water, and
head up toward each other), and as much of
the river, nearly two hundred miles in ex-
tent, as lies between their mouths. All the
ranches along the line of these two creeks
and the river space between join in sending
from one to three or four men to the round-
up, each man taking eight ponies; and for
every six or seven men there will be a four-
horse wagon to carry the blankets and mess

32 HUNTING TRIPS

kit. The whole, including perhaps forty or
fifty cowboys, is under the head of one first-
class foreman, styled the captain of the
found-up. Beginning at one end of the line
the round-up works along clear to the other.
Starting at the head of one creek, the wagons
and the herd of spare ponies go down it ten
or twelve miles, while the cowboys, divided
into small parties scour the neighboring
country, covering a great extent of territory,
and in the evening come into the appointed
place with all the cattle they have seen. This
big herd, together with the pony herd, is
guarded and watched all night, and driven
during the day. At each home-ranch (where
there is always a large corral fitted for the
purpose) all the cattle of that brand are
cut out from the rest of the herd, which is
to continue its journey; and the cows and
calves are driven into the corral, where the
latter are roped, thrown, and branded. In
throwing the rope from horseback, the loop,
held in the right hand, is swung round and
round the head by a motion of the wrist;

OF A RANCHMAN 33

when on foot, the hand is usually held by
the side, the loop dragging on the ground.
It is a pretty sight to see a man who knows
how, use the rope ; again and again an expert
will catch fifty animals by the leg without
making a misthrow. But unless practice is
begun very young it is hard to become really
proficient.

Cutting out cattle, next to managing a
stampeded herd at night, is that part of the
cowboy's work needing the boldest and most
skilful horsemanship. A young heifer or
steer is very loath to leave the herd, always
tries to break back into it, can run like a deer,
and can dodge like a rabbit ; but a thorough
cattle pony enjoys the work as much as its
rider, and follows a beast like a four-footed
fate through every double and turn. The
ponies for the cutting-out or afternoon work
are small and quick ; those used for the cir-
cle-riding in the morning have need rather
to be strong and rangey.

The work on a round-up is very hard, but
although the busiest it is also the pleasantest

34

HUNTING TRIPS

part of a cowboy's existence. His food is
good, though coarse, and his sleep is sound
indeed ; while the work is very exciting, and
is done in company, under the stress of an
intense rivalry between all the men, both as
to their own skill, and as to the speed and
training of their horses. Clumsiness, and
still more the slightest approach to timidity,
expose a man to the roughest and most
merciless raillery; and the unfit are weeded
out by a very rapid process of natural selec-
tion. When the work is over for the day
the men gather round the fire for an hour or
two to sing songs, talk, smoke, and tell sto-
ries ; and he who has a good voice, or, better
still, can play a fiddle or banjo, is sure to re-
ceive his meed of most sincere homage.

Though the ranchman is busiest during
the round-up, yet he is far from idle at other
times. He rides round among the cattle to
see if any are sick, visits any outlying camp
of his men, hunts up any band of ponies
which may stray — and they are always
straying, — superintends the haying, and, in

OF A RANCHMAN 35

fact, does not often find that he has too much
leisure time on his hands. Even in winter
he has work which must be done. His ranch
supplies milk, butter, eggs, and potatoes, and
his rifle keeps him, at least intermittently, in
fresh meat; but coffee, sugar, flour, and
whatever else he may want, has to be hauled
in, and this is generally done when the ice
will bear. Then firewood must be chopped ;
or, if there is a good coal vein, as on my
ranch, the coal must be dug out and hauled
in. Altogether, though the ranchman will
have time enough to take shooting trips, he
will be very far from having time to make
shooting a business, as a stranger who comes
for nothing else can afford to do.

There are now no Indians left in my im-
mediate neighborhood, though a small party
of harmless Grosventres occasionally passes
through; yet it is but six years since the
Sioux surprised and killed five men in a
log station just south of me, where the Fort
Keogh trail crosses the river; and, two
years ago, when I went down on the prairies

36 HUNTING TRIPS

toward the Black Hills, there was still dan-
ger from Indians. That summer the buffalo
hunters had killed a couple of Crows, and
while we were on the prairie a long-range
skirmish occurred near us between some
Cheyennes and a number of cowboys. In
fact, we ourselves were one day scared by
what we thought to be a party of Sioux;
but on riding toward them they proved to
be half-breed Crees, who were more afraid
of us than we were of them.

During the past century a good deal of
sentimental nonsense has been talked about
our taking the Indians' land. Now, I do not
mean to say for a moment that gross wrong
has not been done the Indians, both by gov-
ernment and individuals, again and again.
The government makes promises impossible
to perform, and then fails to do even what
it might toward their fulfilment; and where
brutal and reckless frontiersmen are brought
into contact with a set of treacherous, re-
vengeful, and fiendishly cruel savages a long
series of outrages by both sides is sure to

OF A RANCHMAN 37

follow. But as regards taking the land, at
least from the western Indians, the simple
truth is that the latter never had any real
ownership in it at all. Where the game was
plenty, there they hunted ; they followed it
when it moved away to new hunting-
grounds, unless they were prevented by
stronger rivals; and to most of the land on
which we found them they had no stronger
claim than that of having a few years pre-
viously butchered the original occupants.
When my cattle came to the Little Missouri
the region was only inhabited by a score or
so of white hunters; their title to it was
quite as good as that of most Indian tribes
to the lands they claim ; yet nobody dreamed
of saying that these hunters owned the coun-
try. Each could eventually have kept his
own claim of 160 acres, and no more. The
Indians should be treated in just the same
way that we treat the white settlers. Give
each his little claim; if, as would generally
happen, he declined this, why then let him
share the fate of the thousands of white

38 HUNTING TRIPS

hunters and trappers who have lived on the
game that the settlement of the country has
exterminated, and let him, like these whites,
who will not work, perish from the face of
the earth which he cumbers.

The doctrine seems merciless, and so it is ;
but it is just and rational for all that. It
does not do to be merciful to a few, at the
cost of justice to the many. The cattle-men
at least keep herds and build houses on the
land ; yet I would not for a moment debar
settlers from the right of entry to the cattle
country, though their coming in means in
the end the destruction of us and our in-
dustry.

For we ourselves, and the life that we lead,
will shortly pass away from the plains as
completely as the red and white hunters who
have vanished from before our herds. The
free, open-air life of the ranchman, the
pleasantest and healthiest life in America,
is from its very nature ephemeral. The
broad and boundless prairies have already
been bounded and will soon be made nar-

OF A RANCHMAN

39

row. It is scarcely a figure of speech to say
that the tide of white settlement during the
last few years has risen over the west like
a flood ; and the cattle-men are but the spray
from the crest of the wave, thrown far in
advance, but soon to be overtaken. As the
settlers throng into the lands and seize the
good ground, especially that near the
streams, the great fenceless ranches, where
the cattle and their mounted herdsmen wan-
dered unchecked over hundreds of thousands
of acres, will be broken up and divided into
corn land, or else into small grazing farms
where a few hundred head of stock are
closely watched and taken care of. Of course
the most powerful ranches, owned by wealthy
corporations or individuals, and already
firmly rooted in the soil, will long resist this
crowding ; in places, where the ground is not
suited to agriculture, or where, through the
old Spanish land-grants, title has been ac-
quired to a great tract of territory, cattle
ranching will continue for a long time,
though in a greatly modified form ; elsewhere

40 HUNTING TRIPS

I doubt if it outlasts the present century.
Immense sums of money have been made at
it in the past, and it is still fairly profitable ;
but the good grounds (aside from those re-
served for the Indians) are now almost all
taken up, and it is too late for new men to
start at it on their own account, unless in
exceptional cases, or where an Indian reser-
vation is thrown open. Those that are now
in will continue to make money; but most
of those who hereafter take it up will lose.
The profits of the business are great ; but
the chances for loss are great also. A win-
ter of unusual severity will work sad havoc
among the young cattle, especially the
heifers; sometimes a disease like the Texas
cattle fever will take off a whole herd ; and
many animals stray and are not recovered.
In fall, when the grass is like a mass of dry
and brittle tinder, the fires do much damage,
reducing the prairies to blackened deserts as
far as the eye can see, and destroying feed
which would keep many thousand head of
stock during winter. Then we hold in about

OF A RANCHMAN 41

equal abhorrence the granger who may come
in to till the land, and the sheep-owner who
drives his flocks over it. The former will
gradually fill up the country to our own ex-
clusion, while the latter's sheep nibble the
grass off so close to the ground as to starve
out all other animals.

Then we suffer some loss — in certain re-
gions very severe loss — from wild beasts,
such as cougars, wolves, and lynxes. The
latter, generally called " bob-cats/' merely
make inroads on the hen-roosts (one of them
destroyed half my poultry, coming night
after night with most praiseworthy regu-
larity), but the cougars and wolves destroy
many cattle.

The wolf is not very common with u«;
nothing like as plentiful as the little coyote.
A few years ago both wolves and coyotes
were very numerous on the plains, and as
Indians and hunters rarely molested them,
they were then very unsuspicious. But all
this is changed now. When the cattle-men
came in they soon perceived in the wolves

42 HUNTING TRIPS

their natural foes, and followed them unre-
lentingly. They shot at and chased them on
all occasions, and killed great numbers by
poisoning; and as a consequence the com-
paratively few that are left are as wary and
cunning beasts as exist anywhere. They
hardly ever stir abroad by day, and hence are
rarely shot or indeed seen. During the last
three years these brutes have killed nearly a
score of my cattle, and in return we have poi-
soned six or eight wolves and a couple of
dozen coyotes ; yet in all our riding we have
not seen so much as a single wolf, and only
rarely a coyote. The coyotes kill sheep and
occasionally very young calves, but never
meddle with any thing larger. The stock-
man fears only the large wolves.

According to my experience, the wolf is
rather solitary. A single one or a pair will
be found by themselves, or possibly with
one or more well-grown young ones, and
will then hunt over a large tract where no
other wolves will be found; and as they
wander very far, and as their melancholy

OF A RANCHMAN 43

bowlings have a most ventriloquial effect,
they are often thought to be much more
plentiful than they are. During the day-
time they lie hid in caves or in some patch
of bush, and will let a man pass right by
them without betraying their presence. Oc-
casionally somebody runs across them by ac-
cident. A neighboring ranchman to me
once stumbled, while riding an unshod pony,
right into the midst of four wolves who
\\ ere lying in some tall, rank grass, and shot
one with his revolver and crippled another
before they could get away. But such an
accident as this is very rare; and when, by
any chance, the wolf is himself abroad in
the daytime he keeps such a sharp look-out,
and is so wary, that it is almost impossible
to get near him, and he gives every human
being a wide berth. At night it is differ-
ent. The wolves then wander far and wide,
often coming up round the out-buildings of
the ranches; I have seen in light snow the
tracks of two that had walked round the
house within fifty feet of it. I have never

44 HUNTING TRIPS

heard of an instance where a man was at-
tacked or threatened by them, but they will
at times kill every kind of domestic animal.
They are fond of trying to catch young foals,
but do not often succeed, for the mares and
foals keep together in a kind of straggling
band, and the foal is early able to run at
good speed for a short distance. When at-
tacked, the mare and foal dash off towards
the rest of the band, which gathers together
at once, the foals pressing into the middle
and the mares remaining on the outside, not
in a ring with their heels out, but moving in
and out, and forming a solid mass into which
the wolves do not venture. Full-grown
horses are rarely molested, while a stallion
becomes himself the assailant.

In early spring when the cows begin to
calve the wolves sometimes wait upon the
herds as they did of old on the buffalo, and
snap up any calf that strays away from its
mother. When hard pressed by hunger they
will kill a steer or a heifer, choosing the bit-
terest and coldest night to make the attack.

OF A RANCHMAN 45

The prey is invariably seized by the haunch
or flank, and its entrails afterwards torn out ;
while a cougar, on the contrary, grasps the
neck or throat. Wolves have very strong
teeth and jaws and inflict a most severe bite.
They will in winter come up to the yards
and carry away a sheep, pig, or dog without
much difficulty; I have known one which
had tried to seize a sheep and been pre-
vented by the sheep dogs to canter off with
one of the latter instead. But a spirited dog
will always attack a wolf. On the ranch
next below mine there was a plucky bull
terrier, weighing about twenty-five pounds,
who lost his life owing to his bravery. On
one moonlight night three wolves came
round the stable, and the terrier sallied out
promptly. He made such a quick rush as
to take his opponents by surprise, and seized
one by the throat ; nor did he let go till the
other two tore him almost asunder across
the loins. Better luck attended a large
mongrel called a sheep dog by his master,
but whose blood was apparently about

46 HUNTING TRIPS

equally derived from collie, Newfoundland,
and bulldog. He was a sullen, but very in-
telligent and determined brute, powerfully
built and with strong jaws, and though
neither as tall nor as heavy as a wolf he had
yet killed two of these animals single-
handed. One of them had come into the
farm-yard at night, and had taken a young
pig, whose squeals roused everybody. The
wolf loped off with his booty, the dog run-
ning after and overtaking him in the dark-
ness. The struggle was short, for the dog
had seized the wolf by the throat and the lat-
ter could not shake him off, though he made
the most desperate efforts, rising on his hind
legs and pressing the dog down with his
fore paws. This time the victor escaped
scatheless, but in his second fight, when he
strangled a still larger wolf, he was severely
punished. The wolf had seized a sheep,
when the dog, rushing on him, caused him
to leave his quarry. Instead of running he
turned to bay at once, taking off one of the
assailant's ears with a rapid snap. The dog

OF A RANCHMAN

47

did not get a good hold, and the wolf scored
him across the shoulders and flung him off.
They then faced each other for a minute and
at the next dash the dog made good his
throat hold, and throttled the wolf, though
the latter contrived to get his foe's foreleg
into his jaws and broke it clear through.
When I saw the dog he had completely re-
covered, although pretty well scarred.

On another neighboring ranch there is a
most ill-favored hybrid, whose mother was
a Newfoundland and whose father was a
large wolf. It is stoutly built, with erect
ears, pointed muzzle, rather short head, short
bushy tail, and of a brindled color ; funnily
enough it looks more like a hyena than like
either of its parents. It is familiar with
people and a good cattle dog, but rather
treacherous; it both barks and howls. The
parent wolf carried on a long courtship with
the Newfoundland. He came round the
ranch, regularly and boldly, every night, and
she would at once go out to him. In the
daylight he would lie hid in the bushes at

48 HUNTING TRIPS

some little distance. Once or twice his hid-
ing-place was discovered and then the men
would amuse themselves by setting the New-
foundland on him. She would make at him
with great apparent ferocity ; but when they
were a good way from the men he would
turn round and wait for her and they would
go romping off together, not to be seen again
for several hours.

The cougar is hardly ever seen round my
ranch; but toward the mountains it is very
destructive both to horses and horned cat-
tle. The ranchmen know it by the name of
mountain lion ; and it is the same beast that
in the east is called panther or "painter."
The cougar is the same size and build as the
Old World leopard, and with very much the
same habits. One will generally lie in wait
for the heifers or young steers as they come
down to water, and singling out an animal,
reach it in a couple of bounds and fasten
its fangs in the throat or neck. I have seen
quite a large cow that had be'en killed by a
cougar; and on another occasion, while OHt

OF A RANCHMAN

49

hunting over light snow, I came across a
place where two bucks, while fighting, had
been stalked up to by a cougar which pulled
down one and tore him in pieces. The cou-
gar's gait is silent and stealthy to an extraor-
dinary degree ; the look of the animal when
creeping up to his prey has been wonder-
fully caught by the sculptor, Kemeys, in his
bronzes: "The Still Hunt" and "The
Silent Footfall."

I have never myself killed a cougar,
though my brother shot one in Texas, while
still-hunting some deer, which the cougar it-
self was after. It never attacks man, and
even when hard pressed and wounded turns
to bay with extreme reluctance, and at the
first chance again seeks safety in flight. This
was certainly not the case in old times, but the
nature of the animal has been so changed by
constant contact with rifle-bearing hunters,
that timidity toward them has become a he-
reditary trait deeply engrained in its nature.
When the continent was first settled, and for
long afterward, the cougar was quite as dan-

50 HUNTING TRIPS

gerous an antagonist as the African or In-
dian leopard, and would even attack men
unprovoked. An instance of this occurred
in the annals of my mother's family. Early
in the present century one of my ancestral
relatives, a Georgian, moved down to the
wild and almost unknown country border-
ing on Florida. His plantation was sur-
rounded by jungles in which all kinds of
wild beasts swarmed. One of his negroes
had a sweetheart on another plantation, and
in visiting her, instead of going by the road
he took a short cut through the swamps, heed-
less of the wild beasts, and armed only with
a long knife — for he was a man of colossal
strength, and of fierce and determined tem-
per. One night he started to return late,
expecting to reach the plantation in time
for his daily task on the morrow. But he
never reached home, and it was thought he
had run away. However, when search was
made for him his body was found in the
path through the swamp, all gashed and
torn, and but a few steps from him the body

OF A RANCHMAN 51

of a cougar, stabbed and cut in many places.
Certainly that must have been a grim fight,
in the gloomy, lonely recesses of the swamp,
with no one to watch the midnight death
struggle between the powerful, naked man
and the ferocious brute that was his almost
unseen assailant.

When hungry, a cougar will attack any
thing it can master. I have known of their
killing wolves and large dogs. A friend of
mine, a ranchman in Wyoming, had two
grizzly bear cubs in his possession at one
time, and they were kept in a pen outside the
ranch. One night two cougars came down,
and after vain efforts to catch a dog which
was on the place, leaped into the pen and
carried off the two young bears!

Two or three powerful dogs, however,
will give a cougar all he wants to do to
defend himself. A relative of mine in one
of the Southern States had a small pack
of five blood-hounds, with which he used to
hunt the canebrakes for bear, wildcats, etc.
On one occasion they ran across a cougar,

52 HUNTING TRIPS

and after a sharp chase treed him. As the
hunters drew near he leaped from the tree
and made off, but was overtaken by the
hounds and torn to pieces after a sharp
struggle in which one or two of the pack
were badly scratched.

Cougars are occasionally killed by poison-
ing, and they may be trapped much more
easily than a wolf. I have never known
them to be systematically hunted in the
West, though now and then one is acci-
dentally run across and killed with the rifle
while the hunter is after some other game.

As already said, ranchmen do not have
much idle time on their hands, for their
duties are manifold, and they need to be ever
on the watch against their foes, both ani-
mate and inanimate. Where a man has so
much to do he cannot spare a great deal
of his time for any amusement; but a good
part of that which the ranchman can spare
he is very apt to spend in hunting. His
quarry will be one of the seven kinds of
plains game — bear, buffalo, elk, bighorn, an-

OF A RANCHMAN 53

telope, blacktail or whitetail deer. Moose,
caribou, and white goat never come down into
the cattle country; and it is only on the
southern ranches near the Rio Grande and
the Rio Colorado that the truculent peccary
and the great spotted jaguar are found.

Until recently all sporting on the plains
was confined to army officers, or to men of
leisure who made extensive trips for no other
purpose; leaving out of consideration the
professional hunters, who trapped and shot
for their livelihood. But with the incom-
ing of the cattle-men, there grew up a class
of residents, men with a stake in the wel-
fare of the country, and with a regular busi-
ness carried on in it, many of whom were
keenly devoted to sport, — a class whose mem-
bers were in many respects closely akin to
the old Southern planters. In this book I
propose to give some description of the kind
of sport that can be had by the average
ranchman who is fond of the rifle. Of
course no man with a regular business can
have such opportunities as fall to the lot of

54 HUNTING TRIPS

some who pass their lives in hunting only;
and we cannot pretend to equal the achieve-
ments of such men, for with us it is merely
a pleasure, to be eagerly sought after when
we have the chance, but not to be allowed
to interfere with our business. No ranch-
men have time to make such extended trips
as are made by some devotees of sport who
are so fortunate as to have no every-day
work to which to attend. Still, ranch life
undoubtedly offers more chance to a man to
get sport than is now the case with any other
occupation in America, and those who fol-
low it are apt to be men of game spirit, fond
of excitement and adventure, who perforce
lead an open-air life, who must needs ride
well, for they are often in the saddle from
sunrise to sunset, and who naturally take
kindly to that noblest of weapons the rifle.
With such men hunting is one of the chief
of pleasures; arid they follow it eagerly
when their work will allow them. And with
some of them it is at times more than a

OF A RANCHMAN 55

pleasure. On many of the ranches — on my
own, for instance — the supply of fresh meat
depends mainly on the skill of the riflemen,
and so, both for pleasure and profit, most
ranchmen do a certain amount of hunting
each season. The buffalo are now gene for-
ever, and the elk are rapidly sharing their
fate; but antelope and deer are still quite
plenty, and will remain so for some years;
and these are the common game of the plains-
man. Nor is it likely that the game will dis-
appear much before ranch life itself is a thing
of the past. It is a phase of American life as
fascinating as it is evanescent, and one well
deserving an historian. But in these pages
I propose to dwell on only one of its many
pleasant sides, and to give some idea of the
game shooting which forms perhaps the
chief of the cattle-man's pleasures, aside
from those more strictly connected with his
actual work. I have to tell of no unusual
adventures, but merely of just such hunting
as lies within reach of most of the sport-

56 HUNTING TRIPS

loving ranchmen whose cattle range along
the waters of the Powder and the Bighorn,
the Little Missouri and the Yellowstone.

Of course I have never myself gone out
hunting under the direction of a professional
guide or professional hunter, unless it was to
see one of the latter who was reputed a crack
shot ; all of my trips have been made either
by myself or else with one of my cowboys
as a companion. Most of the so-called hunt-
ers are not worth much. There are plenty
of men hanging round the frontier settle-
ments who claim to be hunters, and who
bedizen themselves in all the traditional finery
of the craft, in the hope of getting a job
at guiding some " tender foot " ; and there
are plenty of skin-hunters, or meat-hunters,
who, after the Indians have been driven away
and when means of communication have
been established, mercilessly slaughter the
game in season and out, being too lazy to
work at any regular trade, and keeping on
hunting until the animals become, too scarce
and shy to be taken without more skill than

OF A RANCHMAN 57

they possess ; but these are all mere tempo-
rary excrescences, and the true old Rocky
Mountain hunter and trapper, the plainsman,
or mountain-man, who, with all his faults,
was a man of iron nerve and will, is now al-
most a thing of the past. In the place of
these heroes of a bygone age, the men who
were clad in buckskin and who carried long
rifles, stands, or rather rides, the bronzed and
sinewy cowboy, as picturesque and self-reli-
ant, as dashing and resolute as the saturnine
Indian fighters whose place he has taken;
and, alas that it should be written ! he in his
turn must at no distant time share the fate of
the men he has displaced. The ground over
which he so gallantly rides his small, wiry
horse will soon know him no more, and in his
stead there will be the plodding grangers and
husbandmen. I suppose it is right and for
the best that the great cattle country, with its
broad extent of fenceless land, over which
the ranchman rides as free as the game that
he follows or the horned herds that he
guards, should be in the end broken up into

58 HUNTING TRIPS

small patches of fenced farm land and graz-
ing land; but I hope against hope that I
myself shall not live to see this take place,
for when it does one of the pleasantest and
freest phases of western American life will
have come to an end.

The old hunters were a class by themselves.
They penetrated, alone or in small parties, to
the farthest and wildest haunts of the ani-
mals they followed, leading a solitary, lonely
life, often never seeing a white face for
months and even years together. They were
skilful shots, and were cool, daring, and reso-
lute to the verge of recklessness. On any
thing like even terms they very greatly over-
matched the Indians by whom they were sur-
rounded, and with whom they waged con-
stant and ferocious war. In the govern-
ment expeditions against the plains tribes
they were of absolutely invaluable assistance
as scouts. They rarely had regular wives or
white children, and there are none to take
their places, now that the greater part of them
have gone. For the men who carry on hunt-

OF A RANCHMAN 59

ing as a business where it is perfectly safe
have all the vices of their prototypes, but,
not having to face the dangers that beset the
latter, so neither need nor possess the stern,
rough virtues that were required in order to
meet and overcome them. The ranks of the
skin-hunters and meat-hunters contain some
good men ; but as a rule they are a most un-
lovely race of beings, not excelling even in
the pursuit which they follow because they
are too shiftless to do anything else; and
the sooner they vanish the better.

A word as to weapons and hunting dress.
When I first came to the plains I had a heavy
Sharps rifle, 45 — 120, shooting an ounce and
a quarter of lead, and a 5O-calibre, double-
barrelled English express. Both of these,
especially the latter, had a vicious recoil ; the
former was very clumsy ; and above all they
were neither of them repeaters; for a re-
peater or magazine gun is as much superior
to a single or double-barrelled breech-loader
as the latter is to a muzzle-loader. I threw
them both aside : and have instead a 40 — 90

60 HUNTING TRIPS

Sharps for very long range work; a 50 — 115
6-shot Bullard express, which has the veloc-
ity, shock, and low trajectory of the English
gun ; and, better than either, a 45 — 75 half-
magazine Winchester. The Winchester,
which is stocked and sighted to suit myself,
is by all odds the best weapon I ever had, and
I now use it almost exclusively, having killed
every kind of game with it, from a grizzly-
bear to a big-horn. It is as handy to carry,
whether on foot or on horseback, and comes
up to the shoulder as readily as a shot-gun ;
it is absolutely sure, and there is no recoil to
jar and disturb the aim, while it carries ac-
curately quite as far as a man can aim with
any degree of certainty; and the bullet,
weighing three quarters of an ounce, is
plenty large enough for any thing on this
continent. For shooting the very large game
(buffalo, elephants, etc.) of India and South
Africa, much heavier rifles are undoubtedly
necessary ; but the Winchester is the best gun
for any game to be found in the United
States, for it is as deadly, accurate, and

OF A RANCHMAN 61

handy as any, stands very rough usage, and
is unapproachable for the rapidity of its fire
and the facility with which it is loaded.

Of course every ranchman carries a re-
volver, a long 45 Colt or Smith & Wesson,
by preference the former. When after game
a hunting-knife is stuck in the girdle. This
should be stout and sharp, but not too long,

with a round handle. I have two double-

«

barrelled shot-guns: a No. 10 choke-bore
for ducks and geese, made by Thomas of
Chicago; and a No. 16 hammerless, built
for me by Kennedy of St. Paul, for grouse
and plover. On regular hunting trips I al-
ways carry the Winchester rifle ; but in rid-
ing round near home, where a man may see
a deer and is sure to come across ducks and
grouse, it is best to take the little ranch gun,
a double-barrel No. 16, with a 40—70 rifle
underneath the shot-gun barrels.

As for clothing, when only off on a day's
trip, the ordinary ranchman's dress is good
enough: flannel shirt, and overalls tucked
into alligator boots, the latter being of serv-

62 HUNTING TRIPS

ice against the brambles, cacti, and rattle-
snakes. Such a costume is good in warm
weather. When making a long hunting trip,
where there will be much rough work, espe-
cially in the dry cold of fall and winter,
there is nothing better than a fringed buck-
skin tunic or hunting-shirt, (held in at the
waist by the cartridge belt,) buckskin
trousers, and a fur cap, with heavy moc-
casins for use in the woods, and light alli-
gator-hide shoes if it is intended to cross
rocks and open ground. Buckskin is most
durable, keeps out wind and cold, and is the
best possible color for the hunter — no small
point in approaching game. For wet it is
not as good as flannel, and it is hot in warm
weather. On very cold days, fur gloves and
either a coon-skin overcoat or a short rid-
ing jacket of fisher's fur may be worn. In
cold weather, if travelling light with only
what can be packed behind the horse, I sleep
in a big buffalo-robe, sewed up at the sides
and one end into the form of a bag, and
very warm. When, as is sometimes the

OF A RANCHMAN 63

case, the spirit in the thermometer sinks to
—60° — 65° Fahrenheit, it is necessary to
have more wraps and bedding, and we use
beaver-robes and bear-skins. An oilskin
44 slicker " or waterproof overcoat and a pair
of shaps keep out the rain almost completly.
Where most of the hunting is done on
horseback the hunting-pony is a very im-
portant animal. Many people seem to think
that any broken-down pony will do to hunt,
but this seems to me a very great mistake.
My own hunting-horse, Manitou, is the best
and most valuable animal on the ranch. He
is stoutly built and strong, able to carry a
good-sized buck behind his rider for miles at
a lope without minding it in the least ; he is
very enduring and very hardy, not only pick-
ing up a living but even growing fat when
left to shift for himself under very hard
conditions; and he is perfectly surefooted
and as fast as any horse on the river.
Though both willing and spirited, he is very
gentle, with an easy mouth, and will stay
grazing in one spot when left, and will per-

64 HUNTING TRIPS

mit himself to be caught without difficulty.
Add to these virtues the fact that he will let
any dead beast or thing be packed on him,
and will allow a man to shoot off his back
or right by him without moving, and it is
evident that he is as nearly perfect as can
be the case with hunting-horseflesh. There
is a little sorrel mare on the ranch, a per-
fect little pet, that is almost as good, but
too small. We have some other horses we
frequently use, but all have faults. Some
of the quiet ones are slow, lazy, or tire easily ;
others are gun shy; while others plunge and
buck if we try to pack any game on their
backs. Others cannot be left standing un-
tied, as they run away; and I can imagine
few forms of exercise so soul-harrowing
as that of spending an hour or two in run-
ning, in shaps, top boots, and spurs over a
broken prairie, with the thermometer at
90°, after an escaped horse. Most of the
hunting-horses used by my friends have one
or more of these tricks, and it is rare to
find one, like Manitou, who has none of them.

OF A RANCHMAN 65

Manitou is a treasure and I value him ac-
cordingly. Besides, he is a sociable old fel-
low, and a great companion when off alone,
coming up to have his head rubbed or to
get a crust of bread, of which he is very
fond.

To be remarkably successful in killing
game a man must be a good shot; but a
good target shot may be a very poor hunter,
and a fairly successful hunter may be only
a moderate shot. Shooting well with the
rifle is the highest kind of skill, for the rifle
is the queen of weapons ; and it is a difficult
art to learn. But many other qualities go
to make up the first-class hunter. He must
be persevering, watchful, hardy, and with
good judgment ; and a little dash and energy
at the proper time often help him immensely.
I myself am not, and never will be, more
than an ordinary shot; for my eyes are bad
and my hand not over-steady; yet I have
1 every kind of game to be found on
the plains, partly because I have hunted very
perseveringly, and partly because by prac-

66 HUNTING TRIPS

tice I have learned to shoot about as well
at a wild animal as at a target. I have killed
rather more game than most of the ranch-
men who are my neighbors, though at least
half of them are better shots than I am.

Time and again I have seen a man who
had, as he deemed, practised sufficiently at
a target, come out " to kill a deer " hot with
enthusiasm; and nine out of ten times he
has gone back unsuccessful, even when deer
were quite plenty. Usually he has been told
by the friend who advised him to take the
trip, or by the guide who inveigled him into
it, that " the deer were so plenty you saw
them all round you," and, this not proving
quite true, he lacks perseverance to keep on ;
or else he fails to see the deer at the right
time ; or else if he does see it he misses it,
making the discovery that to shoot at a gray
object, not over-distinctly seen, at a dis-
tance merely guessed at, and with a back-
ground of other gray objects, is very dif-
ferent from firing into a target, brightly
painted and a fixed number of yards off.

OF A RANCHMAN 67

A man must be able to hit a bull's-eye eight
inches across every time to do good work
with deer or other game ; for the spot around
the shoulders that is fatal is not much bigger
than this; and a shot a little back of that
merely makes a wound which may in the end
prove mortal, but which will in all probabil-
ity allow the animal to escape for the time be-
ing. It takes a good shot to hit a bull's-eye
off-hand several times in succession at a
hundred yards, and if the bull's-eye was
painted the same color as the rest of the
landscape, and was at an uncertain distance,
and, moreover, was alive, and likely to take
to its heels at any moment, the difficulty
of making a good shot would be greatly en-
hanced. The man who can kill his buck
right along at a hundred yards has a right
to claim that he is a good shot. If he can
shoot off-hand standing up, that is much the
best way, but I myself always drop on one
knee, if I have time, unless the animal is
very close. It is curious to hear the non-
sense that is talked and to see the nonsense

68 HUNTING TRIPS

that is written about the distances at which
game is killed. Rifles now carry with deadly
effect the distance of a mile, and most mid-
dle-range hunting-rifles would at least kill at
half a mile ; and in war firing is often begun
at these ranges. But in war there is very
little accurate aiming, and the fact that there
is a variation of thirty or forty feet in the
flight of the ball makes no difference; and,
finally, a thousand bullets are fired for every
man that is killed — and usually many more
than a thousand. How would that serve for
a record on game? The truth is that three
hundred yards is a very long shot, and that
even two hundred yards is a long shot. On
looking over my game-book I find that the
average distance at which I have killed game
on the plains is less than a hundred and
fifty yards. A few years ago, when the buf-
falo would stand still in great herds, half a
mile from the hunter, the latter, using a
long-range Sharp's rifle, would often, by
firing a number of shots into the herd at
that distance, knock over two or three btif-

OF A RANCHMAN 69

falo; but I have hardly ever known single
animals to be killed six hundred yards off,
even in antelope hunting, tne kind in which
most long-range shooting is done; and at
half that distance a very good shot, with all
the surroundings in his favor, is more apt
to miss than to hit. Of course old hunters
— the most inveterate liars on the face of the
earth — are all the time telling of their won-
derful shots at even longer distances, and
they do occasionally, when shooting very
often, make them, but their performances,
when actually tested, dwindle amazingly.
Others, amateurs, will brag of their rifles.
I lately read in a magazine about killing an-
telopes at eight hundred yards with a Win-
chester express, a weapon which cannot be
depended upon at over two hundred, and is
wholly inaccurate at over three hundred,
yards.

The truth is that, in almost all cases the
hunter merely guesses at the distance, and,
often perfectly honestly, just about doubles
it in his ow-n mind. Once a man told me

7o HUNTING TRIPS

of an extraordinary shot by which he killed
a deer at four hundred yards. A couple of
days afterward we happened to pass the
place, and I had the curiosity to step off
the distance, finding it a trifle over a hundred
and ninety. I always make it a rule to pace
off the distance after a successful shot, when-
ever practicable — that is, when the animal
has not run too far before dropping, — and I
was at first both amused and somewhat
chagrined to see how rapidly what I had
supposed to be remarkably long shots shrank
under actual pacing. It is a good rule al-
ways to try to get as near the game as pos-
sible, and in most cases it is best to risk
startling it in the effort to get closer rather
than to risk missing it by a shot at long
range. At the same time, I am a great be-
liever in powder-burning, and if I cannot
get near, will generally try a shot anyhow,
if there is a chance of the rifle's carrying to
it. In this way a man will now and then,
in the midst of many misses, make a very
good long shot, but he should not try to

OF A RANCHMAN 71

deceive himself into the belief that these oc-
casional long shots are to be taken as sam-
ples of his ordinary skill. Yet it is curious
to see how a really truthful man will forget
his misses, and his hits at close quarters,
and, by dint of constant repetition, will fi-
nally persuade himself that he is in the habit
of killing his game at three or four hundred
yards. Of course in different kinds of
ground the average range for shooting va-
ries. In the Bad Lands most shots will be
obtained much closer than on the prairie,
and in the timber they will be nearer still.
Old hunters who are hardy, persevering,
and well acquainted with the nature of the
animals they pursue, will often kill a great
deal of game without being particularly good
marksmen; besides, they are careful to get
up close, and are not flurried at all, shooting
as well at a deer as they do at a target.
They are, as a rule, fair shots — that is, they
shoot a great deal better than Indians or
soldiers, or than the general run of Eastern
amateur sportsmen; but I have never been

?2 HUNTING TRIPS

out with one who has not missed a great
deal, and the " Leather-stocking " class of
shooting stories are generally untrue, at
least to the extent of suppressing part of the
truth — that is, the number of misses. Be-
yond question our Western hunters are, as
a body, to the full as good marksmen as,
and probably much better than, any other
body of men in the world, not even excepting
the Dutch Boers or Tyrolese Jagers, and a
certain number of them who shoot a great
deal at game, and are able to squander
cartridges very freely, undoubtedly become
crack shots, and perform really wonderful
feats. As an instance there is old " Vic,"
a former scout and Indian fighter, and con-
cededly the best hunter on the Little Mis-
souri; probably there are not a dozen men
in the West who are better shots or hunters
than he is, and I have seen him do most skil-
ful work. He can run the muzzle of his
rifle through a board so as to hide the sights,
and yet do quite good shooting at some
little distance; he will cut the head off a

OF A RANCHMAN 73

chicken at eighty or ninety yards, shoot a
deer running through brush at that distance,
kill grouse on the wing early in the season,
and knock over antelopes when they are
so far off that I should not dream of shoot-
ing. He firmly believes, and so do most men
that speak of him, that he never misses. Yet
I have known him make miss after miss at
game, and some that were not such especially
difficult shots either. One secret of his suc-
cess is his constant practice. He is firing
all the time, at marks, small birds, etc., etc.,
and will average from fifty to a hundred
cartridges a day; he certainly uses nearly
twenty thousand a year, while a man who
only shoots for sport, and that occasionally,
will, in practising at marks and every thing
else, hardly get through with five hundred.
Besides, he was cradled in the midst of wild
life, and has handled a rifle and used it
against both brute and human foes almost
since his infancy ; his nerves and sinews are
like iron, and his eye is naturally both quick
and true.

74 HUNTING TRIPS

Vic is an exception. With practice an
amateur will become nearly as good a shot
as the average hunter; and, as I said be-
fore, I do not myself believe in taking out a
professional hunter as a shooting companion.
If I do not go alone I generally go with one
of my foremen, Merrifield, who himself came
from the East but five years ago. He is a
good-looking fellow, daring and self-reliant,
a good rider and first-class shot, and a very
keen sportsman. Of late years he has been
my fidus Achates of the hunting field. I can
kill more game with him than I can alone;
and in hunting on the plains there are many
occasions on which it is almost a necessity
to have a companion along.

It frequently happens that a solitary
hunter finds himself in an awkward predica-
ment, from which he could be extricated
easily enough if there were another man
with him. His horse may fall into a wash-
out, or may get stuck in a mud-hole or
quicksand in such a manner that a man
working by himself will have great difficulty

OF A RANCHMAN 75

in getting it out ; and two heads often prove
better than one in an emergency, especially
if a man gets hurt in any way. The first
thing that a western plainsman has to learn
is the capacity for self-help, but at the same
time he must not forget that occasions may
arise when the help of others will be most
grateful.

CHAPTER II

WATERFOWL

ONE cool afternoon in the early fall,
while sitting on the veranda of the
ranchhouse, we heard a long way off the
ha-ha-honk, ha-honk, of a gang of wild
geese; and shortly afterward they came in
sight, in a V-shaped line, flying low and
heavily toward the south, along the course
of the stream. They went by within a hun-
dred yards of the house, and we watched
them for some minutes as they flew up the
valley, for they were so low in the air that it
seemed certain that they would soon alight;
and light they did when they were less than
a mile past us. As the ground was flat and
without much cover where they had settled,
I took the rifle instead of a shot-gun and
hurried after them on foot. Wild geese are

76

OF A RANCHMAN 77

very watchful and wary, and as I came
toward the place where I thought they were
1 crept along with as much caution as if the
game had been a deer. At last, peering
through a thick clump of bullberry bushes
I saw them. They were clustered on a high
sandbar in the middle of the river, which
here ran in a very wide bed between low
banks. The only way to get at them was to
crawl along the river-bed, which was partly
dry, using the patches of rushes and the
sand hillocks and drift-wood to shield my-
self from their view. As it was already late
and the sun was just sinking, I hastily re-
treated a few paces, dropped over the bank,
and began to creep along on my hands and
knees through the sand and gravel. Such
work is always tiresome, and it is especially
so when done against time. I kept in line
with a great log washed up on the shore,
which was some seventy-five yards from the
geese. On reaching it and looking over I
was annoyed to find that in the fading
light I could not distinguish the birds clearly

78 HUNTING TRIPS

enough to shoot, as the dark river bank was
behind them. I crawled quickly back a few
yards, and went off a good bit to the left into
a hollow. Peeping over the edge I could
now see the geese, gathered into a clump
with their necks held straight out, sharply
outlined against the horizon ; the sand flats
stretching out on either side, while the sky
above was barred with gray and faint crim-
son. I fired into the thickest of the bunch,
and as the rest flew off, with discordant
clamor, ran forward and picked up my vic-
tim, a fat young wild goose (or Canada
goose), the body badly torn by the bullet.

On two other occasions I have killed geese
with the rifle. Once while out riding along
the river bottoms, just at dawn, my atten-
tion was drawn to a splashing and low cack-
ling in the stream, where the water deepened
in a wide bend, which swept round a low
bluff. Leaving my horse where he was,
I walked off towards the edge of the stream,
and lying on the brink of the bank looked
over into the water of the bend. Only a

OF A RANCHMAN 79

faint streak of light was visible in the east,
so that objects on the water could hardly be
made out ; and the little wreaths of mist that
rose from the river made the difficulty even
greater. The birds were some distance
above me, where the water made a long
straight stretch through a sandy level. I
could not see them, but could plainly hear
their low murmuring and splashing, and
once one of them, as I judged by the sound,
stood up on end and flapped its wings vigor-
ously. Pretty soon a light puff of wind
blew the thin mist aside, and I caught a
glimpse of them; as I had supposed, they
were wild geese, five of them, swimming
slowly, or rather resting on the water, and
being drifted down with the current. The
fog closed over them again, but it was grow-
ing light very rapidly, and in a short time
I knew they would be in the still water of the
bend just below me, so I rose on my elbows
and held my rifle ready at the poise. In a
few minutes, before the sun was above the
horizon, but when there was plenty of light

8o HUNTING TRIPS

by which to shoot, another eddy in the wind
blew away the vapor and showed the five
geese in a cluster, some thirty yards off. I
fired at once, and one of the geese, kicking
and flapping frantically, fell over, its neck
half cut from the body, while the others,
with laborious effort, got under way. Be-
fore they could get their heavy bodies fairly
off the water and out of range, I had taken
three more shots, but missed. Waiting till
the dead goose drifted into shore, I picked
it up and tied it on the saddle of my horse
to carry home to the ranch. Being young
and fat it was excellent eating.

The third goose I killed with the rifle was
of a different kind. I had been out after
antelopes, starting before there was any
light in the heavens, and pushing straight
out towards the rolling prairie. After two
or three hours, when the sun was well up,
I neared where a creek ran in a broad, shal-
low valley. I had seen no game, and before
coming up to the crest of the divide beyond
which lay the creek bottom, I dismounted

OF A RANCHMAN 81

and crawled up to it, so as to see if any ani-
mal had come down to drink. Field glasses
are almost always carried while hunting on
the plains, as the distances at which one can
see game are so enormous. On looking over
the crest with the glasses the valley of the
creek for about a mile was stretched before
me. At my feet the low hills came closer
together than in other places, and shelved
abruptly down to the bed of the valley,
where there was a small grove of box-alders
and cotton-woods. The beavers had, in
times gone by, built a large dam at this
place across the creek, which must have pro-
duced a great back-flow and made a regular
little lake in the times of freshets But the
dam was now broken, and the beavers, or
most of them, gone, and in the place of the
lake was a long green meadow. Glancing
toward this my eye was at once caught by
a row of white objects stretched straight
across it, and another look showed me that
they were snow-geese. They were feeding,
and were moving abreast of one another

82 HUNTING TRIPS

slowly down the length of the meadow to-
wards the end nearest me, where the patch
of small trees and brushwood lay. A goose
is not as big game as an antelope; still I
had never shot a snow-goose, and we needed
fresh meat, so I slipped back over the crest
and ran down to the bed of the creek, round
a turn of the hill, where the geese were out
of sight. The creek was not an entirely dry
one, but there was no depth of water in it
except in certain deep holes; elsewhere it
was a muddy ditch with steep sides, difficult
to cross on horseback because of the quick-
sands. I walked up to the trees without any
special care, as they screened me from view,
and looked cautiously out from behind them.
The geese were acting just as our tame geese
act in feeding on a common, moving along
with their necks stretched out before them,
nibbling and jerking at the grass as they
tore it up by mouthfuls. They were very
watchful, and one or the other of them had
its head straight in the air looking sharply
round all the time. Geese will not come

OF A RANCHMAN 83

near any cover in which foes may be lurking
if they can help it, and so I feared that they
would turn before coming near enough to
the brush to give me a good shot. I there-
fore dropped into the bed of the creek,
which wound tortuously along the side of the
meadow, and crept on all fours along one
of its banks until I came to where it made a
loop out towards the middle of the bottom.
Here there was a tuft of tall grass, which
served as a good cover, and I stood upright,
dropping my hat, and looking through be-
tween the blades. The geese, still in a row,
with several yards* interval between each
one and his neighbor, were only sixty or
seventy yards off, still feeding towards me.
They came along quite slowly, and the ones
nearest, with habitual suspicion, edged away
from the scattered tufts of grass and weeds
which marked the brink of the creek. I
tried to get two in line, but could not.
There was one gander much larger than
any other bird in the lot, though not the
closest to me; as he went by just opposite

84 HUNTING TRIPS

my hiding-place, he stopped still, broadside
to me, and I aimed just at the root of the
neck — for he was near enough for any one
firing a rifle from a rest to hit him about
where he pleased. Away flew the others,
and in a few minutes I was riding along
with the white gander dangling behind my
saddle.

The beaver meadows spoken of above are
not common, but, until within the last two
or three years, beavers themselves were very
plentiful, and there are still a good many
left. Although only settled for so short a
period, the land has been known to hunt-
ers for half a century, and throughout that
time it has at intervals been trapped over
by whites or half-breeds. If fur was high
and the Indians peaceful quite a number of
trappers would come in, for the Little Mis-
souri Bad Lands were always famous both
for fur and game; then if fur went down,
or an Indian war broke out, or if the beaver
got pretty well thinned out, the place would
be forsaken and the animals would go un-

OF A RANCHMAN 85

molested for perhaps a dozen years, when
the process would be repeated. But the in-
coming of the settlers and the driving out
of the Indians have left the ground clear for
the trappers to work over unintermittently,
and the extinction of the beaver throughout
the plains country is a question of but a short
time. Excepting an occasional otter or
mink, or a few musk-rats, it is the only fur-
bearing animal followed by the western
plains trapper; and its large size and the
marked peculiarities of its habits, together
with the accessibility of its haunts on the
plains, as compared with its haunts in the
deep woods and mountains, render its pur-
suit and capture comparatively easy. We
have trapped (or occasionally shot) on the
ranch during the past three years several
score beaver ; the fur is paler and less valua-
ble than in the forest animal. Those that
live in the river do not build dams all across
it, but merely extending up some distance
against the current, so as to make a deep
pool or eddy, beside which are the burrows

86 HUNTING TRIPS

and houses. It would seem to be a simple
feat to break into a beaver house, but in re-
ality it needs no little toil with both spade
and axe, for the house has very thick roof
and walls, made of clay and tough branches,
twisted together into a perfect mat, which,
when frozen, can withstand any thing but
the sharpest and best of tools. At evening
beaver often come out to swim, and by
waiting on the plank perfectly quietly for
an hour or so a close shot can frequently be
obtained.

Beaver are often found in the creeks, not
only in those which always contain running
water, but also in the dry ones. Here they
build dams clean across, making ponds which
always contain water, even if the rest of
the bed is almost dry; and I have often
been surprised to find fresh traces of beaver
in a pond but a few feet across, a mile away
from any other body of water. On one oc-
casion I was deer-hunting in a rough,
broken country, which was little more than

OF A RANCHMAN 87

a tangle of ravines and clefts, with very
steep sides rising into sharp hills. The sides
of the ravines were quite densely over-
grown with underbrush and young trees,
and through one or two of them ran, or
rather trickled, srnall streams, but an inch
or two in depth, and often less. Directly
across one of these ravines, at its narrow-
est and steepest part, the beaver had built
an immense, massive dam, completely stop-
ping the course of a little brooklet. The
dam was certainly eight feet high, and strong
enough and broad enough to cross on horse-
back ; and it had turned back the stream until
a large pond, almost a little lake, had been
formed by it. This was miles from any other
body of water, but, judging from the traces
of their work, it had once held a large colony
of beavers ; when I saw it they had all been
trapped out, and the pond had been deserted
for a year and over. Though clumsy on dry
ground, and fearing much to be caught upon
it. yet beaver can make, if necessary, quite

88 HUNTING TRIPS

long overland journeys, and that at a speed
with which it will give a man trouble to keep
up.

As there are few fish in the plains streams,
otters are naturally not at all common,
though occasionally we get one. Musk-rats
are quite plenty in all the pools of water.
Sometimes a little pool out on the prairie
will show along its edges numerous traces
of animal life; for, though of small extent,
and a long distance from other water, it
may be the home of beavers and musk-rats,
the breeding-place of different kinds of
ducks, and the drinking-place for the deni-
zens of the dry country roundabouts, such
as wolves, antelopes, and badgers.

Although the plains country is in most
places very dry, yet there are here and there
patches of prairie land where the reverse
is true. One such is some thirty miles dis-
tant from my ranch. The ground is gently
rolling, in some places almost level, and is
crossed by two or three sluggish, winding

OF A RANCHMAN 89

creeks, with many branches, always holding
T, and swelling out into small pools and
lakelets wherever there is a hollow. The
prairie round about is wet, at times almost
marshy, especially at the borders of the
great reedy slews. These pools and slews
are favorite breeding-places for water-fowl,
especially for mallard, and a good bag can
be made at them in the fall, both among the

0

young flappers (as tender and delicious
birds for the table as any I know), and
among the flights of wild duck that make the
region a stopping-place on their southern mi-
gration. In these small pools, with little
cover round the edges, the poor flappers are
at a great disadvantage ; we never shoot them
unless we really need them for the table.
But quite often, in August or September,
if near the place, I have gone down to visit
one or two of the pools, and have bn
home half a dozen flappers, killed with the
rifle if I had been out after large game, or
v.ith the revolver if I had merely been among

90 HUNTING TRIPS

the cattle, — each duck, in the latter case,
representing the expenditure of a vast num-
ber of cartridges.

Later in the fall, when the young ducks
are grown and the flocks are coming in from
the north, fair shooting may be had by ly-
ing in the rushes on the edge of some large
pond, and waiting for the evening flight of
the birds ; or else by taking a station on some
spot of low ground across which the ducks
fly in passing from one sheet of water to
another. Frequently quite a bag of mal-
lard, widgeon, and pintail can be made in
this manner, although nowhere in the Bad
Lands is there any such duck-shooting as is
found farther east. Ducks are not very easy
to kill, or even to hit, when they fly past.
My duck gun, the No. 10 choke-bore, is
a very strong and close shooting piece, and
such a one is needed when the strong-flying
birds are at any distance ; but the very fact
of its shooting so close makes it necessary
that the aim should be very true; and as a
consequence my shooting at ducks has varied

OF A RANCHMAN 91

from bad to indifferent, and my bags have
been always small.

Once I made an unusually successful right
and left, however. In late summer and early
fall large flocks of both green-winged and
blue-winged teal are often seen both on the
ponds and on the river, flying up and down
the latter. On one occasion while out with
the wagon we halted for the mid-day meal
on the bank of the river. Travelling across
the plains in company with a wagon, espec-
ially if making a long trip, as we were then
doing, is both tiresome and monotonous.
The scenery through the places where the
wagon must go is everywhere much the
same, and the pace is very slow. At lunch-
time I was glad to get off the horse, which
had been plodding along at a walk for hours,
and stretch my muscles; and, noticing a
bunch of teal fly past and round a bend in the
river, I seized the chance for a little diver-
sion, and taking my double-barrel, followed
them on foot. The banks were five or six
feet high, edged with a thick growth of

92 HUNTING TRIPS

cotton-wood saplings ; so the chance to creep
up was very good. On getting round the
bend I poked my head through the bushes,
and saw that the little bunch I was after
had joined a great flock of teal, which was
on a sand bar in the middle of the stream.
They were all huddled together, some stand-
ing on the bar, and others in the water right
by it, and I aimed for the thickest part of
the flock. At the report they sprang into
the air, and I leaped to my feet to give them
the second barrel, when, from under the bank
right beneath me, two shoveller or spoon-bill
ducks rose, with great quacking, and, as they
were right in line, I took them instead,
knocking both over. When I had fished out
the two shovellers, I waded over to the sand
bar and picked up eleven teal, making thir-
teen ducks with the two barrels.

On one occasion my brother and myself
made a short wagon trip in the level, fertile,
farming country, whose western edge lies
many miles to the east of the Bad Lands
around my ranch. There the land was al-

OF A RANCHMAN 93

ready partially settled by farmers, and we
had one or two days' quite fair duck-shoot-
ing. It was a rolling country of mixed
prairie land and rounded hills, with small
groves of trees and numerous little lakes
in the hollows. The surface of the natural
prairie was broken in places by great wheat
fields, and when we were there the grain was
gathered in sheaves and stacks among the
stubble. At night-time we either put up at
the house of some settler, or, if there were
none round, camped out.

One night we had gone into camp among
the dense timber fringing a small river, which
wound through the prairie in a deep narrow
bed with steep banks. Until people have ac-
tually camped out themselves it is difficult
for them to realize how much work there is
in making or breaking camp. But it is very
quickly done if every man has his duties as-
signed to him and starts about doing them
at once. In choosing camp there are three
essentials to be looked to — wood, water, and
grass. The last is found everywhere in the

94 HUNTING TRIPS

eastern prairie land, where we were on our
duck-shooting trip, but in many places on
the great dry plains farther west, it is either
very scanty or altogether lacking ; and I have
at times been forced to travel half a score
miles farther than I wished to get feed for the
horses. Water, again, is a commodity not by
any means to be found everywhere on the
plains. If the country is known and the
journeys timed aright, water can easily be
had, at least at the night camps, for on a
pinch a wagon can be pushed along thirty
miles or so at a stretch, giving the tough
ponies merely a couple of hours' rest and
feed at mid-day; but in going through an
unknown country it has been my misfortune
on more than one occasion to make a dry
camp — that is, one without any water either
for men or horses, and such camps are most
uncomfortable. The thirst seems to be most
annoying just after sundown; after one has
gotten to sleep and the air has become cool,
he is not troubled much by it again until
within two or three hours of noon next day,

OF A RANCHMAN

95

when the chances are that he will have
reached water, for of course by that time he
will have made a desperate push to get to it.
When found, it is more than likely to be bad,
IK ing either from a bitter alkaline pool, or
from a hole in a creek, so muddy that it can
only be called liquid by courtesy. On the
great plains wood is even scarcer, and at
least half the time the only material from
which to make a fire will be buffalo chips'
and sage brush ; the long roots of the latter
if dug up make a very hot blaze. Of course
when wood is so scarce the fire is a small
one, used merely to cook by, and is not kept
up after the cooking is over.

When a place with grass, wood, and water
is found, the wagon is driven up to the wind-
ward side of where the beds are to be laid,
and the horses are unhitched, watered, and
turned out to graze freely until bedtime,
when a certain number of them are picketed
or hobbled. If danger from white or red
horse-thieves is feared, a guard is kept over
them all night. The ground is cleared of

96 HUNTING TRIPS

stones and cacti where the beds are to be
placed, and the blankets and robes spread.
Generally we have no tent, and the wagon-
cover is spread over all to keep out rain.
Meanwhile some one gathers the wood and
starts a fire. The coffee-pot is set among the
coals, and the frying-pan with bacon and
whatever game has been shot is placed on
top. Like Eastern backwoodsmen, all plains-
* men fry about every thing they can get hold
of to cook ; for my own use I always have a
broiler carried along in the wagon. One
evening in every three or four is employed
in baking bread in the Dutch oven ; if there
is no time for this, biscuits are made in the
fryingpan. The food carried along is very
simple, consisting of bacon, flour, coffee,
sugar, baking-powder, and salt; for all else
we depend on our guns. On a long trip ev-
ery old hand carries a water-proof canvas
bag, containing his few spare clothes and
necessaries ; on a short trip a little oilskin one,
for the tooth-brush, soap, towel, etc., will
do.

OF A RANCHMAN 97

On the evening in question our camping-
ground was an excellent one; we had no
trouble about any thing, except that we had
to bring water to the horses in pails, for the
banks were too steep and rotten to get them
down to the river. The beds were made
under a great elm, and in a short time the
fire was roaring in front of them, while the
tender grouse were being roasted on pointed
sticks. One of the pleasantest times of camp-
ing out is the period immediately after sup-
per, when the hunters lie in the blaze of the
firelight, talking over what they have done
during the day .and making their plans for
the morrow. And how soundly a man who
has worked hard sleeps in the open, none but
he who has tried it knows.

Before we had risen in the morning, when
the blackness of the night had barely changed
to gray, we were roused by the whistle of
wings, as a flock of ducks flew by along
the course of the stream, and lit in the water
just above the camp. Some kinds of ducks
in li^luin** strike the water with their tails

98 HUNTING TRIPS

first, and skitter along the surface for a few
feet before settling down. Lying in our
blankets we could plainly hear all the mo-
tions: first of all, the whistle — whistle of
their wings ; then a long-drawn splash-h-h
— plump; and then a low, conversational
quacking. It was too dark to shoot, but we
got up and ready, and strolled down along
the brink of the river opposite where we
could hear them; and as soon as we could
see we gave them four barrels and picked up
half a dozen scaup-ducks. Breakfast was
not yet ready, and we took a turn out on the
prairie before coming back tQ the wagon. In
a small pool, down in a hollow, were a couple
of little dipper ducks or buffie-heads ; they
rose slowly against the wind, and offered
such fair marks that it was out of the ques-
tion to miss them.

The evening before we had lain among
the reeds near a marshy lake and had killed
quite a number of ducks, mostly widgeon
and teal; and this morning we intended to
try shooting among the cornfields. By sun-

OF A RANCHMAN 99

rise c a good distance off, on a high

ridge, across which we had noticed that the

s flew in crossing from one set of lakes
to another. The flight had already begun,
and our arrival scared off the birds for the
time being; but in a little while, after we
had hidden among the sheaves, stacking the
straw up around us, the ducks began to come
back, either flying over in their passage from
the water, or else intending to light and feed.
They were for the most part mallards, which
are the commonest of the Western ducks,
and the only species customarily killed in this

of shooting. They are especially fond
of the corn, of which there was a small patch
in the grain field. To this flocks came again
and again, and fast though they flew we
got many before they left the place, scared
by the shooting. Those that were merely
passing from one point to another flew low,
and among them we shot a couple of gad-
wall, and also knocked over a red-head from
a little bunch that went by, their squat,
chunky forms giving them a very different

ioo HUNTING TRIPS

look from the longer, lighter-built mallard.
The mallards that came to feed flew high in
the air, wheeling round in gradually lower-
ing circles when they had reached the spot
where they intended to light. In shooting
in the grain fields there is usually plenty of
time to aim, a snap shot being from the na-
ture of the sport exceptional. Care must be
taken to He quiet until the ducks are near
enough; shots are most often lost through
shooting too soon. Heavy guns with heavy
loads are necessary, for the ducks are gener-
ally killed at long range ; and both from this
circumstance as well as from the rapidity of
their flight, it is imperative to hold well ahead
of the bird fired at. It has one advantage
over shooting in a marsh, and that is that a
wounded bird which drops is of course
hardly ever lost. Corn- fed mallards are most
delicious eating; they rank on a par with
teal and red-head, and second only to the
canvas-back — a bird, by the way, of which
I have never killed but one or two individuals
in the West.

OF A RANCHMAN 101

In going out of this jt a shot at

a gang of wild geese. We saw them a long
way off, coming straight toward us in a
head and tail line. Down we dropped, flat on
our faces, remaining perfectly still without
even looking up (for wild geese are quick
to catch the slightest motion) until the sound
of the heavy wing strokes and the honking
seemed directly overhead. Then we rose on
our knees and fired all four barrels, into
which we had slipped buckshot cartridges.
They were away up in the air, much beyond
an ordinary gunshot ; and we looked regret-
fully after them as they flew off. Pretty
soon one lagged a little behind; his wings
beat slower ; suddenly his long neck dropped,
and he came down like a stone, one of the
buckshot having gone dean through his
breast.

We had a long distance to make that day,

and after leaving the grain fields travelled

pretty steadily, only getting out of the wagon

or twice after prairie chickens. At

lunch time we halted near a group of small

102 HUNTING TRIPS

ponds and reedy -sloughs. In these were
quite a number of teal and wood-duck,
which were lying singly, in pairs, or small
bunches, on the edges of the reeds, or where
there were thick clusters of lily pads ; and we
had half an hour's good sport in " jump-
ing" these little ducks, moving cautiously
along the margin of the reeds, keeping as
much as possible concealed from view, and
shooting four teal and a wood-duck, as,
frightened at our near approach, they sprang
into the air and made off. Late in the
evening, while we were passing over a nar-
row neck of land that divided two small
lakes, with reedy shores, from each other,
a large flock of the usually shy pintail duck
passed over us at close range, and we killed
two from the wagon, making in all a bag
of twenty-one and a half couple of water-
fowl during the day, two thirds falling to
my brother's gun. Of course, this is a very
small bag indeed compared to those made
in the Chesapeake, or in Wisconsin and the
Mississippi valley; but the day was so per-

OF A RANCHMAN

and there were so many varieties of
shooting, that I question if any bag, no
matter how large, ever gave much more
pleasure to the successful sportsman than did
our forty-three ducks to us.

Though ducks fly so fast, and need such
good shooting to kill them, yet their rate of
speed, as compared to that of other birds,
is not so great as is commonly supposed.
Hawks, for instance, are faster. Once, on the
prairie, I saw a mallard singled out of a flock,
fairly overtaken, and struck down, by a
large, light-colored hawk, which I supposed
to be a lanner, or at any rate one of the long-
winged falcons ; and I saw a duck hawk, on
the coast of Long Island, perform a similar
feat with the swift-flying long-tailed duck
— the old squaw, or sou'-sou'-southerly, of
the baymen. A more curious instance was
related to me by a friend. He was out along
a river, shooting ducks as they flew by him,
and had noticed a bald eagle perched
on the top of a dead tree some distance from
him. While looking at it a little bunch of

104 HUNTING TRIPS

teal flew swiftly by, and to his astonishment
the eagle made after them. The little ducks
went along like bullets, their wings work-
ing so fast that they whistled; flop, flop
came the great eagle after them, with la-
bored-looking flight; and yet he actually
gained so rapidly on his seemingly fleeter
quarry that he was almost up to them when
opposite my friend. Then the five teal went
down headlong into the water, diving like
so many shot. The eagle kept hovering over
the spot, thrusting with its claws at each lit-
tle duck as it came up; but he was unsuc-
cessful, all of the teal eventually getting into
the reeds, where they were safe. In the
East, by the way, I have seen the same trick
of hovering over the water where a flock of
ducks had disappeared, performed by a
Cooper's hawk. He had stooped at some
nearly grown flappers of the black duck ; they
all went under water, and he remained just
above, grasping at any one that appeared,
and forcing them to go under without get-
ting a chance to breathe. Soon he had

OF A RANCHMAN 105

singled out one, when kept down a shorter
and shorter time at each dive ; it soon grew
exhausted, was a little too slow in taking a
dive, and was grasped in the claws of its
foe.

In duck-shooting where there are reeds,
grass and water-lilies the cripples should be
killed at once, even at the cost of burning
some additional powder, many kinds of wa-
terfowl being very expert at diving. Others,
as widgeon, shoveller, and teal, do not dive,
merely trying to hide in some hole in the
bank ; and these are generally birds that fall
to the touch of shot much more easily than
is the case with their tougher relatives.

There are two or three species of birds
tolerably common over the plains which we
do not often regularly hunt, but which are
occasionally shot for the table. These are
the curlew, the upland or grass plover, and
the golden plover. All three kinds belong to
the family of what are called wading birds ;
but with us it is rare to see any one of them
near water.

io6 HUNTING TRIPS

The curlew is the most conspicuous; in-
deed its loud, incessant clamor, its erect car-
riage, and the intense curiosity which pos-
sesses it, and which makes it come up to
circle around any strange object, all com-
bine to make it in springtime one of the most
conspicuous features of plains life. At that
time curlews are seen in pairs or small par-
ties, keeping to the prairies and grassy up-
lands. They are never silent, and their dis-
cordant noise can be heard half a mile off.
Whenever they discover a wagon or a man
on horseback, they fly toward him, though
usually taking good care to keep out of gun-
shot. They then fly over and round the ob-
ject, calling all the time, and sometimes go-
ing off to one side, where they will light and
run rapidly through the grass; and in this
manner they will sometimes accompany a
hunter or traveller for miles, scaring off all
game. By the end of July or August they
have reared their young; they then go in
small flocks, are comparatively silent, and
are very good eating. I have never made a

OF A RANCHMAN 107

practice of shooting them, though I have
fired at them sometimes with the rifle, and
iis way have now and then killed one;
twice I have hit them on the wing with this
weapon, while they were soaring slowly
about above me, occasionally passing pretty
near.

The grass plover is found in the same
places as the curlew, and like it breeds with
us. Its flesh is just as good, and it has
somewhat the same habits ; but is less wary,
noisy, and inquisitive. The golden plover is
only found during the migrations, when
large flocks may sometimes be seen. They
delicious eating; the only ones I have
ever shot have been killed with the little
ranch gun, when riding round the ranch, or
travelling from one point to another.

Like the grouse, and other ground-nest-
ing birds, the curlews and plovers during
breeding-time have for their chief foes the
coyotes, badgers, skunks, and other flesh-
eating prowlers ; and as all these are greatly
thinned off by the cattle-men, with their

io8 HUNTING TRIPS

fire-arms and their infinitely more deadly
poison, the partial and light settlement of
the country that accompanies the cattle in-
dustry has had the effiect of making all these
birds more plentiful than before; and most
unlike the large game, game birds bid fair
to increase in numbers during the next few
years.

The skunks are a nuisance in more ways
than one. They are stupid, familiar beasts,
with a great predilection for visiting camps,
and the shacks or huts of the settlers, to pick
up any scraps of meat that may be lying
round. I have time and again known a
skunk to actually spend several hours of the
night in perseveringly digging a hole under-
neath the logs of a hut, so as to get inside
among the inmates. The animal then hunts
about among them, and of course no one
will willingly molest it ; and it has often been
known to deliberately settle down upon and
begin to eat one of the sleepers. The
strange and terrible thing about these at-
tacks is that in certain districts and at cer-

OP A RANCHMAN

109

tain times the bite of the skunk is surely
fatal, producing hydrophobia; and many
cowmen, soldiers, and hunters have annu-
ally died from this cause. There is no wild
beast in the West, no matter what its size
ami ferocity, so dreaded by old plainsmen
as this seemingly harmless little beast.

I remember one rather ludicrous incident
connected with a skunk. A number of us,
among whom was a huge, happy-go-lucky
Scotchman, who went by the name of
Sandy, were sleeping in a hut, when a skunk
burrowed under the logs and got in. Hear-
ing it moving about among the tin pans
Sandy struck a light, was much taken by
the familiarity of the pretty black and white
little animal, and, as it seemed in his eyes a
curiosity, took a shot at it with his revolver.
He missed ; the skunk, for a wonder, retired
promptly without taking any notice of the
attack ; and the rest of the alarmed sleepers,
when informed of the cause of the shot,
cursed the Scotchman up hill and down dale
for having so nearly brought dire confusion

no HUNTING TRIPS

on them all. The latter took the abuse very
philosophically, merely remarking: "I'm
glad a did na kill him myseF; he seemed
such a dacent wee beastie." The sequel
proved that neither the skunk nor Sandy
had learned any wisdom by the encounter,
for half an hour later the " dacent wee
beastie " came back, and this time Sandy
fired at him with fatal effect. Of course
the result was a frantic rush of all hands
from the hut, Sandy exclaiming with late
but sincere repentance : " A did na ken 't
wad cause such a tragadee."

Besides curlew and plover there are at
times, especially during the migrations, a
number of species of other waders to be
found along the streams and pools in the
cattle region. Yellowlegs, yelper, willet,
marlin, dough bird, stilt, and avocet are
often common, but they do not begin to be
as plentiful as they are in the more fertile
lands to the eastward, and the ranchmen
never shoot at them or follow them as game
birds.

OF A RANCHMAN 1 1 1

A more curious bird than any of these is
the plains plover, which avoids the water
and seems to prefer the barren plateaus and
almost desert-like reaches of sage-brush and
alkali. Plains plovers are pretty birds, and
not at all shy. In fall they are fat and good
eating, but they are not plentiful enough to
be worth goin^ after. Sometimes they are
to be seen in the most seemingly unlikely
places for a wader to be. Last spring one
pair nested in a broken piece of Bad Lands
near my ranch, where the ground is riven
and twisted into abrupt, steep crests and
deep canyons. The soil is seemingly wholly
unfitted to support bird life, as it is almost
bare of vegetation, being covered with fossil
plants, shells, fishes, etc. — all of which ob-
jects, by the way, the frontiersman, who is
much given to broad generalization, groups
together under the startling title of " stone
clams."

CHAPTER III

THE GROUSE OF THE

NORTHERN CATTLE

PLAINS

TO my mind there is no comparison be-
tween sport with the rifle and sport
with the shot-gun. The rifle is the free-
man's weapon. The man who uses it well
in the chase shows that he can at need use
it also in war with human foes. I would no
more compare the feat of one who bags his
score of ducks or quail with that of him who
fairly hunts down and slays a buck or bear,
than I would compare the skill necessary to
drive a buggy with that required to ride a
horse across country; or the dexterity ac-
quired in handling a billiard cue with that
shown by a skilful boxer or oarsman. The
difference is not one of degree; it is one of

kind.

112

OF A RANCHMAN i 1 3

I am far from decrying the shot-gun. It
is always pleasant as a change from the rifle,
and in the Eastern States it is almost the
only fire-arm which we now have a chance
to use. But out in the cattle country it is
the rifle that is always carried by the ranch-
man who cares for sport. Large game is
still that which is sought after, and most
of the birds killed are either simply slaugh-
tered for the pot, or else shot for the sake of
variety, while really after deer or antelope ;
though every now and then I have taken a
day with the shot-gun after nothing else
but prairie fowl.

The sharp-tailed prairie fowl is much the
most plentiful of the feathered game to be
found on the northern cattle plains, where
it replaces the common prairie chicken so
abundant on the prairies to the east and
southeast of the range of our birds. In
habits it is much like the latter, being one
of the grouse which keep to the open, tree-
less tracts, though it is far less averse to
timber than is its nearest relative, and often

ii4 HUNTING TRIPS

is found among the cotton-wood trees and
thick brush which fringe the streams. I
have never noticed that its habits when pur-
sued differ much from those of the common
prairie chicken, though it is perhaps a little
more shy, and is certainly much more apt
to light on a tree like the ruffed grouse. It
is, however, essentially a bird of the wilds,
and it is a curious fact that it seems to re-
treat before civilization, continually moving
westward as the wheat fields advance, while
its place is taken by the common form,
which seems to keep pace with the settle-
ment of the country. Like the latter bird,
and unlike the ruffed grouse and blue
grouse, which have white meat, its flesh is
dark, and it is very good eating from about
the middle of August to the middle of No-
vember, after which it is a little tough.

As already said, the ranchmen do not
often make a regular hunt after these
grouse. This is partly because most of them
look with something akin to contempt upon
any fire-arm but the rifle or revolver, and

OF A RANCHMAN 115

partly because it is next to impossible to
keep hunting-dogs very long on the plains.
The only way to check in any degree the
ravages of the wolves is by the most liberal
use of strychnine, and the offal of any game
killed by a cattle-man is pretty sure to be
poisoned before being left, while the
" wolfer/' or professional wolf-killer strews
his bait everywhere. It thus comes about
that any dog who is in the habit of going
any distance from the house is almost sure
to run across and eat some of the poisoned
meat, the effect of which is certain death.
The only time I have ever shot sharp-tailed
prairie fowl over dogs was during a trip to
the eastward with my brother, which will be
described further on. Out on the plains
I have occasionally taken a morning with
the shot-gun after them, but more often
have either simply butchered them for the
pot, when out of meat, or else have killed a
few with the rifle when I happened to come
across them while after deer or antelope.
Occasions frequently arise, in living a

n6 HUNTING TRIPS

more or less wild life, when a man has to
show his skill in shifting for himself ; when,
for instance, he has to go out and make a
foray upon the grouse, neither for sport,
nor yet for a change of diet, but actually
for food. Under such circumstances he of
course pays no regard to the rules of sport
which would govern his conduct on other
occasions. If a man's dinner for several
consecutive days depends upon a single shot,
he is a fool if he does not take every ad-
vantage he can. I remember, for instance,
one time when we were travelling along the
valley of the Powder River, and got entirely
out of fresh meat, owing to my making a
succession of ludicrously bad misses at deer.
Having had my faith in my capacity to kill
any thing whatever with the rifle a good
deal shaken, I started off one morning on
horseback with the shot-gun. Until nearly
noon I saw nothing; then, while riding
through a barren-looking bottom, I hap-
pened to spy some prairie fowl squatting

OF A RANCHMAN 117

close to the ground underneath a sage-brush.
It v. as some minutes before I could make
out what they were, they kept so low and so
quiet, and their color harmonized so well
with their surroundings. Finally I was con-
vinced that they were grouse, and rode my
horse slowly by them. When opposite, I
reigned him in and fired, killing the whole
hunch of five birds. Another time at the
ranch our supply of fresh meat gave out
entirely, and I sallied forth with the ranch
gun, intent, not on sport, but on slaughter.
It was late fall, and as I rode along in the
dawn (for the sun was not up) a small pack
of prairie fowl passed over my head and lit
on a dead tree that stood out some little dis-
tance from a grove of cotton-woods. They
paid little attention to me, but they are so
shy at that season that I did not dare to try
to approach them on foot, but let the horse
jog on at the regular cow-pony gait — a kind
of single-foot pace, between a walk and a
trot, — and as I passed by fired into the tree

n8 HUNTING TRIPS

and killed four birds. Now, of course I
would not have dreamed of taking either of
these shots had I been out purely for sport,
and neither needed any more skill than
would be shown in killing hens in a barn-
yard ; but, after all, when one is hunting for
one's dinner he takes an interest in his suc-
cess which he would otherwise lack, and on
both occasions I felt a most unsportsman-
like glee when I found how many I had pot-
ted.

The habits of this prairie fowl vary
greatly at different seasons of the year. It
is found pretty much everywhere within
moderate distance of water, for it does not
frequent the perfectly dry wastes where we
find the great sage cock. But it is equally
at home on the level prairie and among the
steep hills of the Bad Lands. When on the
ground it has rather a comical look, for it
stands very high on its legs, carries its sharp
little tail cocked up like a wren's and when
startled stretches its neck out straight; al-

OF A RANCHMAN

together it gives one the impression of being
a very angular bird. Of course it crouches,
and moves about when feeding, like any
other grouse.

One of the strangest, and to me one of the
most attractive, sounds of the prairie is the
hollow booming made by the cocks in
spring. Before the snow has left the ground
they begin, and at the break of morning their
deep resonant calls sound from far and near,
for in still weather they can be heard at an
immense distance. I hardly know how to
describe the call; indeed it cannot be de-
scribed in words. It has a hollow, vibrant
sound like that of some wind instrument,
and would hardly be recognized as a bird
note at all. I have heard it at evening, but
more often shortly after dawn; and I have
often stopped and listened to it for many
minutes, for it is as strange and weird a
form of natural music as any I know. At
the time of the year when they utter these
notes the cocks gather together in certain

120 HUNTING TRIPS

places and hold dancing rings, posturing
and strutting about as they face and pass
each other.

The nest is generally placed in a tuft of
grass or under a sage-brush in the open, but
occasionally in the brush wood near a
stream. The chicks are pretty little balls of
mottled brown and yellow down. The
mother takes great care of them, leading
them generally into some patch of brush
wood, but often keeping them out in the deep
grass. Frequently when out among the cat-
tle I have ridden my horse almost over a
hen with a brood of chicks. The little chicks
first attempt to run off in single file ; if dis-
covered they scatter and squat down under
clods of earth or tufts of grass. Holding
one in my hand near my pocket it scuttled
into it like a flash. The mother, when she
sees her brood discovered, tumbles about
through the grass as if wounded, in the ef-
fort to decoy the foe after her. If she is
successful in this, she takes a series of short
flights, keeping just out of reach of her

OF A RANCHMAN 121

pursuer, and when the latter has been lured
far enough from the chicks the hen rises
and flies off at a humming speed.

By the middle of August the young are
well enough grown to shoot, and are then
most delicious eating. Different coveys at
this time vary greatly in their behavior if
surprised feeding in the open. Sometimes
they will not permit of a very close approach,
and will fly off after one or two have been
shot; while again they will show perfect
indifference to the approach of man, and
will allow the latter to knock off the heads
of five or six with his rifle before the rest
take the alarm and fly off. They now go
more or less all over the open ground, but
are especially fond of frequenting the long
grass in the bottoms of the coulies and ra-
vines and the dense brush along the edges
of the creeks and in the valleys ; there they
will invariably be found at mid-day, and will
lie till they are almost trodden on before
rising.

Late in the month of August one year

122 HUNTING TRIPS

we had been close-herding a small bunch of
young cattle on a bottom about a mile square,
walled in by bluffs, and with, as an inlet, a
long, dry creek running back many miles
into the Bad Lands, where it branched out
into innumerable smaller creeks and coulies.
We wished to get the cattle accustomed to
the locality, for animals are more apt to
stray when first brought on new ground
than at any later period ; so each night we
" bedded " them on the level bottom — that
is, gathering them together on the plain, one
of us would ride slowly and quietly round
and round the herd, heading off and turning
back into it all beasts that tried to stray off,
but carefully avoiding disturbing them or
making any unusual noise; and by degrees
they would all lie down, close together.
This " bedding down " is always done when
travelling with a large herd, when, of course,
it needs several cowboys to do it ; and in such
cases some of the cowboys keep guard all
the time, walking their horses round the
herd, and singing and calling to the cattle

OF A RANCHMAN

all night long. The cattle seem to like to
hear the human voice, and it tends to keep
them quiet and free from panic. Often \
camping near some great cattle outfit I have
lain awake at night for an hour or over lis-
tening to the wild, not unmusical, calls of
the cowboys as they rode round the half-
slumbering steers. In the clear, still night
air the calls can be heard for a mile and
more, and I like to listen to them as they
come through the darkness, half mellowed
by the distance, for they are one of the
characteristic sounds of plains life. Texan
steers often give considerable trouble before
they can be bedded, and are prone to stam-
pede, especially in a thunder-storm. But
with the little herd we were at this time
guarding there was no difficulty whatever,
the animals being grade shorthorns of East-
ern origin. After seeing them quiet we
would leave them for the night, again riding
out early in the morning.

On every occasion when we thus rode out
in the morning we saw great numbers of

i24 HUNTING TRIPS

prairie fowl feeding in the open plain in
small flocks, each evidently composed of a
hen and her grown brood. They would
often be right round the cattle, and went
indifferently among the sage-brush or out
on the short prairie grass. They flew into
the bottom from some distance off about
daybreak, fed for a couple of hours, and
soon after sunrise again took wing and
flew up along the course of the dry creek
mentioned above. While on the bottom they
were generally quite shy, not permitting any
thing like a close approach before taking
wing. Their habit of crowing or clucking
while flying off is very noticeable; it is, by
the way, a most strongly characteristic trait
of this species. I have been especially struck
by it when shooting in Minnesota, where
both the sharp-tail and the common prairie
fowl are found; the contrast between the
noisiness of one bird and the quiet of the
other was very marked. If one of us ap-
proached a covey on horseback the birds
would, if they thought they were unob-

'OF A RANCHMAN 125

served, squat down close to the ground;
more often they would stand very erect, and
walk off. If we came too close to one it
would utter a loud kuk-kuk-kuk, and be off,
at every few strokes of its wings repeating
the sound — a kind of crowing cluck. This
is the note they utter when alarmed, or when
calling to one another. When a flock are
together and undisturbed they keep up a
sociable garrulous cackling.

Every morning by the time the sun had
been up a little while the grouse had all gone
from the bottom, but later in the day while
riding along the creek among the cattle we
often stumbled upon little flocks. We fired
at them with our revolvers whenever we
were close enough, but the amount we got in
this way was very limited, and as we were
rather stinted for fresh meat, the cattle tak-
ing up so much of our time as to prevent our
going after deer, I made up my mind to
devote a morning to hunting up the creeks
and coulies for grouse, with the shot-gun.

Accordingly the next morning I started,

126 HUNTING TRIPS

just about the time the last of the flocks were
flying away from their feeding-ground on
the bottom. I trudged along on foot, not
wanting to be bothered by a horse. The air
was fresh and cool, though the cloudless sky
boded a hot noon. As I walked by the cat-
tle they stopped grazing and looked curi-
ously at me, for they were unused to seeing
any man not on horseback. But they did
not offer to molest me ; Texan or even north-
ern steers bred on the more remote ranges
will often follow and threaten a footman for
miles. While passing among the cattle it
was amusing to see the actions of the little
cow buntings. They were very familiar lit-
tle birds, lighting on the backs of the beasts,
and keeping fluttering round their heads as
they walked through the grass, hopping up
into the air all the time. At first I could
not make out what they were doing ; but on
watching them closely saw that they were
catching the grasshoppers and moths which
flew into the air to avoid the cattle's hoofs.
They are as tame with horsemen ; while rid-

OF A RANCHMAN 127

ing through a patch of tall grass a flock of
huntings will often keep circling within a
couple of yards of the horse's head, seizing
the insects as they fly up before him.

The valley through which the creek ran
was quite wide, bordered by low buttes.
After a heavy rainfall the water rushes
through the at other times dry bed in a foam-
ing torrent, and it thus cuts it down into a
canyon-like shape, making it a deep, wind-
ing, narrow ditch, with steep sides. Along
the edges of this ditch were dense patches,
often quite large, of rose-bushes, bullberry
bushes, ash, and wild cherry, making almost
impenetrable thickets, generally not over
breast high. In the bottom of the valley,
along the edges of the stream bed, the grass
was long and coarse, entirely different from
the short fine bunch grass a little farther
back, the favorite food of the cattle.

Almost as soon as I had entered the creek,
in walking through a small patch of brush
I put up an old cock, as strong a flyer as the
general run of October birds. Off he went,

I28 HUNTING TRIPS

with a whirr, clucking and crowing; I held
the little i6-bore fully two feet ahead of him,
pulled the trigger, and down he came into
the bushes. The sharp-tails fly strongly and
steadily, springing into the air when they
rise, and then going off in a straight line,
alternately sailing and giving a succession of
rapid wing-beats. Sometimes they will sail
a long distance with set wings before alight-
ing, and when they are passing overhead
with their wings outstretched each of the
separate wing feathers can be seen, rigid and
distinct.

Picking up and pocketing my bird I
walked on, and on turning round a shoulder
of the bluffs saw a pair of sharp-tails sitting
sunning themselves on the top of a bullberry
bush. As soon as they saw me they flew off
a short distance and lit in the bed of the
creek. Rightly judging that there were
more birds than those I had seen I began to
beat with great care the patches of brush
and long grass on both sides of the creek,
and soon was rewarded by some very pretty

OF A RANCHMAN 129

shooting. The covey was a large one, com-
posed of two or three broods of young prai-
rie fowl, and I struck on the exact place, a

it hollow filled with low brush and tall
grass, where they were lying. They lay
very close, and my first notice of their pres-
ence was given by one that I almost trod on,
which rose from fairly between my feet. A
young grouse at this season offers an easy
shot, and he was dropped without difficulty.
At the report two others rose and I got one.
When I had barely reloaded the rest began
to get up, singly or two or three at a time,
rising straight up to clear the edge of the
hollow, and making beautiful marks; when
the last one had been put up I had down
seven birds, of which I picked up six, not
being able to find the other. A little farther
on I put up and shot a single grouse, which
fell into a patch of briars I could not pene-
trate. Then for some time I saw nothing,
although beating carefully through every

v-looking place. One patch of grass, but
a few feet across, I walked directly through

i3o HUNTING TRIPS

without rousing any thing; happening to
look back when I had gone some fifty
yards, I was surprised to see a dozen heads
and necks stretched up, and eying me most
inquisitively; their owners were sharp-tails,
a covey of which I had almost walked over
without their making a sign. I strode back ;
but at my first step they all stood up straight,
with their absurd little tails held up in the
air, and at the next step away they went,
flying off a quarter of a mile and then scat-
tering in the brushy hollows where a coulie
headed up into the buttes. (Grouse at this
season hardly ever light in a tree.) I marked
them down carefully and tramped all
through the place, yet I only succeeded in
putting up two, of which I got one and
missed the other with both barrels. After
that I walked across the heads of the
coulies, but saw nothing except in a small
swale of high grass, where there was a little
covey of five, of which I got two with a right
and left. It was now very hot, and I made
for a spring which I knew ran out of a cliff

OF A RANCHMAN 131

a mile or two off. There I stayed till long
after the shadows began to lengthen, when
I started homeward. For some miles I saw
nothing, but as the evening came on the
grouse began to stir. A small party flew
(ALT my head, and though I missed them
with both barrels, either because I miscal-
culated the distance or for some other rea-
son, yet I marked them down very well, and
when I put them up again got two. Three
times afterward I came across coveys, either
flying or walking out from the edges of the
brushes, and I got one bird out of each,
reaching home just after sunset with fifteen
sharp-tails strung over my back. Of course
working after grouse on an August day in
this manner, without a dog, is very tiring,
and no great bag can be made without a
pointer or setter.

In September the sharp- tails begin to come
out from the brushy coulies and creek bot-
toms, and to wander out among the short
grass of the ravines and over the open
prairie. They are at first not very shy, and

i3 2 HUNTING TRIPS

in the early part of the month I have once
or twice had good sport with them. Once
I took a companion in the buck-board, and
drove during the course of the day twenty
or twenty-five miles along the edge of the
rolling prairie, crossing the creeks, and skirt-
ing the wooded basins where the Bad Lands
began. We came across quite a number of
coveys, which in almost all cases waited for
us to come up, and as the birds did not rise
all together, I got three or four shots at each
covey, and came home with ten and a half
couple.

A little later the birds become shy and ac-
quire their full strength of wing. They now
wander far out on the prairie, and hardly ever
make any effort to squat down and conceal
themselves in the marvellous way which they
have earlier in the season, but, on the con-
trary, trust to their vigilance and their pow-
ers of flight for their safety. On bare ground
it is now impossible to get anywhere near
them, but if they are among sage-brush or
in other low cover they afford fine sport to

OF A RANCHMAN 133

a good shot, with a close-shooting, strong-
hitting gun. I remember one evening, while
coming over with a wagon team from the
head waters of O'Fallon Creek, across the
Big Sandy, when it became a matter of a
good deal of interest for us to kill some-
thing, as otherwise we would have had very
little to eat. We had camped near a succes-
sion of small pools, containing one or two
teal, which I shot ; but a teal is a small bird
when placed before three hungry men.
Sharp-tails, however, were quite numerous,
having come in from round about, as evening
came on, to drink. They were in superb
condition, stout and heavy, with clean,
bright plumage, but very shy ; and they rose
so far off and flew so strongly and swiftly
that a good many cartridges were spent be-
fore four of the plump, white-bellied birds
were brought back to the wagon in my
pockets.

Later than this they sometimes unite into
great packs containing hundreds of ind
uals, and then show a strong preference for

i34 HUNTING TRIPS

the timbered ravines and the dense woods
and underbrush of the river bottoms, the up-
per branches of the trees being their favorite
resting-places. On very cold mornings,
when they are feeling numb and chilled, a
man can sometimes get very close up to
them, but as a rule they are very wild, and
the few I have killed at this season of the
year have been shot with the rifle, either from
a tree or when standing out on the bare hill-
sides, at a considerable distance. They offer
very pretty marks for target practice with
the rifle, and it needs a good shot to hit one
at eighty or a hundred yards.

But though the shot-gun is generally of
no use late in the season, yet last December
I had a good afternoon's sport with it.
There was a light snow falling, and having
been in the house all the morning, I de-
termined to take a stroll out in the afternoon
with the shot-gun. A couple of miles from
the house was a cedar canyon; that is, a
canyon one of whose sides was densely
wooded with gnarled, stunted evergreens.

OF A RANCHMAN

'35

had been a favorite resort for the sharp-
tails for some time, and it was especially
likely that they would go to it during a storm,
as it afforded fine shelter, and also food.
The buttes bounding it on the side where the
trees were, rose to a sharp crest, which ex-
tended along with occasional interruptions
for over a mile, and by walking along near

and occasionally looking out over it,
I judged I would get up close to the grouse,
while the falling snow and the wind would
deaden the report of the gun, and not let it
scare all the prairie fowl out of the canyon
at the first fire. It came out as I had planned
and expected. I clambered up to the crest
near the mouth of the gorge, braced myself
firmly, and looked over the top. At once a
dozen sharp-tails, who had perched in the
cedar tops almost at my feet, took wiii£.
crossed over the canyon, and as they rose all
in a bunch to clear the opposite wall I fired
both barrels into the brown, and two of the
birds dropped down to the bottom of the
ravine. They fell on the snow-covered open

136 HUNTING TRIPS

ground where I could easily find them again,
and as it would have been a great and useless
labor to have gone down for them, I left
them where they were and walked on along
the crest. Before I had gone a hundred
yards I had put up another sharp-tail from
a cedar and killed him in fine style as he
sailed off below me. The snow and bad
weather seemed to make the prairie fowl
disinclined to move. There must have been
a good many score of them scattered in
bunches among the cedars, and as I walked
along I put up a covey or a single bird every
two or three hundred yards. They were
always started when I was close up to them,
and the nature of the place made them offer
excellent shots as they went off, while when
killed they dropped down on the snow-cov-
ered canyon bottom where they could be
easily recovered on my walk home. When
the sharp- tails had once left the canyon they
scattered among the broken buttes. I tried
to creep up to one or two, but they were fully
as wild and watchful as deer, and would not

OF A RANCHMAN 137

let me come within a hundred yards of them;
so I turned back, climbed down into the can-
yon, and walked homeward through it, pick-
ing up nine birds on the way, the result of
a little over an hour's shooting. Most of
them were dead outright; and the two or
three who had been only wounded were easily
followed by the tracks they made in the tell-
tale snow.

Most of the prairie fowl I have killed,
ver, have not been obtained in the
course of a day or an afternoon regularly
spent after them for the sake of the sport,
but have simply been shot with whatever
weapon came handy, because we actually
needed them for immediate use. On more
than one occasion I would have gone sup-
perless or dinnerless had it not been for
some of these grouse; and one such in-
stance I will give.

One November, about the middle of the
month, we had driven in a beef herd (which
we wished to ship to the cattle yards),
round the old cantonment building, in

I38 HUNTING TRIPS

which a few years ago troops had been
stationed to guard against Indian out-
breaks. Having taken care of the beef
herd, I determined to visit a little bunch
of cattle which was some thirty-five miles
down the river, under the care of one of
my men — a grizzled old fellow, born in
Maine, whose career had been varied to an
extent only possible in America, he having
successively followed the occupations of
seaman, druggist, clerk, buffalo hunter, and
cowboy.

I intended to start about noon, but there
was so much business to settle that it was
an hour and a half afterwards before I put
spurs to the smart little cow-pony and loped
briskly down the valley. It was a sharp
day, the mercury well down towards zero ;
and the pony, fresh and untired, and im-
patient of standing in the cold, went along
at a good rate ; but darkness sets in so early
at this season that I had not gone many
miles before I began to fear that I would
not reach the shack by nightfall. The well-

OF A RANCHMAN 139

beaten trail followed along the bottoms for
some distance and then branched out into
the Bad Lands, leading up and down
through the ravines and over the ridge
crests of some very rough and broken coun-
try, and crossing a great level plateau, over
which the wind blew savagely, swec
the powdery snow clean off of the bent
blades of short, brown grass. After ma-
king a wide circle of some twelve miles the
trail again came back to the Little
souri, and led along the bottoms between
the rows of high bluffs, continually cross-
ing and recrossing the river. These cross-
ings were difficult and disagreeable for the
horse, as they always are when the ice is
not quite heavy enough to bear. The water
had not frozen until two or three days be-
fore, and the cold snap had not yet lasted
long enough to make the ice solid, besides
which it was covered with about half an
inch of light snow that had fallen, conceal-
ing all bad-looking places. The ice after
bearing the cautiously stepping pony for a

1 40 HUNTING TRIPS

few yards would suddenly break and let
him down to the bottom, and he would then
have to plunge and paw his way through
to the opposite shore. Often it is almost
impossible to make a pony attempt the
crossing under such circumstances; and I
have seen ponies which had to be knocked
down and pulled across glare ice on their
sides. If the horse slips and falls it is a
serious matter to the rider ; for a wetting in
such cold weather, with a long horseback
journey to make, is no joke.

I was still several miles from the hut I
was striving to reach when the sun set ; and
for some time previous the valley had been
in partial darkness, though the tops of the
sombre bluffs around were still lit up. The
pony loped steadily on along the trail,
which could be dimly made out by the star-
light. I hurried the willing little fellow all I
could without distressing him, for though
I knew the road pretty well, yet I doubted
if I could find it easily in perfect darkness ;
and the clouds were gathering overhead

OF A RANCHMAN 141

with a rapidity which showed that the star-
light would last but a short while. The
light snow rendered the hoof beats of my
horse muffled and indistinct ; and almost the
only sound that broke the silence was the
longdrawn, melancholy howling of a wolf,
a quarter of a mile off. When we came to
the last crossing the pony was stopped and
watered; and we splashed through over a
rapid where the ice had formed only a thin
crust. On the opposite side was a large
patch of cotton-woods thickly grown up
with underbrush, the whole about half a
mile square. In this was the cowboy's
shack, but as it was now pitch dark I was
unable to find it until I rode clean through
to the cow-corral, which was out in the
open on the other side. Here I dismounted,
groped around till I found the path, and
then easily followed it to the shack.

Rather to my annoyance the cowboy was
away, having run out of provisions, as I
afterwards learned; and of course he had
left nothing to eat behind him. The tough

i42 HUNTING TRIPS

little pony was, according to custom, turned
loose to shift for himself; and I went into
the low, windowless hut, which was less
than twelve feet square. In one end was a
great chimney-place, and it took but a short
time to start a roaring fire which speedily
made the hut warm and comfortable. Then
I went down to the river with an axe and a
pail, and got some water; I had carried a
paper of tea in my pocket, and the tea-
kettle was soon simmering away. I should
have liked something to eat, but as I did not
have it, the hot tea did not prove such a bad
substitute for a cold and tired man.

Next morning I sallied out at break of
day with the rifle, for I was pretty hungry.
As soon as I stepped from the hut I could
hear the prairie fowl crowing and calling
to one another from the tall trees. There
were many score — many hundreds would
perhaps be more accurate — scattered
through the wood. Evidently they had
been attracted by the good cover and by the
thick growth of choke-cherries and wild

OF A RANCHMAN

plums. As the dawn brightened the sharp-
is kept up incessantly their hoarse cluck-
ing, and small parties began to fly down
from their roosts to the berry bushes.
While perched up among the bare limbs of
the trees, sharply outlined against the sky,
they were very conspicuous. General!/
they crouched close down, with the head
drawn in to the body and the feathers ruf-
fled, but when alarmed or restless they
stood up straight with their necks stretched
out, looking very awkward. Later in the
day they would have been wild and hard to
approach, but I kept out of their sight, and
sometimes got two or three shots at the
same bird before it flew off. They offered
beautiful marks, and I could generally get a
rest for my rifle, while in the gray morning,
before sunrise, I was not very conspicuous
myself, and could get up close beneath
where they were; so I did not have mi.
trouble in killing five, almost all of them
shot very nearly where the neck joins the
body, one having the head fairly cut off.

144 HUNTING TRIPS

Salt, like tea, I had carried with me, and it
was not long before two of the birds,
plucked and cleaned, were split open and
roasting before the fire. And to me they
seemed most delicious food, although, i
in November the sharp-tails, while keeping
their game flavor, have begun to be dry and
tough, most unlike the tender and juicy
young of August and September.

The best day's work I ever did after
sharp-tails was in the course of the wagon
trip, already mentioned, which my brother
and I made through the fertile farming
country to the eastward. We had stopped
over night with a Norwegian settler who
had taken and adapted to a farmhouse an
old log trading-post of one of the fur com-
panies, lying in the timber which fringed
a river, and so stoutly built as to have
successfully withstood the assaults of time.
We were travelling in a light covered
wagon, in which we could drive anywhere
over the prairie. Our dogs would have
made an Eastern sportsman blush, for when

OF A RANCHMAN

roughing it in the West we have to put up
with any kind of mongrel makeshift, and
the best dog gets pretty well battered after
a season or two. I never had a better duck
retriever than a little yellow cur, with
hardly a trace of hunting blood in his
veins. On this occasion we had a stiff-
jointed old pointer with a stub tail, and a
wild young setter pup, tireless and rang-
ing very free (a Western dog on the
prairies should cover five times the ground
necessary for an Eastern one to get over),
but very imperfectly trained.

Half of the secret of success on a shoot-
ing trip lies in getting up early and work-
ing all day; and this at least we had
learned, for we were off as soon as there
was light enough by which to drive. The
ground, of course, was absolutely fenceless,
houses being many miles apart. Through
the prairie, with its tall grass, in which the
sharp-tails lay at night and during the day,
were scattered great grain fields, their feed-
ing-grounds in the morning and evening.

146 HUNTING TRIPS

Our plan was to drive from one field to an-
other, getting out at each and letting the
dogs hunt it over. The birds were in small
coveys and lay fairly well to the dogs,
though they rose much farther off from us
in the grain fields than they did later in the
day when we flushed them from the tall
grass of the prairie (I call it tall grass
in contradistinction to the short bunch
grass of the cattle plains to the westward).
Old stub-tail, though slow, was very
staunch and careful, never flushing a bird,
while the puppy, from pure heedlessness,
and with the best intentions, would some-
times bounce into the midst of a covey be-
fore he knew of their presence. On the
other hand, he covered twice the ground
that the pointer did. The actual killing the
birds was a good deal like quail shooting
in the East, except that it was easier, the
marks being so much larger. When we
came to a field we would beat through it a
hundred yards apart, the dogs ranging in

OF A RANCHMAN 147

long diagonals. When either the setter or
the pointer came to a stand, the other gen-
erally backed him. If the covey was near
enough, both of us, otherwise, whichever
was closest, walked cautiously up. The
grouse generally flushed before we came
up to the dog, rising all together, so as to
give only a right and left.

When the morning was well advanced
the grouse left the stubble fields and flew
into the adjoining prairie. We marked
down several coveys into one spot, where
the ground was rolling and there were
here and there a few bushes in the hol-
lows. Carefully hunting over this, we
found two or three coveys and had ex-
cellent sport out of each. The sharp-
tails in these places lay very close, and we
had to walk them up, when they rose one at
a time, and thus allowed us shot after shot ;
whereas, as already said, earlier in the day
we merely got a quick right and left at
each covey. At least half the time we were

i48 HUNTING TRIPS

shooting in our rubber overcoats, as the
weather was cloudy and there were fre-
quent flurries of rain.

We rested a couple of hours at noon for
lunch, and the afternoon's sport was simply
a repetition of the morning's, except that
we had but one dog to work with; for
shortly after mid-day the stub-tail pointer,
for his sins, encountered a skunk, with
which he waged prompt and valiant battle
— thereby rendering himself, for the bal-
ance of the time, wholly useless as a servant
and highly offensive as a companion.

The setter pup did well, ranging very
freely, but naturally got tired and careless,
flushing his birds half the time; and we
had to stop when we still had a good hour
of daylight left. Nevertheless we had in
our wagon, when we came in at night, a
hundred and five grouse, of which sixty-
two had fallen to my brother's gun, and
forty-three to mine. We would have done
much better with more serviceable dogs;
besides, I was suffering all day long from

OF A RANCHMAN

149

a most acute colic, which was any thing but
a help to good shooting.

Besides the sharp-tail there is but one
kind of grouse found in the northern cattle
plains. This is the sage cock, a bird the
size of a young turkey, and, next to the
Old World capercailzie or cock of the
woods, the largest of the grouse family. It
is a handsome bird with a long pointed
tail and black belly, and is a very char-
acterisic form of the regions which it in-
habits.

It is peculiarly a desert grouse, for though
sometimes found in the grassy prairies and
on the open river bottoms, it seems really to
prefer the dry arid wastes where the with-
ered-looking sage-brush and the spiney
cactus are almost the only plants to be
found, and where the few pools of water
are so bitterly alkaline as to be nearly un-
drinkable. It is pre-eminently the grouse
of the plains, and, unlike all of its relatives,
is never found near trees; indeed no trees
grow in its haunts.

1 5o HUNTING TRIPS

As is the case with the two species of
prairie fowl the cocks of this great bird
become very noisy in the early spring. If
- a man happens at that season to be out in
the dry plains which are frequented by the
sage fowl he will hear in the morning, be-
fore sunrise, the deep, sonorous booming
of the cocks, as they challenge one another
or call to their mates. This call is uttered
in a hollow, bass tone, and can be heard a
long distance in still weather; it is difficult
to follow up, for it has a very ventriloquial
effect.

Unlike the sharp-tail the habits and
haunts of the sage fowl are throughout the
year the same, except that it grows shyer
as the season advances, and occasionally
wanders a little farther than formerly from
its birthplace. It is only found where the
tough, scraggly wild sage abounds, and it
feeds for most of the year solely on sage
leaves, varying this diet in August and Sep-
tember by quantities of grasshoppers. Cur-
iously enough it does not possess any giz-

OF A RANCHMAN 151

zard, such as most gallinaceous birds have,
but has in its place a membranous stomach,
suited to the digestion of its peculiar food.

The little chicks follow their mother as
soon as hatched, and she generally keeps
them in the midst of some patch of sage-
brush so dense as to be almost impene-
irable to man or beast. The little fellows
skulk and dodge through the crooked
stems so cleverly that it is almost im-
possible to catch them. Early in August,
when the brood is well grown, the mother
leads them out, and during the next two
months they are more often found out on
the grassy prairies than is the case at any
other season. They do not form into packs
like the prairie fowl as winter comes on,
two broods at the outside occasionally com-
ing together ; and they then again retire to
the more waste parts of the plains, living
purely on sage leaves, and keeping closely
to the best-sheltered hollows until the
spring-time.

In the early part of the season the young,

152 HUNTING TRIPS

and indeed their parents also, are tame and
unsuspicious to the very verge of stupidity,
and at this time are often known by the
name of " fool-hens " among the frontiers-
men. They grow shyer as the season ad-
vances, and after the first of October are
difficult to approach, but even then are
rarely as wild as the sharp-tails.

It is commonly believed that the flesh of
the sage fowl is uneatable, but this is very-
far from being the truth, and, on the con-
trary, it is excellent eating in August
and September, when grasshoppers con-
stitute their chief food, and, if the birds are
drawn as soon as shot, is generally per-
fectly palatable at other seasons of the year.
The first time I happened to find this out
was on the course of a trip taken with one
of my foremen as a companion through the
arid plains to the westward of the Little
Missouri. We had been gone for two or
three days and camped by a mud hole,
which was almost dry, what water it still
held being almost as thick as treacle. Our

OF A RANCHMAN 153

luxuries being limited, I bethought me of
a sage cock which I had shot during the
and had hung to the saddle. I had
drawn it as soon as it was picked up, and
I made up my mind to try how it tasted. A
good deal to our surprise, the meat, though
dark and coarse-grained, proved perfectly
well flavored, and was quite as good as
wild-goose, which it much resembled. Some
young sage fowl, shot shortly afterward,
proved tender and juicy, and tasted quite as
well as sharp-tails. All of these birds had
their crops crammed with grasshoppers,
and doubtless the nature of their food had
much to do with their proving so good for
the table. An old bird, which had fed on
nothing but sage, and was not drawn when
shot, would, beyond question, be very poor
eating. Like the spruce grouse and the two
kinds of prairie fowl, but unlike the ruffed
grouse and blue grouse, the sage fowl has
dark meat.

In walking and running on the ground,
sage fowl act much like common hens, and

i54 HUNTING TRIPS

can skulk through the sage-brush so fast
that it is often difficult to make them take
wing. When surprised they will sometimes
squat flat down with their heads on tiu-
ground, when it is very difficult to make
them out, as their upper parts harmonize
curiously in color with the surroundings.
I have never known of their being shot over
a dog, and, indeed, the country where they
are found is so dry and difficult that no
dog would be able to do any work in it.

When flushed, they rise with a loud
whirring, laboring heavily, often clucking
hoarsely; when they get fairly under way
they move along in a strong, steady flight,
sailing most of the time, but giving, every
now and then, a succession of powerful
wing-beats, and their course is usually sus-
tained for a mile or over before they light.
They are very easy marks, but require hard
hitting to bring them down, for they are
very tenacious of life. On one occasion I
came upon a flock and shot an old cock
through the body with the rifle. He fell over,

OF A RANCHMAN 155

fluttering and kicking, and I shot a young
one before the rest of the flock rose. To my
astonishment the old cock recovered him-
self and made off after them, actually flying
for half a mile before he dropped. When
I found him he was quite dead, the ball
having gone clean through him. It was a
good deal as if a man had run a mile with
a large grapeshot through his body.

Most of the sage fowl I have killed have
been shot with the rifle when I happened
to run across a covey while out riding, and
wished to take two or three of them back
for dinner. Only once did I ever make a
trip with the shot-gun for the sole purpose
of a day's sport with these birds.

This was after having observed that there
were several small flocks of sage fowl at
home on a great plateau or high plain,
crossed by several dry creeks, which \v:is
about eight miles from the cow-camp where
I was staying ; and I concluded that I would
devote a day to their pursuit. Accordingly,
one morning I started out on horseback

156 HUNTING TRIPS

with my double-barrel lo-bore and a supply
of cartridges loaded with No. 4 shot; one
of my cowboys went with me carrying a
rifle so as to be ready if we ran across any
antelope. Our horses were fresh, and the
only way to find the birds was to cover as
much ground as possible ; so as soon as we
reached the plateau we loped across it in
parallel lines till we struck one of the
creeks, when we went up it, one on each
side, at a good gait, and then crossed over
to another, where we repeated the opera-
tion. It was nearly noon when, while going
up the third creek, we ran into a covey of
about fifteen sage fowl — a much larger
covey than ordinary. They were down in
the bottom of the creek, which here ex-
hibited a formation very common on the
plains. Although now perfectly dry, every
series of heavy rainfalls changed it into a
foaming torrent, which flowed down the
valley in sharp curves, eating away the land
into perpendicular banks on the outside of
each curve. Thus a series of small bottoms

OF A RANCHMAN 157

was formed, each fronted by a semicircular
bluff, highest in the middle, and rising per-
fectly sheer and straight. At the foot of
these bluffs, which varied from six to thirty
feet in height, was the bed of the stream.
In many of these creeks there will be a
growth of small trees by the stream bed,
where it runs under the bluffs, and perhaps
pools of water will be found in such places
even in times of drought. But on the creek
where we found the sage fowl there were
neither trees nor water, and the little bot-
toms were only covered with stunted sage-
brush. Dismounting and leaving my horse
with the cowboy I walked down to the edge
of the bottom, which was not more than
thirty or forty yards across. The covey re-
treated into the brush, some of the birds
crouching flat down, while the others
walked or ran off among the bushes. They
were pretty tame, and rose one at a time as
I walked on. They had to rise over the
low, semicircular bluff in front of them,
and, it being still early in the season, they

158 HUNTING TRIPS

labored heavily as they left the ground.
I fired just as they topped the bluff, and
as they were so close and large, and were
going so slowly, I was able to knock over
eight birds, hardly moving from my place
during the entire time. On our way back
we ran into another covey, a much smaller
one, on the side of another creek ; of these I
got a couple ; and I got another out of still
a third covey, which we found out in the
open, but of which the birds all rose and
made off together. We carried eleven
birds back, most of them young and tender,
and all of them good eating.

In shooting grouse we sometimes run
across rabbits. There are two kinds of
these. One is the little cottontail, almost
precisely similar in appearance to the com-
mon gray rabbit of the Eastern woods. It
abounds in all the patches of dense cover
along the river bottoms and in the larger
creeks, and can be quite easily shot at all
times, but especially when there is any
snow on the ground. It is eatable but

OF A RANCHMAN 159

hardly ever killed except to poison and
throw out as bait for the wolves.

The other kind is the great jack rabbit.
This is a characteristic animal of the plains ;
quite as much so as the antelope or prairie
dog. It is not very abundant, but is
found everywhere over the open ground,
both on the prairie or those river bottoms
which are not wooded, and in the more
open valleys and along the gentle slopes of
the Bad Lands. Sometimes it keeps to the
patches of sage-brush, and in such cases
will lie close to the ground when ap-
proached ; but more often it is found in the
short grass where there is no cover at all
to speak of, and relies upon its speed for its
safety. It is a comical-looking beast with
its huge ears and long legs, and runs very
fast, with a curious lop-sided gait, as if it
was off its balance. After running a couple
of hundred yards it will generally stop and
sit up erect on its haunches to look round
and see if it is pursued. In winter it
turns snow-white except that the tips of the

160 HUNTING TRIPS

ears remain black. The flesh is dry, and I
have never eaten it unless I could get noth-
ing else.

Jack-rabbits are not plentiful enough nor
valuable enough to warrant a man's making
a hunting trip solely for their sakes; and
the few that I have shot have been killed
with the rifle while out after other game.
They offer beautiful marks for target prac-
tice when they sit upon their haunches. But
though hardly worth powder they afford
excellent sport when coursed with grey-
hounds, being very fleet, and when closely
pressed able to double so quickly that the
dogs shoot by them. For reasons already
given, however, it is difficult to keep sport-
ing dogs on the plains, though doubtless in
the future coursing with greyhounds will
become a recognized Western sport.

This finishes the account of the small
game of the northern cattle country. The
wild turkey is not found with us ; but it is
an abundant bird farther south, and eagerly
followed by the ranchmen in whose neigh-

OF A RANCHMAN 161

borhood it exists. And as it is easily the
king of all game birds, and as its pursuit
is a peculiarly American form of sport,
account of how it is hunted in the
southern plains country may be worth
reading. The following is an extract from
a letter written to me by my brother, in
December, 1875, while he was in Texas,
containing an account of some of his turkey-
hunting experience in that State. The
portion relating how the birds are coursed
with greyhounds is especially markworthy;
it reminds one of the method of killing the
great bustard with gazehounds, as de-
scribed in English sporting books of two
centuries back.

" Here, some hundred miles south and
west of Fort McKavett, are the largest
turkey roosts in the world. This beautiful
fertile valley, through which the deep, silent
stream of the Llano flows, is densely
wooded with grand old pecan trees along
its banks; as are those of its minor tribu-
taries which come boiling down from off

1 62 HUNTING TRIPS

the immense upland water-shed of the
staked plains, cutting the sides of the
' divide ' into narrow canyons. The jour-
ney to this sportsman's paradise was over
the long-rolling plains of Western Texas.
Hour after hour through the day's travel
we would drop into the trough of some
great plains-wave only to toil on up to the
crest of the next, and be met by an endless
vista of boundless, billowy-looking prairie.
We were following the old Fort Terret
trail, its ruts cut so deep in the prairie soil
by the heavy supply wagons that these ten
years have not healed the scars in the
earth's face. At last, after journeying for
leagues through the stunted live oaks, we
saw from the top of one of the larger
divides a dark bluish line against the hori-
zon,— the color of distant leafless trees, —
and knew that it meant we should soon
open out the valley. Another hour brought
us over the last divide, and then our hunt-
ing grounds lay before and below us. All
along through the unbroken natural fields

OF A RANCHMAN 163

ihe black-tail and prong-horn abound, and
feast to their heart's content all the winter
through on the white, luscious, and nutri-
tious mesquite grass. Through the valley
with its flashing silver stream ran the dark
line of the famous pecan-tree forests — the
nightly resting-place of that king of game
birds, the wild turkey. It would sound like
romancing to tell of the endless number and
variety of the waterfowl upon the river;
while the multitude of game fish inhabiting
the waters make the days spent on the river
with the rod rival in excitement and good
sport the nights passed gun in hand among
the trees in the roosts. Of course, as we are
purely out on a turkey shoot, during the
day no louder sport is permitted than whip-
ping the stream, or taking the greyhounds
well back on the plains away from the river
to course antelope, jack-rabbit, or maybe
even some fine old gobbler himself.

" When, after our journey, we reached
the brink of the canyon, to drop down into
the valley, pass over the lowlands, and settle

1 64 HUNTING TRIPS

ourselves comfortably in camp under the
shadow of the old stockade fort by the
river, was a matter of but a few hours.
There we waited for the afternoon shadows
to lengthen and the evening to come, when
off we went up the stream for five or six
miles to a spot where some mighty forest
monarchs with huge, bare, spreading limbs
had caught the eye of one of our sporting
scouts in the afternoon. Leaving our
horses half a mile from the place, we walked
silently along the river bank through the
jungle to the roosting trees, where we scat-
tered, and each man secreted himself as best
he could in the underbrush, or in a hollow
stump, or in the reeds of the river itself.
The sun was setting, and over the hills and
from the lowlands came the echoes of the
familiar gobble, gobble, gobble, as each
strutting, foolishly proud cock headed his
admiring family for the roost, after their
day's feeding on the uplands. Soon, as I
lay close and hushed in my hiding-place,
sounds like the clinking of silver, followed

OF A RANCHMAN 165

by what seemed like a breath of the wind
rushing through the trees, struck my ears.
I hardly dared breathe, for the sounds were
made by the snapping of a gobbler's quills
and his rustling feathers; and immediately
a magnificent old bird, swelling and cluck-
ing, bullying his wives and abusing his
weaker children to the last, trod majes-
tically down to the water's edge, and, after
taking his evening drink, winged his way to
his favorite bough above, where he was
joined, one by one, by his family and re-
lations and friends, who came by tens and
dozens from the surrounding country.
Soon in the rapidly darkening twilight the
superb old pecan trees looked as if they
were bending under a heavy crop of the
most odd-shaped and lively kind of fruit.
The air was filled with the peevish pi-ou!
pi-ou! of the sleepy birds. Gradually the
noisy fluttering subsided, and the last faint
unsettled peep even was hushed. Dead
siknce reigned, and we waited and watched.
The moon climbed up, and in another

1 66 HUNTING TRIPS

hour, as we looked through the tree-tops,
we could make out against the light back-
ground of the sky, almost as clearly as by
day, the sleeping victims of our guns and
rifles. A low soft whistle was passed along
from man to man; and the signal given,
how different the scene became ! A deafen-
ing report suddenly rang out into the silent
night, a flash of light belched from the gun
muzzle, and a heavy thud followed as
twenty pounds of turkey struck the ground.
In our silent moccasins we flitted about
under the roost, and report after report on
all sides told how good the sport was and
how excellent the chance that the boys at
McKavett would have plenty of turkeys at
their Christmas dinner. The turkeys were
so surprised by the sudden noise, so entirely
unprepared for the visit of the sportsman
to their secluded retreat, that they did not
know what to make of it, often remaining
stupidly on their branch after a companion
five feet off had been shot down. With
the last bird shot or flown away ended our

OF A RANCHMAN 167

evening's sport. All the dead birds were
gathered together and strapped in bunches
by our saddles and on the pack-mules. It
does not take many pecan- and grass-fed
turkeys to make a load, and back we trotted
to camp, the steel hoofs striking into the
prairie soil with a merry ring of triumph
over the night's work. The hour was nearly
midnight when we sat down to the deli-
cately browned turkey steaks in the mess
tent, and realized that we had enjoyed the
delights of one of the best sports in Texas
— turkey-shooting in the roosts.

" Early in the afternoon following the
night's sport we left the fort mounted on
fine three-quarter Kentucky thorough-
breds, and taking the eleven greyhounds,
struck off six or eight miles into the plains.
Then spreading into line we alternated dogs
and horses, and keeping a general direc-
tion, beat up the small oak clumps, grass
clusters, or mesquite jungles as we went
along. Soon, with a loud whirr of wings,
three or four turkeys rose out of the grass

x68 HUNTING TRIPS

ahead, started up by one of the greyhounds ;
the rest of the party closed in from all
sides ; dogs and men choosing each the bird
they marked as theirs. The turkey, after
towering a bit, with wings set struck off
at a pace like a bullet, and with eyes fixed
upwards the hounds coursed after him. It
was whip and spur for a mile as hard as
horse, man, and hound could make the pace.
The turkey at last came down nearer and
nearer the ground, its small wings refusing
to bear the weight of the heavy body.
Finally, down he came and began running ;
then the hounds closed in on him and
forced him up again as is always the case.
The second flight was not a strong one, and
soon he was skimming ten or even a less
number of feet from the ground. Now
came the sport of it all; the hounds were
bunched and running like a pack behind
him. Suddenly old ' Grimbeard/ in the
heart of the pack, thought it was time for
the supreme effort; with a rush he went
to the front, and as a mighty spring carried

OF A RANCHMAN 169

him up in the air, he snapped his clean,
cruel fangs under the brave old gobbler,
who by a great effort rose just out of reach.
One after another in the next twenty-five
yards each hound made his trial and failed.
At last the old hound again made his rush,
sprang up a wonderful height into the air,
and cut the bird down as with a knife.

" The first flight of a turkey when being
coursed is rarely more than a mile, and the
second about half as long. After that, if it
gets up at all again, it is for very short
flights so near the ground that it is soon cut
down by any hound. The astonishing
springs a greyhound who is an old hand at
turkey coursing will make are a constant
source of surprise and wonder to those fond
of the sport. A turkey, after coming
down from his first flight, will really per-
form the feat which fable attributes to the
ostrich; that is, will run its head into a
clump of bushes and stand motionless as if,
since it cannot see its foes, it were itself
equally invisible. During the day turkeys

1 70 HUNTING TRIPS

are scattered all over the plains, and it is
no unusual thing to get in one afternoon's
ride eight or ten of them."

CHAPTER IV

THE DEER OF THE RIVER
BOTTOMS

OF all the large game of the United
States, the white-tail deer is the best
known and the most widely distributed.
Taking the Union as a whole, fully ten men
will be found who have killed white-tail
for one who has killed any other kind of
large game. And it is the only ruminant
animal which is able to live on in the land
even when it has been pretty thickly settled.
There is hardly a State wherein it does
not still exist, at least in some out-of-the-
way corner ; and long after the elk and the
buffalo have passed away, and when the
big-horn and prong-horn have become rare
indeed, the white-tail deer will still be com-
mon in certain parts of the country.

171

1 72 HUNTING TRIPS

When, less than five years ago, cattle
were first driven on to the northern plains,
the white-tail were the least plentiful and
the least sought after of all the large game ;
but they have held their own as none of
the others have begun to do, and are al-
ready in certain localities more common
than any other kind, and indeed in many
places are more common than all other
kinds put together. The ranchmen along
the Powder River, for instance, now have
to content themselves with white-tail veni-
son unless they make long trips back among
the hills. The same is rapidly getting to be
true of the Little Missouri. This is partly
because the skin and meat hunters find the
chase of this deer to be the most tedious
and least remunerative species of hunting,
and therefore only turn their attention to it
when there is nothing else left to hunt, and
partly because the sheep and cattle and the
herdsmen who follow them are less likely
to trespass on their grounds than on the
grounds of other game. The white-tail is the

OF A RANCHMAN 173

deer of the river bottoms and of the large
creeks, whose beds contain plenty of brush
and timber running down into them. It
prefers the densest cover, in which it lies
hid all day, and it is especially fond of
wet, swampy places, where a horse runs
the risk of being engulfed. Thus it is very
rarely jumped by accident, and when the
cattle stray into its haunts, which is but
seldom, the cowboys are not apt to follow
them. Besides, unlike most other game, it
has no aversion to the presence of cattle,
and in the morning and evening will come
out and feed freely among them.

This last habit was the cause of our
getting a fine buck a few days before
last Christmas. The weather was bitterly
cold, the spirit in the thermometer some-
times going down at night to 50° below
zero and never for over a fortnight get-
above — 10° (Fahrenheit). Snow cov-
the ground, to the depth, however,
of but a few inches, for in the cattle country
the snowfall is always light. When the

i74 HUNTING TRIPS

cold is so great it is far from pleasant to be
out-of-doors. Still a certain amount of
riding about among the cattle and ponies
had to be done, and almost every day was
spent by at least one of us in the saddle.
We wore the heaviest kind of all-wool un-
der-clothing, with flannels, lined boots, and
great fur coats, caps, and gauntlets or mit-
tens, but yet after each ride one or the
other of us would be almost sure to come in
with a touch of the frost somewhere about
him. On one ride I froze my nose and one
cheek, and each of the men froze his ears,
fingers, or toes at least once during the
fortnight. This generally happened while
riding over a plain or plateau with a strong
wind blowing in our faces. When the wind
was on our backs it was not bad fun to
gallop along through the white weather,
but when we had to face it, it cut through
us like a keen knife. The ponies did not
seem to mind the cold much, but the cattle
were very uncomfortable, standing humped

OF A RANCHMAN 175

up in the bushes except for an hour or
two at mid-day when they ventured out to
feed; some of the young stock which were
wintering on the range for the first time
died from the exposure. A very weak
animal we would bring into the cow-shed
and feed with hay; but this was only done
in cases of the direst necessity, as such an
animal has then to be fed for the rest of
the winter, and the quantity of hay is
limited. In the Bad Lands proper, cattle do
not wander far, the deep ravines affording
them a refuge from the bitter icy blasts of
the winter gales; but if by any accident
caught out on the open prairie in a blizzard,
a herd will drift before it for maybe more
than a hundred miles, until it finds a shelter
capable of holding it. For this reason it is
best to keep more or less of a look-out over
all the bunches of beasts, riding about
among them every few days, and turning
back any herd that begins to straggle to-
rd the open plains; though in winter,

176 HUNTING TRIPS

when weak and emaciated, the cattle must
be disturbed and driven as little as possible,
or the loss among them will be fearful.

One afternoon, while most of us were
away from the ranch-house, one of the
cowboys, riding in from his day's outing
over the range, brought word that he had
seen two white-tail deer, a buck and a doe,
feeding with some cattle on the side of a
hill across the river, and not much more
than half a mile from the house. There
was about an hour of daylight left, and one
of the foremen, a tall, fine-looking fellow
named Ferris, the best rider on the ranch
but not an unusually good shot, started out
at once after the deer; for in the late fall
and early winter we generally kill a good
deal of game, as it then keeps well and
serves as a food supply throughout the cold
months ; after January we hunt as little as
possible. Ferris found the deer easily-
enough, but they started before he could
get a standing shot at them, and when he
fired as they ran, he only broke one of the

OF A RANCHMAN 177

buck's hind legs, just above the ankle. He
followed it in the snow for several miles,
across the river, and down near the house
to the end of the bottom, and then back
toward the house. The buck was a cunning
old beast, keeping in the densest cover, and
often doubling back on his trail and sneak-
ing off to one side as his pursuer passed by.
Finally it grew too dark to see the tracks
any longer, and Ferris came home.

Next morning early we went out to
where he had left the trail, feeling very sure
from his description of the place (which
was less than a mile from the house) that
we would get the buck; for when he had
abandoned the pursuit the deer was in a
copse of bushes and young trees some hun-
dreds of yards across, and in this it had
doubtless spent the night, for it was <.
tremely unlikely tfiat, wounded and tired as
it was, it would go any distance after find-
ing that it was no longer pursued.

When we got to the thicket we first made
a circuit round it to see if the wounded

I78 HUNTING TRIPS

animal had broken cover, but though there
were fresh deer tracks leading both in and
out of it, none of them were made by a crip-
ple; so we knew he was still within. It
would seem to be a very easy task to track
up and kill a broken-legged buck in light
snow ; but we had to go very cautiously,
for though with only three legs he could
still run a good deal faster than either of us
on two, and we were anxious not to alarm
him and give him a good start. Then there
were several well-beaten cattle trails
through the thicket, and in addition to that
one or two other deer had been walking to
and fro within it ; so that it was hard work
to follow the tracks. After working some
little time we hit on the right trail, finding
where the buck had turned into the thickest
growth. While Ferris followed carefully
in on the tracks, I stationed myself farther
on toward the outside, knowing that the
buck would in all likelihood start up wind.
In a minute or two Ferris came on the bed
where he had passed the night, and which

OF A RANCHMAN 179

lie had evidently just left; a shout informed
me that the game was on foot, and imme-
diately afterward the crackling and snap-
ping of the branches were heard as the deer
rushed through them. I ran as rapidly and
quietly as possible toward the place where the
sounds seemed to indicate that he would
break cover, stopping under a small tree. A
minute afterward he appeared, some thirty
yards off on the edge of the thicket, and
halted for a second to look round before
going into the open. Only his head and
antlers were visible above the bushes which
hid from view the rest of his body. He
turned his head sharply toward me as I
raised the rifle, and the bullet went fairly
into his throat, just under the jaw, breaking
his neck, and bringing him down in his
tracks with hardly a kick. He was a fine
buck of eight points, unusually fat, consid-
ering that the rutting season was just over.
We dressed it at once, and, as the house
was so near, determined we would drag it
there over the snow ourselves, without go-

i8o HUNTING TRIPS

ing back for a horse. Each took an antler,
and the body slipped along very easily;
but so intense was the cold that we had to
keep shifting sides all the time, the hand
which grasped the horn becoming numb
almost immediately.

White-tail are very canny, and know per-
fectly well what threatens danger and what
does not. Their larger, and to my mind
nobler, relation, the black-tail, is if any
thing easier to approach and kill, and yet
is by no means so apt to stay in the imme-
diate neighborhood of a ranch, where there
is always more or less noise and confusion.
The bottom on which my ranch-house
stands is a couple of miles in length, and
well wooded; all through last summer it
was the home of a number of white-tails,
and most of them are on it to this moment.
Two fawns in especial were really amusing-
ly tame, at one time spending their days hid
in an almost impenetrable tangle of bull-
berry bushes, whose hither edge was barely
a hundred yards from the ranch-house ; and

OF A RANCHMAN 181

in the evening they could frequently be seen
from the door, as they came out to feed. In
walking out after sunset, or in riding home
when night had fallen, we would often run
across them when it was too dark to make
out any thing but their flaunting white tails
as they cantered out of the way. Yet for
all their seeming familiarity they took good
care not to expose themselves to danger.
We were reluctant to molest them, but one
day, having performed our usual weekly or
fortnightly feat of eating up about every
thing there was in the house, it was deter-
mined that the two deer (for it was late in
autumn and they were then well grown)
should be sacrificed. Accordingly one of
us sallied out, but found that the sacrifice
was not to be consummated so easily, for
the should-be victims appeared to distin-
guish perfectly well between a mere passer-
by, whom they regarded with absolute in-
difference, and any one who harbored sin-
ister designs. They kept such a sharp
look-uui, and made off so rapidly if any

1 82 HUNTING TRIPS

one tried to approach them, that on two
evenings the appointed hunter returned
empty-handed, and by the third some one else
had brought in a couple of black-tail. After
that no necessity arose for molesting the
two " tame deer," for whose sound com-
mon-sense we had all acquired a greatly
increased respect.

When not much molested white-tail feed
in the evening or late afternoon; but if
often shot at and chased they only come out
at night. They are very partial to the
water, and in the warm summer nights will
come down into the prairie ponds and stand
knee-deep in them, eating the succulent
marsh plants. Most of the plains rivers
flow through sandy or muddy beds with no
vegetable growth, and to these, of course,
the deer merely come down to drink or re-
fresh themselves by bathing, as they con-
tain nothing to eat.

Throughout the day the white-tails keep
in the densest thickets, choosing if possible
those of considerable extent. For this rea-

OF A RANCHMAN 183

son they are confined to the bottoms of the
rivers and the mouths of the largest creeks,
the cover elsewhere being too scanty to suit
them. It is very difficult to make them
leave one of their haunts during the day-
time. They lie very close, permitting a man
to pass right by them; and the twigs and
branches surrounding them are so thick and
interlaced that they can hear the approach
of any one from a long distance off, and
hence are rarely surprised. If they think
there is danger that the intruder will dis-
cover them, they arise and skulk silently off
through the thickest part of the brush. If
followed, they keep well ahead, moving per-
fectly noiselessly through the thicket, often
going round in a circle and not breaking
cover until hard pressed; yet all the time
stepping with such sharp-eyed caution that
the pursuing hunter will never get a
glimpse of the quarry, though the patch of
brush may not be fifty rods across.

At times the white-tail will lie so close
that it may almost be trodden on. One

1 84 HUNTING TRIPS

June morning I was riding down along the
river, and came to a long bottom, crowded
with rose-bushes, all in bloom. It was
crossed in every direction by cattle paths,
and a drove of long-horned Texans were
scattered over it. A cow-pony gets accus-
tomed to travelling at speed along the cat-
tle trails, and the one I bestrode threaded
its way among the twisted narrow paths
with perfect ease, loping rapidly onward
through a sea of low rose-bushes, covered
with the sweet, pink flowers. They gave
a bright color to the whole plain, while the
air was filled with the rich, full songs of the
yellow-breasted meadow larks, as they
perched on the topmost sprays of the little
trees. Suddenly a white-tail doe sprang up
almost from under the horse's feet, and
scudded off with her white flag flaunting.
There was no reason for harming her, and
she made a pretty picture as she bounded
lightly off among the rose-red flowers, pass-
ing without heed through the ranks of the
long-horned and savage-looking steers.

OF A RANCHMAN 185

Doubtless she had a little spotted fawn
not far away. These wee fellows soon after
birth grow very cunning and able to take
mselves, keeping in the densest
part of the brush, through which they run
and dodge like a rabbit. If taken young
they grow very tame and are most dainty
pets. One which we had round the house
answered well to its name. It was at first
fed with milk, which it lapped eagerly from
a saucer, sharing the meal with the two
cats, who rather resented its presence and
cuffed it heartily when they thought it was
greedy and was taking more than its share.
As it grew older it would eat bread or po-
tatoes from our hands, and was perfectly
fearless. At night it was let go or put in
the cow-shed, whichever was handiest, but
it was generally round in time for breakfast
next morning. A blue ribbon with a bell
attached was hung round its neck, so as to
prevent its being shot; but in the end it
shared the fate of all pets, for one night it
went off and never came back again. Per-

1 86 HUNTING TRIPS

haps it strayed away of its own accord, but
more probably some raw hand at hunting
saw it, and slaughtered it without noticing
the bell hanging from its neck.

The best way to kill white-tail is to still-
hunt carefully through their haunts at dusk,
when the deer leave the deep recesses in
which their day-beds lie, and come out to
feed in the more open parts. For this kind
of hunting, no dress is so good as a buck-
skin suit and moccasins. The moccasins
enable one to tread softly and noiselessly,
while the buckskin suit is of a most incon-
spicuous color, and makes less rustling than
any other material when passing among
projecting twigs. Care must be taken to
always hunt up wind, and to advance with-
out any sudden motions, walking close in to
the edge of the thickets, and keeping a sharp
look-out, as it is of the first importance to
see the game before the game sees you. The
feeding-grounds of the deer may vary. If
they are on a bottom studded with dense
copses, they move out on the open between

OF A RANCHMAN 187

them: if they are in a dense wood, they
feed along its edges; but, by preference,
they keep in the little glades and among the
bushes underneath the trees. Wherever
they may be found, they are rarely far from
thick cover, and are always on the alert,
lifting up their heads every few bites they
take to see if any danger threatens them.
But, unlike the antelope, they seem to rely
for safety even more upon escaping obser-
vation than upon discovering danger while
it is still far off, and so are usually in shel-
tered places where they cannot be seen at
any distance. Hence, shots at them arc
generally obtained, if obtained at all, at
very much closer range than at any other
kind of game; the average distance would
be nearer fifty than a hundred yards. On
the other hand, more of the shots obtained
are running ones than is the case with the
same number taken at antelope or black-
tail.

If the deer is standing just out of .1
fair-sized wood, it can often be obtained

1 88 HUNTING TRIPS

by creeping up along the edge; if seen
among the large trees, it is even more easily
still-hunted, as a tree trunk can be readily
kept in line with the quarry, and thus pre-
vent its suspecting any approach. But only
a few white-tail are killed by regular and
careful stalking; in much the greater num-
ber of instances the hunter simply beats pa-
tiently and noiselessly from the leeward,
carefully through the clumps of trees and
bushes, always prepared to see his game,
and with his rifle at the ready. Sooner or
later, as he steals round a corner, he either
sees the motionless form of a deer, not a
great distance off, regarding him intently
for a moment before taking flight; or else
he hears a sudden crash, and catches a
glimpse of the animal as it lopes into the
bushes. In either case, he must shoot
quick ; but the shot is a close one.

If he is heard or seen a long way off, the
deer is very apt, instead of running away at
full speed, to skulk off quietly through the
bushes. But when suddenly startled, the

OF A RANCHMAN 189

white-tail makes off at a great rate, at a
rolling gallop, the long, broad tail, pure

e, held up in the air. In the dark or in
thick woods, often all that can be seen is
the flash of white from the tail. The head
is carried low and well forward in running;
a buck, when passing swiftly through thick
underbrush, usually throws his horns back
almost on his shoulders, with his nose held
straight in front. White-tail venison is, in
season, most delicious eating, only inferior
to the mutton of the mountain sheep.

Among the places which are most cer-
tain to contain white-tails may be mentioned
the tracts of swampy ground covered with
willows and the like, which are to be found
in a few (and but a few) localities through
the plains country ; there are, for example,
several such along the Powder River, just
below where the Little Powder empties into

Here there is a dense growth of slim-
stemmed young trees, sometimes almost im-
penetrable, and in other places opening out
into what seem like arched passage-ways,

i9o HUNTING TRIPS

through which a man must at times go al-
most on all fours. The ground may be
covered with rank shrubbery, or it may be
bare mud with patches of tall reeds. Here
and there, scattered through these swamps,
are pools of water, and sluggish ditches oc-
casionally cut their way deep below the
surface of the muddy soil. Game trails
are abundant all through them, and now
and then there is a large path beaten out by
the cattle; while at intervals there are
glades and openings. A horse must be
very careful in going through such a
swamp or he will certainly get mired, and
even a man must be cautious about his
footing. In the morning or late afternoon
a man stands a good chance of killing deer
in such a place, if he hunts carefully
through it. It is comparatively easy to
make but little noise in the mud and among
the wet, yielding swamp plants; and by
moving cautiously along the trails and
through the openings, one can see some lit-
tle distance ahead ; and toward evening the

OF A RANCHMAN

191

pools should be visited, and the borders as
far back as possible carefully examined, for
any deer that come to drink, and the glades
should be searched through for any that
may be feeding. In the soft mud, too, a
fresh track can be followed as readily as if
in snow, and without exposing the hunter
to such probability of detection. If a shot
is obtained at all, it is at such close quarters
as to more than counterbalance the dimness
of the light, and to render the chance of a
miss very unlikely. Such hunting is for a
change very pleasant, the perfect stillness
of the place, the quiet with which one has
to move, and the constant expectation of
seeing game keeping one's nerves always on
the stretch ; but after a while it grows tedi-
ous, and it makes a man feel cramped to be
always ducking and crawling through such
places. It is not to be compared, in cool
weather, with still-hunting on the open
hills ; nevertheless, in the furious heat of the
summer sun it has its advantages, for it is
not often so oppressingly hot in the swamp

192 HUNTING TRIPS

as it is on the open prairie or in the dry
thickets.

The white-tail is the only kind of large
game for which the shot-gun can occasion-
ally be used. At times in the dense brush it
is seen, if seen at all, at such short dis-
tances, and the shots have to be taken so
hurriedly, that the shot-gun is really the
best weapon wherewith to attempt its death.
One method of taking it is to have trained
dogs hunt through a valley and drive the
deer to guns stationed at the opposite end.
With a single slow hound, given to bay-
ing, a hunter can often follow the deer on
foot in the method adapted in most of the
Eastern States for the capture of both the
gray and the red fox. If the dog is slow
and noisy the deer will play round in circles
and can be cut off and shot from a stand.
Any dog will soon put a deer out of a
thicket, or drive it down a valley ; but with-
out a dog it is often difficult to drive deer
toward the runaway or place at which the
guns are stationed, for the white-tail will

OF A RANCHMAN 193

often skulk round and round a thicket in-
stead of putting out of it when a man en-
ters; and even when started it may break
back past the driver instead of going to-
ward the guns.

In all these habits white-tail are the very
reverse of such game as antelope. Ante-
lope care nothing at all about being seen,
and indeed rather court observation, while
the chief anxiety of a white-tail is to go un-
observed. In passing through a country
where there are antelope, it is almost impos-
sible not to see them; while where there
are an equal number of white-tail, the odds
are manifold against travellers catching a
glimpse of a single individual. The prong-
horn is perfectly indifferent as to whether
the pursuer sees him, so long as in his turn
he is able to see the pursuer ; and he relies
entirely upon his speed and wariness for his
safety; he never trusts for a moment to
eluding observation. White-tail on the con-
trary rely almost exclusively either upon
lying perfectly still and letting the danger

i94 HUNTING TRIPS

pass by, or else upon skulking off so slyly
as to be unobserved; it is only when hard
pressed or suddenly startled that they
bound boldly and freely away.

In many of the dense jungles without any
opening the brush is higher than a man's
head, and one has then practically no chance
at all of getting a shot on foot when cross-
ing through such places. But I have known
instances where a man had himself driven
in a tall light wagon through a place like
this, and got several snap shots at the deer,
as he caught momentary glimpses of them
stealing off through the underbrush; and
another method of pursuit in these jungles
is occasionally followed by one of my fore-
men, who, mounted on a quiet horse, which
will stand fire, pushes through the bushes
and now and then gets a quick shot at a
deer from horseback. I have tried this
method myself, but without success, for
though my hunting-horse, old Manitou,
stands as steady as a rock, yet I find it im-

OF A RANCHMAN 195

possible to shoot the rifle with any degree
of accuracy from the saddle.

Except on such occasions as those just
mentioned, the white-tail is rarely killed
while hunting on horseback. This last
term, by-the-way, must not be understood
in the sense in which it would be taken by
the fox-hunter of the South, or by the Cali-
fornian and Texan horsemen who course
hare, antelope, and wild turkey with their
fleet greyhounds. With us hunting on
horseback simply means that the horse is
ridden not only to the hunting grounds, but
also through them, until the game is dis-
covered; then the hunter immediately dis-
mounts, shooting at once if the animal is
near enough and has seen him, or stalking
up to it on foot if it is a great distance off
and he is still unobserved. Where great
stretches of country have to be covered, as
in antelope shooting, hunting on horseback
is almost the only way followed; but the
haunts and habits of the white-tail deer

196 HUNTING TRIPS

render it nearly useless to try to kill them
in this way, as the horse would be sure to
alarm them 6y making a noise, and even if
he did not there would hardly be time to
dismount and take a snap shot. Only once
have I ever killed a white-tail buck while
hunting on horseback; and at that time I
had been expecting to fall in with black-
tail.

This was while we had been making a
wagon trip to the westward following the
old Keogh trail, which was made by the
heavy army wagons that journeyed to Fort
Keogh in the old days when the soldiers
were, except a few daring trappers, the only
white men to be seen on the last great hunt-
ing-ground of the Indians. It was aban-
doned as a military route several years ago,
and is now only rarely travelled over, either
by the canvas-topped ranch-wagon of some
wandering cattle-men — like ourselves, — or
else by a small party of emigrants, in two
or three prairie schooners, which contain all
their household goods. Nevertheless, it is

OF A RANCHMAN 197

still as plain and distinct as ever. The two
deep parallel ruts, cut into the sod by the
wheels of the heavy wagon, stretch for
scores of miles in a straight line across the
level prairie, and take great turns and
doublings to avoid the impassable portions
of the Bad Lands. The track is always
perfectly plain, for in the dry climate of the
western plains the action of the weather
tends to preserve rather than to obliterate
here it leads downhill, the snow water
has cut and widened the ruts into deep gul-
lies, so that a wagon has at those places to
travel alongside the road. From any little
rising in the prairie the road can be seen, a
long way off, as a dark line, which, when
near, resolves itself into two sharply defined
parallel cuts. Such a road is a great con-
venience as a landmark. When travelling
along it, or one like it, the hunters can sep-
arate in all directions, and no matter how
long or how far they hunt, there is never
the least difficulty about finding camp. For
the general direction in which the road lies,

198 HUNTING TRIPS

is, of course, kept in mind, and it can be
reached whether the sun is down or not;
then a glance tells if the wagon has passed,
and all that remains to be done is to gallop
along the trail until camp is found.

On the trip in question we had at first
very bad weather. Leaving the ranch in
the morning, two of us, who were mounted,
pushed on ahead to hunt, the wagon follow-
ing slowly, with a couple of spare saddle
ponies leading behind it. Early in the af-
ternoon, while riding over the crest of a
great divide, which separates the drainage
basins of two important creeks, we saw that
a tremendous storm was brewing with that
marvellous rapidity which is so marked a
characteristic of weather changes on the
plains. A towering mass of clouds gath-
ered in the northwest, turning that whole
quarter of the sky to an inky blackness.
From there the storm rolled down toward
us at a furious speed, obscuring by degrees
the light of the sun, and extending its
wings toward each side, as if to overlap any

OF A RANCHMAN 199

that tried to avoid its path. Against the
dark background of the mass could be seen
pillars and clouds of gray mist, whirled
hither and thither by the wind, and sheets
of level rain driven before it. The edges
of the wings tossed to and fro, and the
wind shrieked and moaned as it swept over
the prairie. It was a storm of unusual in-
tensity; the prairie fowl rose in flocks
from before it, scudding with spread wings
toward the thickest cover, and the herds of
antelope ran across the plain like race-
horses to gather in the hollows and behind
the low ridges.

We spurred hard to get out of the open,
riding with loose reins for the creek. The
centre of the storm swept by behind us,
fairly across our track, and we only got a
wipe from the tail of it. Yet this itself we
could not have faced in the open. The first
gust caught us a few hundred yards from
the creek, almost taking us frorp the sad-
dK . and driving the rain and hail in sting-
level sheets against us. We galloped

200 HUNTING TRIPS

to the edge of a deep wash-out, scrambled
into it at the risk of our necks, and huddled
up with our horses underneath the wind-
ward bank. Here we remained pretty \\vll
sheltered until the storm was over. Although
it was August, the air became very cold.
The wagon was fairly caught, and would
have been blown over if the top had been
on; the driver and horses escaped without
injury, pressing under the leeward side, the
storm coming so level that they did not need
a roof to protect them from the hail. Where
the centre of the whirlwind struck it did
great damage, sheets of hailstones as large
as pigeons' eggs striking the earth with the
velocity of bullets; next day the hailstones
could have been gathered up by the bushel
from the heaps that lay in the bottom of the
gullies and ravines. One of my cowboys
was out in the storm, during whose continu-
ance he crouched under his horse's belly ;
coming home he came across some antelope
so numb and stiffened that they could barely
limp out of the way.

OF A RANCHMAN 201

Near my ranch the hail killed quite a
number of lambs. These were the miser-
able remnants of a flock of twelve thousand
p driven into the Bad Lands a year be-
fore, four fifths of whom had died during
the first winter, to the delight of all the
neighboring cattle-men. Cattle-men hate
sheep, because they eat the grass so close
that cattle cannot live on the same ground.
The sheep-herders are a morose, melan-
choly set of men, generally afoot, and \\itli
no companionship except that of the bleat-
ing idiots they are hired to guard. No man
can associate with sheep and retain his self-
respect. Intellectually a sheep is about on
the lowest level of the brute creation ; why
the early Christians admired it, wh<
young or old, is to a good cattle-man always
a profound mystery.

The wagon came on to the creek, along
whose banks we had taken shelter, and we
then went into camp. It rained all night, and
there was a thick mist, with continual sharp
showers, all the next day and night. The

202 HUNTING TRIPS

wheeling was, in consequence, very heavy,
and after striking the Keogh trail, we were
able to go along it but a few miles before
the fagged-out look of the team and the ap-
proach of evening warned us that we should
have to go into camp while still a dozen
miles from any pool or spring. Accord-
ingly we made what would have been a dry
camp had it not been for the incessant
down-pour of rain, which we gathered in
the canvas wagon-sheet and in our oilskin
overcoats in sufficient quantity to make
coffee, having with infinite difficulty started
a smouldering fire just to leeward of the
wagon. The horses, feeding on the soaked
grass, did not need water. An antelope,
with the bold and heedless curiosity some-
times shown by its tribe, came up within
two hundred yards of us as we were build-
ing the fire; but though one of us took a
shot at him, it missed. Our shaps and oil-
skins had kept us perfectly dry, and as soon
as our frugal supper was over, we coiled up

OF A RANCHMAN 203

among the boxes and bundles inside the
wagon and slept soundly till daybreak.

When the sun rose next day, the third
we were out, the sky was clear, and we two
horsemen at once prepared to make a hunt.
Some three miles off to the south of where
we were camped, the plateau on which we
were sloped off into a great expanse of
broken ground, with chains upon chains of
steep hills, separated by deep valleys, wind-
ing and branching in every direction, their
bottoms filled with trees and brushwood.
Toward this place we rode, intending to go
into it some little distance, and then to hunt
along through it near the edge. As soon as
we got down near the brushy ravine we
rode along without talking, guiding the
horses as far as possible on earthy places,
where they would neither stumble nor
strike their feet against stones, and not let-
ting our rifle-barrels or spurs clink against
any thing. Keeping outside of the brush,
a little up the side of the hill, one of us

204 HUNTING TRIPS

would ride along each side of the ravine,
examining intently with our eyes every
clump of trees or brushwood. For some
time we saw nothing, but, finally, as we
were riding both together round the jutting
spur of a steep hill, my companion suddenly
brought his horse to a halt, and pointing
across the shelving bend to a patch of trees
well up on the opposite side of a broad ra-
vine, asked me if I did not see a deer in it.
I was off the horse in a second, throwing
the reins over his head. We were in the
shadow of the cliff-shoulder, and with the
wind in our favor; so we were unlikely to
be observed by the game. I looked long
and eagerly toward the spot indicated, which
was about a hundred and twenty-five yards
from us, but at first could see nothing. By
this time, however, the experienced plains-
man who was with me was satisfied that
he was right in his supposition, and he told
me to try again and look for a patch of red.
I saw the patch at once, just glimmering
through the bushes, but should certainly

OF A RANCHMAN 205

never have dreamed it was a deer if left to
myself. Watching it attentively I soon saw
it move enough to satisfy me where the
head lay ; kneeling on one knee and (as it
was a little beyond point-blank range) hold-
ing at the top of the portion visible, I pulled
trigger, and the bright-colored patch disap-
peared from among the bushes. The aim
was a good one, for, on riding up to the
brink of the ravine, we saw a fine white-
tail buck lying below us, shot through just
behind the shoulder ; he was still in the red
coat, with his antlers in the velvet.

A deer is far from being such an easy
animal to see as the novice is apt to suppose.
Until the middle of September he is in the
red coat ; after that time he is in the gray ;
but it is curious how each one harmonizes
in tint with certain of the surroundings. A
red doe lying down is, at a little distance,
undistinguishable from the soil on which
she is ; while a buck in the gray can hardly
be made out in dead timber. While feed-
ing quietly or standing still, they rarely

2o6 HUNTING TRIPS

show the proud, free port we are accus-
tomed to associate with the idea of a Buck,
and look rather ordinary, humble-seeming
animals, not at all conspicuous or likely
to attract the hunter's attention; but once
let them be frightened, and as they stand
facing the danger, or bound away from it,
their graceful movements and lordly bear-
ing leave nothing to be desired. The black-
tail is a still nobler-looking animal; while
an antelope, on the contrary, though as light
and quick on its feet as is possible for any
animal not possessing wings to be, yet has
an angular, goat-like look, and by no means
conveys to the beholder the same idea of
grace that a deer does.

In coming home, on this wagon trip, we
made a long moonlight ride, passing over
between sunset and sunrise what had taken
us three days' journey on the outward
march. Of our riding horses, two were still
in good condition and well able to stand
a twenty-four hours' jaunt, in spite of hard
work and rough usage; the spare ones, as

OF A RANCHMAN 207

well as the team, were pretty well done
up and could get along but slowly. All day
long we had been riding beside the wagon
over barren sage-brush plains, following
the dusty trails made by the beef-herds
that had been driven toward one of the
Montana shipping towns.

When we halted for the evening meal we
came near learning by practical experience
how easy it is to start a prairie fire. We
were camped by a dry creek on a broad bot-
tom covered with thick, short grass, as dry
as so much tinder. We wished to burn a
good circle clear for the camp fire; light-
ing it, we stood round with branches to keep
it under. While thus standing a puff of
wind struck us; the fire roared like a wild
beast as it darted up; and our hair and
eyelashes were well singed before we had
beaten it out. At one time it seemed as if,
though but a very few feet in extent, it
would actually get away from us; in which
case the whole bottom would have been
a blazing furnace within five minutes.

ao8 HUNTING TRIPS

After supper, looking at the worn-out
condition of the team, we realized that it
would take three more days travelling at
the rate we had been going to bring us in,
and as the country was monotonous, with-
out much game, we concluded we would
leave the wagon with the driver, and taking
advantage of the full moon, push through
the whole distance before breakfast next
morning. Accordingly, we at nine o'clock
again saddled the tough little ponies we had
ridden all day and loped off out of the circle
at firelight. For nine hours we rode
steadily, generally at a quick lope, across the
moon-lit prairie. The hoof-beats of our
horses rang out in steady rhythm through
the silence of the night, otherwise unbroken
save now and then by the wailing cry of a
coyote. The rolling plains stretched out on
all sides of us, shimmering in the dear
moonlight ; and occasionally a band of spec-
tral-looking antelope swept silently away
from before our path. Once we went by a
drove of Texan cattle, who stared wildly at

OF A RANCHMAN 209

the intruders; as we passed they charged
down by us, the ground rumbling beneath
their tread, while their long horns knocked
against each other with a sound like the
clattering of a multitude of castanets. We
could see clearly enough to keep our general
course over the trackless plain, steering by
the stars where the prairie was perfectly
level and without landmarks; and our ride
was timed well, for as we galloped down
into the valley of the Little Missouri the
sky above the line of level bluffs in our
front was crimson with the glow of the un-
risen sun.

CHAPTER V
THE BLACK-TAIL DEER

FAR different from the low-scudding,
brush-loving white-tail, is the black-
tail deer, the deer of the ravines and the
rocky uplands. In general shape and form,
both are much alike; but the black-tail is
the larger of the two, with heavier antlers,
of which the prongs start from one another,
as if each of the tines of a two-pronged
pitchfork had bifurcated ; and in some cases
it looks as if the process had been again re-
peated. The tail, instead of being broad
and bushy as a squirrel's, spreading from
the base, and pure white to the tip, is round
and close haired, witH the end black, though
the rest is white. If an ordinary deer is
running, its flaunting flag is almost its
most conspicuous part; but no one would
notice the tail of a black-tail deer.

210

OF A RANCHMAN 211

All deer vary greatly in size ; and a small
black-tail buck will be surpassed in bulk by
many white-tails; but the latter never
reaches the weight and height sometimes at-
tained by the former. The same holds true
of the antlers borne by the two animals ; on
the average those of the black-tail are the
heavier, and exceptionally large antlers of
this species are larger than any of the white-
tail. Bucks of both kinds very often have,
when full-grown, more than the normal
number of ten points; sometimes these
many-pronged antlers will be merely de-
formities, while in other instances the
points are more symmetrical, and add
greatly to the beauty and grandeur of the
head. The venison of the black-tail is said
to be inferior in quality to that of the white-
tail; but I have never been able to detect
much difference, though, perhaps, on the
whole, the latter is slightly better.

The gaits of the two animals are widely
different. The white-tail runs at a rolling
gallop, striking the ground with the for-

212 HUNTING TRIPS

ward feet first, the head held forward. The
black-tail, on the contrary, holds its head
higher up, and progresses by a series of
prodigious bounds, striking the earth with
all four feet at once, the legs held nearly
stiff. It seems like an extraordinary method
of running; and the violent exertion tires
the deer sooner than does the more easy
and natural gait of the white-tail; but for
a mile or so these rapidly succeeding bounds
enable the black-tail to get over the ground
at remarkable speed. Over rough ground,
along precipitous slopes, and among the
boulders of rocky cliffs, it will go with sur-
prising rapidity and surefootedness, only
surpassed by the feats of the big-horn in
similar localities, and not equalled by those
of any other plains game.

One of the noticeable things in western
plains hunting is the different zones or bands
of territory inhabited by different kinds of
game. Along the alluvial land of the rivers
and large creeks is found the white-tail.
Back of these alluvial lands generally comes a

OF A RANCHMAN 213

broad tract of broken, hilly country, scantily
clad with brush in some places ; this is the
abode of the black-tail deer. And where
these hills rise highest, and where the
ground is most rugged and barren, there
the big-horn is found. After this hilly
country is passed, in travelling away from
the river, we come to the broad, level plains,
the domain of the antelope. Of course the
habitats of the different species overlap at
the edges ; and this overlapping is most ex-
tended in the cases of the big-horn and the
black-tail.

The -Bad Lands are the favorite haunts
of the black-tail. Here the hills are steep
and rugged, cut up and crossed in every di-
rection by canyon-like ravines and val
which branch out and subdivide in the most
intricate and perplexing manner. Here and
there are small springs, or pools, marked by
the greener vegetation growing round
them. Along the bottoms and sides of the
ravines there are patches of scrubby under-
growth, and in many of the pockets or glens

214 HUNTING TRIPS

in the sides of the hills the trees grow to
some little height. High buttes rise here
and there, naked to the top, or else covered
with stunted pines and cedars, which also
grow in the deep ravines and on the edges
of the sheer canyons. Such lands, where
the ground is roughest, and where there is
some cover, even though scattered and
scanty, are the best places to find the black-
tail. Naturally their pursuit needs very dif-
ferent qualities in the hunter from those re-
quired in the chase of the white-tail. In the
latter case stealth and caution are the prime
requisites; while the man who would hunt
and kill the deer of the uplands has more
especial need of energy, activity, and endur-
ance, of good judgment and of skill with the
rifle. Hunting the black-tail is beyond all
comparison the nobler sport. Indeed,
there is no kind of plains hunting, except
only the chase of the big-horn, more fitted
to bring out the best and hardiest of the
many qualities which go to make up a good
hunter.

OF A RANCHMAN 215

It is still a moot question whether it is
better to hunt on horseback or on foot ; but
the course of events is rapidly deciding it
in favor of the latter method. Undoubtedly
it is easier and pleasanter to hunt on horse-
back ; and it has the advantage of covering
a great deal of ground. But it is impossible
to advance with such caution, and it is diffi-
cult to shoot as quickly, as when on foot ;
and where the deer are shy and not very
plenty, the most enthusiastic must, slowly
and reluctantly but surely, come to the con-
clusion that a large bag can only be made
by the still-hunter who goes on foot. Of
course, in the plains country it is not as in
mountainous or thickly wooded regions, and
the horse should almost always be taken as
a means of conveyance to the hunting-
grounds and from one point to another ; but
the places where game is expected should,
as a rule, be hunted over on foot. This rule
is by no means a general one, however.
There are still many localities where the
advantage of covering a great deal of

216 HUNTING TRIPS

ground more than counterbalances the dis-
advantage of being on horseback. About
one third of my hunts are still made on
horseback ; and in almost all the others I
take old Manitou to carry me to and from
the grounds and to pack out any game that
may be killed. A hunting-horse is of no
use whatever unless he will permit a man
to jump from his back and fire with the
greatest rapidity; and nowhere does prac-
tice have more to do with success than in
the case of jumping off a horse to shoot at
game which has just been seen. The vari-
ous movements take a novice a good deal
of time ; while an old hand will be off and
firing with the most instantaneous quick-
ness. Manitou can be left anywhere at a
moment's warning, while his rider leaps off,
shoots at a deer from almost under his head,
and perhaps chases the wounded animal a
mile or over ; and on his return the good old
fellow will be grazing away, perfectly happy
and contented, and not making a movement
to run off or evade being caught.

OF A RANCHMAN

One method of killing deer on horseback
is very exciting. Many of the valleys or
ravines extend with continual abrupt turns
and windings for several miles, the brush
and young trees stretching with constant
breaks down the middle of the bottom, and
leaving a space on each side along which a
surefooted horse can gallop at speed. Two
men, on swift, hardy horses, can hunt down
such a ravine very successfully at evening,
by each taking a side and galloping at a
good speed the whole length against the
1 The patter of the unshod hoofs over
the turf makes but little noise ; and the turns
are so numerous and abrupt, and the horses
go so swiftly, that the hunters come on the
deer almost before the latter are aware of
their presence. If it is so late in the day
that the deer have begun to move they will
find the horses close up before they have a
suspicion of danger, while if they are still
lying in the cover the suddenness of the ap-
pearance of their foe is apt to so startle them
as to make them break out and show them-

2i8 HUNTING TRIPS

selves instead of keeping hid, as they would
probably do if they perceived the approach
from afar. One thus gets a close running shot
or if he waits a minute he will generally get
a standing shot at some little distance, ow-
ing to a very characteristic habit of the
black-tail. This is its custom of turning
round, apparently actuated simply by curi-
osity, to look at the object which startled it,
after it has run off a hundred and fifty
yards or so. It then stands motionless for
a few seconds, and offers a chance for a
steady shot. If the chance is not improved,
no other will offer, for as soon as the deer
has ended its scrutiny it is off again, and
this time will not halt till well out of dan-
ger. Owing to its singular gait a succes-
sion of buck jumps, the black-tail is a pecul-
iarly difficult animal to hit while on the run ;
and it is best to wait until it stops and turns
before taking the shot, as if fired at, the re-
port will generally so alarm it as to make it
continue its course without halting to look
back. Some of the finest antlers in my

OF A RANCHMAN

219

possession come from bucks killed by this
method of hunting ; and it is a most exhilar-
ating form of sport, the horse galloping
rapidly over what is often very broken
ground, and the senses being continually
on the alert for any sign of game. The rush
and motion of the horse, and the care neces-
sary to guide it and at the same time be
in constant readiness for a shot, prevent the
chase having any of the monotony that is at
times inseparable from still-hunting proper.
Nevertheless, it is by still-hunting that
most deer are killed, and the highest form
of hunting craft is shown in the science of
the skilful still-hunter. With sufficient
practice any man who possesses common-
sense and is both hardy and persevering can
become, to a certain extent, a still-hunter.
But the really good still-hunter is born
rather than made ; though of course in addi-
tion to possessing the gifts naturally he must
also have developed them, by constant prac-
tice, to the highest point possible. One of
the foremen on my ranch is a really remark-

220 HUNTING TRIPS

ably good hunter and game shot, and an-
other does almost as well; but the rest of
us are not, and never will be, any thing very
much out of the common. By dint of prac-
tice we have learned to shoot as well at game
as at a target ; and those of us who are fond
of the sport hunt continually and so get a
good deal of game at one time or another.
Hunting through good localities, up wind,
quietly and perseveringly, we come upon
quite a number of animals ; and we can kill
a standing shot at a fair distance and a run-
ning shot close up, and by good luck every
now and then kill far off ; but to much more
than is implied in the description of such
modest feats we cannot pretend.

After the disappearance of the buffalo
and the thinning out of the elk, the black-
tail was, and in most places it still is, the
game most sought after by the hunters; I
have myself shot as many of them as of all
other kinds of plains game put together.
But for this very reason it is fast disappear-
ing; and bids fair to be the next animal,

OP A RANCHMAN 221

the buffalo and elk, to vanish from the
places that formerly knew it. The big-horn
and the prong-horn are more difficult to
stalk and kill, partly from their greater nat-
ural wariness, and partly from the kind of
ground on which they are found. But it
seems at first sight strange that the black-
tail should be exterminated or driven away
so much more quickly than the white-tail,
when it has sharper ears and nose, is more
tenacious of life, and is more wary. The
main reason is to be found in the difference
in the character of the haunts of the two
creatures. The black-tail is found on much
more open ground, where the animals can
be seen farther off, where it is much easier
to take advantage of the direction of the
wind and to get along without noise, and

e far more country can be traversi
a given time ; and though the average length
of the shots taken is in one case two or three
times as great as in the other, yet tl
more than counterbalanced by the fact that
they are more often standing ones, and that

222 HUNTING TRIPS

there is usually much more time for aiming.
Moreover, one kind of sport can be followed
on horseback, while the other must be fol-
lowed on foot; and then the chase of the
white-tail, in addition, is by far the more
tedious and patience-trying. And the black-
tail are much the more easily scared or
driven out of a locality by persecution or by
the encroaching settlements. All these
qualities combine to make it less able to
hold its own against mankind than its
smaller rival. It is the favorite game of the
skin hunters and meat hunters, and has, in
consequence, already disappeared from
many places, while in others its extermina-
tion is going on at a frightfully rapid rate,
owing to its being followed in season and
out of season without mercy. Besides, the cat-
tle are very fond of just the places to which
it most often resorts; and wherever cattle
go the cowboys ride about after them, with
their ready six-shooters at their hips. They
blaze away at any deer they see, of course,
and in addition to now and then killing or

OF A RANCHMAN 223

wounding one, continually harry and dis-
turb the poor animals. In the more re-
mote and inaccessible districts the black-tail
will long hold its own, to be one of the ani-
mals whose successful pursuit will redound
most to the glory of the still-hunter ; but in
a very few years it will have ceased entirely
to be one of the common game animals of
the plains.

Its great curiosity is one of the disadvan-
tages under which it labors in the fierce
struggle for existence, compared to the wfiite-
tail. The latter, when startled, does not often
* stop to look round ; but, as already said, the
former will generally do so after having
gone a few hundred feet. The first black-
tail I ever killed — unfortunately killed, for
the body was not found until spoiled — was
obtained owing solely to this peculiarity. I
had been riding up along the side of a brushy
coulie, when a fine buck started out some
thirty yards ahead. Although so close, my
first shot, a running one, was a miss ; when
a couple of hundred yards off, on the very

224 HUNTING TRIPS

crest of the spur up which he had run,
he stopped and turned partially round. Fir-
ing again from a rest, the bullet broke his
hind leg far up and went into his body. Off
he went on three legs, and I after him as
fast as the horse could gallop. He went
over the spur and down into the valley of
the creek from which the coulie branched
up, in very bad ground. My pony was
neither fast nor surefooted, but of course
in half a mile overhauled the three-legged
deer, which turned short off and over the
side of the hill flanking the valley. Instead
of running right up on it I foolishly dis- '
mounted and began firing; after the first
shot — a miss — it got behind a boulder hith-
erto unseen, and thence over the crest. The
pony meanwhile had slipped its hind leg
into the rein ; when, after some time, I got
it out and galloped up to the ridge, the most
careful scrutiny of which my unpractised
eyes were capable failed to discover a track
on the dry ground, hard as granite. A day
of two afterwards the place where the car-

OF A RANCHMAN 225

cass lay was made known by the vultures,
gathered together from all parts to feed
upon it.

When fired at from a place of hiding,
deer which have not been accustomed to the
report of a gun will often appear confused
and uncertain what to do. On one occa-
sion, while hunting in the mountains, I saw
an old buck with remarkably large horns, of
us and beautiful shape, more sym-
metrical than in most instances where the
normal form is departed from. The deer
was feeding in a wide, gently sloping val-
ontaining no cov^er from behind which
to approach him. We were in no need of
meat, but the antlers were so fine that I
felt they justified the death of their bearer.
After a little patient waitng, the buck
walked out of the valley, and over the ridge
on the other side, moving up wind ; I raced
after him, and crept up behind a thick
of stunted cedars, which had started
up from among some boulders. The deer
was about a hundred yards off, down in the

226 HUNTING TRIPS

valley. Out of breath, and over-confident,
I fired hastily, overshooting him. The wind
blew the smoke back away from the ridge,
so that he saw nothing, while the echo pre-
vented his placing the sound. He took a
couple of jumps nearer, when he stood still
and was again overshot. Again he took a
few jumps, and the third shot went below
him; and the fourth just behind him. This
was too much, and away he went. In des-
pair I knelt down (I had been firing off-
hand), took a steady aim well- for ward on
his body, and fired, bringing him down, but
with small credit to the shot, for the bul-
let had gone into his hip, paralyzing his
hind-quarters. The antlers are the finest
pair I ever got, and form a magnificent or-
nament for the hall; but the shooting is
hardly to be recalled with pleasure. Still,
though certainly very bad, it was not quite
as discreditable as the mere target shot
would think. I have seen many a crack
marksman at the target do quite as bad

OF A RANCHMAN 227

missing when out in the field, and that not
once, but again and again.

Of course, in those parts of the wilder-
ness where the black-tail are entirely un-
used to man, they are as easy to approach
(from the leeward side) as is any and every
other kind of game under like conditions.
In lonely spots, to which hunters rarely or
never penetrate, deer of this species will
stand and look at a hunter without offer-
ing to run away till he is within fifty yards
of them, if he will advance quietly. In a
far-off mountain forest I have more than
once shot a young buck at less than that
distance as he stood motionless, gazing at
me, although but little caution had been
used in approaching him.

But a short experience of danger on the
part of the black-tail changes all this ; and
where hunters are often afoot, he becomes
ild and wary as may be. Then the suc-
cessful still-hunter shows that he is indeed
well up in the higher forms of hunting craft.

228 HUNTING TRIPS

For the man who can, not once by accident,
but again and again, as a regular thing,
single-handed, find and kill his black-tail,
has shown that he is no mere novice in his
art; still-hunting the black-tail is a sport
that only the skilful can follow with good
results, and one which implies in the suc-
cessful sportsman the presence of most of
the still-hunter's rarest attributes. All of
the qualities which a still-hunter should pos-
sess are of service in the pursuit of any
kind of game; but different ones will be
called into especial play in hunting different
kinds of animals. Thus, to be a successful
hunter after any thing, a man should be
patient, resolute, hardy, and with good
judgment; he should have good lungs and
stout muscles; he should be able to move
with noiseless stealth ; and he should be
keen-eyed, and a first-rate marksman with
the rifle. But in different kinds of shoot-
ing, the relative importance of these quali-
ties varies greatly. In hunting white-tail
deer, the two prime requisites are stealth

OF A RANCHMAN 229

and patience. If the quarry is a big-horn,
a man needs especially to be sound in wind
and limbs, and to be both hardy and reso-
lute. Skill in the use of the long-range rifle
counts for more in antelope hunting than
in any other form of sport ; and it is in this
kind of hunting alone that good marksman-
ship is more important than any thing else.
With dangerous game, cool and steady
nerves are of the first consequence ; all else
comes after. Then, again, in the use of the
rifle, the kind of skill — not merely the de-
gree of skill — required to hunt different
animals may vary greatly. In shooting
white-tail, it is especially necessary to be a
good snap shot at running game ; when the
distance is close, quickness is an essential.
But at antelope there is plenty of time, and
what is necessary is ability to judge dis-
tance, and capacity to hit a small station-
ary object at long range.

The different degrees of estimation in
which the chase of the various kinds of
plains game is held depend less upon the

230 HUNTING TRIPS

difficulty of capture than upon the nature
of the qualities in the hunter which each par-
ticular form of hunting calls into play. A
man who is hardy, resolute, and a good
shot, has come nearer to realizing the ideal
of a bold and free hunter than is the case
with one who is merely stealthy and pa-
tient; and so, though to kill a white-tail is
rather more difficult than to kill a black-
tail, yet the chase of the latter is certainly
the nobler form of sport, for it calls into
play, and either develops or implies the
presence of, much more manly qualities
than does the other. Most hunters would
find it nearly as difficult to watch in silence
by a salt-lick throughout the night, and
then to butcher with a shot-gun a white-
tail, as it would be to walk on foot through
rough ground from morning till evening,
and to fairly approach and kill a black-tail ;
yet there is no comparison between the de-
gree of credit to be attached to one feat
and that to be attached to the other. Indeed,
if difficulty in killing is to be taken as a cri-

OF A RANCHMAN 231

terion, a mink or even a weasel would have
to stand as high up in the scale as a deer,
were the animals equally plenty.

Ranged in the order of the difficulty with
which they are approached and slain, plains
game stand as follows: big-horn, antelope,
white-tail, black-tail, elk, and buffalo. But,
as regards" the amount of manly sport fur-
nished by the chase of each, the white-tail
should stand at the bottom of the list, and
the elk and black-tail abreast of the ante-
lope.

Other things being equal, the length of
an animal's stay in the land, when the arch
foe of all lower forms of animal life has
made his appearance, therein, depends upon
the difficulty with which he is hunted and
slain. But other influences have to be taken
into account. The big-horn is shy and re-
tiring; very few, compared to the whole
number will be killed; and yet the others
vanish completely. Apparently they will not
remain where they are hunted and dis-
turbed. With antelope and white-tail this

HUNTING TRIPS

does not hold ; they will cling to a place far
more tenaciously, even if often harassed.
The former being the more conspicuous, and
living in such open ground, is apt to be
more persecuted; while the white-tail,
longer than any other animal, keeps its
place in the land in spite of the swinish
game butchers, who hunt for hides and not
for sport or actual food, and who murder
the gravid doe and the spotted fawn with
as little hesitation as they would kill a buck
of ten points. No one who is not himself
a sportsman and lover of nature can realize
the intense indignation with which a true
hunter sees these butchers at their brutal
work of slaughtering the game, in season
and out, for the sake of the few dollars they
are too lazy to earn in any other and more
honest way.

All game animals rely upon both eyes,
ears, and nose to warn them of the approach
of danger ; but the amount of reliance
placed on each sense varies greatly in dif-
ferent species. Those found out on the

OF A RANCHMAN 233

plains pay very little attention to what they
hear; indeed, in the open they can hardly
be approadu <1 iu-ar enough to make of much
account any ordinary amount of noise
caused by the stalker, especially as the lat-
ter is walking over little but grass and soft
earth. The buffalo, whose shaggy front-
let of hair falls over his eyes and prevents
his seeing at any great distance, depends
mainly upon his exquisite sense of smell.
The antelope, on the other hand, depends al-
most entirely on his great, bulging eyes, and
very little on his nose. His sight is many
times as good as that of deer, both species
of which, as well as elk, rely both upon
sight and hearing, but most of all upon their
sense of smell, for their safety. The big-
horn has almost as keen eyesight as an ante-
lope, while his ears and nose are as sens
to sound and scent as are those of an elk.

Black-tail, like other members of the deer
family, do not pay much attention to an ob-
ject which is not moving. A hunter who
is standing motionless or squatting do\\

HUNTING TRIPS

not likely to receive attention, while a big-
horn or prong-horn would probably see him
and take the alarm at once ; and if the black-
tail is frightened and running he will run
almost over a man standing in plain sight,
without paying any heed to him, if the latter
does not move. But the very slightest move-
ment at once attracts a deer's attention, and
deer are not subject to the panics that at
times overtake other kinds of game. The
black-tail has much curiosity, which often
proves fatal to it ; but which with it is after
all by no means the ungovernable passion
that it is with antelope. The white-tail and
the big-horn are neither over-afflicted with
morbid curiosity, nor subject to panics or fits
of stupidity ; and both these animals, as well
as the black-tail, seem to care very little for
the death of tfie leader of the band, going
their own ways with small regard for the
fate of the chief, while elk will huddle to-
gether in a confused group, and remain al-
most motionless when their leader is struck
down. Antelope and more especially elk

OF A RANCHMAN 235

are subject to perfect panics of unreasoning
terror, during which they will often put
themselves completely in the power of the
hunter; while buffalo will frequently show
a downright stupidity almost unequalled.

The black-tail suffers from no such pe-
culiarities. His eyes are good ; his nose and
ears excellent. He is ever alert and wary ;
his only failing is his occasional over-curi-
osity; and his pursuit taxes to the utmost
the skill and resources of the still-hunter.

By all means the best coverings for the
feet when still-hunting are moccasins, as
with them a man can go noiselessly through
ground where hobnailed boots would clatter
like the hoofs of a horse ; but in hunting in
winter over the icy buttes and cliffs it is best
to have stout shoes, with nails in the soles,
and if the main work is done on horseback
it is best to wear high boots, as they keep
the trousers down. Indeed in the Bad
Lands boots have other advantages, for rat-
tlesnakes abound, and against these they af-
ford perfect protection — unless a man

236 HUNTING TRIPS

should happen to stumble on a snake while
crawling along on all fours. But moccasins
are beyond all comparison the best footgear
for hunting. In very cold weather a fur
cap which can be pulled down over the ears
is a necessity ; but at other times a brimmed
felt hat offers better protection against both
sun and rain. The clothes should be of
some neutral tint — buckskin is on this ac-
count excellent — and very strong.

The still-hunter should be well acquainted
with, at any rate, certain of the habits of his
quarry. There are seasons when the black-
tail is found in bands ; such is apt to be the
case when the rutting time is over. At this
period, too, the deer wander far and wide,
making what may almost be called a migra- !
tion ; and in rutting time the bucks follow
the does at speed for miles at a stretch. But
except at these seasons each individual
black-tail has a certain limited tract of coun-
try to which he confines himself unless dis-
turbed or driven away, not, of course, keep-
ing in the same spot all the time, but work-

OF A RANCHMAN 237

ing round among a particular set of ravines
and coulies, where the feed is good, and
^e water can be obtained without going
too far out of the immediate neighborhood.
Throughout the plains country the black-
tail lives in the broken ground, seldom com-
ing down to the alluvial bottoms or out on
the open prairies and plateaus. But he is
found all through this broken ground.
Sometimes it is rolling in character with
rounded hills and gentle valleys, dotted here
and there with groves of trees ; or the hills
may rise into high chains, covered with an
open pine forest, sending off long spurs and
led by deep valleys and basins. Such
places are favorite resorts of this deer ; but
it is as. plentiful in the Bad Lands proper.
There are tracts of these which are in part
or wholly of volcanic origin ; then the hills
are called scoria buttes. They are high and
very steep, but with rounded tops and edges,
and are covered, as is the ground round
about, with scoriae boulders. Bushes, and
sometimes a few cedar, grow among them,

23 8 HUNTING TRIPS

and thronged they would seem to be most un-
likely places for deer, yet black-tail are very
fond of them, and are very apt to be found
among them. Often in the cold fall morn-
ings they will lie out among the boulders.
on the steep side of such a scoria butte,
sunning themselves, far from any cover ex-
cept a growth of brushwood in the bottom
•

of the dry creeks or coulies. The grass on
top of and between these scoria buttes is
often very nutritious, and cattle are also
fond of it. The higher buttes are choice
haunts of the mountain sheep.

Nineteen twentieths of the Bad Lands,
however, owe their origin not to volcanic
action but to erosion and to the peculiar
weathering forces always at work in the
dry climate of the plains. Geologically the
land is for the most part composed of a set
of parallel, perfectly horizontal strata, of
clay, marl, or sandstone, which, being of dif-
ferent degrees of hardness, offer some more
and some less resistance to the action of the
weather. The table-lands, peaks, cliffs, and

OF A RANCHMAN 239

jagged ridges are caused solely by the rains
and torrents cutting away the land into
channels, which at first are merely wash-
outs, and at last grow into deep canyons,
winding valleys, and narrow ravines or
basins. The sides of these cuts are at first
perpendicular, exposing to view the various
bands of soil, perhaps of a dozen different
colors; the hardest bands resist the action
of the weather best and form narrow ledges
stretching along the face of the cliff. Peaks
of the most fantastic shape are formed in
this manner; and where a ridge is worn
away on each side its crest may be as sharp
as a knife blade, but all notched and jagged.
The peaks and ridges vary in height from a
few feet to several hundred; the sides of
the buttes are generally worn down in places
so as to be steeply sloping instead of per-
pendicular. The long wash-outs and the
canyons and canyon-like valleys stretch and
branch out in every direction ; the dr\
of the atmosphere, the extremes of intense
heat and bitter cold, and the occasional furi-

240 HUNTING TRIPS.

ous rain-storms keep the edges and angles
sharp and jagged, and pile up boulders and
masses of loose detritus at the foot of the
cliffs and great lonely crags. Sometimes
the valleys are quite broad, with steep sides
and with numerous pockets, separated by
spurs jutting out into the bottom from the
lateral ridges. Other ravines or clefts taper
down to a ditch, a foot or so wide, from
which the banks rise at an angle of sixty
degrees to the tops of the enclosing ridges.

The faces of the terraced cliffs and sheer
crags are bare of all but the scantiest vege-
tation, and where the Bad Lands are most
rugged and broken the big-horn is the only
game found. But in most places the tops
of the buttes, the sides of the slopes, and the
bottoms of the valleys are more or less
thickly covered with the nutritious grass
which is the favorite food of the black-tail.

Of course, the Bad Lands grade all the
way from those that are almost rolling in
character to those that are so fantastically
broken in form and so bizarre in color as to

OF A RANCHMAN 241

seem hardly properly to belong to this earth.
If the weathering forces have not been very
active, the ground will look, from a little
distance, almost like a level plain, but on
approaching nearer, it will be seen to be
crossed by straight-sided gullies and can-
yons, miles in length, cutting across the land
in every direction and rendering it almost
impassable for horsemen or wagon-teams.
If the forces at work have been more in-
tense, the walls between the different gullies
have been cut down to thin edges, or broken
through, leaving isolated peaks of strange
shape, while the hollows have been chan-
nelled out deeper and deeper; such places
show the extreme and most characteristic
Bad Lands formation. When the weather-
ing has gone on further, the angles are
rounded off, grass begins to grow, bushes
and patches of small trees sprout up, water
is found in places, and the still very rugged
country becomes the favorite abode of the
black-tail.

During the daytime, these deer lie quietly

242 HUNTING TRIPS

in their beds, which are sometimes in the
brush and among the matted bushes in the
bottoms of the small branching coulies, or
heads of the crooked ravines. More often
they will be found in the thickets of stunted
cedars clothing the brinks of the canyons or
the precipitous slopes of the great chasms
into which the ground is cleft and rent; or
else among the groves of gnarled pines on
the sides of the buttes, and in the basins
and pockets between the spurs. If the coun-
try is not much hunted over, a buck or old
doe will often take its mid-day rest out in the
open, lying down among the long grass or
shrubbery on one of the bare benches at the
head of a ravine, at the edge of the dense
brush with which its bottom and sides are
covered. In such a case, a position is al-
ways chosen from which a look-out can be
kept all around ; and the moment any sus-
picious object is seen, the deer slips off into
the thicket below him. Perhaps the favor-
ite resting-places are the rounded edges of
the gorges, just before the sides of the lat-

OF A RANCHMAN 243

kr break sheer off. Here the deer lies,
usually among a few straggling pines or
cedars, on the very edge of the straight side-
wall of the canyon, with a steep-shelving
slope above him, so that he cannot be seen
from the summit ; and in such places it
next to impossible to get at him. If lying
on a cedar-grown spur or ridge-point, the
still-hunter has a better chance, for the
evergreen needles with which the ground is
covered enable a man to walk noiselessly,
and, by stooping or going on all fours, he
can keep under the branches. But it is at
all times hard and unsatisfactory work to
find and successfully still-hunt a deer that
is enjoying its day rest. Generally, the
only result is to find the warm, fresh bed
from which the deer has just sneaked off,
the blades of grass still slowly rising, after
the hasty departure of the weight that has
flattened them down; or else, if in dense
cover, the hunter suddenly hears a scram-
ble, a couple of crashing bounds through
the twigs and dead limbs, and gets a mo-

244 HUNTING TRIPS

mentary glimpse of a dark outline vanish-
ing into the thicket as the sole reward of
his labor. Almost the only way to success-
fully still-hunt a deer in the middle of the
day, is to find its trail and follow it up to
the resting-places, and such a feat needs an
expert tracker and a noiseless and most
skilful stalker.

The black-tail prefers to live in the neigh-
borhood of water, where he can get it every
twenty- four hours ; but he is perfectly will-
ing to drink only every other day, if, as is
often the case, he happens to be in a very
dry locality. Nor does he stay long in the
water or near it, like the white-tail, but
moves off as soon as he is no longer thirsty.
On moonlight nights he feeds a good deal
of the time, and before dawn he is always
on foot for his breakfast ; the hours around
daybreak are those in which most of his
grazing is done. By the time the sun has
been up an hour he is on his way home-
ward, grazing as he goes ; and he will often
stay for some little time longer, if there has

OP A RANCHMAN 245

been no disturbance from man or other
foes, feeding among the scattered scrub
cedars. skirting the thicket in which he in-

*i to make his bed for the day. Having
made his bed he crouches very close in
it, and is difficult to put up during the heat
of the day ; but as the afternoon wears on
he becomes more restless, and will break
from his bed and bound off at much smaller
provocation, while if the place is lonely he
will wander out into the open hours before
sunset. If, however, he is in much danger
of being molested, he will keep close to his
hiding-place until nearly nightfall, when he
ventures out to feed. Owing to the lau
of his evening appearance in localities
where there is much hunting, it is a safer
plan to follow him in the early morning, be-
ing on the ground and ready to start out by
the time the first streak of dawn appears.

n I have lost deer when riding home in
the evening, because the dusk liad deepened
so that it was impossible to distinguish
clearlv enough to shoot.

246 HUNTING TRIPS

One day one of my cowboys and myself
were returning from an unsuccessful hunt,
about nightfall, and were still several miles
from the river, when a couple of yearling
black-tails jumped up in the bed of the dry
creek down which we were riding. Our
horses though stout and swift were not well
trained; and the instant we were off their
backs they trotted off. No sooner were we
on the ground and trying to sight the deer,
one of which was cantering slowly off
among the bushes, than we found we could
not catch the bead sights of our rifles, the
outlines of the animals seeming vague, and
shadowy, and confounding themselves with
the banks and dull green sage bushes behind
them. Certainly six or eight shots were
fired, we doing our best to aim, but without
any effect; and when we gave it up and
turned to look for our horses we were an-
noyed to see the latter trotting off down the
valley half a mile away. We went after at
a round pace ; but darkness closed in before
.we had gained at all on them. There was

OF A RANCHMAN 247

nothing left to do but to walk on down the
valley to the bottoms, and then to wade the
river; as the latter was quite high, we had
to take off our clothes, and it is very un-
comfortable to feel one's way across a river
at night, in bare feet, with the gun and the
bundle of clothes held high over head.
However, when across the river and half a
mile from home, we ran into our horses — a
piece of good luck, as otherwise we should
have had to spend the next day in looking
for them.

Almost the only way in which it is possi-
ble to aim after dark is to get the object
against the horizon, toward the light. One
of the finest bucks I ever killed was shot in
this way. It was some little time after the
sun had set, and I was hurrying home, rid-
ing down along a winding creek at a gallop.
The middle of the bottom was covered with
brush, while the steep, grassy, rounded hills
:ich side sent off spurs into the valley,
the part between every two spurs making a
deep pocket. The horse's feet were unshod

248 HUNTING TRIPS

and he made very little noise, coming down
against the wind. While passing a deep
pocket I heard from within it a snort and
stamping of feet, the well-known sounds
made by a startled deer. Pulling up short
I jumped off the horse — it was Manitou, —
who instantly began feeding with perfect
indifference to what he probably regarded
as an irrational freak of his master; and,
aiming as well as I could in the gathering
dusk, held the rifle well ahead of a shadowy
gray object which was scudding along the
base of the hill towards the mouth of the
pocket. The ball struck in front of and
turned the deer, which then started obliquely
up the hill. A second shot missed it; and
I then (here comes in the good of having a
repeater) knelt down and pointed the rifle
against the sky line, at the place where the
deer seemed likely to top the bluff. Imme-
diately afterwards the buck appeared, mak-
ing the last jump with a great effort which
landed him square on the edge, as sharply
outlined as a silhouette against the fading

OF A RANCHMAN 249

western light. My rifle bead was just above
him; pulling it down I fired, as the buck
paused for a second to recover himself from
his last great bound, and with a crash the
mighty antlered beast came rolling down
the hill, the bullet having broken his back
behind the shoulders, afterwards going out
through his chest.

At times a little caution must be used in
approaching a wounded buck, for if it is not
disabled it may be a rather formidable an-
tagonist. In my own experience I have
never known a wounded buck to do more
than make a pass with his horns, or, in
plunging when the knife enters his throat,
to strike with his forefeet. But one of my
men was regularly charged by a great buck,
which he had wounded, and which was
brought to bay on the ice by a dog. It
seemed to realize that the dog was not the
main antagonist, and knocking him over
charged straight past him at the man, and
he latter had in his haste not reloaded
his rifle, he might have been seriously in-

250 HUNTING TRIPS

jured had it not been for the dog, a very
strong and plucky one, which caught the
buck by the hock and threw him. The buck
got up and again came straight at his foe,
uttering a kind of grunting bleat, and it
was not till after quite a scuffle that the
man, by the help of the dog, got him down
and thrust the knife in his throat. Twice I
have known hounds to be killed by bucks
which they had brought to bay in the rut-
ting season. One of these bucks was a sav-
age old fellow with great thick neck and
sharp-pointed antlers. He came to bay in
a stream, under a bank thickly matted with
willows which grew down into the water,
guarding his rear and flanks, while there
was a small pool in his front across which
the hounds had to swim. Backing in among
the willows he rushed out at every dog that
came near, striking it under water with his
forefeet, and then again retreating to his
fortress. In this way he kept the whole
pack off, and so injured one hound that he
had to be killed. Indeed, a full-grown

OF A RANCHMAN 251

buck with antlers would be a match for a
wolf, unless surprised, and could not im-
probably beat off a cougar if he received the
hitu-r'.s spring fairly on his prong points.

Bucks fight fiercely among themselves
during the rutting season. At that time the
black-tail, unlike the white-tail, is found in
bands, somewhat like those of the elk, but
much smaller, and the bucks of each band
keep up an incessant warfare. A weak buck
promptly gets out of the way if charged by
a large one ; but when two of equal strength
come together the battle is well fought. In-
stances occasionally occur, of a pair of
these duellists getting their horns firmly in-
terlocked and thus perishing ; but these in-
stances are much rarer, owing to the shape
of the antlers, than with the white-tail, of
which species I have in my own experience
come across two or three sets of skulls held
together by their interlacing antlers, the
bearers of which had doubtless died owing
to their inability to break away from each
other.

252 HUNTING TRIPS

A black-tail buck is one of the most no-
ble-looking of all deer. His branching and
symmetrically curved antlers are set on a
small head, carried with beautiful poise by
the proud, massive neck. The body seems
almost too heavy for the slender legs, and
yet the latter bear it as if they were rods
of springing steel. Every movement is full
of alert, fiery life and grace, and he steps
as lightly as though he hardly trod the
earth. The large, sensitive ears are thrown
forward to catch the slightest sound; and
in the buck they are not too conspicuous,
though they are the only parts of his frame
which to any eye can be said to take away
from his beauty. They give the doe a some-
what mulish look; at a distance, the head
of a doe peering out from among twigs
looks like a great black V. To me, how-
ever, even in the case of the doe, they seem
to set off and strengthen by contrast the
delicate, finely-moulded look of the head.
Owing to these ears the species is called in
the books the Mule Deer, and every now

OF. A RANCHMAN 253

and then a plainsman will speak of it by
this title. I kit all plainsmen know it gen-

illy, and ninety-nine out of a hundred
know it only, as the Black-tail Deer; and
as this is the title by which it is known
among all who hunt it or live near it, it

>uld certainly be called by the same name
in the books.

But though so grand and striking an ob-
ject when startled, or whea excited, whether
by curiosity or fear, love or hate, a black-tail
is nevertheless often very hard to make out
\\hen standing motionless among the trees
and brushwood, or when lying down among
the boulders. A raw hand at hunting has
no idea how hard it is to see a deer when at
rest The color of the hair is gray, almost
the same tint as that of the leafless branches
and tree trunks ; for of course the hunting
season is at its height only when UK leaves

e fallen. A deer standing motionless
looks black or gray, according as the sun-
light strikes it; but always looks exactly
the same color as the trees around it. It

254 HUNTING TRIPS

generally stands or lies near some tree
trunks ; and the eye may pass over it once
or twice without recognizing its real na-
ture. In the brush it is still more difficult,
and there a deer's form is often absolutely
indistinguishable from the surroundings, as
one peers through the mass of interlacing
limbs and twigs. Once an old hunter and
myself in walking along the ridge of a
scoria butte passed by without seeing them,
three black-tail lying among the scattered
boulders of volcanic rock on the hillside,
not fifty yards from us. After a little prac-
tical experience a would-be hunter learns
not to expect deer always, or even gener-
ally, to appear as they do when near by or
suddenly startled; but on the contrary to
keep a sharp look-out on every dull-looking
red or yellow patch he sees in a thicket, and
to closely examine any grayish-looking ob-
ject observed on the hillsides, for it is just
such small patches or obscure-looking ob-
jects which are apt, if incautiously ap-
proached, to suddenly take to themselves

OF A RANCHMAN

255

legs, and go bounding off at a rate which
takes them out of danger before the aston-
ished tyro has really waked up to the fact
that they are deer. The first lesson to be
learned in still-hunting is the knowledge of
how to tell what objects are and what are
not deer ; and to learn it is by no means as
easy a task as those who have never tried
it would think.

When he has learned to see a deer, the
novice then has to learn to hit it, and this
again is not the easy feat it seems. That
he can do well with a shot-gun proves very
little as to a man's skill with the rifle, for
the latter carries but one bullet, and can
therefore hit in but one place, while with a
shot-gun, if you hold a foot off your mark
you will be nearly as apt to hit as if you
held plumb centre. Nor does mere prac-
tice at a mark avail, though excellent in its
way ; for a deer is never seen at a fixed and
ascertained distance, nor is its outline often
y and sharply defined as with a target.
Even if a man keeps cool — and for the first

256 HUNTING TRIPS

shot or two he will probably be flurried —
he may miss an absurdly easy shot by
not taking pains. I remember on one occa-
sion missing two shots in succession where
it seemed really impossible for a man to
help hitting. I was out hunting on horse-
back with one of my men, and on loping
round the corner of a brushy valley came
suddenly in sight of a buck with certainly
more than a dozen points on his great
spreading antlers. I jumped off my horse
instantly, and fired as he stood facing me
not over forty yards off; fired, as I sup-
posed, perfectly coolly, though without
dropping on my knee as I should have done.
The shot must have gone high, for the
buck bounded away unharmed, heedless of
a second ball; and immediately his place
was taken by another, somewhat smaller,
who sprang out of a thicket into almost the
identical place where the big buck had
stood. Again I fired and missed; again
the buck ran off, and was shot at and missed
.while running — all four shots being taken

OF A RANCHMAN 257

within fifty yards. I clambered on to the
horse without looking at my companion,
but too conscious of his smothered dis-
favor; after riding a few hundred yards,
he said with forced politeness and a vague
desire to offer some cheap consolation, that
he supposed I had done my best; to \v
I responded with asperity that I'd be
damned if I had; and we finished our jour-
ney homeward in silence. A man is likely
to overshoot at any distance; but at from
twenty-five to seventy-five yards he is cer-
tain to do so if he is at all careless.

Moreover, besides not missing, a man
must learn to hit his deer in the right place ;
the first two or three times he shoots he will
probably see the whole deer in the rifle
sights, instead of just the particular spot
ishcs to strike; that is, he will aim in
a general way at the deer's whole body—
which will probably result in a wound not
disabling the animal in the least for the
time, although ensuring its finally dying a
lingering and painful death. The most in-

258 HUNTING TRIPS

stantaneously fatal places are the brain and
any part of the spinal column; but these
offer such small marks that it is usually only
by accident they are hit. The mark at
any part of which one can fire with safety
is a patch about eight inches or a foot
square, including the shoulder-blades,
lungs, and heart. A kidney-shot is very
fatal ; but a black-tail will go all day with a
bullet through his entrails, and in cold
weather I have known one to run several
miles with a portion of its entrails sticking
out of a wound and frozen solid. To break
both shoulders by a shot as the deer stands
sideways to the hunter, brings the buck
down in its tracks; but perhaps the best
place at which to aim is the point in the
body right behind the shoulder-blade. On
receiving a bullet in this spot the deer will
plunge forward for a jump or two, and then
go some fifty yards in a labored gallop;
will then stop, sway unsteadily on its legs for
a second, and pitch forward on its side.
[When the hunter comes up he will find his

OF A RANCHMAN 259

quarry stone dead. If the deer stands fac-
ing the hunter it offers only a narrow mark,
but either a throat or chest shot will be

;il.

•

Good shooting is especially necessary
after black-tail, because it is so very tena-
cious of life ; much more so than the white-
tail, or, in proportion to its bulk, than the
elk. For this reason it is of the utmost im-
portance to give an immediately fatal or dis-
abling wound, or the game will almost cer-
tainly be lost. It is wonderful to see how
far and how fast a seemingly crippled deer
will go. Of course, a properly trained dog
would be of the greatest use in tracking and
bringing to bay wounded black-tail; but,
unless properly trained to come in to heel,
a dog is worse than useless; and, anyhow,
it will be hard to keep one, as long as the
wolf-hunters strew the ground so plenti-
fully with poisoned bait. We have had
several hunting dogs on our ranch at dif-
ferent times; generally wirehaired deer-
hounds, fox-hounds, or greyhounds, by no

260 HUNTING TRIPS

means absolutely pure in blood; but they
all, sooner or later, succumbed to the effects
of eating poisoned meat. Some of them
were quite good hunting dogs, tlje rougli
deer-hounds being perhaps the best at fol-
lowing and tackling a wounded buck. They
were all very eager for the sport, and when
in the morning we started out on a hunt the
dogs were apparently more interested than
the men; but their judgment did not equal
their zeal, and lack of training made them
on the whole more bother than advantage.

But much more than good shooting is
necessary before a man can be called a good
hunter. Indians, for example, get a good
deal of game, but they are in most cases
very bad shots. Once, while going up the
Clear Fork of the Powder, in Northern
Wyoming, one of my men, an excellent
hunter, and myself rode into a large camp
of Cheyennes; and after a while started a
shooting-match with some of them. We
had several trials of skill with the rifle, and,
a good deal to my astonishment, I found

OF A RANCHMAN 261

that most of the Indians (quite successful
hunters, to judge by the quantity of smoked
venison lying round) were very bad shots
indeed. -None of them came anywhere near
the hunter who was with me ; nor, indeed,
to myself. An Indian gets his game by his
patient, his stealth, and his tireless perse-
verance; and a white to be really success-
ful in still-hunting must learn to copy some
of the Indian's traits.

While the game butchers, the skin hunt-
ers, and their like, work such brutal slaugh-
ter among the plains animals that these will
soon be either totally extinct or so thinned
out as to cease being prominent features of
plains life, yet, on the other hand, the na-
ture of the country debars them from fol-
lowing certain murderous and unsports-
manlike forms of hunting much in vogue in
other quarters of our land. There is no
deep water into which a deer can be driven
by hounds, and then shot at arm's-length
from a boat, as is the fashion with some of
the city sportsmen who infest the Adiron-

262 HUNTING TRIPS

dack forests during the hunting season ; nor
is the winter snow ever deep enough to
form a crust over which a man can go on
snow-shoes, and after running down a deer,
which plunges as if in a quagmire, knock
the poor, worn-out brute on the head with
an axe. Fire-hunting is never tried in the
cattle country ; it would be far more likely
to result in the death of a steer or pony than
in the death of a deer, if attempted on foot
with a torch, as is done in some of the
Southern States ; while the streams are not
suited to the floating or jacking with a lan-
tern in the bow of the canoe, as practised in
the Adirondacks. Floating and fire-hunt-
ing, though by no means to be classed
among the nobler kinds of sport, yet have a
certain fascination of their own, not so
much for the sake of the actual hunting, as
for the novelty of being out in the wilder-
ness at night; and the noiselessness abso-
lutely necessary to insure success often en-
ables the sportsman to catch curious

OF A RANCHMAN 263

glimpses of the night life of the different
kinds of wild animals.

If it were not for the wolf poison, the
plains country would be peculiarly fitted for
hunting with hounds; and, if properly car-
ried on, there is no manlier form of sport.
It does not imply in the man who follows
it the skill that distinguishes the success-
ful still-hunter, but it has a dash and excite-
ment all its own, if the hunter follows the
hounds on horseback. But, as carried on
in the Adirondack's and in the Eastern and
Southern mountains generally, hounding
deer is not worthy of much regard. There
the hunter is stationed at a runaway over
which deer will probably pass, and has
nothing to do but sit still for a number of
weary hours and perhaps put a charge of
buckshot into a deer running by but a few
yards off. If a rifle instead of a shot-gun
is used, a certain amount of skill is neces-
sary, for then it is hard to hit a deer run-

no matter how close up; but
with this weapon all the sportsman has to

264 HUNTING TRIPS

do is to shoot well; he need not show
knowledge of a single detail of hunting
craft, nor need he have any trait of mind or
body such as he must possess to follow most
other kinds of the chase.

Deer-hanting on horseback is something
widely different. Even if the hunters carry
rifles and themselves kill the deer, using the
dogs merely to drive it out of the brush,
they must be bold and skilful horsemen,
and must show good judgment in riding to
cut off the quarry, so as to be able to get a
shot at it. This is the common American
method of hunting the deer in those places
where it is followed with horse and hound ;
but it is also coursed with greyhounds in
certain spots where the lay of the land per-
mits this form of sport, and in many dis-
tricts, even where ordinary hounds are
used, the -riders go unarmed and merely
follow the pack till the deer is bayed and
pulled down. All kinds of hunting on
horseback — and most hunting on horseback
is done with hounds — tend to bring out the

OF A RANCHMAN 265

best and manliest qualities in the men who
low them, and they should be encouraged
in every way. Long after the rifleman, as
well as the game he hunts, shall have van-
ished from the plains, the cattle country
!l -afFord fine sport in coursing hares ; and
both wolves and deer could be followed
and killed with packs of properly-trained
hounds, and such sport would be even more
exciting than still-hunting with the rifle. It
is on the great plains lying west of the Mis-
souri that riding to hounds will in the end
receive its fullest development as a national
pastime.

But at present, for the reasons already,
stated, it is almost unknown in the cattle
country; and the ranchman who loves
sport must try still-hunting — and by still-
hunting is meant pretty much every kind
of chase where a single man, unaided by a
dog, and almost always on foot, outgen-
erals a deer and kills it with the rifle. To
do this successfully, unless deer are vi
plenty and tame, implies a certain knowl-

266 HUNTING TRIPS

edge of the country, and a good knowl-
edge of the habits of the game. The hunter
must keep a sharp look-out for deer sign;
for, though a man soon gets to have a gen-
eral knowledge of the kind of places in
which deer are likely to be, yet he will also
find that they are either very capricious, or
else that no man has more than a partial
understanding of their tastes and likings;
for many spots apparently just suited to
them will be almost uninhabited, while in
others they will be found where it would
hardly occur to any one to suspect their
presence. Any cause may temporarily
drive deer out of a given locality. Still-
hunting, especially, is sure to send many
away, while rendering the others extremely
wild and shy, and where deer have become
used to being pursued in only one way, it
is often an excellent plan to try some en-
tirely different method.

A certain knowledge of how to track deer
is very useful. To become a really skilful

OF A RANCHMAN 267

is most difficult; and there are some
kinds of ground, where, for instance, it is
very hard and dry, or frozen solid, on which
almost any man will be at fault. But any
one with a little practice can learn to do a
certain amount of tracking. On snow, of
course, it is very easy; but on the other
hand it is also peculiarly difficult to a
being seen by the deer when the ground is
white. After deer have been frightened
once or twice, or have even merely been
disturbed by man, they get the habit of
keeping a watch back on their trail ; and
when snow has fallen, a man is such a con-
spicuous object deer see him a long way off,
and even the tamest become wild. A deer
will often, before lying down, take a half
circle back to one side and make its bed a
few yards from its trail, where it can, itself
unseen, watch any person tracing it up. A
man tracking in snow needs to pay very
little heed to the footprints, which can be
followed without effort, but requires to

268 HUNTING TRIPS

keep up the closest scrutiny over the ground
ahead of him, and on either side of the
trail.

In the early morning when there is a heavy
dew the footprints will be as plain as possible
in the grass, and can then be followed read-
ily ; and in any place where the ground is at
all damp they will usually be plain enough
to be made out without difficulty. When the
ground is hard or dry the work is very much
less easy, and soon becomes so difficult as not
to be worth while following up. Indeed, at
all times, even in the snow, tracks are chiefly
of use to show the probable locality in which
a deer may be found; and the still-hunter
instead of laboriously walking along a trail
will do far better to merely follow it until,
from its freshness and direction, he feels con-
fident that the deer is in some particular
space of ground, and then hunt through it,
guiding himself by his knowledge of the
deer's habits and by the character of the
land. Tracks are of most use in showing
whether deer are plenty or scarce, whether

OF A RANCHMAN 269

they have been in the place recently or not.
Generally, signs of deer are infinitely more
plentiful than the animals themselves — al-
though in regions where tracking is es-
pecially difficult deer are often jumped with-
out any sign having been seen at all. Usu-
ally, however, the rule is the reverse, and as
deer are likely to make any quantity of tracks
the beginner is apt, judging purely from the
sign, greatly to over-estimate their number.
Another mistake of the beginner is to look
for the deer during the daytime in the places
where their tracks were made in the morn-
ing, when their day beds will probably be
a long distance off. In the night-time deer
will lie down almost anywhere, but during
the day they go some distance from their
feeding- or watering-places, as already ex-
plained.

If deer are at all plenty — and if scarce only
a master in the art can succeed at still-hunt-
ing— it is best not to try to follow the tracks
at all, but merely to hunt carefully through
any ground which from its looks seems likely

270

HUNTING TRIPS

to contain the animals. Of course the hunt-
ing must be done either against or across the
wind, and the greatest care must be taken
to avoid making a noise. Moccasins should
be worn, and not a twig should be trodden
on, nor should the dress be allowed to catch
in a brush. Especial caution should be used
in going over a ridge or crest ; no man should
ever let his whole body appear at once, but
should first carefully peep over, not letting
his rifle barrel come into view, and closely
inspect every place in sight in which a deer
could possibly stand or lie, always remem-
bering that a deer is when still a most dif-
ficult animal to see, and that it will be com-
pletely hidden in cover which would appar-
ently hardly hold a rabbit. The rifle should
be carried habitually so that the sun will not
glance upon it. Advantage must be taken,
in walking, of all cover, so that the hunter
will not be a conspicuous object at any dis-
tance. The heads of a series of brushy ra-
vines should always be crossed; and a nar-
row, winding valley, with patches of bushes

OF A RANCHMAN 271

and young trees down through the middle,
is always a likely place. Caution should
never for a moment be forgotten, especially
in the morning or evening, the times when
a hunter will get nine tenths of his shots;
for it is just then, when moving and feed-
ing, that deer are most watchful. One will
never browse for more than a minute or two
without raising its head and peering about
for any possible foe, the great, sensitive ears
thrown forward to catch the slightest sound.
But while using such caution it is also well to
remember that as much ground should be
crossed as possible ; other things being equal,
the number of shots obtained will correspond
to the amount of country covered. And of
course a man should be on the hunting
ground — not starting for the hunting ground
— by the time there is enough light by which
to shoot.

Deer are in season for hunting from Au-
gust first to January first. August is really
too early to get full enjoyment out of the
sport. The bucks, though fat and good eat-

272 HUNTING TRIPS

ing, are still in the velvet; and neither does
nor fawns should be killed, as many of the
latter are in the spotted coat. Besides it is
very hot in the middle of the day, though
pleasant walking in the early morning and
late evening, and with cool nights. Decem-
ber is apt to be too cold, although with
many fine days. The true time for the chase
of the black-tail is in the three fall months.
Then the air is fresh and bracing, and a man
feels as if he could walk or ride all day long
without tiring. In the bright fall weather
the country no longer keeps its ordinary look
of parched desolation, and the landscape
loses its sameness at the touch of the frost.
Where everything before had been gray or
dull green there are now patches of russet
red and bright yellow. The clumps of ash,
wild plum-trees, and rose-bushes in the heads
and bottoms of the sloping valleys become
spots of color that glow among the stretches
of brown and withered grass ; the young cot-
ton-woods, growing on the points of land
round which flow the rivers and streams,

OF A RANCHMAN 373

change to a delicate green or yellow, on
which the eye rests \vith pleasure after hav-

g so long seen only the dull drab of the

•s. Often there will be days of 1
ter cold, when a man who sleeps out in the
open feels the need of warm furs; but still
more often there will be days and days of
sunny weather, not cold enough to bring dis-
comfort, but yet so cool that the blood leaps
briskly through a man's veins and makes him
feel that to be out and walking over the hills
is a pleasure in itself, even were he not in
hopes of any moment seeing the sun glint
on the horns and hide of some mighty buck,
as it rises to face the intruder. On days such
as these, mere life is enjoyment ; and on days
such as these, the life of a hunter is at its
pleasantest and best.

Many black-tail are sometimes killed in a
day. I have never made big bags myself, for
I rarely hunt except for a fine head or when
we need meat, and if it can be avoided do
not shoot at fawns or does; so the greatest
number I have ever killed in a day was three.

274

HUNTING TRIPS

This was late one November, on an occa-
sion when our larder was running low. My
foreman and I, upon discovering this fact,
determined to make a trip next day back in
the broken country, away from the river,
where black-tail were almost sure to be
found.

We breakfasted hours before sunrise, and
then mounted our horses and rode up the
river bottom. The bright prairie moon was
at the full, and was sunk in the west till it
hung like a globe of white fire over the long
row of jagged bluffs that rose from across
the river, while its beams brought into fan-
tastic relief the peaks and crests of the buttes
upon our left. The valley of the river it-
self was in partial darkness, and the stiff,
twisted branches of the sage-brush seemed
to take on uncanny shapes as they stood in
the hollows. The cold was stinging, and we
let our willing horses gallop with loose reins,
their hoofs ringing on the frozen ground.
After going up a mile or two along the
course of the river we turned off to follow

OF A RANCHMAN 275

the bed of a large dry creek. At its mouth
was a great space of ground much cut up
by the hoofs of the cattle, which was in sum-
mer overflowed and almost a morass; but
now the frost-bound earth was like wrinkled
iron beneath the horses' feet. Behind us
the westering moon sank down out of sight ;
and with no light but that of the stars, we
let our horses thread their own way up the
creek bottom. When we had gone a couple
of miles from the river the sky in front of
our faces took on a faint grayish tinge, the
forerunner of dawn. Every now and then
we passed by bunches of cattle, lying down
or standing huddled together in the patches
of brush or under the lee of some shelving
bank or other wind-break ; and as the east-
ern heavens grew brighter, a dark form sud-
denly appeared against the sky-line, on the
crest of a bluff directly ahead of us. An-
other and another came up beside it. A
glance told us that it was a troop of ponies,
which stood motionless, like so many sil-
houettes, their outstretched necks and long

276 HUNTING TRIPS

tails vividly outlined against the light be-
hind them. All in the valley was yet dark
when we reached the place where the creek
began to split up and branch out into the
various arms and ravines from which it
headed. We galloped smartly over the di-
vide into a set of coulies and valleys which
ran into a different creek, and selected a
grassy place where there was good feed to
leave the horses. My companion picketed
his ; Manitou needed no picketing.

The tops of the hills were growing rosy,
but the sun was not yet above the horizon
when we started off, with our rifles on our
shoulders, walking in cautious silence, for we
were in good ground and might at any mo-
ment see a deer. Above us was a plateau of
some size, breaking off sharply at the rim
into a surrounding stretch of very rough and
rugged country. It sent off low spurs with
notched crests into the valleys round about,
and its edges were indented with steep ra-
vines and half-circular basins, their sides cov-
ered with clusters of gnarled and wind-

OF A RANCHMAN 277

beaten cedars, often gathered into groves of
some size. The ground was so broken as to
give excellent cover under which a man could
approach game unseen > there were plenty of
fresh signs of deer; and we were confident
we should soon get a shot Keeping at the
bottom of the gullies, so as to be ourselves
inconspicuous, we walked noiselessly on,
cautiously examining every pocket or turn
before we rounded the corner, and looking
with special care along the edges of the
patches of brush.

At last, just as the sun had risen, we came
out by the mouth of a deep ravine or hol-
low, cut in the flank of the plateau,
steep, cedar-clad sides; and on the crest of
a jutting spur, not more than thirty yards
from where I stood, was a black-tail doe,
half facing me. I was in the shadow, and
for a moment she could not make me out,
and stood motionless with her head turned
toward me and her great ears thrown for-
ward. Dropping on my knee, I held the rifle
a little back of her shoulder — too far back,

278 HUNTING TRIPS

as it proved, as she stood quartering and not
broadside to me. No fairer chance could
ever fall to the lot of a hunter ; but, to my
intense chagrin, she bounded off at the re-
port as if unhurt, disappearing instantly.
My companion had now come up, and we
ran up a rise of ground, and crouched down
beside a great block of sandstone, in a posi-
tion from which we overlooked the whole
ravine or hollow. After some minutes of
quiet watchfulness, we heard a twig snap —
the air was so still we could hear any thing
— some rods up the ravine, but below us ; and
immediately afterward a buck stole out of the
cedars. Both of us fired at once, and with a
convulsive spring he rolled over backward,
one bullet having gone through his neck, and
the other — probably mine — having broken a
hind leg. Immediately afterward, another
buck broke from the upper edge of the cover,
near the top of the plateau, and, though I
took a hurried shot at him, bounded over the
crest, and was lost to sight.

We now determined to go down into the

OF A RANCHMAN 279

ravine and look for the doe, and as there was
a good deal of snow in the bottom and under
the trees, we knew we could soon tell if she
were wounded. After a little search we
found her track, and walking along it a few

rds, came upon some drops and then a
splash of blood. There being no need to
hurry, we first dressed the dead buck — a fine,
fat fellow, but with small misshapen horns,
— and then took up the trail of the wounded
doe. Here, however, I again committed an
error, and paid too much heed to the trail
and too little to the country round about;
and while following it with my eyes down
on the ground in a place where it was faint,
the doe got up some distance ahead and to
one side of me, and bounded off round a
corner of the ravine. The bed where she had
lain was not very bloody, but from the fact of
her having stopped so soon, I was sure she

s badly wounded. However, after she got
out of the snow the ground was as hard as
flint, and it was impossible to track her;
the valley soon took a turn, and branched

28o HUNTING TRIPS

into a tangle of coulies and ravines. I
deemed it probable that she would not go up
hill, but would run down the course of the
main valley ; but as it was so uncertain, we
thought it would pay us best to look for a
new deer.

Our luck, however, seemed — very deserv-
edly— to have ended. We tramped on, as
swiftly as was compatible with quiet, for
hour after hour ; beating through the valleys
against the wind, and crossing the brushy
heads of the ravines, sometimes dose to-
gether, and sometimes keeping about a hun-
dred yards apant, according to the nature of
the ground. When we had searched
all through the country round the head
of the creek, into which we had come
down, we walked over to the next,
and went over it with equal care and
patience. The morning was now well ad-
vanced, and we had to change our method of
hunting. It was no longer likely that we
should find the deer feeding or in the open,
and instead we looked for places where they

OF A RANCHMAN 281

might be expected to bed, following any trails
that led into thick patches of brush or young
trees, one of us then hunting through the
patch while the other kept watch without
Doubtless we must have passed close to more
than one deer, and doubtless others heard
us and skulked off through the thick cover;
but, although we saw plenty of signs, we
saw neither hoof nor hair of living thing.
It is under such circumstances that a still-
hunter needs to show resolution, and to per-
severe until his luck turns — this being a
euphemistic way of saying, until he ceases to
commit the various blunders which alarm the
deer and make them get out of the way.
Plenty of good shots become disgusted if
they do not see a deer early in the morning,
and go home ; still more, if they do not see
one in two or three days. Others will go
on hunting, but become careless, stumble and
P on dried sticks, and let their eyes fall
to the ground. It is a good test of a man's
resolution to see if, at the end of a long and
unsuccessful tramp after deer, he moves just

282 HUNTING TRIPS

as carefully, and keeps just as sharp a look-
out as he did at the beginning. If he does
this, and exercises a little common-sense —
in still-hunting, as in every thing else, com-
mon-sense is the most necessary of qualities,
— he may be sure that his reward will come
some day; and when it does come, he feels
a gratification that only his fellow-sportsmen
can understand.

We lunched at the foot of a great clay
butte, where there was a bed of snow. • Fall
or winter hunting in the Bad Lands has one
great advantage: the hunter is not annoyed
by thirst as he is almost sure to be if walk-
ing for long hours under the blazing sum-
mer sun. If he gets very thirsty, a mouth-
ful or two of snow from some hollow will
moisten his lips and throat; and anyhow
thirstiness is largely a mere matter of habit.
For lunch, the best thing a hunter can carry
is dried or smoked venison, with not too
much salt in it. It is much better than
bread, and not nearly so dry ; and it is easier
to carry, as a couple of pieces can be thrust

OF 'A RANCHMAN 283

into the bosom of the hunting-shirt or the
pocket, or in fact anywhere; and for keep-
in- up a man's strength there is nothing that
comes up to it.

After lunch we hunted until the shadows
began to lengthen out, when we went back
to our horses. The buck was packed behind
good old Manitou, who can carry any
amount of weight at a smart pace, and does
not care at all if a strap breaks and he finds
his load dangling about his feet, an event
that reduces most horses to a state of fran-
tic terror. As soon as loaded we rode down
the valley into which the doe had disappeared
in the morning, one taking each side and
looking into every possible lurking place.
The odds were all against our finding any
trace of her; but a hunter soon learns that
he must take advantage of every chance,
however slight. This time we were rewarded
for our care; for after riding about a mile
our attention was attracted by a white patch
in a clump of low briars. On getting off
in it proved to be the white rump

284 HUNTING TRIPS

of the doe, which lay stretched out inside,
stark and stiff. The ball had gone in too
far aft and had come out on the opposite
side near her hip, making a mortal wound,
but one which allowed her to run over a
mile before dying. It was little more than
an accident that we in the end got her ; and
my so nearly missing at such short range
was due purely to carelessness and bad judg-
ment. I had killed too many deer to be at
all nervous over them, and was as cool with
a buck as with a rabbit; but as she was so
close I made the common mistake of being
too much in a hurry, and did not wait to see
that she was standing quartering to me and
that consequently I should aim at the point
of the shoulder. As a result the deer was
nearly lost.

Neither of my shots had so far done me
much credit; but at any rate I had learned
where the error lay, and this is going a long
way toward correcting it. I kept wishing that
I could get another chance to see if I had not
profited by my lessons; and before we

OF A RANCHMAN 285

reached home i h was gratified. We

were loping down a grassy valley, d
with clumps of brush, the wind blowing
strong in our faces, and deadening the noise

c by the hoofs on the grass,
passed by a piece of broken ground a year-
ling black-tail buck jumped into view and
cantered away. I was off Manitou's back
in an instant. The buck was moving slowly,
and was evidently soon going to stop and
look round, so I dropped on one knee, with

rifle half raised, and waited. When
about si rds off he halted and turned

> to me, offering a beautiful broad-
side shot. I aimed at the spot just behind
the shoulder and felt I had him. At the
report he went off, but with short, weak
bounds, and I knew he would not go far;
nor did he, but stopped short, swayed un-
steadily about, and went over on his side,
dead, the bullet clean through his body.

Each of us already had a deer behind his
saddle, so we could not take the last buck
along with us. Accordingly v ^ed him.

286 HUNTING TRIPS

and hung him up by the heels to a branch
of a tree, piling the brush around as if build-
ing a slight pen or trap, to keep off the coy-
otes; who, anyhow, are not apt to harm
game that is hanging up, their caution seem-
ing to make them fear that it will not be safe
to do so. In such cold weather a deer hung
up in this way will keep an indefinite length
of time ; and the carcass was all right when
a week or two afterwards we sent out the
buck-board to bring it back.

A stout buck-board is very useful on a
ranch, where men are continually taking
short trips on which they do not wish to be
encumbered by the heavy ranch wagon.
Pack ponies are always a nuisance, though
of course an inevitable one in making jour-
neys through mountains or forests. But on
the plains a buck-board is far more handy.
The blankets and provisions can be loaded
upon it, and it can then be given a definite
course to travel or point to reach ; ancT mean-
while the hunters, without having their horses
tired by carrying heavy packs, can strike off

OF A RANCHMAN 287

and hunt wherever they wish. There is little
or no difficulty in going over the prairie, but
it needs a skilful plainsman, as well as a good
ister, to take a wagon through the Bad
Lands. There are but two courses to follow.
One is to go along the bottoms of the val-
: the other is to go along the tops of the
les. The latter is generally the best ; for
each valley usually has at its bottom a deep
winding ditch with perpendicular banks,
which wanders first to one side and then to
the other, and has to be crossed again and
again, while a little way from it begin the
gullies and gulches which come down from
the side hills. It is no easy matter to tell
h is the main divide, as it curves and
:s about, and is all the time splitting up
into lesser ones, which merely separate two
branches of the same creek. If the team-
ster does not know the lay of the land he
will be likely to find himself in a cul-de-sac,
from which he can only escape by going

a mile or two and striking out af:
In very difficult country the horsemen must

288 HUNTING TRIPS

be on hand to help the team pull up the steep
places. Many horses that will not pull a
pound in harness will haul for all there is
in them from the saddle ; Manitou is a case in
point. Often obstacles will be encountered
across which it is simply impossible for any
team to drag a loaded or even an empty
wagon. Such are steep canyons, or muddy-
bottomed streams with sheer banks, especially
if the latter have rotten edges. The horses
must then be crossed first and the wagon
dragged over afterward by the aid of long
ropes. Often it may be needful to build a
kind of rude bridge or causeway on which
to get the animals over; and if the canyon
Is very deep the wagon may have to be taken
in pieces, let down one side, and hauled up
the other. An immense amount of labor may
be required to get over a very trifling dis-
tance. Pack animals, however, can go al-
most anywhere that a man can.

Although still-hunting on foot, as de-
scribed above, is on the whole the best way
to get deer, yet there are many places where

OF A RANCHMAN 289

from the nature of the land the sport can be
followed quite a on horseback, than

which there is no more pleasant kind of
hunting. The best shot I ever made in
life — a shot into which, however, I am afraid
the element of chance entered much more
largely than the element of skill — was made
while hunting black-tail on horseback.

\Ve were at that time making quite a long
trip with the wagon, and were going up the
fork of a plains river in Western Montana.
As we were out of food, those two of our
number who usually undertook to keep the
camp supplied with game determined to
make a hunt of? back of the river after black-
tail ; for though there were some white-tail
in the more densely timbered river bottoms,
we had been unable to get any. It was ar-
ranged that the wagon should go on a few
miles, and then halt for the night, as it was
already the middle of the afternoon when we
started out. The country resembled in char-
r other parts of the cattle plains, hut it
was absoh re of trees except along the

290

HUNTING TRIPS

bed of the river. The rolling hills sloped
steeply off into long valleys and deep ravines.
They were sparsely covered with coarse
grass, and also with an irregular growth of
tall sage-brush, which in some places
gathered into dense thickets. A beginner
would have thought the country entirely too
barren of cover to hold deer, but a very little
experience teaches one that deer will be
found in thickets of such short and sparse
growth that it seems as if they could hide
nothing; and, what is more, that they will
often skulk round in such thickets without
being discovered. And a black-tail is a bold,
free animal, liking to go out in comparatively
open country, where he must trust to his
own powers, and not to any concealment, to
protect him from danger.

\Yhere the hilly country joined the allu-
vial river bottom, it broke off short into steep
bluffs, up which none but a Western pony
could have climbed. It is really wonderful
to see what places a pony can get over, and
the indifference with which it regards turn-

OF A RANCHMAN 291

bles. In getting up from the bottom we
into a wash-out, and then led our ponies
along a clay ledge, from which we turned off
and went straight up a very steep sandy bluff.
My companion was ahead ; just as he turned
off the ledge, and as I was right underneath
him, his horse, in plunging to try to gt
the sand bluff, overbalanced itself, and,
after standing erect on its hind legs for a
second, came over backward. The second's
pause while it stood bolt upright, gave me
time to make a frantic leap out of the way
with my pony, which scrambled after me,
and we both clung with hands and hoofs to
the side of the bank, while the other horse
took two as complete somersaults as I ever

and landed with a crash at the bottom
of the wash-out, feet uppermost. I thought

is done for, but not a bit. After a mo-
ment or two it struggled to its legs, shook
itself, and looked round in rather a shame-
faced way, apparently not in the least the
worse for the fall. We now got my pony
up to the top by vigorous pulling, and then

292 HUNTING TRIPS

went down for the other, which at first
strongly objected to making another trial,
but, after much coaxing and a good deal of
abuse, took a start and went up without
trouble.

For some time after reaching the top of
the bluffs we rode along without seeing any
thing. When it was possible, we kept one on
each side of a creek, avoiding the tops of
the ridges, because while on them a horse-
man can be seen at a very long distance, and
going with particular caution whenever we
went round a spur or came up over a crest.
The country stretched away like an endless,
billowy sea of dull-brown soil and barren
sage-brush, the valleys making long parallel
furrows, and every thing having a look of
dreary sameness. At length, as we came out
on a rounded ridge, three black-tail bucks
started up from a lot of sage-brush some two
hundred yards away and below us, and made
off down hill. It was a very long shot, es-
pecially to try running, but, as game seemed
scarce and cartridges were plenty, I leaped

OF A RANCHMAN

293

off the horse, and, kneeling, fired. The bul-
-vent low, striking in line at the feet o£
the hindmost. I was very high next time,
making a wild shot above and ahead of them,
which had the effect of turning them, and
they went off round a shoulder of a bluff,
being by this time down in the valley. Hav-
ing plenty of time I elevated the sights (a
tiling I hardly ever do) to four hundred
yards and waited for their reappearance.
Meanwhile they had evidently gotten over
their fright, for pretty soon one walked out
from the other side of the bluff, and came
to a standstill, broadside toward me. He
too far off for me to see his horns. As
I was r; the rifle 'another steppted out

and began to walk towards the first. I
thought I miffht as well have as much of a
t as possible to shoot at, and waited for
the second buck to come out farther, which
he did immediately and stood still just along-
side of the first. I aimed above his shoulders
and pulled the trigger r went the two

bucks! And when I rushed do\\ here

294 HUNTING TRIPS

they lay I found I had pulled a little to one
side, and the bullet had broken the backs of
both. While my companion was dressing
them I went back and paced off the distance.
It was just four hundred and thirty-one long
paces ; over four hundred yards. Both were
large bucks and very fat, with the velvet
hanging in shreds from their antlers, for it
was late in August. The day was waning
and we had a long ride back to the wagon,
each with a buck behind his saddle. When we
came back to the river valley it was pitch
dark, and it was rather ticklish work for our
heavily laden horses to pick their way down
the steep bluffs and over the rapid stream;
nor were we sorry when we saw ahead under
a bluff the gleam of the camp fire, as it was
reflected back from the canvas-topped prairie
schooner, that for the time being represented
home to us.

Tkis was much the best shot I ever made ;
and it is just such a shot as any one will
occasionally make if he takes a good many
chances and fires often at ranges where the

OF A RANCHMAN 295

odds are greatly against his hitting. I sup-
pose I had fired a dozen times at animals four
or five him irds off, and now, by the

doctrine of chances, 1 happened to hit; but
I would have been very foolish if I had
thought for a moment that I had learned how
to hit at over four hundred yards. I have
yet to see the hunter who can hit with any
regularity at that distance, when he has to
judge it for himself; though I have seen
plenty who could make such a long range
hit now and then. And I have noticed that
such a hunter, in talking over his experience,
certain soon to forget the numerous
misses he made, and to say, and even to
actually think, that his occasional hits repre-
sented his average shooting.

One of the finest black-tail bucks I ever
shot was killed while lying out in a rather
nal place. I was hunting mountain-
sheep, in a stretch of very high and broken
country, and about mid-day, crept cauti<
up to the edge of a great gorge, whose sheer
walls went straight down several hundred

296 HUNTING TRIPS

feet. Peeping over the brink of the chasm
I saw a buck, lying out on a ledge so nar-
row as to barely hold him, right on the face
of the cliff wall opposite, some distance be-
low, and about seventy yards diagonally
across from me. He lay with his legs half
stretched out, and his head turned so as to
give me an exact centre-shot at his forehead ;
the bullet going in between his eyes, so that
his legs hardly so much as twitched when he
received it. It was toilsome and almost dan-
gerous work climbing out to where he lay;
I have never known any other individual,
even of this bold and adventurous species
of deer, to take its noonday siesta in a place
so barren of all cover and so difficult of ac-
cess even to the most sure-footed climber.
This buck was as fat as a prize sheep, and
heavier than any other I have ever killed ;
while his antlers also were, with two excep-
tions, the best I ever got.

END OF PART ONE.

Stories of Cotleoe Xife

THE UNIVERSITY SERIES

I. Harvard Stories.— Sketches of the Undergradu-
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Post's manner of telling these tales is In Its way inimi-
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element in most of the stories that is very welcome. It goes
without saying that Harvard men will find keen pleasure in this
volume, while for those who desire a faithful picture of certain
phases of American student life it offer* a noteworthy fund of
instruction and entertainment."— Literary AlrtM.

II. Yale Yarns.— By J. S. WOOD. Fifth edition.
Illustrated. 12° .... . $i-OO
41 This delightful little book will be read with intense interest

by all Yale men."— New Haven Eve. LtcuU-r.

* Yale atmosphere is wonderfully reproduced in some
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** College days are regarded by most educated men as the
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The Babe, B.A. The Uneventful History of a
Young Gentleman in Cambridge University. By
EDWARD F. BENSON, author of •• Dodo." etc.
Illustrated. 12° $1.00

r story tells of the every-day life of a young man called
die Babe, . . . Cleverly written and one oftLe beat this
author has written. "—L**4rr% New Haven.

A Princetonian. A Story of Undergraduate Life at
the College of New Jersey. By JAMES BARNES,
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There is enough of fiction in the story to give true livelineat to
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G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

DETECTIVE STORIES

By Anna Katharine Green
THE LEAVENWORTH CASE

A Lawyer's Story, xooth thousand. Hudson Library,
No. 44. 12°; paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.25.
" She has proved herself as well able to write an interesting story
of mysterious crime as any man living."— London Academy.

THAT AFFAIR NEXT DOOR

38th thousand. Hudson Library, No. 17. 12°; paper,
50 cents; cloth, $1.00.

"The success of * That Affair Next Door,' Anna Katharine
Green's latest novel, is something almost unprecedented. Of all
the tales since^ The Leavenworth Case,' this has had the greatest
vogue which is saying considerable, for Mrs. Rohlfs enjoys the
distinction of being one of the most widely read authors in this
country. 'That Affair Next Door,' with its startling ingenuity,
its sustained interest and its wonderful plot, shows that the
author's hand has not lost its cunning, but has gained as the
years go by." — Buffalo Inquirer.

LOST MAN'S LANE

24th thousand. Hudson Library, No. 29. 12°; paper,
50 cents; cloth, $1.00.

" Miss Green works up a cause cttebre with a fertility of device
and ingenuity of treatment hardly second to Wilkie Collins or
Edgar Allan Poe."— The Outlook.

AGATHA WEBB

a8th thousand. 12°; cloth only, $1.25.

" This is a cleverly concocted detective story, and sustains the
well-earned reputation of the writer. . . . The curiosity of
the reader is excited and sustained to the close." — Brooklyn
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Other detective stories by this author, issued in paper at 50
cents; in cloth at $1.00, are:

A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE
THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES
HAND AND RING
THE MILL MYSTERY
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS
CYNTHIA WAKEHAM'S MONEY
MARKED "PERSONAL"
MISS HURD
DR. IZARD

G. P. Putnam's Sons

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JUL 12 1933

FEB 8

FEB 28 1938

U

•7Apr54lti

354

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51

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY