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00002515e95

WOU

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

THE AMERICAN SPORTSMAN’S LIBRARY

EDITED BY
CASPAR WHITNEY

tne DEeER FAMILY

THE DEER FAMILY

BY

THEODORE ROOSEVELT
\\
ho VAN, DYKE, D. G. ELLIOT

AND

A. J. STONE

ILLUSTRATED BY CARL RUNGIUS AND OTHERS

New Work

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1902

Ali rights reserved

THE LIBRARY @F
CONGRESS,
Two Cores Recetveo

MAY. 8 1902

CopvrieHT ENTRY

May &~1qer

\
COPYRIGHT, 1902,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped April, 1902.
M4 AY
rvs. /»
oa KL Norwood press
¥ ~ J. 8. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith

Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

FOREWORD

Turis volume is meant for the lover of the
wild, free, lonely life of the wilderness, and of

the hardy pastimes known to the sojourners

therein.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

VICE-PRESIDENT’S ROOM,
WASHINGTON, D.C.,
June, IgoI.

CONTENTS

THE DEER AND ANTELOPE OF NORTH
AMERICA

By THEODORE ROOSEVELT

CHAPTER

r.
I.

Ill,

INTRODUCTORY

THE MULE-DEER, OR ROCKY MOUNTAIN BLACKTAIL .
THE WHITETAIL DEER

THE PRONGHORN ANTELOPE

THE WAPITI, OR ROUND-HORNED ELK

THE DEER AND ELK OF THE PACIFIC
COAST

By T. S. VAN DYKE

THE ELK OF THE PACIFIC COAST 3 3 :
THE MULE-DEER . 5 3 F A ‘: -

THE COLUMBIA BLACKTAIL . ; 3 -

Rae CARIBOU. By D.: G.) ELLior

THE MOOSE: WHERE IT LIVES AND How IT LIvEs. By

A. J. STONE . : . F . .

131

167
192

226

257

289

te ee

ta

oo
ee

Le

ot hh petals Wie @ nats 7
ats |

f

. ” "

Bina 50

Pist- OF ILLUSTRA FIONS

Vv
THE CHALLENGE . ° . . . ° ° Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
THE BLACKTAIL OF COLORADO . : : ° ; a) 150
THE WHITETAIL IN FLIGHT 5 ; ‘ 5 : oe NO ie
VIRGINIA DEER COMING TO THE WATER . : 4 Be sions
THE ANTELOPE AT HOME . é : - : a gi BID
STALKING ANTELOPE . : - : : - - 22
A SHOT AT ELK’ . : : : d : : : 3 US o Ee
THE RETURN FROM THE HUNT . : : : : i230, *
THE CARIBOU OF THE BARREN GROUNDS . : : 200) |
CARIBOU ANTLERS FROM THE CASSIAR MOUNTAINS. 2 205
CARIBOU ANTLERS FROM UPPER MAINE . - . - 2724
CARIBOU ANTLERS FROM NEWFOUNDLAND . - : 27206
CARIBOU ANTLERS FROM QUEBEC : : - : 274 Ae
CARIBOU ANTLERS FROM NEW BRUNSWICK . : - ez Aue
CARIBOU ANTLERS FROM ONTARIO 2 : ; : beer veg
CARIBOU ANTLERS FROM THE BARREN GROUND . : PBI)
BARREN GROUND CARIBOU HOOF ; : : A 27
CARIBOU ANTLERS. MOUNTAIN CARIBOU . ° < 3) 278
CARIBOU ANTLERS. KENAI PENINSULA - . - ey ZOO nme
CARIBOU ANTLERS. GREENLAND ; ‘ ; ; <1) 284
CxRIeOu ANTLERS: (ALASKA 8) fe re S86 a
MOOSE . : . ° : : : : : : 2) 2g2
MoosE ANTLERS FROM ALASKA . ; : 5 : «298,
MOOsE ANTLERS FROM ALASKA . : : : : 4.302)"

MOOsE ANTLERS FROM ALASKA . ; : : : 6314 y

1X

Ts xn

Hs ee cs

RANGE
RANGE
RANGE
RANGE
RANGE
RANGE

RANGE

kist<OF MAPS

By DR. C. HART MERRIAM

OF MULE-DEER .

OF CATON’S CALIFORNIA MULE-DEER
OF WHITETAIL DEER

OF ARIZONA DWARF WHITETAIL

OF ANTELOPE IN Ig00_. . .
OF ELK IN 1900 : . : 5

OF BLACKTAIL DEER : 5 :

FACING PAGE te
32
32
68
68

ie ORR AND ANTELOPE OF
NORTH AMERICA

By THEODORE ROOSEVELT

THE DEER AND ANTELOPE OF
NORTH AMERICA

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTORY

Wirtn the exception of the bison, during the
period of its plenty, the chief game animals fol-
lowed by the American rifle-bearing hunter have
always been the different representatives of the
deer family, and, out on the great plains, the
pronghorn antelope. They were the game which
Daniel Boone followed during the closing decades
of the seventeenth century, and JJavid Crockett
during the opening decades of the eighteenth;
and now, at the outset of the twentieth century,
it is probably not too much to say that ninety-
nine out of every hundred head of game killed
in the United States are deer, elk, or antelope.
Indeed, the proportion is very much larger. In
certain restricted localities black bear were at one
time very numerous, and over large regions the
multitudinous herds of the bison formed until
1883 the chief objects of pursuit. But the bison
have now vanished; and though the black bear has
held its own better than any other of the larger

B I

2 Deer and Antelope of North America

carnivora, it is only very locally that it has ever
been plentiful in the sense that even now the elk,
deer, and antelope are still plentiful over consider-
able tracts of country. Taking the United States
as a whole, the deer have always been by far the
most numerous of all game; they have held their
own in the land better than any other kinds; and
they have been the most common quarry of the
hunter.

The nomenclature and exact specific relation-
ships of American deer and antelope offer diffh-
culties not only to the hunter but to the naturalist.
As regards the nomenclature, we share the trouble
encountered by all peoples of European descent
who have gone into strange lands. The incomers
are almost invariably men who are not accus-
tomed to scientific precision of expression. Like
other people, they do not like to invent names
if they can by any possibility make use of those
already in existence, and so in a large number
of cases they call the new birds and animals by
names applied to entirely different birds and
animals of the Old World to which, in the eyes
of the settlers, they bear some resemblance. In
South America the Spaniards, for instance,
christened “lion” and “tiger” the great cats
which are properly known as cougar and jaguar.
In South Africa the Dutch settlers, who came
from a land where all big game had long been

Introductory 3

exterminated, gave fairly grotesque names to the
great antelopes, calling them after the European
elk, stag, and chamois. The French did but little
better in Canada. Even in Ceylon the English,
although belonging for the most part to the edu-
cated classes, did no better than the ordinary
pioneer settlers, miscalling the sambur stag an
elk, and the leopard a cheetah. Our own pioneers
behaved in the same way. Hence it is that we
have no distinctive name at all for the group of
peculiarly American game birds of which the bob-
white is the typical representative ; and that, when
we could not use the words quail, partridge, or
pheasant, we went for our terminology to the
barn-yard, and called our fine grouse, fool-hens,
sage-hens, and prairie-chickens. The bear and
wolf our people recognized at once. The bison
they called a buffalo, which was no worse than
the way in which every one in Europe called the
Old World bison an aurochs. The American true
elk and reindeer were rechristened moose and
caribou — excellent names, by the way, derived
from the Indian. The huge stag was called an
elk. The extraordinary antelope of the high
Western peaks was christened the white goat; not
unnaturally, as it has a most goatlike look. The
prongbuck of the plains, an animal standing as
much alone among ruminants as does the giraffe,
was simply called antelope. Even when we

4 Deer and Antelope of North America

invented names for ourselves, we applied them
loosely. The ordinary deer is sometimes known
as the red deer, sometimes as the Virginia deer,
and sometimes as the whitetail deer,— the last
being by far the best and most distinctive term.

In the present condition of zoological research
it is not possible to state accurately how many
“species” of deer there are in North America,
both because mammalogists have not at hand a
sufficient amount of material in the way of large
series of specimens from different localities, and
because they are not agreed among themselves as
to the value of “species,” or indeed as to exactly
what is denoted by the term. Of course, if we
had a complete series of specimens of extinct and
fossil deer before us, there would be an absolutely
perfect intergradation among all the existing forms
through their long-vanished ancestral types; for
the existing gaps have been created by the ex-
tinction and transformation of these former types.
Where the gap is very broad and well marked
no difficulty exists in using terms which shall ex-
press the difference. Thus the gap separating the
moose, the caribou, and the wapiti from one an-
other, and from the smaller American deer, is so
wide, and there is so complete a lack of transi-
tional forms, that the differences among them are
expressed by naturalists by the use of different
generic terms. The gap between the whitetail

[ntroductory 5

and the different forms of blacktail, though much
less, is also clearly marked. But when we come
to consider the blacktail among themselves, we find
two very distinct types which yet show a certain
tendency to intergrade; and with the whitetail
very wide differences exist, even in the United
States, both individually among the deer of cer-
tain localities, and also as between all the deer
of one locality when compared with all the deer of
another. Our present knowledge of the various
forms hardly justifies us in dogmatizing as to
their exact relative worth, and even if our knowl-
edge was more complete, naturalists are as yet
wholly at variance as to the laws which should
govern specific nomenclature. However, the
hunter, the mere field naturalist, and the lover
of outdoor life, are only secondarily interested in
the niceness of these distinctions, and it is for
them that this volume is written. Accordingly, I
shall make no effort to determine the number of
different but closely allied forms of smaller deer
_which are found in North Temperate America.

Disregarding the minor differences, there are
in North America in addition to the so-called
antelope, six wholly distinct kinds of deer: the
moose, caribou, wapiti, whitetail, and the two
blacktails.

The moose in its various forms reaches from
the Atlantic to the Pacific, through the cold bo-

6 Deer and Antelope of North America

real forests of Canada, extending its range down
into the United States in northern New England,
Minnesota, and along the Rocky Mountains. It
was exterminated from the Adirondacks in the
early sixties, about the time that the wapiti was
exterminated in Pennsylvania, or very shortly be-
fore. It is the brother of the Old World elk, and
its huge size, shovel horns, short neck, swollen
nose, and long legs distinguish it at a glance from
any other animal.

The caribou is found throughout most of the
moose’s range, but it does not extend so far south,
and in some of its forms reaches much farther
north, being found on the cold barrens, from New-
foundland to the shores of the Arctic Sea. It is
the only animal which is still at certain seasons
found in enormous multitudes comparable to the
vast herds of the bison in the old days, and in
parts of its range it is being slaughtered in
the same butcherly spirit that was responsible for
the extinction of the bison. The different kinds
of American caribou are closely akin to the rein-
deer of the Old World, and their long, irregularly
branched antlers, with palmated ends, their big
feet, coarse heads, and stout bodies, render them
as easily distinguishable as the moose.

The wapiti or round-horned elk always had its
centre of abundance in the United States, though
in the West it was also found far north of the

Introductory 7

Canadian line. This splendid deer affords a good
instance of the difficulty of deciding what name
to use in treating of our American game. On
the one hand, it is entirely undesirable to be pe-
dantic; and on the other hand, it seems a pity,
at a time when speech is written almost as much
as spoken, to use terms which perpetually require
explanation in order to avoid confusion. The
wapiti is not properly an elk at all; the term
wapiti is unexceptionable, and it is greatly to be
desired that it should be generally adopted. But
unfortunately it has not been generally adopted.
From the time when our backwoodsmen first
began to hunt the animal among the foot-hills of
the Appalachian chains to the present day, it has
been universally known as elk wherever it has
been found. In ordinary speech it is never
known as anything else, and only an occasional
settler or hunter would understand what the word
wapiti referred to. The book name is a great
deal better than the common name; but after all,
it is only a book name. The case is almost ex-
actly parallel to that of the buffalo, which was
really a bison, but which lived as the buffalo, died
as the buffalo, and left its name imprinted on our
landscape as the buffalo. There is little use in
trying to upset a name which is imprinted in our
geography in hundreds of such titles as Elk
Ridge, Elk Mountain, Elkhorn River. Yet in

8 Deer and Antelope of North America

the books it is often necessary to call it the wap-
iti in order to distinguish it both from its differ-
ently named close kinsfolk of the Old World, and
from its more distant relatives with which it
shares the name of elk. It is the largest of the
true deer, and the noblest and stateliest of the deer
kind throughout the world. It is closely akin to
the much smaller European stag or red deer, and
still more closely to certain Asiatic deer, one of
which so closely approaches it in size, appearance,
and stately presence as to be almost indistin-
guishable. Its huge and yet delicately moulded
proportions, and its massive, rounded antlers, the
beam of which bends backward from the head,
while the tines are thrust forward, render it im-
possible to confound it with any other species of
American deer. Owing to its habitat it has
suffered from the persecution of hunters and set-
tlers more than any other of its fellows in Amer-
ica, and the boundaries of its range have shrunk
in far greater proportion. The moose and caribou
have in most places greatly diminished in num-
bers, and have here and there been exterminated
altogether from outlying portions of their range;
but the wapiti has completely vanished from
nine-tenths of the territory over which it roamed
a century and a quarter ago. Although it was
never found in any one place in such enormous
numbers as the bison and the caribou, it never-

Introductory 9

theless went in herds far larger than the herds
of any other American game save the two men-
tioned, and was formerly very much more abun-
dant within the area of its distribution than was
the moose within the area of its distribution. It is
now almost limited to certain mountainous areas
in the Rockies and on the Pacific coast, —the Pa-
cific coast form differing from the ordinary form.

The remaining three deer are much more closely
connected with one another, all belonging to the
same genus. The whitetail has always been, and
is now, on the whole the commonest of American
game, and it has held its own better than any
other kind. It is found from southern Canada,
in various forms, from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
down into South America. It is given various
names, and throughout most of its habitat is
simply known as “deer”; but wherever it comes
in contact with the blacktail it is almost invari-
ably called whitetail. This is a very appropriate
name, for its tail is habitually so carried as to be
extremely conspicuous, being white and bushy, only
the middle part above being dark colored. The
antlers curve out and forward, the prongs branch-
ing from the posterior surface.

The Rocky Mountain blacktail or mule-deer
is somewhat larger, with large ears, its tail short-
haired and round, white excepting for a black tip,
and with antlers which fork evenly like the prongs

10 ©Deer and Antelope of North America

of a pitchfork,—so that it is difficult to say
which prong should be considered the main
shaft, —and each prong itself bifurcates again.
In the books this animal is called the mule-deer,
but throughout its haunts it is almost always
known simply as the blacktail. It is found in
rough, broken country from the Bad Lands of
the western Dakotas to the Pacific coast, and is
everywhere the characteristic deer of the Rocky
Mountains. The southern California form is
peculiar, especially in having a dark stripe on
the tail above.

The true blacktail is found on the Pacific coast
from southern Alaska to northern California. Its
horns are like those of the Rocky Mountain black-
tail; its tail is more like that of the whitetail, but
is not as large, and the white is much reduced,
the color above and on the sides, to the very tip,
being nearly black.

The so-called antelope is not an antelope at all,
but a very extraordinary creature. It is the only
hollow-horned ruminant which annually sheds its
horns as do the deer. Its position in its class is
as unique as that of the giraffe. It is sometimes
called the prongbuck, but antelope is the name
nearly universally used for it throughout its range.
It extends from Canada to Mexico, through the
great plains and the open plateaus of the Rocky
Mountains; it was formerly found from the lower

Introductory II

Missouri and the Red River of the North to the
Pacific coast in California; but it has been exter-
minated from the eastern and western borders of
its former range, and very much thinned out
everywhere.

In the game preserves and zoological gardens
east of the Mississippi it has proved feasible to
perpetuate the whitetail and the wapiti, which
lend themselves readily to this semi-domestica-
tion. With mule-deer, caribou, moose, and prong-
buck the task has been far more difficult, owing
probably to the difficulty caused by an entire
change of surroundings. Seemingly, however,
the effort to keep moose on preserves in the Ad-
irondacks and New Hampshire has been success-
ful. There would be a far better chance to keep
mule-deer and prongbuck permanently in captiv-
ity if the effort were made in their natural habitat.

The chase of all these noble and beautiful an-
imals has ever possessed a peculiar fascination
for bold and hardy men, skilled in the use of arms
and the management of the horse, and wonted to
feats of strength and endurance. Throughout
the pioneer times the settlers followed hunting
as an industry as much as a sport, and to this day
there are regions in the Rockies and even on the
great plains where the ranchmen still so follow
it. Ordinarily the hunter goes on foot with the
rifle, but where the country is open, as through-

12 Deer and Antelope of North America

out much of the West, there are still places where
he habitually rides; and on the plains this is
the universal habit. Moreover, the antelope is
occasionally followed with greyhounds, and the
whitetail deer with the ordinary track-hounds or
deer-hounds. American hunters have never been
partial to large-bore rifles, and against American
game the heavy batteries necessary in India and
Africa have never been found necessary, or in-
deed useful. Nowadays the small-bore, smokeless-
powder rifle is almost universally used for all the
different kinds of game described in this volume.
For deer and antelope the lighter rifles are amply
sufficient. For moose and wapiti the heavier kinds
are preferable — not larger bores, but with a greater
quantity of powder and a longer bullet. The hard,
metal jacket of the bullet should of course not
extend to the point; in other words, the nose
should be of naked lead. Any good, modern rifle
will meet the requirements. The particular make
is largely a matter of personal taste. There are
a dozen different kinds, each of which comes up
to the standard of accuracy, flatness of trajectory,
killing power, handiness, and endurance. The
vital point is not the gun but the man behind the
gun. Any one of these rifles is good enough, and
the difference between any two of them is infini-
tesimal when compared with the importance of a
good eye and a steady hand and nerves.

_ Introductory 13

The matter of clothes is almost as much one of
personal taste as is the choice of a rifle. The es-
sential thing is that they should be of some kind
of drab or neutral tint tending toward gray or
brown. Personally, after many years’ experience,
I regard a buckskin shirt, when properly tanned,
as the best possible outside garment for any but
very rainy weather. Of course when the ther-
mometer gets down toward zero, a warm, heavy
jacket will be needed if one is on horseback.
The buckskin shirt should be worn as a tunic,
belted in at the waist. The hat should be soft,
with not too wide a brim. The trousers should
be loose and free to below the knee, and from
there to the ankle should button tightly down the
leg; the alternative being to use over them leather
leggings which should have straps and buckles and
not buttons. Not only the soles and heels of the
shoes but under the insteps should be studded
with nails.

To describe the necessary equipment is hardly
worth while, because it differs so widely in differ-
ent kinds of shooting. If a man lives ona ranch,
or is passing some weeks in a lodge in a game
country, and starts out for two or three days, he
will often do well to carry nothing whatever but
a blanket, a frying-pan, some salt pork, and some
hardtack. If the hunting-ground is such that he
can use a wagon ora canoe, and the trip is not

14 Deer and Antelope of North America

to be too long, he can carry about anything he
chooses, including a tent, any amount of bedding,
and if it is very cold, a small, portable stove, not
to speak of elaborate cooking apparatus. If he
goes with a pack-train, he will also be able to
carry a good deal; but in such a case he must
rely on the judgment of the trained packers, un-
less he is himself an expert in the diamond hitch.
If it becomes necessary to go on foot for any
length of time, he must be prepared to do genuine
roughing, and must get along with the minimum
of absolute necessities.

It is hardly necessary to point out that the
hunter worthy of the name should be prepared
to shift for himself in emergencies. A ranch-
man, or any other man whose business takes him
much in the mountains and out on the great
plains or among the forests, ought to be able
to get along entirely on his own account. But
this cannot usually be done by those whose ex-
istence is habitually more artificial When a man
who normally lives a rather over-civilized life,
an over-luxurious life,— especially in the great
cities — gets off for a few weeks’ hunting, he can-
not expect to accomplish much in the way of
getting game without calling upon the services
of a trained guide, woodsman, plainsman, or moun-
tain man, whose life-work it has been to make him-
self an adept in all the craft of the wilderness.

Introductory 1S

Until a man, unused to wilderness life, even though
a good sportsman, has actually tried it, he has no
idea of the difficulties and hardships of shifting
absolutely for himself, even for only two or three
days. Not only will the local guide have the neces-
sary knowledge as to precisely which one of two
seemingly similar places is most apt to contain
game; not only will he possess the skill in pack-
ing horses, or handling a canoe in rough water,
or finding his way through the wilderness, which
the amateur must lack; but even the things which
the amateur does, the professional will do so much
more easily and rapidly, as in the one case to leave,
and in the other case not to leave, ample time for
the hunting proper. Therefore the ordinary ama-
teur sportsman, especially if he lives in a city, must
count upon the services of trained men, possibly
to help him in hunting, certainly to help him in
travelling, cooking, pitching camp, and the like;
and this he must do, if he expects to get good
sport, no matter how hardy he may be, and no
matter how just may be the pride he ought to take
in his own craft, skill, and capacity to undergo
fatigue and exposure. But while normally he
must take advantage of the powers of others, he
should certainly make a point of being able to
shift for himself whenever the need arises; and
he can only be sure of possessing this capacity by
occasionally exercising it. It ought to be unneces-

16 Deer and Antelope of North America

sary to point out that the wilderness is not a
place for those who are dependent upon luxuries,
and above all for those who make a camping trip
an excuse for debauchery. Neither the man who
wants to take a French cook and champagne
on a hunting trip, nor his equally objectionable
though less wealthy brother who is chiefly con-
cerned with filling and emptying a large whiskey
jug, has any place whatever in the real life of the
wilderness.

The most striking and melancholy feature in
connection with American big game is the rapidity
with which it has vanished. When, just before
the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the rifle-
bearing hunters of the backwoods first penetrated
the great forests west of the Alleghanies, deer, elk,
black bear, and even buffalo swarmed in what are
now the states of Kentucky and Tennessee; and
the country north of the Ohio was a great and
almost virgin hunting-ground. From that day to
this the shrinkage has gone on, only partially
checked here and there, and never arrested as a
whole. Asa matter of historical accuracy, how-
ever, it is well to bear in mind that a great many
writers in lamenting this extinction of the game
have, from time to time, anticipated or overstated
the facts. Thus as good an author as Colonel Rich-
ard Irving Dodge spoke of the buffalo as practi-
cally extinct, while the great northern herd still

Introductory PT

existed in countless thousands. As early as 1880
very good sporting authorities spoke not only of
the buffalo but of the elk, deer, and antelope as no
longer to be found in plenty; and within a year
one of the greatest of living hunters has stated
that it is no longer possible to find any American
wapiti bearing heads comparable with the red deer
of Hungary. As a matter of fact, in the early
eighties there were still great regions where every
species of game that had ever been known within
historic times on our continent were still to be
found as plentifully as ever. In the early nineties
there were still large regions in which this was
true of all game except the buffalo; for instance,
it was true of the elk in portions of northwestern
Wyoming, of the blacktail in northwestern Colo-
rado, of the whitetail here and there in the Indian
Territory, and of the antelope in parts of New Mex-
seo; . Even at the present day there are smaller,
but still considerable regions where these four
animals are yet found in great abundance, and I
have seen antlers of wapiti shot in 1900 far sur-
passing any of which there is record from Hun-
gary. In New England and New York, as well
as New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the whitetail
deer is more plentiful than it was thirty years
ago, and in Maine (and to an even greater extent
in New Brunswick) the moose and caribou have,
on the whole, increased during the same period.

(e

18 Deer and Antelope of North America

There is yet ample opportunity for the big game
hunter in the United States and Canada; while
not even in the old days was it possible to go on
any trip better worth taking than the recent suc-
cessful hunt of Mr. Dall DeWeese, of Canon City,
Colorado, after the giant moose, giant bear, white
sheep, and caribou of Alaska.

While it is necessary to give this word of warn-
ing to those who, in praising time past, always
forget the opportunities of the present, it is a
thousand fold more necessary to remember that
these opportunities are, nevertheless, vanishing;
and if we are a sensible people, we will make it
our business to see that the process of extinction
is arrested. At the present moment the great
herds of caribou are being butchered as in the
past the great herds of bison and wapiti have
been butchered. Every believer in manliness,
and therefore in manly sport, and every lover of
nature, every man who appreciates the majesty
and beauty of the wilderness and of wild life,
should strike hands with the far-sighted men who
wish to preserve our material resources, in the
effort to keep our forests and our game beasts,
game birds, and game fish — indeed all the living
creatures of prairie, and woodland, and seashore
—from wanton destruction.

Above all, we should realize that the effort
toward this end is essentially a democratic move-

Introductory 1g

ment. It is entirely in our power as a nation to
preserve large tracts of wilderness, which are val-
ueless for agricultural purposes, as play-grounds
for rich and poor alike, and to preserve the game
so that it shall continue to exist for the benefit of
all lovers of nature, and to give reasonable oppor-
tunities for the exercise of the skill of the hunter,
whether he is or is not a man of means. But this
end can only be achieved by wise laws and by a reso-
lute enforcement of the laws. Lack of such legis-
lation and administration will result in harm to
all of us, but most of all in harm to the nature
lover who does not possess vast wealth. Already
there have sprung up here and there through the
country, as in New Hampshire and the Adiron-
dacks, large private preserves. These preserves
often serve a most useful purpose, and should be
encouraged within reasonable limits; but it would
be a great misfortune if they increased beyond a
certain extent, or if they took the place of great
tracts of wild land, which continue as such, either
_ because of their very nature, or because of the
protection of the state exerted in the form of
making them state or national parks or reserves.
It is utterly foolish to regard proper game laws
as undemocratic, unrepublican. On the contrary,
they are essentially in the interests of the people
as a whole, because it is only through their enact-
ment and enforcement that the people as a whole

20 Deer and Antelope of North America

can preserve the game and can prevent its be-
coming purely the property of the rich, who are
able to create and maintain extensive private pre-
serves. The very wealthy man can get hunting
anyhow, but the man of small means is depen-
dent solely upon wise and well-executed game
laws for his enjoyment of the sturdy pleasure of
the chase. In Maine, in Vermont, in the Adiron-
dacks, even in parts of Massachusetts and on Long
Island too, people have waked up to this fact,
particularly so far as the common whitetail deer
is concerned, and in Maine also as regards the
moose and caribou. The effect is shown in the
increase in all these animals. Such game protec-
tion results,in the first place, in securing to the
people who live in the neighborhood permanent
opportunities for hunting; and in the next place,
it provides no small source of wealth to the local-
ity because of the visitors which it attracts. A
deer wild in the woods is worth to the people of
the neighborhood many times the value of its
carcass, because of the way it attracts sportsmen,
who give employment and leave money behind
them.

True sportsmen, worthy of the name, men who
shoot only in season and in moderation, do no
harm whatever to game. The most objection-
able of all game destroyers is, of course, the kind
of game butcher who simply kills for the sake

Introductory 21

of the record of slaughter, who leaves deer and
ducks and -prairie-chicken to rot after he has
slain them. Such a man is wholly obnoxious;
and indeed, so is any man who shoots for the
purpose of establishing a record of the amount
of game killed. To my mind this is one very
unfortunate feature of what is otherwise the
admirably sportsmanlike English spirit in these
matters. The custom of shooting great bags of
deer, grouse, partridges, and pheasants, the keen
rivalry in making such bags, and their publica-
tion in sporting journals, are symptoms of a spirit
which is most unhealthy from every standpoint.
It is to be earnestly hoped that every American
hunting or fishing club will strive to inculcate
among its own members, and in the minds of the
general public, that anything like an excessive
bag, any destruction for the sake of making a
record, is to be severely reprobated.

But after all, this kind of perverted sportsman,
unworthy though he is, is not the chief factor
in the destruction of our game. The professional
skin or market hunter, is the real offender. Yet
he is of all others the man who would ultimately
be most benefited by the preservation of the
game. The frontier settler, in a thoroughly wild
country, is certain to kill game for his own use.
As long as he does no more than this, it is hard
to blame him; although if he is awake to his

22 Deer and Antelope of North America

own interests he will soon realize that to him, too,
the live deer is worth far more than the dead
deer, because of the way in which it brings
money into the wilderness. The professional
hunter who kills game for the hide, or for the
meat, or to sell antlers and other trophies, and
the rich people, who are content to buy what
they have not the skill to get by their own exer-
tions — these are the men who are the real enemies
of game. Where there is no law which checks
the market hunters, the inevitable result of their
butchery is that the game is completely destroyed,
and with it their own means of livelihood. If, on
the other hand, they were willing to preserve it,
they could make much more money by acting as
guides. In northwestern Colorado, at the present
moment, there are still blacktail deer in abun-
dance, and some hundreds of elk are left. Colo-
rado has fairly good game laws, but they are
indifferently enforced. The country in which
the game is found can probably never support
any but a very sparse population, and a large
portion of the summer range is practically use-
less for settlement. If the people of Colorado
generally, and above all the people of the counties
in which the game is located, would resolutely co-
operate with those of their own number who are
already alive to the importance of preserving the
game, it could, without difficulty, be kept always

Introductory 23

as abundant as it now is, and this beautiful region
would be a permanent health resort and play-
ground for the people of a large part of the
Union. Such action would be a benefit to every
one, but it would be a benefit most of all to the
people of the immediate locality.

In northwestern Wyoming the preservation of
the Yellowstone Park by the Federal government
has done inestimable good. It preserves the
great nursery and breeding-ground of the elk.
The reserve should, however, be extended so as
to include more of the elk’s winter range.

It is to be remembered that the preservation of
the game is by no means merely the affair of the
sportsman. Most of us, as we grow older, grow to
care relatively less for the sport itself than for the
splendid freedom and abounding health of outdoor
life in the woods, on the plains, and among the
great mountains; and to the true nature lover it
is melancholy to see the wilderness stripped of
the wild creatures which gave it no small part of

its peculiar charm. It is inevitable, and probably
necessary, that the wolf and the cougar should
go; but the blacktail and wapiti grouped on the
mountain side, the whitetail and moose feeding in
the sedgy ponds, —these add beyond measure to
the wilderness landscape, and if they are taken
away, they leave a lack which nothing else can
quite make good. So it is of those true birds of

24 Deer and Antelope of North America

the wilderness, the eagle and the raven; and
indeed of all the wild things furred, feathered, and
finned.

There are many sides to the charm of big
game hunting; nor should it be regarded as
being without its solid advantages from the stand-
point of national character. Always in our mod-
ern life, the life of a highly complex industrialism,
there is a tendency to softening of the fibre. This
is true of our enjoyments; and it is no less true of
very many of our business occupations. It is not
true of such work as railroading, a purely modern
development, nor yet of work like that of those
who man the fishing fleets; but it is preéminently
true of all occupations which cause men to lead
sedentary lives in great cities. For these men it
is especially necessary to provide hard and rough
play. Of course, if such play is made a serious
business, the result is very bad; but this does not
in the least affect the fact that within proper
limits the play itself is good. Vigorous athletic
sports carried on ina sane spirit are healthy. The
hardy out-of-door sports of the wilderness are even
healthier. It is a mere truism to say that the
qualities developed by the hunter are the qualities
needed by the soldier; and a curious feature of
the changed conditions of modern warfare is that
they call to a much greater extent than during
the two or three centuries immediately past, for

Introductory 25

the very qualities of individual initiative, ability to
live and work in the open, and personal skill in
the management of horse and weapons, which are
fostered by a hunter's life. No training in the
barracks or on the parade-ground is as good as
the training given by a hard hunting trip in which
a man really does the work for himself, learns to
face emergencies, to study country, to perform
feats of hardihood, to face exposure and undergo
severe labor. It isan excellent thing for any man
to be a good horseman and a good marksman, to
be able to live in the open and to feel a self-reli-
ant readiness in any crisis. Big game hunting
tends to produce or develop exactly these physi-
cal and moral traits. To say that it may be
pursued in a manner or to an extent which is
demoralizing is but to say what can likewise be
said of all other pastimes and of almost all kinds of
serious business. That it can be abused either in
the way in which it is done, or the extent to which
it is carried, does not alter the fact that it is in
itself a sane and healthy recreation.

At the risk of over-emphasis, I desire to repeat
that we cannot too sedulously insist upon the fact
that the big game hunter should not be a game
butcher. To protest against all hunting is, of
course, merely a bit of unhealthy sentimentality.
If no wild animals were killed by man for food
or sport, he would speedily have to kill them in

26 Deer and Antelope of North America

self-defence because they would eat him out of
house and home. But the true sportsman is
never wanton in slaughter. If he is worthy the
name, he will feel infinitely more satisfaction in
a single successful shot which comes to crown
the triumph of his hardihood and address in ex-
ploring the wilds, and in the actual stalk, than
he would in any amount of shooting at creatures
driven past him from artificially stocked covers.
The best test of the worth of any sport is the
demand that sport makes upon those qualities
of mind and body which in their sum we call
manliness.

Moreover, in addition to being a true sports-
man and not a game butcher, in addition to being
a humane man as well as keen-eyed, strong-limbed,
and stout-hearted, the big game hunter should
be a field naturalist. If possible, he should be an
adept with the camera; and hunting with the
camera will tax his skill far more than hunting
with the rifle, while the results in the long run
give much greater satisfaction. Wherever possible
he should keep a note-book, and should carefully
study and record the habits of the wild creatures,
especially when in some remote regions to which
trained scientific observers but rarely have access.
If we could only produce a hunter who would do
for American big game what John Burroughs has
done for the smaller wild life of hedgerow and

Introductory 27

orchard, farm and garden and grove, we should
indeed be fortunate. Yet even though a man does
not possess the literary faculty and the powers of
trained observation necessary for such a task, he
can do his part toward adding to our information
by keeping careful notes of all the important facts
which he comes across. Such note-books would
show the changed habits of game with the changed
seasons, their abundance at different times and
different places, the melancholy data of their dis-
appearance, the pleasanter facts as to their change
of habits which enable them to continue to exist
in the land, and, in short, all their traits. <A real
and lasting service would thereby be rendered,
not only to naturalists, but to all who care for
nature.

CHAPTER.

THE MULE-DEER, OR ROCKY MOUNTAIN BLACKTAIL

Tus is the largest and finest of our three
smaller deer. Throughout its range it is known
as the blacktail deer, and it has as good a historic
claim to the title as its Pacific coast kinsman, the
coast or true blacktail. If one were writing purely
of this species, it would be pedantry to call it by
its book name of mule-deer, a name which con-
veys little or no meaning to the people who live
in its haunts and who hunt it; but it is certainly
very confusing to know two distinct types of deer
by one name, and as both the Rocky Mountain
blacktail and Coast blacktail are treated in this
volume, and as the former is occasionally known
as mule-deer, I shall, for convenience’ sake, speak
of it under this name, —a name given it because
of its great ears, which rather detract from its
otherwise very handsome appearance.

The mule-deer is a striking and beautiful ani-
mal. As is the case with our other species, it
varies greatly in size, but is on the average heavier
than either the whitetail or the true blacktail. The

28

The Mule-deer 29

horns also average longer and heavier, and in
exceptional heads are really noteworthy trophies.
Ordinarily a full-grown buck has a head of ten
distinct and well-developed points, eight of which
consist of the bifurcations of the two main prongs
into which each antler divides, while in addition
there are two shorter basal or frontal points. But
the latter are very irregular, being sometimes
missing; while sometimes there are two or three
of them on each antler. When missing it usually
means that the antlers are of young animals that
have not attained their full growth. A yearling
will sometimes have merely a pair of spikes, and
sometimes each spike will be bifurcated so as to
make two points. A two-year-old may develop
antlers which, though small, possess the normal
four points. Occasionally, where unusually big
heads are developed, there are a number of extra
points. If these are due to deformity, they simply
take away from the beauty of the head; but where
they are symmetrical, while at the same time the
antlers are massive, they add greatly to the beauty.
All the handsomest and largest heads show this
symmetrical development of extra points. It is
rather hard to lay down a hard-and-fast rule for
counting them. The largest and finest antlers
are usually rough, and it is not easy to say when
a particular point in roughness has developed so
that it may legitimately be called a prong. The

30 «Deer and Antelope of North America

largest head I ever got to my own rifle had twenty-
eight points, symmetrically arranged, the antlers
being rough and very massive as well as very long.
The buck was an immense fellow, but no bigger
than other bucks I have shot which possessed
ordinary heads.

The mule-deer is found from the rough country
which begins along the eastern edges of the great
plains, across the Rocky Mountains to the eastern
slopes of the coast ranges, and into southern Cali-
fornia. It extends into Canada on the north and
Mexico on the south. On the west it touches,
and here and there crosses, the boundaries of the
Coast blacktail. The whitetail is found in places
throughout its habitat from east to west and from
north to south. But there are great regions in
this territory which are peculiarly fitted for the
mule-deer, but in which the whitetail is never
found, as the habits of the two are entirely dif-
ferent. In the mountains of western Colorado
and Wyoming, for instance, the mule-deer swarms,
but the whole region is unfit for the whitetail,
which is accordingly only found in a very few
narrowly restricted localities.

The mule-deer does not hold its own as well as
the whitetail in the presence of man, but it is by
no means as quickly exterminated as the wapiti.
The general limits of its range have not shrunk
materially in the century during which it has

The Mule-deer 31

been known to white hunters. It was never
found until the fertile, moist country of the Mis-
sissippi Valley was passed and the dry plains
region to the west of it reached, and it still
exists in some numbers here and there in this
country, as, for instance, in the Bad Lands along
the Little Missouri, and in the Black Hills. But
although its limits of distribution have not very
sensibly diminished, there are large portions of
the range within these limits from which it has
practically vanished, and in most places its num-
bers have been wofully thinned. It holds its
own best among the more inaccessible mountain
masses of the Rockies, and from Chihuahua to
Alberta there are tracts where it is still very
abundant. Yet even in these places the numbers
are diminishing, and this process can be arrested
only by better laws, and above all, by a better
administration of the law. The national govern-
ment could do much by establishing its forest
reserves as game reserves, and putting on a suff-
cient number of forest rangers who should be
‘empowered to prevent all hunting on the reserves.
The state governments can do still more. Colo-
rado has good laws, but they are not well enforced.
The easy method of accounting for this fact is to
say that it is due to the politicians; but in reality
the politicians merely represent the wishes, or
more commonly the indifference, of the people.

32 Deer and Antelope of North America

As long as the good citizens of a state are indif-
ferent as to game protection, or take but a tepid
interest in it, the politicians, through their agents,
will leave the game laws unenforced. But if the
people of Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana come
to feel the genuine interest in the enforcement of
these laws that the people of Maine and Vermont
have grown to take during the past twenty years,
not only will the mule-deer cease to diminish,
but it will positively increase. It is a mistake
to suppose that such a change would only be to
the advantage of well-to-do sportsmen. Men who
are interested in hunting for hunting’s sake, men
who come from the great cities remote from the
mountains in order to get three or four weeks’
healthy, manly holiday, would undoubtedly be
benefited; but the greatest benefit would be to
the people of the localities, and of the neighbor-
hoods round about. The presence of the game
would attract outsiders who would leave in the
country money or its equivalent, which would
many times surpass in value the game they
actually killed; and furthermore, the preservation
of the game would mean that the ranchmen and
grangers who live near its haunts would have
in perpetuity the chance of following the pleas-
antest and healthiest of all out-of-door pastimes ;
whereas, if through their shortsightedness they
destroy, or permit to be destroyed, the game, they

ea anern”

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“"sesncse “77>

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On, ¢

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V7) RANGE OF MULE DEER
Q° (ODOCOILEUS HEMIONUS AND SUBSPECIES) Qa
RANGE OF CATON’S CALIFORNIA MULE DEER \ &
(ODOCOILEUS CALIFORNICUS ) ry.
Bee ) - 2
By Dr>-C, Hart Merriam et ae

115°
BORMAY & CO.,N.Y,

The Mutle-deer 33

are themselves responsible for the fact that their
children and children’s children find themselves
forever debarred from a pursuit which must under
such circumstances become the amusement only
of the very rich. If we are really alive to our
opportunities under our democratic, social, and
political system, we can keep for ourselves — and
by “ourselves ” I mean the enormous bulk of men
whose means range from moderate to very small
—ample opportunity for the enjoyment of hunt-
ing and shooting, of vigorous and _ blood-stirring
out-of-doors sport. If we fail to take advantage
of our possibilities, if we fail to pass, in the
interest of all, wise game laws, and to see that
these game laws are properly enforced, we will
then have to thank ourselves if in the future the
game is only found in the game preserves of the
wealthy ; and under such circumstances only these
same wealthy people will have the chance to
hunt it.

The mule-deer differs widely from the whitetail
in its habits, and especially in its gait, and in the
kind of country which it frequents. Although in
many parts of its range it is found side by side
with its whitetail cousin, the two do not actually
associate together, and their propinquity is due
simply to the fact, that the river bottoms being a
favorite haunt of the whitetail, long tongues of the
distribution area of this species are thrust into the

34. Deer and Antelope of North America

domain of its bolder, less stealthy and less crafty
kinsman. Throughout the plains country the
whitetail is the deer of the river bottoms, where
the rank growth gives it secure hiding-places, as
well as ample food. The mule-deer, on the con-
trary, never comes down into the dense growths
of the river bottoms. Throughout the plains coun-
try it is the deer of the broken Bad Lands which
fringe these river bottoms on either side, and of
the rough ravines which wind their way through
the Bad Lands to the edge of the prairie country
which lies back of them. The broken hills, their
gorges filled with patches of ash, buck brush, cedar.
and dwarf pine, form a country in which the mule-
deer revels. The whitetail will, at times, wander
far out on the prairies where the grass is tall and
rank; but it is not nearly so bold or fond of the
open as the mule-deer. The latter is frequently
found in hilly country where the covering is so_
scanty that the animal must be perpetually on the
watch, as if it were a bighorn or prongbuck, in
order to spy its foes at a distance and escape be-
fore they can come near; whereas the whitetail
usually seeks to elude observation by hiding —
by its crouching, stealthy habits.

It must be remembered, however, that with the
mule-deer, as with all other species of animals,
there is a wide variability in habits under differ-
ent conditions. ‘This is often forgotten even by

The Mule-deer RG

trained naturalists, who accept the observations
made in one locality as if they applied throughout
the range of the species. Thus in the excellent
account of the habits of this species in Mr. Ly-
deker’s book on the “ Deer of All Lands” it is
asserted that mule-deer never dwell permanently
in the forest, and feed almost exclusively on grass.
The first statement is entirely, and the second
mainly, true of the mule-deer of the plains from
the Little Missouri westward to the headwaters
of the Platte, the Yellowstone, and the Big Horn;
but there are large parts of the Rockies in which
neither statement applies at all. In the course of
several hunting trips among the densely wooded
mountains of western Montana, along the water-
shed separating the streams that flow into Clarke’s
Fork of the Columbia from those that ultimately
empty into Kootenay Lake, I found the mule-
deer plentiful in many places where practically
the whole country was covered’ by dense for-
est, and where the opportunities for grazing were
small indeed, as we found to our cost in connec-
tion with our pack-train. In this region the mule-
deer lived the entire time among the timber, and
subsisted for the most part on browse. Occasion-
ally they would find an open glade and graze;
but the stomachs of those killed contained not
grass, but blueberries and the leaves and delicate
tips of bushes. I was not in this country in win-

36 =Deer and Antelope of North America

ter, but it was perfectly evident that even at that
season the deer must spend their time in the thick
timber. There was no chance for them to go
above the timber line, because the mountains were
densely wooded to their summits, and the white
goats of the locality also lived in the timber. It
was far harder to get the mule-deer than it was to
get the white goats, for the latter were infinitely
more conspicuous, were slower in their movements,
and bolder and less shy. Almost the only way
we succeeded in killing the deer was by finding
one of their well-trodden paths and lying in wait
beside it very early in the morning or quite late
in the afternoon. The season was August and
September, and the deer were astir long before
sunset. They usually, but not always, lay high
up on the mountain sides, and while they some-
times wandered to and fro browsing on the moun-
tains, they often came down to feed in the valleys,
where the berries were thicker. Their paths were
well beaten, although, like all game trails, after
being as plainly marked as a pony track for a
quarter of a mile or so, they would suddenly
grow faint and vanish. The paths ran nearly
straight up and down hill, and even when en-
tirely undisturbed, the deer often came down
them at a great rate, bouncing along in a way
that showed that they have no fear of develop-
ing the sprung knees which we should fear for

The Mule-deer 37

a domestic animal which habitually tried the
same experiment.

In other habits also the deer vary widely in
different localities. For instance, there is an
absolute contrast as regards their migratory habits
between the mule-deer, which live in the Bad
Lands along the Little Missouri, and those which
live in northwestern Colorado; and this differ-
ence is characteristic generally of the deer which
in the summer dwell in the high mountains, as
contrasted with those which bear and rear their
young in the low, broken, hill-country. Along
the Little Missouri there was no regular or
clearly defined migration of the mule-deer in a
mass. Some individual, or groups of individuals,
shifted their quarters for a few miles, so that in
the spring, for instance, a particular district of a
few square miles, in which they had been abun-
dant before, might be wholly without them.
But there were other districts which happened
to afford at all times sufficient food and shelter,
in which they were to be found the year round;
and the animals did not band and migrate as
the prongbucks did in the same region. In the
immediate neighborhood of my ranch there were
groups of high hills containing springs of water,
good grass, and an abundance of cedar, ash, and
all kinds of brush in which mule-deer were per-
manent residents. There were big dry creeks,

38 Deer and Antelope of North America

with well-wooded bottoms, lying among rugged
hills, in which I have found whitetail and mule-
deer literally within a stone’s throw of one
another. I once started from two adjoining
pockets in this particular creek two does, each
with a fawn, one being a mule-deer and the other
a whitetail. On another occasion, on an early
spring afternoon, just before the fawns were born,
I came upon a herd of twenty whitetails, does,
and young of the preceding year, grazing greedily
on the young grass; and half a mile up the creek,
in an almost exactly similar locality, I came upon
just such a herd of mule-deer. In each case the
animals were so absorbed in the feasting, which
was to make up for their winter privations, that
I was able to stalk to within fifty yards, though
of course I did not shoot.

In northwestern Colorado the conditions are
entirely different. Throughout the region there
is not a single whitetail to be found, and never
has been, although in the winter range of the
mule-deer there are a few prongbuck; and the
wapiti once abounded. The mule-deer are still
plentiful. They make a complete migration
summer and winter, so that in neither season is a
single individual to be found in the haunts they
frequent during the other season. In the sum-
mer they live and bring forth their young high
up in the main chain of the mountains, in a

The Mutle-deer 39

beautiful country of northern forest growth,
dotted with trout-filled brooks and clear lakes.
The snowfall is so deep in these wooded moun-
tains that the deer would run great risk of perish-
ing if they stayed therein, and indeed, could only
winter there at all in very small numbers. Ac-
‘cordingly, when the storms begin in the fall,
usually about the first of October, just before the
rut, the deer assemble in bands and move west
and south to the lower, drier country, where the
rugged hills are here and there clothed with an
open growth of pinyon and cedar, instead of the
tall spruces and pines of the summer range. The
migrating bands follow one another along definite
trails over mountains, through passes and valleys,
and across streams; and their winter range
swarms with them a few days after the fore-
runners have put in their appearance in what
has been, during the summer, an absolutely deer-
less country.

In January and February, 1901, I spent five
weeks north of the White River, in northwestern
Colorado. It was in the heart of the wintering
ground of the great Colorado mule-deer herd.
Forty miles away to the east, extending north,
lay the high mountains in which these deer had
spent the summer. The winter range, in which
I was at the time hunting cougars, is a region of
comparatively light snowfall, though the cold is

40 Deer and Antelope of North America

very bitter. On several occasions during my
stay the thermometer went down to twenty
degrees below zero. The hills, or low mountains,
for it was difficult to know which to call them,
were steep and broken, and separated by narrow
flats covered with sage brush. The ordinary
trees were the pinyon and cedar, which were
scattered in rather open groves over the moun-
tain sides and the spurs between the ravines.
There were also patches of quaking asp, scrub
oak, and brush. The entire country was thinly
covered with ranches, and there were huge pas-
tures enclosed by wire fences. I have never
seen the mule-deer so numerous anywhere as
they were in this country at this time; although
in 1883, on the Little Missouri, they were almost
as plentiful. There was not a day we did not
see scores, and on some days we saw hundreds.
Frequently they were found in small parties of two
or three, or a dozen individuals, but on occasions
we saw bands of thirty or forty. Only rarely
were they found singly. The fawns were of course
well grown, being eight or nine months old.
They were still accompanying their mothers.
Ordinarily a herd would consist of does, fawns,
and yearlings, the latter carrying their first ant-
lers. But it was not possible to lay down a unt-
versal rule. Again and again I saw herds in
which there were one or two full-grown bucks

The Mule-deer 4l

associating with the females and younger deer.
At other times we came across small bands of
full-grown bucks by themselves; and occasionally
a solitary buck. Considering the extent to which
these deer must have been persecuted, I did not
think them shy. We were hunting on horseback,
and had hounds with us, so we made no especial
attempt to avoid noise. Yet very frequently we
would come close on the deer before they took
alarm; and even when alarmed they would some-
times trot slowly off, halting and looking back.
On one occasion, in some bad lands, we came
upon four bucks which had been sunning them-
selves on the face of a clay wall. They jumped
up and went off one at a time, very slowly, pass-
ing diagonally by us, certainly not over seventy
yards off. All four could have been shot without
effort, and as they had fine antlers I should cer-
tainly have killed one, had it been the open
season.

When we came on these Colorado mule-deer
suddenly, they generally behaved exactly as their
brethren used to in the old days on the Little
Missouri; that is, they would run off at a good
speed for a hundred yards or so, then slow up,
halt, gaze inquisitively at us for some seconds,
and again take to flight. While the sun was
strong they liked to lie out in the low brush on
slopes where they would get the full benefit of

42 Deer and Antelope of North America

the heat. During the heavy snowstorms they
usually retreated into some ravine where the trees
grew thicker than usual, not stirring until the
weight of the storm was over. Most of the night,
especially if it was moonlight, they fed; but they
were not at all regular about this. I frequently
saw them standing up and grazing, or more rarely
browsing, in the middle of the day, and in the
late afternoon they often came down to graze
on the flats within view of the different ranch
houses where I happened to stop. The hours
for feeding and resting, however, always vary
accordingly as the deer are or are not perse-
cuted. In wild localities I have again and again
found these deer grazing at all hours of the day,
and coming to water at high noon ; whereas, where
they have been much persecuted, they only begin
to feed after dusk, and come to water after dark.
Of course during this winter weather they could
get no water, snow supplying its place.

I was immensely interested with the way they
got through the wire fences. A mule-deer is a
great jumper; I have known them to clear with
ease high timber corral fences surrounding hay-
ricks. If the animals had chosen, they could have
jumped any of the wire fences I saw; yet never
in a single instance did I see one of them so jump
a fence, nor did I ever find in the tell-tale snow
tracks which indicated their having done so,

The Mule-deer 43

They paid no heed whatever to the fences, so
far as I could see, and went through them at
will; but they always got between the wires, or
went under the lowest wire. The dexterity with
which they did this was extraordinary. When
alarmed they would run full speed toward a wire
fence, would pass through it, often hardly alter-
ing their stride, and never making any marks
in the snow which looked as though they had
crawled. Twice I saw bands thus go through a
wire fence, once at speed, the other time when
they were not alarmed. On both occasions they
were too far off to allow me to see exactly their
mode of procedure, but on examining the snow
where they had passed, there was not the slightest
mark of their bodies, and the alteration in their
gait, as shown by the footprints, was hardly per-
ceptible. In one instance, however, where I scared
a young buck which ran over a hill and through
a wire fence on the other side, I found one of his
antlers lying beside the fence, it having evidently
been knocked off by the wire. Their antlers
were getting very loose, and toward the end of
our stay they had begun to shed them.

The deer were preyed on by many foes. Sports-
men and hide hunters had been busy during the
fall migrations, and the ranchmen of the neighbor-
hood were shooting them occasionally for food,
even when we were out there. The cougars at

44 Deer and Antelope of North America

this season were preying upon them practically
to the exclusion of everything else. We came
upon one large fawn which had been killed by a
bobcat. The gray wolves were also preying upon
them. A party of these wolves can sometimes
run down even an unwounded blacktail; I have
myself known of their performing this feat. Twice
on this very hunt we came across the carcasses
of blacktail which had thus been killed by wolves,
and one of the cowpunchers at a ranch where we .
were staying came in and reported to us that while
riding among the cattle that afternoon he had seen
two coyotes run a young mule-deer to a stand-
still, and they would without doubt have killed it
had they not been frightened by his approach.
Still the wolf is very much less successful than
the cougar in killing these deer, and even the cou-
gar continually fails in his stalks. But the deer
were so plentiful that at this time all the cougars
we killed were very fat, and evidently had no
difficulty in getting as much venison as they
needed. The wolves were not as well off, and
now and then made forays on the young stock of
the ranchmen, which at this season the cougar let
alone, reserving his attention to them for the sum-
mer season when the deer has vanished.

In the Big Horn Mountains, where I also saw
a good deal of the mule-deer, their habits were
intermediate between those of the species that

The Mule-deer 45

dwell on the plains and those that dwell in the
densely timbered regions of the Rockies further
to the northwest. In the summer time they lived
high up on the plateaus of the Big Horn, some-
times feeding in the open glades and sometimes
in the pine forests. In the fall they browsed on
certain of the bushes almost exclusively. In win-
ter they came down into the low country. South
of the Yellowstone Park, where the wapiti swarmed,
the mule-deer were not numerous. I believe that
by choice they prefer rugged, open country, and
they certainly care comparatively little for bad
weather, as they will often visit bleak, wind-swept
ridges in midwinter, as being places where they
can best get food at that season, when the snow
lies deep in the sheltered places. Nevertheless,
many of the species pass their whole life in thick
timber.

My chief opportunities for observing the mule-
deer were in the eighties, when I spent much of
my time on my ranch on the Little Missouri.
Mule-deer were then very plentiful, and I killed
more of them than of all other game put together.
At that time in the cattle country no ranchman
ever thought of killing beef, and if we had fresh
meat at all it was ordinarily venison. In the
fall we usually tried to kill enough deer to last
out the winter. Until the settlers came in, the
Little Missouri country was an ideal range for

46 Deer and Autelope of North America

mule-deer, and they fairly swarmed; while elk
were also plentiful, and the restless herds of the
buffalo surged at intervals through the land.
After 1882 and 1883 the buffalo and elk were
killed out, the former completely, and the latter
practically, and the skin hunters, and then the
ranchers, turned their attention chiefly to the
mule-deer. It lived in open country where there
was cover for the stalker, and so it was much
easier to kill than either the whitetail, which
was found in the dense cover of the river bot-
toms, or the prongbuck, which was found far
back from the river, on the flat prairies where
there was no cover at all. I have been informed
of other localities in which the antelope has dis-
appeared long before the mule-deer, and I believe
that in the Rockies the mule-deer has a far better
chance of survival than the antelope has on the
plains; but on the Little Missouri the antelope
continued plentiful long after the mule-deer had
become decidedly scarce. In 1886 1 think the
antelope were fully as abundant as ever they were,
while the mule-deer had wofully diminished. In
the early nineties there were still regions within
thirty or forty miles of my ranch, where the ante-
lope were very plentiful—far more so than the
mule-deer were at that time. Now they are both
scarce along the Little Missouri, and which will
outlast the other I cannot say.

The Mule-deer 47

In the old days, as I have already said, it was
by no means infrequent to see both the whitetail
and the mule-deer close together, and when, under
such circumstances, they were alarmed, one got a
peculiarly clear idea of the extraordinary gait
which is the mule-deer’s most striking character-
istic. It trots wells, gallops if hard pressed, and
is a good climber, though much inferior to the
mountain sheep. But its normal gait consists of
a series of stiff-legged bounds, all four feet leav-
ing and striking the ground at the same time.
This gait differs more from the gait of bighorn,
prongbuck, whitetail, and wapiti than the gaits of
these latter animals differ among themselves.
The wapiti, for instance, rarely gallops, but when
he does, it is a gallop of the ordinary type. The
prongbuck runs with a singularly even gait;
whereas the whitetail makes great bounds, some
much higher than others. But fundamentally in
all cases the action is the same, and has no resem-
blance to the stiff-legged buck jumping which is
the ordinary means of progression of the mule-
deer. These jumps carry it not only on the level,
but up and down hill at a great speed. It is said
to be a tiresome gait for the animal, if hunted for
any length of time on the level; but of this I
cannot speak with full knowledge.

Compared to the wapiti, the mule-deer, like
our other small deer, is a very silent animal. For

48 Deer and Antelope of North America

a long time I believed it uttered no sound beyond
the snort of alarm and the rare bleat of the doe
to her fawn; but one afternoon I heard two bucks
grunting or barking at one another in a ravine
back of the ranch-house, and crept up and shot
them. I was still uncertain whether this was an
indication of a regular habit; but a couple of
years later, on a moonlight night just after sunset,
I heard a big buck travelling down a ravine and
continually barking, evidently as a love challenge.
I have been informed by some hunters that the
bucks at the time of the rut not infrequently thus
grunt and bark; but most hunters are ignorant
of this habit; and it is certainly not a common
practice.

The species is not nearly as gregarious as the
wapiti or caribou. During the winter the bucks
are generally found singly, or in small parties by
themselves, although occasionally one will associ-
ate with a party of does and of young deer. When
in May or June —for the exact time varies with
the locality —the doe brings forth her young, she
retires to some lonely thicket. Sometimes one
and sometimes two fawns are brought forth. They
lie very close for the first few days. I have picked
them up and handled them without their making
the slightest effort to escape, while the mother
hung about a few hundred yards off. On one
occasion I by accident surprised a doe in the very

The Mule-deer 49

act of giving birth to two fawns. One had just
been born and the other was born as the doe
made her first leap away. She ran off with as
much speed and unconcern as if nothing what-
ever had happened. I passed on immediately,
lest she should be so frightened as not to come
back to the fawns. It has happened that where
I have found the newly born fawns I have invari-
ably found the doe to be entirely alone, but her
young of the previous year must sometimes at
least be in the neighborhood, for a little later I
have frequently seen the doe and her fawn or
fawns, and either one or two young of the previ-
ous year, together. Often, however, these young
deer will themselves be alone, or associated with
an older doe which is barren. The bucks at the
same time go to secluded places; sometimes
singly, while sometimes an old buck will be accom-
panied by a younger one, or a couple of old bucks
will lie together. They move about as little as
possible while their horns are growing, and if a
hunter comes by, they will lie far closer than at
any other time of the year, squatting in the dense
thickets as if they were whitetails.

When in the Bad Lands of the western Da-
kotas the late September breezes grow cold, then
the bucks, their horns already clean of velvet
which they have thrashed off on the bushes and
saplings, feel their necks begin to swell; and

50 Deer and Antelope of North America

early in October — sometimes not until Novem-
ber — they seek the does. The latter, especially
the younger ones, at first flee in frantic haste.
As the rut goes on the bucks become ever bolder
and more ardent. Not only do they chase the
does by night but also by day. I have sat on the
side of a ravine in the Bad Lands at noon and
seen a young doe race past me as if followed by
a wolf. When she was out of sight a big buck
appeared on her trail, following it by scent, also
at speed. When he had passed I got up, and the
motion frightened a younger buck which was fol-
lowing two or three hundred yards in the rear of
the big one. After a while the doe yields, and
the buck then accompanies her. If, however, it
is early in the season, he may leave her entirely
in order to run after another doe. Later in the
season he will have a better chance of adding the
second doe to his harem, or of robbing another
buck of the doe or does which he has accumu-
lated. I have often seen merely one doe and one
buck together, and I have often seen a single doe
which for several days was accompanied by sev-
eral bucks, one keeping off the others. But
generally the biggest bucks collect each for him-
self several does, yearlings also being allowed in
the band. The exact amount of companionship
with the does allowed these young bucks depends
somewhat upon the temper of the master buck.

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The Mule-deer 51

In books by imperfectly informed writers we often
see allusions to the buck as protecting the doe,
or even taking care of the fawn. Charles Dudley
Warner, for instance, in describing with great
skill and pathos an imaginary deer hunt, after
portraying the death of the doe, portrays the
young fawn as following the buck when the latter
comes back to it in the evening.’ While the
fawn is so young as to be wholly dependent upon
the doe, the buck never comes near either. More-
over, during the period when the buck and the doe
are together, the buck’s attitude is merely that of
a brutal, greedy, and selfish tyrant. He will un-
hesitatingly rob the doe of any choice bit of food,
and though he will fight to keep her if another
buck approaches, the moment that a dangerous
foe appears his one thought is for his own preser-
vation. He will not only desert the doe, but if
he is an old and cunning buck, he will try his
best to sacrifice her by diverting the attention of
the pursuer to her and away from him.

By the end of the rut the old bucks are often
exhausted, their sides thin, their necks swollen;
though they are never as gaunt as wapiti bulls at
this time. They then rest as much as possible,

1 While the situation thus described was an impossible one, the
purpose of Mr. Warner’s article was excellent, it being intended as
a protest against hunting deer while the fawns are young, and against
killing them in the water.

52. Deer and Antelope of North America

feeding all the time to put on fat before winter
arrives, and rapidly attaining a very high condi-
tion.

Except in dire need no one would kill a deer
after the hard weather of winter begins or before
the antlers of the buck are full-grown and the
fawns are out of the spotted coat. Even in the
old days we, who lived in the ranch country, al-
ways tried to avoid killing deer in the spring or
early summer, though we often shot buck ante-
lope at those times. The close season for deer
varies in different states, and now there is gen-
erally a limit set to the number any one hunter
can kill; for the old days of wasteful plenty are
gone forever.

To my mind there is a peculiar fascination in
hunting the mule-deer. By the time the hunting
season has arrived, the buck is no longer the
slinking beast of the thicket, but a bold and yet
wary dweller in the uplands. Frequently he can
be found clear of all cover, often at midday, and
his habits at this season are, from the hunter’s
standpoint, rather more like those of the wapiti
than of the whitetail; but each band, though con-
tinually shifting its exact position, stays perma-
nently in the same tract of country, whereas
wapiti are more apt to wander.

In the old days, when mule-deer were plentiful
in country through which a horse could go at a

The Mutle-deer 53

fair rate of speed, it was very common for the
hunter to go on horseback and not to dismount
save at the moment of the shot. In the early
eighties, while on my ranch on the Little Missouri,
this was the way in which I usually hunted.
When I first established my ranch I have often
gone out in the fall, after the day’s work was over,
and killed a deer before dark. If it was in Sep-
tember, I would sometimes start after supper.
Later in the year I would take supper when I
got back. Under such circumstances my mode
of procedure was perfectly simple. Deer were
plentiful. Every big tangle of hills, every set of
grassy coulies winding down to a big creek bot-
tom, was sure to contain them. The time being
short, with at most only an hour or two of light,
I made no effort to find the tracks of a deer or
to spy one afar off. I simply rode through the
likely places, across the heads of the ravines or
down the winding valleys, until I jumped a deer
close enough up to give me a shot. The unshod
hoofs of the horse made but little noise as he
shuffled along at the regular cow-pony fox trot,
and I kept him close into the bank or behind
cover, so as to come around each successive point
without warning. If the ground was broken and
rugged, I made no attempt to go fast. If, on the
other hand, I struck a smooth ravine with gentle
curves, I would often put the pony to a sharp

54. Deer and Antelope of North America

canter or gallop, so as to come quickly on any
deer before it could quite make up its mind what
course was best to follow. Sooner or later, as
I passed a thick clump of young ash or buck
brush, or came abruptly around a sharp bend,
there would be a snort, and then the thud, thud,
thud, of four hoofs striking the ground exactly in
unison, and away would go a mule-deer with the
peculiar bounding motion of its kind. The pony,
well accustomed to the work, stopped short, and
I was off its back in an instant. If the deer had
not made out exactly what I was, it would often
show by its gait that it was not yet prepared to
run straight out of sight. Under such circum-
stances I would wait until it stopped and turned
round to look back. If it was going very fast, I
took the shot running. Once I thus put up a
young buck from some thick brush in the bottom
of a winding washout. I leaped off the pony,
standing within ten yards of the washout. The
buck went up a hill on my left, and as he reached
the top and paused for a second on the sky line,
I fired. At the shot there was a great scram-
bling and crashing in the washout below me, and
another and larger buck came out and tore off
in frantic haste. I fired several shots at him,
finally bringing him down. Meanwhile, the other
buck had disappeared, but there was blood on his
trail, and I found him lying down in the next

The Mule-deer $5

coulie, and finished him. This was not much
over a mile from the ranch-house, and after dress-
ing the deer, I put one behind the saddle and
one on it, and led the pony home.

Such hunting, though great fun, does not imply
any particular skill either in horsemanship, marks-
manship, or plainscraft and knowledge of the ani-
mal’s habits; and it can of course be followed only
where the game is very plentiful. Ordinarily the
mule-deer must be killed by long tramping among
the hills, skilful stalking, and good shooting.
The successful hunter should possess good eyes,
good wind, and good muscles. He should know
how to take cover and how to use his rifle. The
work is sufficiently rough to test any man’s endur-
ance, and yet there is no such severe and intense
toil as in following true mountain game, like the
bighorn or white goat. As the hunter’s one aim
is to see the deer before it sees him, he can only
use the horse to take him to the hunting-ground,
Then he must go through the most likely ground
and from every point of vantage scan with minute
care the landscape round about, while himself un-
seen. If the country is wild and the deer have
not been much molested, he will be very apt to
come across a band that is feeding. Under such
circumstances it is easy to see them at once. But
if lying down, it is astonishing how the gray of
their winter coats fits in with the color of their

56 Deer and Antelope of North America

surroundings. Too often I have looked carefully
over a valley with my glasses until, thinking I had
searched every nook, I have risen and gone for-
ward, only to see a deer rise and gallop off out of
range from some spot which I certainly thought
I had examined with all possible precaution. If
the hunter is not himself hidden, he will have his
labor for his pains. Neither the mule-deer nor the
white-tail is by any means as keen-sighted as the
prong-horn antelope, and men accustomed chiefly
to antelope shooting are quite right in speaking of
the sight of deer as poor by comparison, But this
is only by comparison. A motionless object does
not attract a deer’s gaze as it attracts the tele-
scopic eye of a prongbuck; but any motion is
seen at once, and as soon as this has occurred, the
chances of the hunter are usually at an end. On
the other hand, from the nature of its haunts the
mule-deer usually offers fairly good opportunities
for stalking. It is not as big or as valuable as
the elk, and therefore it is not as readily seen or
as eagerly followed, and in consequence holds its
own better. But though the sport it yields calls
normally for a greater amount of hardihood and
endurance in the hunter than is the case with the
sport yielded by the prongbuck, and especially by
the whitetail, yet when existing in like numbers
it is easier to kill than either of these two
animals.

The Mule-deer $7

Sometimes in the early fall, when hunting from
the ranch, I have spent the night in some likely
locality, sleeping rolled up in a blanket on the.
ground so as to be ready to start at the first
streak of dawn. On one such occasion a couple
of mule-deer came to where my horse was pick-
eted just before I got up. I heard them snort or
whistle, and very slowly unwrapped myself from
the blanket, turned over, and crawled out, rifle in
hand. Overhead the stars were paling in the
faint gray light, but the ravine in which the deer
were was still so black that, watch as I would, I
‘could not see them. I feared to move around lest
I might disturb them, but after wriggling toward
a little jutting shoulder I lay still to wait for the
light. They went off, however, while it was still
too dusk to catch more than their dim and form-
less outlines, and though I followed them as rap-
idly and cautiously as possible, I never got a shot
at them. On other occasions fortune has favored
me, and before the sun rose I have spied some
buck leisurely seeking his day bed, and have been
able either to waylay him or make a running stalk
on him from behind.

In the old days it was the regular thing with
most ranchmen to take a trip in the fall for the
purpose of laying in the winter’s supply of venison.
I frequently took such trips myself, and though
occasionally we killed wapiti, bighorn, prong-

58 Deer and Antelope of North America

buck, and whitetail, our ordinary game was the
mule-deer. Around my ranch it was not neces-
sary to go very far. A day’s journey with the
wagon would usually take us to where a week's
hunting would enable us to return with a dozen
deer or over. If there was need of more, I would
repeat the hunt later on. I have several times
killed three of these deer in a day, but I do not
now recall ever killing a greater number. It is
perhaps unnecessary to say that every scrap of
flesh was used.

These hunts were always made late in the fall,
usually after the close of the rut. The deer were
then banded, and were commonly found in parties
of from three or four to a score, although the big
bucks might be lying by themselves. The weather
was apt to be cold, and the deer evidently liked to
sun themselves, so that at midday they could be
found lying, sometimes in thin brush and some-
times boldly out on the face of a cliff or hill. If
they were unmolested, they would feed at intervals
throughout the day, and not until the bands had
been decimated by excessive hunting, did they
ever spend the hours of daylight in hiding.

On such a hunt our proceedings were perfectly
simple. The nights were longer than the days,
and therefore we were away from camp at the first
streak of dawn, and might not return until long
after darkness. All the time between was spent

The Mule-deer 59

in climbing and walking through the rugged hills,
keeping a sharp lookout for our game. Only too
often we were seen before we ourselves saw the
quarry, and even when this was not the case, the
stalks were sometimes failures. Still blank days
were not very common. Probably every hunter
remembers with pride some particular stalk. I
recall now outwitting a big buck which I had seen
and failed to get on two successive days. He was
hanging about a knot of hills with brush on their
shoulders, and was not only very watchful, but
when he lay down always made his bed at the
lower end of a brush patch, whence he could see
into the valley below, while it was impossible to
approach him from above, through the brush, with-
out giving the alarm. On the third day I saw
him early in the morning, while he was feeding.
He was very watchful, and I made no attempt to
get near him, simply peeping at him until he
finally went into a patch of thin brush and lay
down. As I knew what he was I could distinctly
make him out. If I had not seen him go in, I
certainly never would have imagined that he was
a deer, even had my eyes been able to pick him
out at all among the gray shadows and small dead
tree-tops. Having waited until he was well settled
down, I made a very long turn and came up behind
him, only to find that the direction of the wind
and the slope of the hill rendered it an absolute

60 Deer and Antelope of North America

impossibility to approach him unperceived. After
careful study of the ground I abandoned the effort,
and returned to my former position, having spent
several hours of considerable labor in vain. — It
was now about noon, and I thought I would lie
still to see what he would do when he got up, and
accordingly I ate my lunch stretched at full length
in the long grass which sheltered me from the
wind. From time to time I peered cautiously
between two stones toward where the buck lay.
It was nearly mid-afternoon before he moved.
Sometimes mule-deer rise with a single motion,
all four legs unbending like springs, so that the
four hoofs touch the ground at once. This old
buck, however, got up very slowly, looked about
for certainly five minutes, and then came directly
down the hill and toward me. When he had
nearly reached the bottom of the valley between
us he turned to the right and sauntered rapidly
down it. Islpped back and trotted as fast as I
could without losing my breath along the hither
side of the spur which lay between me and the
buck. While I was out of sight he had for some
reason made up his mind to hurry, and when I
was still fifty yards from the end of the spur he
came in sight just beyond it, passing at a swing-
ing trot. I dropped on one knee so quickly that
for a moment he evidently could not tell what I
was, — my buckskin shirt and gray slouch-hat

The Mutle-deer 61

fading into the color of the background — and
halted, looking sharply around. Before he could
break into flight my bullet went through his
shoulders.

Twice I have killed two of these deer at a
shot; once two bucks, and once a doe and a
buck.

It has proved difficult to keep the mule-deer
in captivity, even in large private parks or roomy
zoological gardens. I think this is because
hitherto the experiment has been tried east of
the Mississippi in an alien habitat. The wapiti
and whitetail are species that are at home over
most of the United States, East and West, in rank,
wet prairies, dense woodland, and dry mountain
regions alike; but the mule-deer has a far more
sharply localized distribution. In the Bronx
Zoological Gardens, in New York, Mr. Hornaday
informs me that he has comparatively little difh-
culty in keeping up the stock alike of wapiti and
whitetail by breeding —as indeed any visitor can
see for himself. The same is true in the game
preserves in the wilder regions of New York and
New England; but hitherto the mule-deer has
offered an even more difficult problem in captivity
than the pronghorn antelope. Doubtless the
difficulty would be minimized if the effort at
domestication were made in the neighborhood of
the Rocky Mountains.

62 Deer and Antelope of North America

The true way to preserve the mule-deer, how-
ever, as well as our other game, is to establish on
the nation’s property great nurseries and winter-
ing grounds, such as the Yellowstone Park, and
then to secure fair play for the deer outside these
grounds by a wisely planned and faithfully exe-
cuted series of game laws. This is the really
democratic method of solving the problem. Occa-
sionally even yet some one will assert that the
game “belongs to the people, and should be
given over to them” — meaning, thereby, that
there should be no game laws, and that every
man should be at liberty indiscriminately to kill
every kind of wild animal, harmless, useless, or
noxious, until the day when our woods become
wholly bereft of all the forms of higher animal
life. Such an argument can only be made from
the standpoint of those big game dealers in the
cities who care nothing for the future, and desire
to make money at the present day by a slaughter
which in the last analysis only benefits the wealthy
people who are able to pay for the game, —for
once the game has been destroyed, the livelihood
of the professional gunner will be taken away,
Most emphatically wild game not on _ private
property does belong to the people, and the only
way in which the people can secure their owner-
ship. is by’ protecting it im the imterest johaal
against the vandal few. As we grow older I

The Mule-deer 63

think most of us become less keen about that
part of the hunt which consists in the killing.
I know that as far as I am concerned I have
long gone past the stage when the chief end of
a hunting trip was the bag. One or two bucks,
or enough grouse and trout to keep the camp
supplied, will furnish all the sport necessary to
give zest and point to a trip in the wilderness.
When hunters proceed on such a plan they do
practically no damage to the game. Those who
are not willing to act along these lines of their
own free will, should be made to by the state.
The people of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado,
and of the states near by, can do a real service,
primarily to themselves, but secondarily to others
also, by framing and executing laws which will
keep these noble deer as permanent denizens of
their lofty mountains and beautiful valleys. There
are other things much more important than game
laws; but it will be a great mistake to imagine
because until recently in Europe game laws have
been administered in the selfish interest of one
class and against the interest of the people as a
whole, that here in this country, and under our
institutions, they would not be beneficial to all
our people. So far from game laws being in the
interest of the few, they are emphatically in the
interest of the many. The very rich man can
stock a private game preserve, or journey afar off

64 Deer and Antelope of North America

to where game is still plentiful; but it is only
where the game is carefully preserved by the
state that the man of small means has any
chance to enjoy the keen delight of the chase.

Crit Hix. lit
THE WHITETAIL DEER

Tue whitetail deer is now, as it always has been,
the most plentiful and most widely distributed of
American big game. It holds its own in the land
better than any other species, because it is by
choice a dweller in the thick forests and swamps,
the places around which the tide of civilization
flows, leaving them as islets of refuge for the wild
creatures which formerly haunted all the country.
The range of the whitetail is from the Atlantic
to the Pacific, and from the Canadian to the Mex-
ican borders, and somewhat to the north and far
to the south of these limits. The animal shows
a wide variability, both individually and locally,
within these confines; from the hunter’s stand-
point it is not necessary to try to determine ex-
actly the weight that attaches to these local
variations.

There is also a very considerable variation in
habits. As compared with the mule-deer, the
whitetail is not a lover of the mountains. As
compared with the prongbuck, it is not a lover of

F 6 5

66 Deer and Antelope of North America

the treeless plains. Yet in the Alleghanies and
the Adirondacks, at certain seasons especially,
and in some places at all seasons, it dwells high
among the densely wooded mountains, wandering
over their crests and sheer sides, and through the
deep ravines; while in the old days there were
parts of Texas and the Indian Territory where it
was found in great herds far out on the prairie.
Moreover, the peculiar nature of its chosen habi-
tat, while generally enabling it to resist the on-
slaught of man longer than any of its fellows,
sometimes exposes it to speedy extermination.
To the westward of the rich bottom-lands and
low prairies of the Mississippi Valley proper, when
the dry plains country is reached, the natural
conditions are much less favorable for whitetail
than for other big game. The black bear, which
in the East has almost precisely the same habitat
as the whitetail, disappears entirely on the great
plains, and reappears in the Rockies in regions
which the whitetail does not reach. All over the
great plains, into the foot-hills of the Rockies, the
whitetail is found, but only in the thick timber of
the river bottoms. Throughout the regions of
the Upper Missouri and Upper Platte, the Big
Horn, Powder, Yellowstone, and Cheyenne, over
all of which I have hunted, the whitetail lives
among the cottonwood groves and dense brush
growth that fringe the river beds and here and

The Whitetail Deer 67

there extend some distance up the mouths of the
large creeks. In these places the whitetail and
the mule-deer may exist in close proximity; but
normally neither invades the haunts of the other.

Along the ordinary plains river, such as the
Little Missouri, where I ranched for many years,
there are three entirely different types of country
through which a man passes as he travels away
from the bed of the river. There is first the allu-
vial river bottom covered with cottonwood and
box-elder, together with thick brush. These bot-
toms may be a mile or two across, or they may
shrink to but a few score yards. After the exter-
mination of the wapiti, which roamed everywhere,
the only big game animal found in them was the
whitetail deer. Beyond this level alluvial bottom
the ground changes abruptly to bare, rugged hills
or fantastically carved and shaped Bad Lands
rising on either side of the river, the ravines,
coulies, creeks, and canyons twisting through
them in every direction. Here there are patches
of ash, cedar, pine, and occasionally other trees,
but the country is very rugged, and the cover very
scanty. This is the home of the mule-deer, and,
in the roughest and wildest parts, of the bighorn.
The absolutely clear and sharply defined line of
demarkation between this rough, hilly country,
flanking the river, and the alluvial river bottom,
serves as an equally clearly marked line of de-

68 Deer and Antelope of North America

markation between the ranges of the whitetail and
the mule-deer. This belt of broken country may
be only a few hundred yards in width; or it may
extend for a score of miles before it changes into
the open prairies, the high plains proper. As
soon as these are reached, the prongbuck’s do-
main begins.

As the plains country is passed, and the vast
stretches of mountainous region entered, the river
bottoms become narrower, and the plains on which
the prongbuck is found become of very limited
extent, shrinking to high valleys and _ plateaus,
while the mass of rugged foot-hills and mountains
add immensely to the area of the mule-deer’s
habitat.

Given equal areas of country, of the three dif-
ferent types alluded to above, that in which the
mule-deer is found offers the greatest chance of
success to the rifle-bearing hunter, because there
is enough cover to shield him and not enough
to allow his quarry to escape by stealth and
hiding. On the other hand, the thick river bot-
toms offer him the greatest difficulty. In conse-
quence, where the areas of distribution of the dif-
ferent game animals are about equal, the mule-deer
disappears first before the hunter, the prong-
buck next, while the whitetail holds out the best
of all. I saw this frequently on the Yellowstone,
the Powder, and the Little Missouri. When the

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The Whitetail Deer 69

ranchman first came into this country the mule-
deer swarmed, and yielded a far more certain
harvest to the hunter than did either the prong-
buck or the whitetail. They were the first to be
thinned out, the prongbuck lasting much better.
The cowboys and small ranchmen, most of whom
did not at the time have hounds, then followed
the prongbuck; and this, in its turn, was killed
out before the whitetail. But in other places a
slight change in the conditions completely re-
versed the order of destruction. In parts of
Wyoming and Montana the mountainous region
where the mule-deer dwelt was of such vast extent,
and the few river bottoms on which the white-
tail were found were so easily hunted, that the
whitetail was completely exterminated throughout
large districts where the mule-deer continued to
abound. Moreover, in these regions the table-
lands and plains upon which the prongbuck was
found were limited in extent, and although the
prongbuck outlasted the whitetail, it vanished
long before the herds of the mule-deer had been
destroyed from among the neighboring mountains,

The whitetail was originally far less common
in the forests of northern New England than was
the moose, for in the deep snows the moose had
a much better chance to escape from its brute
foes and to withstand cold and starvation. But
when man appeared upon the scene he followed

70 Deer and Antelope of North America

the moose so much more eagerly than he followed
the deer that the conditions were reversed and the
moose was killed out. The moose thus vanished
entirely from the Adirondacks, and almost entirely
from Maine; but the excellent game laws of the
latter state, and the honesty and efficiency with
which they have been executed during the last
twenty years, has resulted in an increase of moose
during that time. During the same period the
whitetail deer has increased to an even greater
extent. It is doubtless now more plentiful in New
York and New England than it was a quarter of
a century ago. Stragglers are found in Connecti-
cut, and, what is still more extraordinary, even
occasionally come into wild parts of densely popu-
lated little Rhode Island,— my authority for the
last statement being Mr. C. Grant La Farge. Of
all our wild game, the whitetail responds most
quickly to the efforts for its protection, and ex-
cept the wapiti, it thrives best in semi-domes-
tication; in consequence, it has proved easy to
preserve it, even in such places as Cape Cod in
Massachusetts and Long Island in New York;
while it has increased greatly in Vermont, New
Hampshire, and Maine, and has more than held
its own in the Adirondacks. Mr. James R. Shef-
field, of New York City, in the summer of 1899,
spent several weeks on a fishing trip through
northern Maine. He kept count of the moose

The Whitetail Deer 71

and deer he saw, and came across no less than
thirty-five of the former and over five hundred
and sixty of the latter; in the most lonely parts of
the forest deer were found by the score, feeding
in broad daylight on the edges of the ponds.
Deer are still plentiful in many parts of the Alle-
ghany Mountains, from Pennsylvania southward,
and also in the swamps and cane-brakes of the
South Atlantic and Gulf states.

Where the differences in habitat and climate
are so great there are many changes of habits, and
some of them of a noteworthy kind. Mr. John
A. Mclilhenny, of Avery’s Island, Louisiana, for-
merly a lieutenant in my regiment, lives in what
is still a fine game country. His plantation is
in the delta of the Mississippi, among the vast
marshes, north of which lie the wooded swamps.
Both the marshes and the swamps were formerly
literally thronged with whitetail deer, and the
animals are still plentiful in them. Mr. Mclll-
henny has done much deer-hunting, always using
hounds. He informs me that the breeding times
are unexpectedly different from those of the
northern deer. In the North, in different locali-
ties, the rut takes place in October or Novem-
ber, and the fawns are dropped in May or June.
In the Louisiana marshes around Avery’s Island
the rut begins early in July and the fawns are
dropped in February. In the swamps immedi-

72 Deer and Antelope of North America

ately north of these marshes the dates are fully a
month later. The marshes are covered with tall
reeds and grass, and broken by bayous, while
there are scattered over them what are called
“islands” of firmer ground overgrown with tim-
ber. In this locality the deer live in the same
neighborhood all the year round, just as, for
instance, they do on Long Island. So on the
Little Missouri, in the neighborhood of my ranch,
they lived in exactly the same localities through-
out the entire year. Occasionally they would
shift from one river bottom to another, or go a
few miles up or down stream because of scarcity
of food. But there was no general shifting.

On the Little Missouri, in one place where they
were not molested, I knew a particular doe and
fawn with whose habits I became quite intimately
acquainted. When the moon was full they fed
chiefly by night, and spent most of the day lying
in the thick brush. When there was little or no
moon they would begin to feed early in the morn-
ing, then take a siesta, and then — what struck
me as most curious of all—would go to a little
willow-bordered pool about noon to drink, feed-
ing for some time both before and after drinking.
After another siesta they would come out late in
the afternoon and feed until dark.

In the Adirondacks the deer often alter their
habits completely at different seasons. Soon after

The Whitetail Deer 73

the fawns are born they come down to the water’s
edge, preferring the neighborhood of the lakes,
but also haunting the stream banks. The next
three months, during the hot weather, they keep
very close to the water, and get a large proportion
of their food by wading in after the lies and other
aquatic plants. Where they are much hunted, they
only come to the water’s edge after dark, but in re-
gions where they are little disturbed they are quite
as often diurnal in their habits. I have seen dozens
feeding in the neighborhood of a lake, some of them
two or three hundred yards out in shallow places,
up to their bellies; and this after sunrise, or two or
three hours before sunset. Before September the
deer cease coming to the water, and go back among
the dense forests and on the mountains. There
is no genuine migration, as in the case of the mule-
deer, from one big tract to another, and no entire
desertion of any locality. But the food supply
which drew the animals to the water’s edge during
the summer months shows signs of exhaustion
toward fall; the delicate water-plants have van-
ished, the marsh-grass is dying, and the lilies are
less succulent. An occasional deer still wanders
along the shores or out into the lake, but most of
them begin to roam the woods, eating the berries
and the leaves and twig ends of the deciduous
trees, and even of some of the conifers, although a
whitetail is fond of grazing, especially upon the

74. Deer and Antelope of North America

tips of the grass itself. I have seen moose feed-
ing on the tough old lily stems and wading after
them when the ice had skimmed the edges of the
pool. But the whitetail has usually gone back
into the woods long before freezing time.

From Long Island south there is not enough
snow to make the deer alter their habits in the
winter. As soon as the rut is over, which in dif-
ferent localities may be from October to December,
whitetail are apt to band together — more apt than
at any other season, although even then they are
often found singly or in small parties. While
nursing, the does have been thin, and at the end
of the rut the bucks are gaunt, with their necks
swollen and distended. From that time on bucks
and does alike put on flesh very rapidly in prepa-
ration for the winter. Where there is no snow, or
not enough to interfere with their travelling, they
continue to roam anywhere through the woods
and across the natural pastures and meadows, eat-
ing twigs, buds, nuts, and the natural hay which
is cured on the stalk.

In the northern woods they form yards during
the winter. These yards are generally found in a
hardwood growth which offers a supply of winter
food, and consist simply of a tangle of winding
trails beaten out through the snow by the inces-
sant passing and repassing of the animal. The
yard merely enables the deer to move along the

The Whitelail Deer 75

various paths in order to obtain food. If there
are many deer together, the yards may connect
by interlacing paths, so that a deer can run a con-
siderable distance through them. Often, however,
each deer will yard by itself, as food is the prime
consideration, and a given locality may only have
enough to support a single animal. When the
snows grow deep the deer is wholly unable to
move, once the yard is left, and hence it is abso-
lutely at the mercy of a man on snow-shoes, or of
a cougar or a wolf, if found at such times. The
man on snow-shoes can move very comfortably ;
and the cougar and the wolf, although hampered
by the snow, are not rendered helpless like the
deer. I have myself scared a deer out of a yard,
and seen it flounder helplessly in a great drift be-
fore it had gone thirty rods. When I came up
close it ploughed its way a very short distance
through the drifts, making tremendous leaps.
But as the snow was over six feet deep, so that
the deer sank below the level of the surface at
each jump, and yet could not get its feet on the
solid ground, it became so exhausted that it fell
over on its side and bleated in terror as I came up;
after looking at it I passed on. Hide hunters
and frontier settlers sometimes go out after the
deer on snow-shoes when there is a crust, and
hence this method of killing is called crusting.
It is simple butchery, for the deer cannot, as the

76 Deer and Antelope of North America

moose does, cause its pursuer a chase which may
last days. No self-respecting man would follow
this method of hunting save from the necessity of
having meat.

In very wild localities deer sometimes yard on
the ice along the edges of lakes, eating off all the
twigs and branches, whether of hardwood trees or
of conifers, which they can reach.

At the beginning of the rut the does flee from
the bucks, which follow them by scent at full
speed. The whitetail buck rarely tries to form a
herd of does, though he will sometimes gather
two. or three. The mere fact that his: tactics
necessitate a long and arduous chase after each
individual doe prevents his organizing herds as
the wapiti bull does. Sometimes two or three
bucks will be found strung out one behind the
other, following the same doe. The bucks wage
desperate battle among themselves during this
season, coming together with a clash, and then
pushing and straining for an hour or two at a
time, with their mouths open, until the weakest
gives way. As soon as one abandons the fight
he flees with all possible speed, and usually
escapes unscathed. While head to head there
is no opportunity for a disabling thrust, but if,
in the effort to retreat, the beaten buck gets
caught, he may be killed. Owing to the char-
acter of the antlers whitetail bucks are peculiarly

THE WHITETAIL IN FLIGHT

The Whitetail Deer Te

apt to get them interlocked in such a fight, and
if the efforts of the two beasts fail to disentangle
them, both ultimately perish by starvation. I
have several times come across a pair of skulls
with interlocked antlers. The same thing occurs,
though far less frequently, to the mule-deer and
even the wapiti.

The whitetail is the most beautiful and grace-
ful of all our game animals when in motion. I
have never been able to agree with Judge Caton
that the mule-deer is clumsy and awkward in his
gait. I suppose all such terms are relative.
Compared to the moose or caribou the mule-deer
is light and quick in his movements, and to me
there is something very attractive in the poise
and power with which one of the great bucks
bounds off, all four legs striking the earth
together and shooting the body upward and for-
ward as if they were steel springs. But there
can be no question as to the infinitely superior
grace and beauty of the whitetail when he either
trots orruns. The mule-deer and blacktail bound,
as already described. The prongbuck gallops
with an even gait, and so does the bighorn, when
it happens to be caught on a flat; but the white-
tail moves with an indescribable spring and buoy-
ancy. If surprised close up, and much terrified,
it simply runs away as hard as it can, at a gait
not materially different from that of any other

78 Deer and Antelope of North America

game animal under like circumstances, while its
head is thrust forward and held down, and the
tail is raised perpendicularly. But normally its
mode of progression, whether it trots or gallops,
is entirely unique. In trotting, the head and tail
are both held erect, and the animal throws out
its legs with a singularly proud and free motion,
bringing the feet well up, while at every step
there is an indescribable spring. In the canter or
gallop the head and tail are also held erect, the
flashing white brush being very conspicuous.
Three or four low, long, marvellously springy
bounds are taken, and then a great leap is made
high in the air, which is succeeded by three
or four low bounds, and then by another high
leap. A whitetail going through the brush in
this manner is a singularly beautiful sight. It
has been my experience that they are not usually
very much frightened by an ordinary slow track-
hound, and I have seen a buck play along in front
of one, alternately trotting and cantering, head
and flag up, and evidently feeling very little fear.

To my mind the chase of the whitetail, as it
must usually be carried on, offers less attraction
than the chase of any other kind of our large
game. But this is a mere matter of taste, and
such men as Judge Caton and Mr. George Bird
Grinnell have placed it above all others as a game
animal. Personally I feel that the chase of any

The Whitetail Deer 79

animal has in it two chief elements of attraction.
The first is the chance given to be in the wilder-
ness; to see the sights and hear the sounds of
wild nature. The second is the demand made
by the particular kind of chase upon the qualities
of manliness and hardihood. As regards the first,
some kinds of game, of course, lead the hunter
into particularly remote and wild localities; and
the farther one gets into the wilderness, the
greater is the attraction of its lonely freedom.
Yet to camp out at all implies some measure of
fais delisht, “he keen; fresh air, the breath of
the pine forests, the glassy stillness of the lake
at sunset, the glory of sunrise among the moun-
tains, the shimmer of the endless prairies, the
ceaseless rustle of the cottonwood leaves, where
the wagon is drawn up on the low bluff of the
shrunken river —all these appeal intensely to any
man, no matter what may be the game he happens
to be following. But there is a wide variation,
and indeed contrast, in the qualities called for
in the chase itself, according as one quarry or
another is sought.

The qualities that make a good soldier are, in
large part, the qualities that make a good hunter.
Most important of all is the ability to shift for
one’s self, the mixture of hardihood and resource-
fulness which enables a man to tramp all day
in the right direction, and, when night comes, to

80 Deer and Antelope of North America

make the best of whatever opportunities for
shelter and warmth may be at hand. Skill in
the use of the rifle is another trait; quickness in
seeing game, another; ability to take advantage
of cover, yet another; while patience, endurance,
keenness of observation, resolution, good nerves,
and instant readiness in an emergency, are all
indispensable to a really good hunter.

The chase of an animal should rank according
as it calls for the exercise in a high degree of a
large number of these qualities. The grizzly is
almost our only dangerous game, and under
certain conditions shooting the grizzly calls for
considerable courage on the part of the hunter.
Disregarding these comparatively rare occasions,
the chase of mountain game, especially the big-
horn, demands more hardihood, power of endur-
ance, and moral and physical soundness than
any other kind of sport, and so must come first.
The wapiti and mule-deer rank next, for they too
must be killed by stalking as a result of long
tramps over very rough ground. To kill a moose
by still hunting is a feat requiring a high degree
of skill, and entailing severe fatigue. When game
is followed on horseback, it means that the suc-
cessful hunter must ride well and boldly.

The whitetail is occasionally found where it
yields a very high quality of sport. But normally
it lives in regions where it is extremely difficult to

The Whitetail Deer 8i

kill it legitimately, as the wapiti and mule-deer are
killed, and yet comparatively easy to kill it under
circumstances which make no demand for any
particular prowess on the part of the hunter. It
is far more difficult to still hunt successfully in
the dense brushy timber frequented by the white-
tail than in the open glades, the mountains, and
the rocky hills, through which the wapiti and
mule-deer wander. The difficulty arises, how-
ever, because the chief requirement is stealth,
noiselessness. The man who goes out into the
hills for a mule-deer must walk hard and far,
must be able to bear fatigue, and possibly thirst
and hunger, must have keen eyes, and be a good
shot. He does not need to display the extraordi-
nary power of stealthy advance which is necessary
to the man who would creep up to and kill a white-
tail in thick timber. Now, the qualities of hardi-
hood and endurance are better than the quality
of stealth, and though all three are necessary in
both kinds of chase, yet it is the chase of the mule-
deer which most develops the former, and the
chase of the whitetail which most develops the
latter. When the woods are bare and there is
some snow on the ground, however, still hunting
the whitetail becomes not only possible, but a
singularly manly and attractive kind of sport.
Where the whitetail can be followed with horse
and hound, the sport is of course of a very high

82. Deer and Antelope of North America

order. To be able to ride through woods and
over rough country at full speed, rifle or shot-
gun in hand, and then to leap off and shoot at a
running object, is to show that one has the quali-
ties which made the cavalry of Forrest so formi-
dable in the Civil War. There could be no better
training for the mounted rifleman, the most effh-
cient type of modern soldier.

By far the easiest way to kill the whitetail is
in one or other of certain methods which entail
very little work or skill on the part of the hunter.
The most noxious of these, crusting in the deep
snows, has already been spoken of. No sports-
man worthy of the name would ever follow so
butcherly a method. Fire hunting must also
normally be ruled out. It is always mere murder
if carried on by a man who sits up at a lick, and
is not much better where the hunter walks through
the fields — not to mention the fact that on such
a walk he is quite as apt to kill stock as to killa
deer. But fire hunting from a boat, or jacking,
as it is called, though it entails absolutely no skill
in the hunter, and though it is, and ought to be,
forbidden, as it can best be carried on in the
season when nursing does are particularly apt to
be the victims, nevertheless has a certain charm
of its own. The first deer I ever killed, when
a boy, was obtained in this way, and I have
always been glad to have had the experience,

The Whitetail Deer 83

though I have never been willing to repeat it.
I was at the time camped out in the Adiron-
dacks.

Two or three of us, all boys of fifteen or six-
teen, had been enjoying what was practically our
first experience in camping out, having gone out
with two guides, Hank Martin and Mose Sawyer,
from Paul Smith’s on Lake St. Regis. My brother
and cousin were fond of fishing and I was not, so
I was deputed to try to bring in a deer. I had
a double-barrelled 12-bore gun, French pin-fire,
with which I had industriously collected “ speci-
mens” ona trip to Egypt and around Oyster Bay,
Long Island; except for three or four enthralling,
but not oversuccessful, days, after woodcock and
quail, around the latter place, I had done no game
shooting. As to every healthy boy with a taste
for outdoor life, the northern forests were to me
a veritable land of enchantment. We were en-
camped by a stream among the tall pines, and I
had enjoyed everything; poling and paddling
the boat, tramping through the woods, the cries
of chickaree and chipmunk, of jay, woodpecker,
chickadee, nuthatch, and cross-bill, which broke
the forest stillness; and, above all, the great
reaches of sombre woodland themselves. The
heart-shaped footprints which showed where the
deer had come down to drink and feed on
the marshy edges of the water made my veins

84 Deer and Antelope of North America

thrill; and the nights around the flickering camp-
fire seemed filled with romance.

My first experiment in jacking was a failure.
The jack, a bark lantern, was placed upon a stick
in the bow of the boat, and I sat in a cramped
huddle behind it, while Mose Sawyer plied the
paddle with noiseless strength and skill in the
stern. I proved unable to respond even to
the very small demand made upon me, for when
we actually did come upon a deer I failed to see
it until it ran, when I missed it; and on the way
back capped my misfortune by shooting at a large
owl which perched on a log projecting into the
water, looking at the lantern with two glaring
eyes.

All next day I was miserably conscious of the
smothered disfavor of my associates, and when
night fell was told I would have another chance
to redeem myself. This time we started across
a carry, the guide carrying the light boat, and
launched it in a quiet little pond about a mile off.
Dusk was just turning into darkness when we
reached the edge of the little lake, which was per-
haps a mile long by three-quarters of a mile across,
with indented shores. We did not push off for half
an hour or so, until it was entirely dark ; and then
for a couple of hours we saw no deer. Never-
theless, I thoroughly enjoyed the ghostly, mys-
terious, absolutely silent night ride over the water.

The Whitetail Deer 85

Not the faintest splash betrayed the work of the
paddler. The boat glided stealthily alongshore,
the glare of the lantern bringing out for one mo-
ment every detail of the forest growth on the
banks, which the next second vanished into abso-
lute blackness. Several times we saw muskrats
swimming across the lane of light cut by the lan-
tern through the darkness, and two or three times
their sudden plunging and splashing caused my
heart to leap. Once when we crossed the lake
we came upon a loon floating buoyantly right out
in the middle of it. It stayed until we were within
ten yards, so that I could see the minute outlines
of the feathers and every movement of the eye.
Then it swam off, but made nocry. At last, while
crossing the mouth of a bay we heard a splashing
sound among the lilies inshore, which even my
untrained ears recognized as different from any
of the other noises we had yet heard, and a jarring
motion of the paddle showed that the paddler
wished me to be on the alert. Without any
warning the course of the boat was suddenly
changed, and I was aware that we were moving
stern foremost. Then we swung around, and I
could soon make out that we were going down
the little bay. The forest-covered banks nar-
rowed ; then the marsh at the end was lighted up,
and on its hither edge, knee-deep among the water-
lilies, appeared the figure of a yearling buck still

86 Deer and Antelope of North America

in the red. It stood motionless, gazing at the
light with a curiosity wholly unmixed with alarm,
and at the shot wheeled and fell at the water’s
edge. We made up our mind to return to camp
that night, as it was before midnight. I carried
the buck and the torch, and the guide the boat,
and the mile walk over the dim trail, occasionally
pitching forward across a stump or root, was a
thing to be remembered. It was my first deer,
and I was very glad to get it; but although only
a boy, I had sense enough to realize that it was
not an experience worth repeating. The paddler
in such a case deserves considerable credit, but
the shooter not a particle, even aside from the
fact to which I have already alluded, that in too
many cases such shooting results in the killing of
nursing does. No matter how young a sportsman
is, if he has a healthy mind, he will not long take
pleasure in any method of hunting in which some-
body else shows the skill and does the work so
that his share is only nominal. The minute that
sport is carried on on these terms it becomes a
sham, and a sham is always detrimental to all who
take part in it.

Whitetail are comparatively easily killed with
hounds, and there are very many places where
this is almost the only way they can be killed at
all. Formerly in the Adirondacks this method
of hunting was carried on under circumstances

The Whitetail Deer 87

which rendered those who took part in it objects
of deserved contempt. The sportsman stood in
a boat while his guides put out one or two hounds
mathe: chosen ‘forest’ side, -Aiter a longer or
shorter run the deer took to the water; for white-
tail are excellent swimmers, and when pursued by
hounds try to shake them off by wading up or
down stream, or by swimming across a pond, and,
if tired, come to bay in some pool or rapid. Once
the unfortunate deer was in the water, the guide
rowed the boat after it. If it was yet early in the
season, and the deer was still in the red summer
coat, he would sink when shot, and therefore the
guide would usually take hold of its tail before
the would-be Nimrod butchered it. If the deer
was in the blue, the carcass would float, so it was
not necessary to do anything quite so palpably
absurd. But such sport, so far as the man who
did the shooting was concerned, had not one re-
deeming feature. The use of hounds has now
been prohibited by law.

In regions where there are no lakes, and where
the woods are thick, the shooters are stationed at
runways by which it is supposed the deer may
pass when the hounds are after them. Under
such circumstances the man has to show the skill
requisite to hit the running quarry, and if he uses
the rifle, this means that he must possess a certain
amount of address in handling the weapon. But

88 Deer and Antelope of North America

no other quality is called for, and so even this
method, though often the only possible one (and
it may be necessary to return to it in the Adiron-
dacks) can never rank high in the eyes of men
who properly appreciate what big game hunting
should be. It is the usual method of killing deer
on Long Island, during the three or four days of
each year when they can be legally hunted. The
deer are found along the south and centre of the
eastern half of the island; they were nearly exter-
minated a dozen years ago, but under good laws
they have recently increased greatly. The exten-
sive grounds of the various sportsmen’s clubs,
and the forests of scrub-oak in the scantily settled
inland region, give them good harbors and sanctu-
aries. On the days when it is legal to shoot them,
hundreds of hunters turn out from the neighbor-
hood, and indeed from all the island and from
New York. On such a day it is almost impossible
to get any work done; for the sport is most demo-
cratic, and is shared by everybody. The hunters
choose their position before dawn, lying in lines
wherever deer are likely to pass, while the hounds
are turned into every patch of thick cover. A
most lively day follows, the fusillade being terrific ;
some men are invariably shot, and a goodly num-
ber of deer are killed, mostly by wily old hunters
who kill ducks and quail for a living in the fall.
When the horse is used together with the

aqaLVM OL ONINOD Mead VINIONIA

The Whitetail Deer 89

hounds the conditions are changed. To ride a
horse over rough country after game always
implies hardihood and good horsemanship, and
therefore makes the sport a worthy one. In very
open country,—4in such country, for instance, as
the whitetail formerly frequented both in Texas
and the Indian Territory,—the horseman could
ride at the tail of the pack until the deer was
fairly run down. But nowadays I know of no
place where this is possible, for the whitetail’s
haunts are such as to make it impracticable for
any rider to keep directly behind the hounds.
What he must do is to try to cut the game off
by riding from point to point. He then leaps
off the horse and watches his chance for a shot.
This is the way in which Mr. Mclllhenny has
done most of his deer hunting, in the neighbor-
hood of his Louisiana plantation.

Around my ranch I very rarely tried to still-
hunt whitetail, because it was always easier to get
mule-deer or prongbuck, if I had time to go off
for an all-day’s hunt. Occasionally, however, we
would have at the ranch hounds, usually of the
old black-and-tan southern type, and then if we
needed meat, and there was not time for a hunt
back in the hills, we would turn out and hunt one
or two of the river bottoms with these hounds.
If I rode off to the prairies or the hills I went
alone, but if the quarry was a whitetail, our chance

go Deer and Antelope of North America

of success depended upon our having a sufficient
number of guns to watch the different passes and
runways. Accordingly, my own share of the chase
was usually limited to the fun of listening to the
hounds, and of galloping at headlong speed from
one point where I thought the deer would not
pass to some other, which, as a matter of fact, it
did not pass either. The redeeming feature of
the situation was that if I did get a shot, I almost
always got my deer. Under ordinary circum-
stances to merely wound a deer is worse than not
hitting it; but when there are hounds along they
are certain to bring the wounded animal to bay,
and so on these hunts we usually got venison.

Of course, I occasionally did get a whitetail
when I was alone, whether with the hounds or
without them. There were whitetail on the very
bottom on which the ranch-house stood, as well
as on the bottom opposite, and on those to the
right and left up and down stream. Occasionally
I have taken the hounds out alone, and then as
they chevied the whitetail around the bottom,
have endeavored by rapid running on foot or on
horseback to get to some place from which I
could obtain a shot. The deer knew perfectly
well that the hounds could not overtake them,
and they would usually do a great deal of sneak-
ing round and round through the underbrush and
cottonwoods before they finally made up their

The Whitetail Deer g1

minds to leave the bottom. On one occasion a
buck came sneaking down a game trail through
the buck brush where I stood, going so low that
I could just see the tips of his antlers, and though
I made desperate efforts I was not able to get
into a position from which I could obtain a shot.
On another occasion, while I was looking intently
into a wood through which I was certain a deer
would pass, it deliberately took to the open ground
behind me, and I did not see it until it was just
vanishing. Normally, the end of my efforts was
that the deer went off and the hounds disappeared
after it, not to return for six or eight hours. Once
or twice things favored me; I happened to take
the right turn or go in the right direction, and
the deer happened to blunder past me; and then
I returned with venison for supper. Two or
three times I shot deer about nightfall or at
dawn, in the immediate neighborhood of the
ranch, obtaining them by sneaking as noiselessly
as possible along the cattle trails through the
brush and timber, or by slipping along the edge
of the river bank. Several times I saw deer
while I was sitting on the piazza or on the door-
step of the ranch, and on one occasion I stepped
back into the house, got the rifle, and dropped
the animal from where I stood.

On yet other occasions I obtained whitetail
which lived not on the river bottoms but among

92 Deer and Antelope of North America

the big patches of brush and timber in the larger
creeks. When they were found in such country
I hunted them very much as I hunted the mule-
deer, and usually shot one when I was expecting
as much to see a mule-deer as a whitetail. When
the game was plentiful I would often stay on my
horse until the moment of obtaining the shot,
especially if it was in the early morning or late
evening. My method then was to ride slowly
and quietly down the winding valleys and across
the spurs, hugging the bank, so that if deer were
feeding in the open, I would get close up before
either of us saw the other. Sometimes the deer
would halt for a moment when it saw me, and
sometimes it would bound instantly away. In
either case my chance lay in the speed with
which I could jump off the horse and take my
shot. Even in favorable localities this method
was of less avail with whitetail than mule-deer,
because the former were so much more apt to
skulk.

As soon as game became less plentiful my
hunting had to be done on foot. My object was
to be on the hunting-ground by dawn, or else to
stay out there until it grew too dark to see the
sights of my rifle. Often all I did was to keep
moving as quietly as possible through likely
ground, ever on the alert for the least trace of
game; sometimes I would select a lookout and

The Whitetail Deer 93

carefully scan a likely country to see if I could not
detect something moving. On one occasion I ob-
tained an old whitetail buck by the simple exercise
of patience. I had twice found him in a broad
basin, composed of several coulies, all running
down to form the head of a big creek, and all of
them well timbered. He dodged me on both
occasions, and I made up my mind that I would
spend a whole day in watching for him from a
little natural ambush of sage brush and cedar on
a high point which overlooked the entire basin.
I crept up to my ambush with the utmost caution
early in the morning, and there I spent the entire
day, with my lunch and a water-bottle, continually
scanning the whole region most carefully with
the glasses. The day passed less monotonously
than it sounds, for every now and then I would
catch a glimpse of wild life; once a fox, once a
coyote, and once a badger; while the little chip-
munks had a fine time playing all around me. At
last, about mid-afternoon, I suddenly saw the buck
come quietly out of the dense thicket in which he
had made his midday bed, and deliberately walk
up a hillside and lie down in a thin clump of ash
where the sun could get at him—for it was in
September, just before the rut began. There was
no chance of stalking him in the place he had
chosen, and all I could do was to wait. It was
nearly sunset before he moved again, except that

94 Deer and Antelope of North America

I occasionally saw him shift his head. Then he
got up and after carefully scrutinizing all the
neighborhood, moved down into a patch of fairly
thick brush, where I could see him standing and
occasionally feeding, all the time moving slowly
up the valley. I now slipped most cautiously
back and trotted nearly a mile until I could come
up behind one of the ridges bounding the valley
in which he was. The wind had dropped, and it
was almost absolutely still when I crawled flat on
my face to the crest, my hat in my left hand, my
rifle in my right. There was a big sage bush con-
veniently near, and under this I peered. There
was a good deal of brush in the valley below, and
if I had not known that the buck was there, I would
never have discovered him. As it was, I watched
for a quarter of an hour, and had about made up
my mind that he must have gone somewhere else,
when aslight movement nearly below me attracted
my attention, and I caught a glimpse of him,
nearly three hundred yards off, moving quietly
along by the side of a little dry watercourse which
was right in the middle of the brush. I waited
until he was well past, and then again slipped
back with the utmost care, and ran on until I was
nearly opposite the head of the coulie, when I
again approached the ridge line. Here there was
no sage brush, only tufts of tall grass, which were
stirring in the little breeze which had just sprung

The Whitetail Deer 95

up —fortunately in the right direction. Taking
advantage of a slight inequality in the soil, I
managed to get behind one of these tufts, and
almost immediately saw the buck. Toward the
head of the coulie the brush had become scanty
and low, and he was now walking straight for-
ward, evidently keeping a sharp lookout. The
sun had just set. His course took him past me
at a distance of eighty yards. When directly
opposite I raised myself on my elbows, drawing
up the rifle, which I had shoved ahead of me.
The movement of course caught his eye at once;
he halted for one second to look around and see
what it was, and during that second I pulled the
trigger. Away he went, his white flag switching
desperately, and though he galloped over the hill,
I felt he was mine. However, when I got to the
top of the rise over which he had gone, I could
not see him, and as there was a deep though
narrow coulie filled with brush on the other side,
I had a very ugly feeling that I might have lost
him, in spite of the quantity of blood he had left
along his trail. It was getting dark, and I plunged
quickly into the coulie. Usually a wounded deer
should not be followed until it has had time to grow
stiff, but this was just one of the cases where the
rule would have worked badly; in the first place,
because darkness was coming on, and in the next
place, because the animal was certain to die

96 Deer and Antelope of North America

shortly, and all that I wanted was to see where
he was. I followed his trail into the coulie, and
expected to find that he had turned down it, but
a hurried examination in the fading light showed
me that he had taken the opposite course, and I
scrambled hastily out on the other side, and
trotted along, staring into the brush, and now
and then shouting or throwing in a clod of earth.
When nearly at the head there was a crackling
in the brush, and out burst the wounded buck.
He disappeared behind a clump of elms, but he
had a hard hill to go up, and the effort was too
much for him. When I next saw him he had
halted, and before I could fire again down he
came.

On another occasion I spied a whole herd of
whitetail feeding in a natural meadow, right out
in the open, in mid-afternoon, and was able to get
up so close that when I finally shot a yearling
buck (which was one of the deer farthest away
from me, there being no big buck in the outfit)
the remaining deer, all does and fawns, scattered
in every direction, some galloping right past me
in their panic. Once or twice I was able to per-
form a feat of which I had read, but in which I
scarcely believed. This was to creep up to a deer
while feeding in the open, by watching when it
shook its tail, and then remaining motionless. I
cannot say whether the habit is a universal one,

The Whitetail Deer 97

but on two occasions at least I was able thus to
creep up to the feeding deer, because before lift-
ing its head it invariably shook its tail, thereby
warning me to stay without moving until it had
lifted its head, scrutinized the landscape, and again
lowered its head to graze. The eyesight of the
whitetail, as compared with that of the prong-
horn antelope, is poor. It notes whatever is in
motion, but it seems unable to distinguish clearly
anything that is not in motion. On the occa-
sions in question no antelope that I have ever
seen would have failed to notice me at once and
to take alarm. But the whitetail, although it
scrutinized me narrowly, while I lay motionless
with my head toward it, seemed in each case to
think that I must be harmless, and after a while it
would go on feeding. In one instance the ani-
mal fed over a ridge and walked off before I
could get a shot; in the other instance I killed it.

CHATTER..1¥,
THE PRONGHORN ANTELOPE

Tue prongbuck or pronghorn antelope, known
throughout its range simply as antelope, is a very
extraordinary creature, being the only hollow-horn
ruminant known which annually sheds its horns
as deer do their antlers. Of course, only the horn
sheaths are shed, leaving underneath the soft
and bristle-haired new horn already partially
formed on the bone cores. The shedding takes
place in the late fall. After a few days the new
horns harden, and in consequence there is only a
very brief time during which any signs are left of
the shedding. This is the reason why the fact
was so long doubted. The hair of the antelope is
very peculiar, being stiff, coarse, and springy.
It is rather loosely attached to the skin, so that
the hide is not valuable. When the animal is
alarmed or excited it has the power of erecting
all the brilliantly white hair on the rump, so as
to greatly add to its already existing conspicu-
ousness.

The prongbuck is an animal of the open
plains. In the old days it was found as soon as

98

The Pronghorn Antelope 99

the westward-moving traveller left the green bot-
tom-lands of the Mississippi, and from thence
across to the dry, open valleys of California, and
northward to Canada and southward into Mexico.
It has everywhere been gradually thinned out, and
has vanished altogether from what were formerly
the extreme easterly and westerly limits of its
range. In dealing with the mule-deer I have
already explained how unequal the rates of exter-
mination of the different kinds of big game have
been in different localities. Each kind of big
game has had its own peculiar habitat in which it
throve best, and each has also been found more
or less plentifully in other regions where the cir-
cumstances were less favorable; and in these
comparatively unfavorable regions it early tends
to disappear before the advance of man. In con-
sequence, where the ranges of the different game
animals overlap and are intertwined, one will dis-
appear first in one locality, and another will dis-
appear first where the conditions are different.
Thus the whitetail deer had thrust forward along
the very narrow river bottoms into the domain of
the mule-deer and the prongbuck among the
foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains, and in these
places it was exterminated from the narrow strips
which it inhabited long before the mule-deer
vanished from the high hills, or the prongbuck
from the great open plains. But along great
L. of C.

100 Deer and Antelope of North America

portions of the Missouri there are plenty of white-
tails yet left in the river bottoms, while the mule-
deer that once dwelt in the broken hills behind
them, and the prongbuck which lived on the
prairie just back of these bluffs, have both disap-
peared. In the same way the mule-deer and
the prongbuck are often found almost intermin-
gled through large regions in which plains, hills,
and mountains alternate. If such a region is
mainly mountainous, but contains a few valleys
and tablelands, the prongbuck is sure to vanish
from the latter before the mule-deer vanishes from
the broken country. But if the region is one
primarily of plains, with here and there rows of
rocky hills in which the mule-deer is found, the
latter is killed off long before the prongbuck can
be hunted out of the great open stretches. The
same is true of the pronghorn and the wapiti. The
size and value of the wapiti make it an object of
eager persecution on the part of hunters. But
as it can live in the forest-clad fastnesses of the
Rockies, into which settlement does not go, it
outlasts over great regions the pronghorn, whose
abode is easily penetrated by sheep and cattle men.
Under anything like even conditions, however,
the prongbuck, of course, outlasts the wapiti.
This was the case on the Little Missouri. On
that stream the bighorn also outlasted the wapiti.
In 1881 wapiti were still much more plentiful

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The Pronghorn Antelope 101

than bighorns. Within the next decade they
had almost totally disappeared, while the bighorn
was still to be found; I shot one and saw others
in 1893, at which time I had not authentic in-
formation of a single wapiti remaining anywhere
on the river in my neighborhood, although it is
possible that one or two still lurked in some
out-of-the-way recess. In Colorado at one time
the bighorn was killed out much more rapidly
than the wapiti; but of late years in that state
the rapidity of destruction of the latter has in-
creased far beyond what is true in the case of the
former.

I mention these facts partly because they are
of interest in themselves, but chiefly because they
tend to explain the widely different opinions ex-
pressed by competent observers about what seem
superficially to be similar facts. It cannot be too
often repeated that allowance must be made for
the individual variability of the traits and charac-
ters of animals of the same species, and especially
of the same species under different circumstances
and in different localities; and allowance must
also be made for the variability of the individual
factor in the observers themselves. Many seem-
ingly contradictory observations of the habits of
deer, wapiti, and prongbuck will be found in books
by the best hunters. Take such questions as the
keenness of sight of the deer as compared with

102 Deer and Antelope of North America

the prongbuck, and of the pugnacity of the wapiti,
both actual and relative, and a wide difference of
opinion will be found in three such standard works
as Dodge’s “ The Hunting-grounds of the Great
West,” Caton’s “ Deer and Antelope of America,”
and the contributions of Mr. Grinnell to the “ Cen-
tury Book of Sports.” Sometimes the difference
will be in mere matters of opinion, as, for instance,
in the belief as to the relative worth of the sport
furnished by the chase of the different creatures ;
but sometimes there is a direct conflict of fact.
Colonel Dodge, for instance, has put it upon record
that the wapiti is an exceedingly gentle animal,
less dangerous than a whitetail or blacktail buck
in a close encounter, and that the bulls hardly ever
fight among themselves. My own experience leads
me to traverse in the most emphatic manner every
one of these conclusions, and all hunters whom
I have met feel exactly as I do; yet no one would
question for a moment Colonel Dodge’s general
competency as an observer. In the same way Mr.
Grinnell has a high opinion of the deer’s keenness
of sight. Judge Caton absolutely disagrees with
him, and my own experience tends to agree with
that of the Judge — at least to the extent of plac-
ing the deer’s vision far below that of the prong-
buck and even that of the bighorn, and only on a
par with that of the wapiti. Yet Mr. Grinnell is
an unusually competent observer, whose opinion

The Pronghorn Antelope 103

on any such subject is entitled to unqualified re-
spect.

Difference in habits may be due simply to dif-
ference of locality, or to the need of adaptation to
new conditions. The prongbuck’s habits about
migration offer examples of the former kind of
difference. Over portions of its range the prong-
buck is not migratory at all. In other parts the
migrations are purely local. In yet other regions
the migrations are continued for great distances,
immense multitudes of the animals going to and
fro in the spring and fall along well-beaten tracks.
I know of one place in New Mexico where the
pronghorn herds are tenants of certain great plains
throughout the entire year. I know another
region in northwestern Colorado where the very
few prongbucks still left, though they shift from
valley to valley, yet spend the whole year in the
same stretch of rolling, barren country. On the
Little Missouri, however, during the eighties and
early nineties, there was a very distinct though
usually local migration. Before the Black Hills had
been settled they were famous wintering places for
the antelope, which swarmed from great distances
to them when cold weather approached; those which
had summered east of the Big Missouri actually
swam the river in great herds, on their journey to
the Hills. The old hunters around my ranch in-
sisted that formerly the prongbuck had for the

104 Deer and Antelope of North America

most part travelled from the Little Missouri Bad
Lands into the Black Hills for the winter.

When I was ranching on that river, however,
this custom no longer obtained, for the Black
Hills were too well settled, and the herds of prong-
buck that wintered there were steadily diminish-
ing in numbers. At that time, from 1883 to 1896,
the seasonal change in habits, and shift of posi-
tion, of the prongbucks were well marked. As
soon as the new grass sprang they appeared in
great numbers upon the plains. They were espe-
cially fond of the green, tender blades that came
up where the country had been burned over. If
the region had been devastated by prairie fires in
the fall, the next spring it was certain to contain
hundreds and thousands of prongbucks. All
through the summer they remained out on these
great open plains, coming to drink at the little
pools in the creek beds, and living where there
was no shelter of any kind. As winter approached
they began to gather in bands. Some of these
bands apparently had regular wintering places to
the south of us, in Pretty Buttes and beyond; and
close to my ranch, at the crossing of the creek
called Beaver, there were certain trails which these
antelope regularly travelled, northward in the
spring and southward in the fall. But other bands
would seek out places in the Bad Lands near by,
vathering together on some succession of plateaus

The Pronghorn Antelope 10S

which were protected by neighboring hills from
the deep drifts of snow. Here they passed the
winter, on short commons, it is true (they graze,
not browsing like deer), but without danger of
perishing in the snow-drifts. On the other hand,
if the skin hunters discovered such a wintering
place, they were able to butcher practically the
entire band, if they so desired, as the prongbucks
were always most reluctant to leave such a chosen
ground.

Normally the prongbuck avoids both broken
ground and timber. It is a queer animal, with
keen senses, but with streaks of utter folly in its
character. Time and again I have known bands
rush right by me, when I happened to surprise
them feeding near timber or hills, and got between
them and the open plains. The animals could
have escaped without the least difficulty if they
had been willing to go into the broken country,
or through even a few rods of trees and brush;
and yet they preferred to rush madly by me at
close range, in order to get out to their favorite
haunts. But nowadays there are certain localities
where the prongbucks spend a large part of their
time in the timber or in rough, hilly country, feeding
and bringing up their young in such localities.

Typically, however, the prongbuck is_pre-
eminently a beast of the great open plains, eat-
ing their harsh, dry pasturage, and trusting to its

106 Deer and Antelope of North America

own keen senses and speed for its safety. All
the deer are fond of skulking; the whitetail pre-
eminently so. The prongbuck, on the contrary,
never endeavors to elude observation. Its sole
aim is to be able to see its enemies, and it cares
nothing whatever about its enemies seeing it. Its
coloring is very conspicuous, and is rendered
still more so by its habit of erecting the white
hair on its rump. It has a very erect carriage,
and when it thinks itself in danger it always
endeavors to get on some crest or low hill from
which it can look all about. The great bulging
eyes, situated at the base of the horns, scan the
horizon far and near like twin telescopes. They
pick out an object at such a distance that it would
entirely escape the notice of a deer. When sus-
picious, they have a habit of barking, uttering a
sound something like “kau,” and repeating it
again and again, as they walk up and down,
endeavoring to find out if danger lurks in the
unusual object. They are extremely curious, and
in the old days it was often possible to lure them
toward the hunter by waving a red handkerchief
to and fro on a stick, or even by lying on one’s
back and kicking the legs. _ Nowadays, however,
there are very few localities indeed in which they
are sufficiently unsophisticated to make it worth
while trying these time-honored tricks of the long-
vanished trappers and hunters,

The Pronghorn Antelope 107

Along the Little Missouri the fawns, sometimes
one and sometimes two in number, were dropped
in May or early in June. At that time the ante-
lope were usually found in herds which the mother
did not leave until she was about to give birth to
the fawn. During the first few days the fawn’s
safety is to be found only in its not attracting
attention. During this time it normally lies per-
fectly flat on the ground, with its head outstretched,
and makes no effort to escape. While out on the
spring round-up I have come across many of these
fawns. Once, in company with several cowboys,
I was riding behind a bunch of cattle which, as
we hurried them, spread out in open order ahead
of us. Happening to cast down my eyes I saw
an antelope fawn directly ahead of me. The
bunch of cattle had passed all around it, but it
made not the slightest sign, not even when I
halted, got off my pony, and took it up in my
arms. It was useless to take it to camp and try
to rear it, and so I speedily put it down again.
Scanning the neighborhood I saw the doe hang-
ing about some half a mile off, and when I looked
back from the next divide I could see her gradu-
ally drawing near to the fawn.

If taken when very young, antelope make cun-
ning and amusing pets, and I have often seen
them around the ranches. There was one in the
ranch of a Mrs. Blank who had a station on the

108 Deer and Antelope of North America

Deadwood stage line some eighteen years ago.
She was a great worker in buckskin, and I got
her to make me the buckskin shirt I still use.
There was an antelope fawn that lived at the
house, wandering wherever it wished; but it
would not permit me to touch it. As I sat in-
side the house it would come in and hop up on
a chair, looking at me sharply all the while. No
matter how cautiously I approached, I could never
put my hand upon it, as at the last moment it
would spring off literally as quick as a bird would
fly. One of my neighbors on the Little Missouri,
Mr. Howard Eaton, had at one time upon his
ranch three little antelope whose foster mother
was a sheep, and who were really absurdly tame.
I was fond of patting them and of giving them
crusts, and the result was that they followed me
about so closely that I had to be always on the
lookout to see that I did not injure them. They
were on excellent terms with the dogs, and were
very playful. It was a comic sight to see them
skipping and hopping about the old ewe when
anything happened to alarm her and she started
off at a clumsy waddle. Nothing could: surpass
the tameness of the antelope that are now under
Mr. Hornaday’s care at the Bronx Zoological
Garden in New York. The last time that I
visited the garden some repairs were being made
inside the antelope enclosure, and a dozen work-

The Pronghorn Antelope 109

men had gone in to make them. The antelope
regarded the workmen with a friendliness and
curiosity untempered by the slightest touch of
apprehension. When the men took off their
coats the little creatures would nose them over
to see if they contained anything edible, and they
would come close up and watch the men plying
the pick with the utmost interest. Mr. Hornaday
took us inside, and they all came up in the most
friendly manner. One or two of the bucks would
put their heads against our legs and try to push
us around, but not roughly. Mr. Hornaday told
me that he was having great difficulty, exactly as
with the mule-deer, in acclimatizing the antelope,
especially as the food was so different from what
they were accustomed to in their native haunts.
The wild fawns are able to run well a few days
after they are born. They then accompany the
mother everywhere. Sometimes she joins a band
of others; more often she stays alone with her
fawn, and perhaps one of the young of the previ-
ous year, until the rut begins. Of all game the
prongbuck seems to me the most excitable during
the rut. The males run the does much as do the
bucks of the mule and whitetail deer. If there
are no does present, I have sometimes watched a
buck run to and fro by himself. The first time I
saw this I was greatly interested, and could form
no idea of what the buck was doing. He was by

110 Deer and Antelope of North America

a creek bed in a slight depression or shallow val-
ley, and was grazing uneasily. After a little while
he suddenly started and ran just as hard as he
could, off in a straight direction, nearly away from
me. I thought that somehow or other he had
discovered my presence ; but he suddenly wheeled
and came back to the original place, still running
at his utmost speed. Then he halted, moved about
with the white hairs on his rump outspread, and
again dashed off at full speed, halted, wheeled,
and came back. Two or three times he did this,
and let me get up very close to him before he dis-
covered me. I was too much interested in what
he was doing to desire to shoot him.

In September, sometimes not earlier than Octo-
ber, the big bucks begin to gather the does into
harems. Each buck is then constantly on the
watch to protect his harem from outsiders, and
steal another doe if he can get a chance. I have
seen a comparatively young buck who had ap-
propriated a doe, hustle her hastily out of the
country as soon as he saw another antelope in
the ‘neighborhood; while, on the other hand, a
big buck, already with a good herd of does, will do
his best to appropriate any other that comes in
sight. The bucks fight fearlessly but harmlessly
among themselves, locking their horns and then
pushing as hard as they can.

Although their horns are not very formidable

The Pronghorn Antelope 111

weapons, they are bold little creatures, and if
given a chance will stand at bay before either
hound or coyote. <A doe will fight most gallantly
for her fawn, and is an overmatch for a single
coyote, but of course she can do but little against
a large wolf. The wolves are occasionally very
destructive to the herds. The cougar, however,
which is a much worse foe than the wolf to deer
and mountain sheep, can but rarely molest the
prongbuck, owing tc the nature of the latter’s
haunts. Eagles, on occasion, take the fawns as
they do those of deer.

I have always been very fond of the chase of the
prongbuck. While I lived on my ranch on the
Little Missouri it was, next to the mule-deer,
the game which I most often followed, and on the
long wagon trips which I occasionally took from
my ranch to the Black Hills, to the Big Horn
Mountains, or into eastern Montana, prongbuck
venison was our usual fresh meat, save when we
could kill prairie-chickens and ducks with our
rifles, which was not always feasible. In my
mind the prongbuck is always associated with the
open prairies during the spring, summer, or the
early fall. It has happened that I have generally
pursued the bighorn in bitter weather; and when
we laid in our stock of winter meat, mule-deer was
our usual game. Though I have shot prongbuck
in winter, I never liked to do so, as I felt the ani-

112 Deer and Antelope of North America

mals were then having a sufficiently hard struggle
for existence anyhow. But in the spring the meat
of the prongbuck was better than that of any other
game, and, moreover, there was not the least dan-
ger of mistaking the sexes, and killing a doe acci-
dentally, and accordingly I rarely killed anything
but pronghorns at that season. In those days
we never got any fresh meat, whether on the
ranch or while on the round-up or on a wagon
trip, unless we shot it, and salt pork became a
most monotonous diet after a time.

Occasionally I killed the prongbuck in a day’s
hunt from my ranch. If I started with the
intention of prongbuck hunting, I always went
on horseback; but twice I killed them on foot
when I happened to run across them by accident
while looking for mule-deer. I shall always re-
member one of these occasions. I was alone in
the Elkhorn ranch-house at the time, my fore-
man and the only cowpuncher who was not on
the round-up having driven to Medora, some forty
miles away, in order to bring down the foreman’s
wife and sister, who were going to spend the sum-
mer with him. It was the fourth day of his ab-
sence. Iexpected him in the evening and wanted
to have fresh meat, and so after dinner I shoul-
dered my rifle and strolled off through the hills.
It was too early in the day to expect to see any-
thing, and my intention was simply to walk out

THE ANTELOPE AT HOME

The Pronghorn Antelope 113

until I was five or six miles from the ranch, and
then work carefully home through a likely coun-
try toward sunset, as by this arrangement I would
be in a good game region at the very time that
the animals were likely to stir abroad. It was a
glaring, late-spring day, and in the hot sun of
mid-afternoon I had no idea that anything would
be moving, and was not keeping a very sharp look-
out. After an hour or two’s steady tramping I
came into a long, narrow valley, bare of trees and
brushwood, and strolled along it, following a
cattle trail that led up the middle. The hills
rose steeply into a ridge crest on each side, sheer
clay shoulders breaking the mat of buffalo-grass
which elsewhere covered the sides of the valley as
well as the bottom. It was very hot and still, and
I was paying but little attention to my surround-
ings, when my eye caught a sudden movement on
the ridge crest to my right, and, dropping on one
knee as I wheeled around, I saw the head and
neck of a prongbuck rising above the crest. The
animal was not above a hundred yards off, and
stood motionless as it stared at me. At the crack
of the rifle the head disappeared ; but as I sprang
clear of the smoke I saw a cloud of dust rise on
the other side of the ridge crest, and felt con-
vinced that the quarry had fallen. I was right.
On climbing the ridge crest I found that on the
‘other side it sank abruptly in a low cliff of clay,

114 Deer and Antelope of North America

and at the foot of this, thirty feet under me, the
prongbuck lay with its neck broken. After dress-
ing it I shouldered the body entire, thinking that
I should like to impress the newcomers by the
sight of so tangible a proof of my hunting prow-
ess as a whole prongbuck hanging up in the cot-
tonwoods by the house. As it was a well-grown
buck the walk home under the hot sun was one
of genuine toil.

The spot where I ran across this prongbuck
was miles dway from the nearest plains, and it
was very unusual to see one in such rough coun-
try. In fact, the occurrence was wholly excep-
tional; just as I once saw three bighorn rams,
which usually keep to the roughest country, delib-
erately crossing the river bottom below my ranch,
and going for half a mile through the thick cot-
tonwood timber. Occasionally, however, parties
of prongbuck came down the creek bottoms to
the river. Once I struck a couple of young bucks
in the bottom of a creek which led to the Chim-
ney Butte ranch-house, and stalked them without
difficulty; for prongbuck are conspicuous and
make no effort to hide, and where there is good
cover even their sharp eyes do not avail them.
On another occasion several does and fawns,
which we did not molest, spent some time on
what we called “the corral bottom,” which was
two or three miles above the ranch-house. In

The Pronghorn Antelope 11S

the middle of this bottom we had built a corral
for better convenience in branding the calves when
the round-up came near our ranch —as the bottom
on which the ranch-house stood was so thickly
wooded as to make it difficult to work cattle
thereon. The does and fawns hung around the
corral bottom for some little time, and showed
themselves very curious and by no means shy.
When I went from the ranch for a day’s prong-
buck hunting of set purpose, I always rode a stout
horse and started by dawn. The prongbucks are
almost the only game that can be hunted as well
during the heat of the day as at any other time.
They occasionally lie down for two or three hours
about noon in some hollow where they cannot be
seen, but usually there is no place where they are
sure they can escape observation even when rest-
ing; and when this is the case they choose a some-
what conspicuous station and trust to their own
powers of observation, exactly as they do when
feeding. There is therefore no necessity, as with
deer, of trying to strike them at dawn or dusk.
The reason why I left the ranch before sunrise
and often came back long after dark was because
I had to ride at least a dozen miles to get out to
the ground and a dozen to get back, and if after
industrious walking I failed at first to find my
game, I would often take the horse again and
ride for an hour or two to get into new country.

116 Deer and Antelope of North America

Prongbuck water once a day, often travelling great
distances to or from some little pool or spring.
Of course, if possible, I liked to leave the horse
by such a pool or spring. On the great plains to
which I used to make these excursions there was
plenty of water in early spring, and it would often
run, here and there, in the upper courses of some
of the creeks — which, however, usually contained
running water only when there had been a cloud-
burst or freshet. As the season wore on the
country became drier and drier. Water would
remain only in an occasional deep hole, and few
springs were left in which there was so much as
a trickle. In a strange country I could not tell
where these water-holes were, but in the neigh-
borhood of the ranch I of course knew where I
was likely to find them. Often, however, I was
disappointed ; and more than once after travelling
many miles to where I hoped to find water, there
would be nothing but sun-cracked mud, and the
horse and I would have eighteen hours of thirst
in consequence. A ranch horse, however, is ac-
customed to such incidents, and of course when a
man spends half the day riding, it is merely a
matter of slight inconvenience to go as long with-
out a drink.

Nevertheless, if I did reach a spring, it turned
the expedition into pleasure instead of toil. Even
in the hot weather the ride toward the plains over

The Pronghorn Antelope 117

the hills was very lovely. It was beautiful to see
the red dawn quicken from the first glimmering
gray in the east, and then to watch the crimson
bars glint on the tops of the fantastically shaped
barren hills when the sun flamed, burning and
splendid, above the horizon. In the early morn-
ing the level beams brought out into sharp relief
the strangely carved and channelled cliff walls of
the buttes. There was rarely a cloud to dim the
serene blue of the sky. By the time the heat had
grown heavy I had usually reached the spring or
pool, where I unsaddled the horse, watered him,
and picketed him out to graze. Then, under the
hot sun I would stride off for the hunting proper.
On such occasions I never went to where the
prairie was absolutely flat. There were always
gently rolling stretches broken by shallow water-
courses, slight divides, and even low mounds, some-
times topped with strangely shaped masses of red
scoria or with petrified trees. My object, of course,
was, either with my unaided eyes or with the help
of my glasses, to catch sight of the prongbucks
before they saw me. I speedily found, by the
way, that if they were too plentiful this was almost
impossible. The more abundant deer are in a
given locality the more apt one is to run across
them, and of course if the country is sufficiently
broken, the same is true of prongbucks; but
where it is very flat and there are many different

118 Deer and Antelope of North America

bands in sight at the same time, it is practically
impossible to keep out of sight of all of them, and
as they are also all in sight of one another, if one
flees the others are certain to take the alarm.
Under such circumstances I have usually found
that the only pronghorns I got were obtained by
accident, so to speak; that is, by some of them un-
expectedly running my way, or by my happening
to come across them in some nook where I could
not see them, or they me.

On ordinary occasions I found that in an exas-
peratingly large proportion of cases the prongbuck
saw me either before or during the attempted stalk.
By exercising great care, however, and worming
my way under cover of every inequality, I was
almost certain to get one or more chances. The
shot was usually taken at least at twice the distance
that would be necessary in stalking a mule-deer or
a wapiti. This, of course, meant that there was a
far greater chance fora miss. On the other hand,
the very open nature of the country often enabled
me to put in many shots, and in addition, I would
frequently be tempted by pronghorns standing
still and looking at me at a range where it was
unlikely that I would hit them, and still entirely
possible. In consequence, I found that I expended
a much greater number of cartridges for every
head of antelope killed than was the case in any
other kind of chase. If successful, I would sling

The Pronghorn Antelope 119g

the buck or bucks behind the saddle, keeping them
in place by passing the lariat diagonally under the
horse’s belly from the horn of the saddle to the
legs of the antelope, running it through slits in
the sinews, and passing it back again to the saddle-
horn; afterward repeating the operation with the
legs on the other side. This arrangement renders
it impossible for the carcass to shift, no matter
what antics the horse may perform.

Usually, however, my pronghorn hunting has
been done while I have been off with a wagon on
a trip intended primarily for the chase, or else
while travelling for some other purpose.

All life in the wilderness is so pleasant that the
temptation is to consider each particular variety,
while one is enjoying it, as better than any other.
A canoe trip through the great forests, a trip with
a pack-train among the mountains, a trip on snow-
shoes through the silent, mysterious fairyland of
the woods in winter — each has its peculiar charm.
To some men the sunny monotony of the great
plains is wearisome; personally there are few
things I have enjoyed more than journeying over
them where the game was at all plentiful. Some-
times I have gone off for three or four days alone
on horseback, with a slicker or oilskin coat behind
the saddle, and some salt and hardtack as my sole
provisions. But for comfort ona trip of any length
it was always desirable to havea wagon. My reg-

120 Deer and Antelope of North America

ular outfit consisted of a wagon and team driven
by one man who cooked, together with another
man and four riding ponies, two of which we rode,
while the other two were either driven loose or led
behind the wagon. While it is eminently desira-
ble that a hunter should be able to rough it, and
should be entirely willing to put up with the bare
minimum of necessities, and to undergo great
fatigue and hardship, it is yet not at all necessary
that he should refrain from comfort of a whole-
some sort when it is obtainable. By taking the
wagon we could carry a tent to put up if there
was foul weather. I had a change of clothes to
put on if I was wet, two or three books to read —
and nothing adds more to the enjoyment of a
hunting trip—as well as plenty of food; while
having two men made me entirely foot-loose as
regards camp, so that I could hunt whenever I
pleased, and, if I came in tired, I simply rested,
instead of spending two or three hours in pitch-
ing camp, cooking, tethering horses, and doing
the innumerable other little things which in the
aggregate amount to so much.

On such a trip, when we got into unknown
country it was of course very necessary to stay
near the wagon, especially if we had to hunt for
water. But if we knew the country at all, we
would decide in the morning about where the
camp was to be made in the afternoon, and then

The Pronghorn Antelope 121

I would lope off on my own account, while the
wagon lumbered slowly across the rough prairie
sward straight toward its destination. Some-
times I took the spare man with me, and some-
times not. It was convenient to have him, for
there are continually small emergencies in which
it is well to be with a companion. For instance,
if one jumps off for a sudden shot, there is always
a slight possibility that any but a thoroughly
trained horse will get frightened and gallop away.
On some of my horses I could absolutely depend,
but there were others, and very good ones too,
which would on rare occasions fail me; and few
things are more disheartening than a long stern
chase after one’s steed under such circumstances,
with the unpleasant possibility of seeing him
leave the country entirely and strike out for the
ranch fifty or sixty miles distant. If there is a
companion with one, all danger of this is over.
Moreover, in galloping at full speed after the
game it is impossible now and then to avoid a
tumble, as the horse may put his leg into a prairie-
dog hole or badger burrow, and on such occasions
a companion may come in very handily. On the
other hand, there is so great a charm in absolute
solitude, in the wild, lonely freedom of the great
plains, that often I would make some excuse and
go off entirely by myself.

Such rides had a fascination of their own.

122 Deer and Antelope of North America

Hour after hour the wiry pony shuffled onward
across the sea of short, matted grass. On every
side the plains stretched seemingly limitless.
Sometimes there would be no object to break
the horizon; sometimes across a score of miles
there would loom through the clear air the fan-
tastic outlines of a chain of buttes, rising grim and
barren. Occasionally there might be a slightly
marked watercourse, every drop of moisture long
dried; and usually there would not be as much
as the smallest sage brush anywhere in sight. As
the sun rose higher and higher the shadows of
horse and rider shortened, and the beams were
reflected from the short, bleached blades until in
the hot air all the landscape afar off seemed to
dance and waver. Often on such trips days went
by without our coming across another human
being, and the loneliness and vastness of the
country seemed as unbroken as if the old van-
ished days had returned —the days of the wild
wilderness wanderers, and the teeming myriads
of game they followed, and the scarcely wilder
savages against whom they warred.

Now and then prongbuck would appear, singly
or in bands; and their sharp bark of alarm or
curiosity would come to me through the still, hot
air over great distances, as they stood with head
erect looking at me, the white patches on their
rumps shining in the sun, and the bands and

AdOTALNVY ONIATVLS

The Pronghorn Antelope 123

markings on their heads and necks showing as
if they were in livery. Scan the country as care-
fully as I would, they were far more apt to see
me than I was them, and once they had seen me,
it was normally hopeless to expect to get them.
But their strange freakishness of nature frequently
offset the keenness of their senses. At least half
of the prongbucks which I shot were obtained,
not by stalking, but by coming across them purely
through their own fault. Though the prairie
seemed level, there was really a constant series
of undulations, shallow and of varying width.
Now and then as I topped some slight rise I
would catch a glimpse of a little band of prong-
horns feeding, and would slip off my horse before
they could see me. A hasty determination as to
where the best chance of approaching them lay
would be followed by a_half-hour’s laborious
crawl, a good part of the time flat on my face.
They might discover me when I was still too far
for a shot; or by taking advantage of every little
inequality I might get within long range before
they got a glimpse of me, and then in a reason-
able proportion of cases I would bag my buck.
At other times the buck would come to me.
Perhaps one would suddenly appear over a divide
himself, and his curiosity would cause him to
stand motionless long enough to give me a shot ;
while on other occasions I have known one which

124 Deer and Antelope of North America

was out of range to linger around, shifting his
position as I shifted mine, until by some sudden
gallop or twist I was able to get close enough to
empty my magazine at him.

When the shadows had lengthened, but before
any coolness had come into the air, I would head
for the appointed camping-place. Sometimes
this would be on the brink of some desolate little
pool under a low, treeless butte, or out on the
open prairie where the only wood was what we
had brought with us. At other times I would
find the wagon drawn up on the edge of some
shrunken plains river, under a line of great cotton-
woods with splintered branches and glossy leaves
that rustled all day long. Such a camp was al-
ways comfortable, for there was an abundance of
wood for the fire, plenty of water, and thick feed
in which the horses grazed — one or two being
picketed and the others feeding loose until night
came on. If I had killed a prongbuck, steaks
were speedily sizzling in the frying-pan over the
hot coals. If I had failed to get anything, I would
often walk a mile or two down or up the river to
see if I could not kill a couple of prairie-chickens
or ducks. If the evening was at all cool, we built
a fire as darkness fell, and sat around it, while
the leaping flames lit up the trunks of the cotton-
woods and gleamed on the pools of water in the
half dry river bed. Then I would wrap myself

The Pronghorn Antelope 125

in my blanket and lie looking up at the brill-
iant stars until I fell asleep.

If there were many prongbuck in the locality,
we might spend two or three days there, and
I would hunt either on foot or on horseback.
When such was the case I often went on foot,
for the hunting might begin within half a mile
of camp, and the less amount of ground covered
was offset by the great increase in the care with
which I could hunt. Every hunter remembers
scores of stalks he has made, successful and un-
successful, each marked with its own incidents.
But such incidents differ slightly enough in the
narration. I would usually see the animal I in-
tended to stalk a long distance off, and would
not dare to lift my head for another look until
I thought I was in his neighborhood. In con-
sequence I would sometimes find that I had
crawled to the wrong place. I remember one
rather ludicrous incident in connection with such
a stalk. I saw a prongbuck quite half a mile
off, and though I dropped at once, I was uncer-
tain whether or not he had seen me. He was
in a little hollow. A long, smoothly sloping pla-
teau led up to one edge of it. Across this plateau
I crawled, and when I was near what I thought
was the edge I ventured slowly to look up, and
almost immediately saw vaguely through the tops
of the long grasses what I took to be the head

126 Deer and Antelope of North America

and horns of the buck looking in my direction.
There was no use in going back, and I dropped
flat on my face again and crawled another hun-
dred yards, until it became evident I was on the
rise from which the plateau sank into the little
hollow beyond. Raising my head inch by inch,
I caught sight of the object toward which I had
been crawling, and after a moment's hesitation
recognized it as a dead sunflower, the stalks and
blossoms so arranged as to have a V shape. I
was now completely puzzled and started to sit
up, when by sheer good luck I caught sight of
the real prongbuck, still feeding, some three
hundred yards off, and evidently not aware of my
presence. It was feeding toward a slight hill to
my left, and instead of risking the long shot, I
crept back out of sight until I got behind this
hill, and then walked up until I got in a line with
a large bunch of weeds on its shoulder. I crept
on all fours to these weeds, peeped through and
saw that the prongbuck was still slowly coming
my way. When it was but seventy yards off I
sat up and shot it.

Half a dozen times I have had prongbucks
almost come into camp, while on these trips, and
have shot three or four under such circumstances.
When we were thus camped, so that the horse I
was not riding was resting, I would often hunt
the prongbuck in what is to me far the most

Tbe Pronghorn Anielope 127

attractive way — that is, galloping after them on
horseback. They can be killed in this fashion
with greyhounds, and I once contributed two
or three dogs to a scratch-pack, with which we
thus killed quite a number. Any long-legged dog
that could run and bite was classed for our pur-
poses as a greyhound, and the pack consisted of
true greyhounds, wire-haired Scotch staghounds,
and crosses between them and between grey-
hounds and foxhounds. Where really good
greyhounds are used for pronghorn chasing the
dogs are carried in wagons until the animal is
sighted; but our method was to stretch out in a
long line of horsemen and dogs and beat across
country, setting the dogs upon any pronghorn
that started near enough by. Usually the buck
got away, but sometimes, if we happened upon
him very close, the dogs would seize him; and at
other times we would mob him by sheer numbers,
the dogs at one end of the line turning him so
that before he knew where he was he had run
almost into those at the other end of the line.

I enjoyed even more trying to kill pronghorn
on horseback when I was alone without any dogs.
On such occasions I always used either old
Manitou (by far the best hunting horse I ever
possessed), or else Muley, who was my favorite
cutting horse when I worked on the round-up.
Both were very fast and very enduring, and both,

128 Deer and Antelope of North America

when I jumped off and left them, would always stay
in the neighborhood and permit themselves to be
caught without difficulty. Both took the keenest
interest in the chase, knowing what to do just as
well as I did, and both would come to a dead
halt the instant I pulled the reins to spring off
for the shot. Manitou stayed right by me, but
Muley’s nerves always overcame him as I raised
my rifle, and snorting violently, he would dash
off for a hundred yards, wheel, and stand looking
at me with absorbed interest, his ears pricked
forward.

It was, of course, no use to try to run down the
prongbuck in a straight-away, tail-on-end chase.
My object was to take advantage of the animal’s
disinclination to change its course when it has
once definitely determined to run toward a cer-
tain point. When they first see a mounted man,
a band of pronghorns will frequently circle and
wheel or run in zigzags, halt and look about
them, finally making up their minds to go away
in good earnest and in a definite course. When
they are once thus running they dislike to aban-
don their course, and if a man seeks to cut them
off, they will frequently refuse to swerve, simply
increasing their speed so as to pass ahead of the
pursuer. Taking advantage of this peculiarity I
would ride at a jog-trot until I saw a band or
a single animal under circumstances which I

The Pronghorn Antelope 129

thought favorable. After a little manceuvring
to find out what the quarry was inclined to do, I
would then bend off to one side, perhaps getting
under cover of some low ridge. When I disap-
peared the pronghorns were sure to gallop toward
some place where they could see me. If their
gallop took them straight away from me, so that
when I next saw them they were far off, I might
not make any further effort after them. But fre-
quently the next glimpse I got of them showed
them much nearer than they were before, and I
would then alter my course and try to go out of
sight, still travelling slowly. Once out of sight,
if I thought I was travelling in the right direction
to get near them, I would strike a smart gallop
until I again topped a ridge from which they were
visible. Of course there was again the chance
that they had gone in the wrong direction, but if
they had not, I might find myself within range, or
more likely I might see them, now running in
good earnest and quartering away or toward me.
Choosing my point along their line of flight, I
pressed the willing horse, and away we flew as
hard as we knew how. The pronghorns went
faster than I did, but as I had the shorter dis-
tance to go, it frequently happened that I could
cut them off, and as soon as they showed signs of
swerving, or as soon as it became evident that
they would pass in front of me, off I would leap

130 Deer and Antelope of North America

for the shot. A pronghorn is the easiest of all
game to hit running, as in spite of its speed it has
an exceedingly even gait, and there is of course no
cover; so that if I was at all close, I would count
on getting the buck before it was out of range.
Where the ground was favorable I once killed
three prongbucks in one day in this fashion, and
very often got one or two. It is to my mind the
most exhilarating way of hunting this, the true
game of the plains.

CEEAPTER V

THE WAPITI OR ROUND-HORNED ELK

THE wapiti is the largest and stateliest deer in
the world. A full-grown bull is as big as a steer.
The antlers are the most magnificent trophies
yielded by any game animal of America, save the
giant Alaskan moose. When full grown they are
normaliy of twelve tines; frequently the tines are
more numerous, but the increase in their number
has no necessary accompaniment in increase in
the size of the antlers. The length, massiveness,
roughness, spread, and symmetry of the antlers
must all be taken into account in rating the value
of ahead. Antlers over fifty inches in length are
large; if over sixty, they are gigantic. Good
heads are getting steadily rarer under the perse-
cution which has thinned out the herds.

Next to the bison the wapiti is of all the big
game animals of North America the one whose
range has most. decreased. Originally it was
found from the Pacific coast east across the Alle-
ghanies, through New York to the Adirondacks,
through Pennsylvania into western New Jersey,

131

132 Deer and Antelope of North America

and far down into the mid-country of Virginia
and the Carolinas. It extended northward into
Canada, from the Great Lakes to Vancouver;
and southward into Mexico, along the Rockies.
Its range thus corresponded roughly with that of
the bison, except that it went farther west and not
so far north. In the early colonial days so little
heed was paid by writers to the teeming myriads
of game that it is difficult to trace the wapiti’s
distribution in the Atlantic coast region. It was
certainly killed out of the Adirondacks long
before the moose was exterminated. At the
close of the colonial period, when the backwoods-
men were settling the valleys of the Alleghany
Mountains, they there found the elk very abun-
dant, and the stately creatures roamed in great
bands over Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indi-
ana when the first settlers made their way into
what are now these states, at the outbreak of the
Revolution. These first settlers were all hunters,
and they followed the wapiti (or, as they always
called it, the elk) with peculiar eagerness. In con-
sequence its numbers were soon greatly thinned,
and about the beginning of the present century it
disappeared from that portion of its former range
lying south of the Great Lakes and between the
Alleghanies and the Mississippi. In the north-
ern Alleghanies it held its own much longer, the
last individual of which I have been able to get

The Wapiti or Round-horned Elk 133

record having been killed in Pennsylvania in
1869. In the forests of northern Wisconsin,
northern Michigan, and Minnesota wapiti existed
still longer, and one or two individuals may still
be found. A few are left in Manitoba. When
Lewis and Clark and Pike became the pioneers
among the explorers, army officers, hunters, and
trappers who won for our people the great west,
they found countless herds of wapiti through-
out the high plains country from the Mississippi
River to the Rocky Mountains. Throughout
this region it was exterminated almost as rap-
idly as the bison, and by the early eighties
there only remained a few scattered individuals,
in bits of rough country such as the Black Hills,
the sand-hills of Nebraska, and certain patches of
Bad Lands along the Little Missouri. Doubtless,
stragglers exist even yet in one or two of these
localities. But by the time the great buffalo
herds of the plains were completely exterminated,
in 1883, the wapiti had likewise ceased to be a
plains animal; the peculiar Californian form had
also been well-nigh exterminated.

Disregarding the Pacific coast form of Van-
couver and the Olympian Mountains, the wapiti
was thenceforth a beast of the Rocky Mountain
region proper, and was especially abundant in
western Montana, Wyoming, and _ Colorado.
Throughout these mountains its extermination,

134 Deer and Antelope of North America

though less rapid than on the plains, has never-
theless gone on with melancholy steadiness. In
the early nineties it was still as abundant as ever
in large regions in western Wyoming and Mon-
tana and northwestern Colorado. In northwest-
ern Colorado the herds are now represented by
only a few hundred individuals. In western
Montana they are scattered over a wider region
and are protected by the denser timber, but are
nowhere plentiful. They have nearly vanished
from the Big Horn Mountains. They are still
plentiful in and around their great nursery and
breeding-ground, the Yellowstone National Park.
If this park can be extended so as to take in part
of their winter range, they can be preserved for
all time, to the delight of all lovers of nature, and
to the great pecuniary benefit of the people of
Wyoming and Montana. But at present their
former winter range, especially south of the park,
is filling up with settlers, and unless the condi-
tions change, the wapiti will more and more be
compelled to winter among the mountains, which
will mean such immense losses from starvation
and deep snow that the herds will be wofully
thinned. Surely all men who care for nature,
no less than all men who care for big game hunt-
ing, should combine to try to see that not merely
the states but the Federal authorities make every
effort, and are given every power, to prevent the

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The Wapiti or Round-horned Elk — 135

extermination of this stately and beautiful animal,
the lordliest of the deer kind in the entire world.
The wapiti, like the bison, and even more than
the whitetail deer, can thrive in widely varying
surroundings. It is at home among the high
mountains, in the deep forests, and on the tree-
less, level plains. It is rather omnivorous in its
tastes, browsing and grazing on all kinds of trees,
shrubs, and grasses. These traits, and its hardi-
hood, make it comparatively easy to perpetuate
in big parks and forest preserves in a semi-wild
condition; and it has thriven in such preserves
and parks in many of the eastern states. As it
does not, by preference, dwell in such tangled
forests as are the delight of the moose and the
whitetail deer, it vanishes much quicker than
either when settlers appear in the land. In the
mountains and foot-hills its habitat is much the
same as that of the mule-deer, the two animals
being often found in the immediate neighbor-
hood of each other. In such places the superior
size and value of the wapiti put it at a disadvan-
tage in the keen struggle for life, and when the
rifle-bearing hunter appears upon the scene, it
vanishes long before its smaller kinsman.
Moreover, the wapiti is undoubtedly subject to
queer freaks of panic stupidity, or what seems
like a mixture of tameness and of puzzled terror.
At these times a herd will remain almost motion-

136 Deer and Antelope of North America

less, the individuals walking undecidedly to and
fro, and neither flinching nor giving any other
sign even when hit with a bullet. In the old
days it was not uncommon for a_ professional
hunter to destroy an entire herd of wapiti when
one of these fits of confusion was on them. Even
nowadays they sometimes behave in this way.
In 1897, Mr. Ansley Wilcox, of Buffalo, was
hunting in the Teton basin. He came across a
small herd of wapiti, the first he had ever seen,
and opened fire when a hundred and fifty yards
distant. They paid no heed to the shots, and
after taking three or four at one bull, with seem-
ingly no effect, he ran in closer and emptied his
magazine at another, also seemingly without
effect, before the herd slowly disappeared. After
a few rods, both bulls fell; and on examination
it was found that all nine bullets had hit them.

To my mind, the venison of the wapiti is, on
the whole, better than that of any other wild
game, though its fat when cooled at once hardens,
like mutton tallow.

In its life habits the wapiti differs somewhat
from its smaller relatives. It is far more gre-
garious, and is highly polygamous. During the
spring, while the bulls are growing their great
antlers, and while the cows have very young
calves, both bulls and cows live alone, each indi-
vidual for itself. At such time each seeks the

The Wapiti or Round-borned Elk 137

most secluded situation, often going very high up
on the mountains. Occasionally a couple of
bulls lie together, moving around as little as pos-
sible. The cow at this time realizes that her
calf’s chance of life depends upon her absolute
seclusion, and avoids all observation.

As the horns begin to harden the bulls thrash
the velvet off against quaking asp, or ash, or even
young spruce, splintering and battering the bushes
and small trees. The cows and calves begin to
assemble; the bulls seek them. But the bulls do
not run the cows as among the smaller deer the
bucks run the does. The time of the beginning
of the rut varies in different places, but it usu-
ally takes place in September, about a month
earlier than that of the deer in the same lo-
cality. The necks of the bulls swell and they
challenge incessantly, for unlike the smaller deer
they are very noisy. Their love and war calls,
when heard at a little distance, amid the moun-
tains, have a most musica] sound. Frontiersmen
usually speak of their call as “ whistling,” which
is not a very appropriate term. The call may be
given in a treble or in a bass, but usually consists
of two or three bars, first rising and then falling,
followed by a succession of grunts. The grunts
can only be heard when close up. There can be
no grander or more attractive chorus than the
challenging of a number of wapiti bulls when two

138 Deer and Antelope of North America

great herds happen to approach one another under
the moonlight or in the early dawn. The pealing
notes echo through the dark valleys as if from
silver bugles, and the air is filled with the wild
music. Where little molested the wapiti chal-
lenge all day long.

They can be easiest hunted during the rut, the
hunter placing them, and working up to them, by
the sound alone. The bulls are excessively trucu-
lent and pugnacious. Each big one gathers a
herd of cows about him and drives all possible
rivals away from his immediate neighborhood,
although sometimes spike bulls are allowed to
remain with the herd. Where wapiti are very
abundant, however, many of these herds may join
together and become partially welded into a mass
that may contain thousands of animals. In the
old days such huge herds were far from uncom-
mon, especially during the migrations; but now-
adays there only remain one or two localities in
which wapiti are sufficiently plentiful ever to come
together in bands of any size. The bulls are inces-
santly challenging and fighting one another, and
driving around the cows and calves. Each keeps
the most jealous watch over his own harem, treat-
ing its members with great brutality; and is sel-
fishly indifferent to their fate the instant he thinks
his own life in jeopardy. During the rut the
erotic manifestations of the bull are extraordinary.

The Wapiti or Round-horned Elk 139

One or two fawns are born, about May. In
the mountains the cow usually goes high up to
bring forth her fawn. Personally I have only had
a chance to observe the wapiti in the spring in
the neighborhood of my ranch in the Bad Lands
of the Little Missouri. Here the cow invariably
selected some wild lonely bit of very broken coun-
try in which there were dense thickets and some
water. There was one such patch some fifteen
miles from my ranch, in which for many years
wapiti regularly bred. The breeding cow lay by
herself, although sometimes the young of the pre-
ceding year would lurk in the neighborhood. For
the first few days the calf seemed not to leave the
bed, and would not move even when handled.
Then it began to follow the mother. In this
particular region the grass was coarse and rank,
save for a few patches in the immediate neighbor-
hood of little alkali springs. Accordingly, it was
not much visited by the cattle or by the cowboys.
Doubtless in the happier days of the past, when
man was merely an infrequent interloper, the
wapiti cows had made their nurseries in pleas-
anter and more fruitful valleys. But in my time
the hunted creatures had learned that their only
chance was to escape observation. I have known
not only cows with young calves, but cows when
the calves were out of the spotted coat, and even
yearlings, to try to escape by hiding —the great

140 Deer and Antelope of North America

beasts lying like rabbits in some patch of thick
brush, while I rode close by. The best hunting
horse I ever had, old Manitou, in addition to his
other useful qualities, would serve as a guard on
such occasions. I would leave him on a little
hillock to one side of such a patch of brush, and
as he walked slowly about, grazing and rattling
his bridle chains, he would prevent the wapiti
breaking cover on that side, and give me an addi-
tional chance of slipping around toward them —
although, if the animal was a cow, I never molested
it unless in dire need of meat.

Most of my elk hunting was done among the
stupendous mountain masses of the Rockies, which
I usually reached after a long journey, with wagon-
or pack-train, over the desolate plains. Ordinarily
I planned to get to the hunting-ground by the end
of August, so as to have ample time. By that
date the calves were out of the spotted coat, the
cows and the young of the preceding year had
banded, and the big bulls had come down to join
them from the remote recesses in which they had
been lying, solitary or in couples, while their antlers
were growing. Many bulls were found alone, or,
if young, in small parties; but the normal arrange-
ment was for each big bull to have his own harem,
around the outskirts of which there were to be
found lurking occasional spike bulls who were
always venturing too near and being chased off

The Wapiti or Round-borned Elk 141

by the master bull. Frequently several such herds
joined together into a great band. Before the
season was fairly on, when the bulls had not
been worked into actual frenzy, there was not
much fighting in these bands. Later they were
the scenes of desperate combats. Each master
buli strove to keep his harem under his own eyes,
and was always threatening and fighting the other
master bulls, as well as those bulls whose prowess
had proved insufficient hitherto to gain them a
band, or who after having gained one had been
so exhausted and weakened as to succumb to
some new aspirant for the leadership. The bulls
were calling and challenging all the time, and
there was ceaseless turmoil, owing to their fights
and their driving the cows around. The cows
were more wary than the bulls, and there were so
many keen noses and fairly good eyes that it was
difficult to approach a herd; whereas the single
bulls were so noisy, careless, and excited that it
was comparatively easy to stalk them. A rutting
wapiti bull is as wicked looking a creature as
can be imagined, swaggering among the cows and
threatening the young bulls, his jaws mouthing
and working in a kind of ugly leer.

The bulls fight desperately with one another.
The two combatants come together with a re-
sounding clash of antlers, and then push and
strain with their mouths open. The skin on

142 Deer and Antelope of North America

their neck and shoulders is so thick and tough
that the great prongs cannot get through or do
more than inflict bruises. The only danger comes
when the beaten party turns to flee. The victor
pursues at full speed. Usually the beaten one
gets off; but if by any accident he is caught where
he cannot escape, he is very apt to be gored in the
flank and killed. Mr. Baillie-Grohman has given
a very interesting description of one such fatal
duel of which he was an eye-witness on a moon-
light night in the mountains. I have never
known of the bull trying to protect the cow from
anyenemy. He battles for her against rivals with
intense ferocity; but his attitude toward her, once
she is gained, is either that of brutality or of in-
difference. She will fight for her calf against any
enemy which she thinks she has a chance of con-
quering, although of course not against man. But
the bull leaves his family to their fate the minute
he thinks there is any real danger. During the
rut he is greatly excited, and does not fear a dog
or a single wolf, and may join with the rest of the
herd of both sexes in trying to chase off one or
the other, should he become aware of its approach.
But if there is serious danger, his only thought is
for himself, and he has no compunctions about
sacrificing any of his family. When on the move
a cow almost always goes first, while the bull
brings up the rear.

The Wapiti or Round-horned Elk 143

In domestication the bulls are very dangerous
to human beings, and will kill a man at once if
they can get him at a disadvantage; but ina state
of nature they very rarely indeed overcome their
abject terror of humanity, even when wounded and
cornered. Of course, if the man comes straight
up to him where he cannot get away, a wapiti will
fight as, under like circumstances, a blacktail or
whitetail will fight, and equally, of course, he is
then far more dangerous than his smaller kins-
folk; but he is not nearly so apt to charge asa bull
moose. I have never known but two authentic
instances of their thus charging. One happened
to a hunter named Bennett on the Little Mis-
souri; the other to a gentleman I met, a doctor,
in Meeker, Colorado. The doctor had wounded
his wapiti, and as it was in the late fall, followed
him easily in the snow. Finally, he came upon
the wapiti standing where the snow was very deep
at the bottom of a small valley, and on his approach
the wapiti deliberately started to break his way
through the snow toward him, and had almost
reached him when he was killed. But for every
one such instance of a wapiti’s charging there are
a hundred in which a bull moose has charged.
Senator Redfield Proctor was charged most reso-
lutely by a mortally hurt bull moose which fell in
the death throes just before reaching him; and I
could cite case after case of the kind,

144 Deer and Antelope of North America

The wapiti’s natural gaits are a walk and a trot.
It walks very fast indeed, especially if travelling to
reach some given point. More than once I have
sought to overtake a travelling bull, and have
found myself absolutely unable to do so, although
it never broke its walk. Of course, if I had not
been obliged to pay any heed to cover or wind, I
could have run up on it; but the necessity for
paying heed to both handicapped me so that I
was actually unable to come up to the quarry as
it swung steadily on through woodland and open,
over rough ground and smooth. Wapiti have a
slashing trot, which they can keep up for an in-
definite time and over any kind of country. Only
a good pony can overtake them when they have
had any start and have got settled into this trot.
If much startled they break into a gallop —the
young being always much more willing to gallop
than the old. Their gallop is very fast, especially
down hill. But they speedily tire under it. A
yearling or a two-year-old can keep it up for a
couple of miles. A heavy old bull will be done
out after a few hundred yards. I once sawa band
of wapiti frightened into a gallop down a steep
incline where there were also a couple of mule-
deer. I had not supposed that wapiti ran as fast
as mule-deer, but this particular band actually
passed the deer, though the latter were evidently
doing their best ; the wapiti were well ahead when,

The Wapiti or Round-horned Elk 145

after thundering down the steep, broken incline,
they all disappeared into a belt of woodland. In
spite of their size, wapiti climb well and go sure-
footedly over difficult and dangerous ground.
They have a habit of coming out to the edges
of cliffs, or on mountain spurs, and looking over
the landscape beneath, almost as though they en-
joyed the scenery. What their real object is on
such occasions I do not know.

The nose of the wapiti is very keen. Its sight
is much inferior to that of the antelope, but about
as good as a deer’s. Its hearing is also much like
that of adeer. When in country where it is little
molested, it feeds and moves about freely by day,
lying down to rest at intervals, like cattle. Wapiti
offer especial attractions to the hunter, and next to
the bison are more quickly exterminated than any
other kind of game. Only the fact that they
possess a far wider range of habitat than either
the mule-deer, the prongbuck, or the moose, has
enabled them still to exist. Their gregariousness
is also against them. Even after the rut the
herds continue together until in mid spring the
bulls shed their antlers—for they keep their
antlers at least two months longer than deer.
During the fall, winter, and early spring wapiti
are roving, restless creatures. Their habit of
migration varies with locality, as among mule-
deer. Along the Little Missouri, as in the plains

146 Deer and Antelope of North America

country generally, there was no well-defined migra-
tion. Up to the early eighties, when wapiti was
still plentiful, the bands wandered far and wide;
but fitfully and irregularly, wholly without regard
to the season, save that they were stationary from
May to August. After 1883 there were but a few
individuals left, although as late as 1886 I once
came across a herd of nine. These surviving in-
dividuals had learned caution. The bulls only
called by night, and not very frequently then, and
they spent the entire year in the roughest and
most out-of-the-way places, having the same range
both winter and summer. They selected tracts
where the ground was very broken and there was
much shrubbery, and patches of small trees. This
tree and bush growth gave them both shelter and
food; for they are particularly fond of browsing
on the leaves and tender twig ends, though they
also eat weeds and grass.

Wherever wapiti dwell among the mountains
they make regular seasonal migrations. In north-
western Wyoming they spend the summer in the
Yellowstone National Park, but in winter they
go south to Jackson’s Hole, and used formerly,
also, to move out of the park to the northeast.
In northwestern Colorado their migrations fol-
lowed much the same line as those of the mule-
deer. In different localities the length of the
migration and even the time differed. There

The Wapiti or Round-horned Elk 147

were some places where the shift was simply
from the high mountains down to their foot-hills.
In other places great herds travelled a couple of
hundred miles, so that localities absolutely barren
one month would be swarming with wapiti the
next. In some places the shift took place as
early as the month of August; in others not
until after the rut, in October or even Novem-
ber; and in some places the rut took place
during the migration.

No chase is more fascinating than that of the
wapiti. In the old days, when the mighty antlered
beasts were found upon the open plains, they
could be followed upon horseback, with or with-
out hounds. Nowadays, when they dwell in the
mountains, they are to be killed only by the
rifle-bearing still-hunter. Needless butchery of
any kind of animal is repulsive, but in the case
of the wapiti it is little short of criminal. He is
the grandest of the deer kind throughout the
world, and he has already vanished from most of
the places where he once dwelt in his pride.
Every true sportsman should feel it incumbent
upon him to do all in his power to preserve so
noble a beast of the chase from extinction. No
harm whatever comes to the species from killing
a certain number of bulls; but an excessive num-
ber should never be killed, and no cow or calf
should under any circumstances be touched.

148 Deer and Antelope of North America

Formerly, when wapiti were plentiful, it would
have been folly for hunters and settlers in the
unexplored wilderness not to kill wild game for
their meat, and occasionally a cow or a calf had
to be thus slain; but there is no excuse nowadays
for a hunting party killing anything but a full-
grown bull.

In a civilized and cultivated country wild ani-
mals only continue to exist at all when preserved
by sportsmen. The excellent people who protest
against all hunting, and consider sportsmen as
enemies of wild life, are wholly ignorant of the
fact that in reality the genuine sportsman is by
all odds the most important factor in keeping wild
creatures from total extermination. Of course, if
wild animals were allowed to breed unchecked,
they would, in an incredibly short space of time,
render any country uninhabitable by man,—a
fact which ought to be a matter of elementary
knowledge in any community where the average
intelligence is above that of certain portions of
Hindoostan. Equally, of course, in a purely utili-
tarian community all wild animals are extermi-
nated outofhand. Inorderto preserve the wild life
of the wilderness at all, some middle ground must
be found between brutal and senseless slaughter
and the unhealthy sentimentalism which would
just as surely defeat its own end by bringing
about the eventual total extinction of the game.

The Wapiti or Round-horned Elk 149

It is impossible to preserve the larger wild
animals in regions thoroughly fit for agricul-
ture; and it is perhaps too much to hope that
the larger carnivors can be preserved for merely
esthetic reasons. But throughout our country
there are great regions entirely unsuited for agri-
culture where, if the people only have foresight,
they can, through the power of the state, keep
the game in perpetuity. There is no hope of
preserving the bison permanently, save in great
private parks; but all other game, including not
merely deer, but the pronghorn, the splendid big-
horn, and the stately and beautiful wapiti, can be
kept on the public lands, if only the proper laws
are passed, and if only these laws are properly
enforced. I suppose that no lover of nature who
travels through Switzerland does not regret that
the ibex has vanished from among the Swiss
mountains; and every good American ought to
endeavor to see to it that for ages to come such
a fate does not befall the bighorn and the wapiti
in the Rockies.

A peculiar charm in the chase of the wapiti
comes from the wild beauty of the country in
which it dwells. The moose lives in marshy for-
ests; if one would seek the white goat or caribou
of the northern Rockies, he must travel on foot,
pack on back; while the successful chase of the
bighorn, perhaps on the whole the manliest of

150 Deer and Antelope of North America

all our sports, means heart-breaking fatigue for
any but the strongest and hardiest. The prong-
buck, again, must be followed on the desolate, sun-
scorched plains. But the wapiti dwells amid lofty,
pine-clad mountains, in a region of lakes and
streams. A man can travel in comfort while
hunting it, because he can almost always take a
pack-train with him, and the country is usually
sufficiently open to enable the hunter to enjoy all
the charm of distant landscapes. Where the wap-
iti lives the spotted trout swarm in the brooks,
and the wood-grouse fly upward to perch among
the tree-tops as the hunter passes them. When
hunting him there is always sweet cold water to
be drunk at night, and beds of aromatic fir boughs
on which to sleep, with the blankets drawn over
one to keep out the touch of the frost. He must
be followed on foot, and the man who follows him
must be sound in limb and wind. But his pur-
suit does not normally mean such wearing ex-
haustion as is entailed by climbing cliffs all day
long after the white goat. Whoever has hunted
the wapiti, as he looks at his trophies, will always
think of the great mountains with the snow lying
in the rifts in their sides; of the splashing mur-
mur of rock-choked torrents; of the odorous
breath of the pine branches; of tents pitched in
open glades; of long walks through cool open
forests; and of great camp-fires, where the

The Wapiti or Round-borned Elk 151

pitchy stumps flame like giant torches in the
darkness.

In the old days, of course, much of the hunting
was done on the open plains or among low, rugged
hills. The wapiti that I shot when living at my
Little Missouri ranch were killed under exactly
the same conditions as mule-deer. When I built
my ranch-house wapiti were still not uncommon,
and their shed antlers were very numerous both on
the bottoms and in places among the hills. There
was one such place a couple of miles from my
ranch in a stretch of comparatively barren but
very broken hill-country in which there were
many score of these shed antlers. Evidently a
few years before this had been a great gathering-
place for wapiti toward the end of winter. My
ranch itself derived its name “ The Elkhorn”
from the fact that on the ground where we built
it were found the skulls and interlocked antlers
of two wapiti bulls who had perished from getting
their antlers fastened in a battle. I never, how-
ever, killed a wapiti while on a day’s hunt from
the ranch itself. Those that I killed were ob-
tained on regular expeditions, when I took the
wagon and drove off to spend a night or two on
ground too far for me to hunt it through in a sin-
gle day from the ranch. Moreover, the wapiti on
the Little Missouri had been so hunted that they
had entirely abandoned the diurnal habits of their

152 Deer and Antelope of North America

kind, and it was a great advantage to get on the
ground early. This hunting was not carried on
amid the glorious mountain scenery which marks
the home of the wapiti in the Rockies; but the
surroundings had a charm of their own. All
really wild scenery is attractive. The true
hunter, the true lover of the wilderness, loves all
parts of the wilderness, just as the true lover of
nature loves all seasons. There is no season of
the year when the country is not more attractive
than the city; and there is no portion of the wil-
derness, where game is found, in which it is not a
keen pleasure to hunt. Perhaps no other kind of
country quite equals that where snow lies on the
lofty mountain peaks, where there are many open
glades in the pine forests, and clear mountain
lakes, and rushing trout-filled torrents. But the
fantastic desolation of the Bad Lands, and the end-
less sweep of the brown prairies, alike have their
fascination for the true lover of nature and lover
of the wilderness who goes through them on foot
or on horseback. As for the broken hill-country
in which I followed the wapiti and the mule-deer
along the Little Missouri, it would be strange
indeed if any one found it otherwise than attrac-
tive in the bright, sharp, fall weather. Long,
grassy valleys wound among the boldly shaped
hills. The basins were filled with wind-beaten
trees and brush which generally also ran along-

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The Wapiti or Round-horned Elk 153

side of the dry watercourses down the middle of
each valley. Cedars clustered in the sheer ra-
vines, and here and there groups of elm and ash
grew to a considerable height in the more shel-
tered places. At the first touch of the frost the
foliage turned russet or yellow—the Virginia
creepers crimson. Under the cloudless blue sky
the air was fresh and cool, and as we lay by the
camp-fire at night the stars shone with extraordi-
nary brilliancy. Under such conditions the actual
chase of the wapiti was much like that of the mule-
deer. They had been so hunted that they showed
none of the foolish traits which they are prone to
exhibit when bands are found in regions where
they have been little persecuted; and they were
easier to kill than mule-deer simply because they
were more readily tracked and more readily seen,
and offered a larger, and on the whole a steadier,
mark at which to shoot. Whena small band had
visited a pool their tracks could be identified at
once, because in the soft ground the flexible feet
spread and yielded so as to leave the marks of the
false hoofs. On ordinary ground it was very dif-
ficult to tell their footprints from those of the
yearling and two-year-old ranch cattle.

But the mountains are the true ground for the
wapiti. Here he must be hunted on foot, and
nowadays, since he has grown wiser, skill and
patience, and the capacity to endure fatigue

1$4 Deer and Antelope of North America

and exposure must be shown by the successful
hunter. My own wapiti hunting has been done
in September and early October during the
height of the rut, and therefore at a time when
the conditions were most favorable for the hunter.
I have hunted them in many places throughout
the Rockies, from the Big Horn in western
Wyoming to the Big Hole Basin in western Mon-
tana, close to the Idaho line. Where I hunted,
the wapiti were always very noisy both by day
and by night, and at least half of the bulls that
I killed attracted my attention by their calling
before I saw either them or their tracks. At
night they frequently passed close to camp, or
came nearly up to the picketed horses, challeng-
ing all the time; more than once I slipped out,
hoping to kill one by moonlight, but I never
succeeded. Occasionally, when they were plenti-
ful, and were restless and always roving about,
I simply sat still on a log, until one gave me a
chance. Sometimes I came across them while
hunting through likely localities, going up or
across wind, keeping the sharpest lookout,
and moving with great care and caution, until
I happened to strike the animals I was after.
More than once I took the trail of a band, when
out with some first-class woodsman, and after
much running, dodging, and slipping through
the timber, overtook the animals — though usu-

The Wapiti or Round-horned Elk 155

ally when thus merely following the trail I failed
to come up with them. On two different
occasions I followed and came up to bands,
attracted by their scent. Wapiti have a strong,
and, on the whole, pleasing scent, like that of
Alderney cattle; although in old bulls it becomes
offensively strong. This scent is very penetrat-
ing. I once smelt a herd which was lying quite
still taking its noonday siesta, certainly half a
mile to the windward of me; and creeping up
I shot a good bull as he lay. On another occa-
sion, while working through the tangled trees and
underbrush at the bottom of a little winding val-
ley, I suddenly smelt wapiti ahead, and without
paying any further attention to the search for
tracks, I hunted cautiously up the valley, and
when it forked was able to decide by the smell
alone which way the wapiti had gone. He was
going up wind ahead of me, and his ground-cover- |
ing walk kept me at a trot in order to overtake
him. Finally I saw him, before he saw me,
and then, by making a run to one side, got a
shot at him when he broke cover, and dropped
him.

It is exciting to creep up to a calling wapiti.
If it is a solitary bull he is apt to be travelling,
seeking the cows, or on the lookout for some
rival of weaker thews. Under such circumstances,
only hard running will enable the hunter to over-

156 Deer and Antelope of North America

take him, unless there is a chance to cut him off.
If, however, he hears another bull, or has a herd
under him, the chances are that he is nearly sta-
tionary, or at least is moving slowly, and the
hunter has every opportunity to approach. In
a herd the bull himself is usually so absorbed
both with his cows and with his rivals that he is
not at all apt to discover the approaching hunter.
The cows, however, are thoroughly awake, and
it is their eyes and keen noses for which the
hunter must look out. A solitary bull which is
answering the challenge of another is the easiest
of all to approach. Of course, if there has been
much hunting, even such a bull is wary and is
on the lookout for harm. But in remote localities
he becomes so absorbed in finding out the where-
abouts of his rival, and he is so busy answering
the latter’s challenges and going through motions
of defiance, that with proper care it is compara-
tively easy to approach him. Once, when within
seventy yards of such a bull, he partly made me
out, and started toward me. Evidently he could
not tell exactly what I was, — my buckskin shirt
probably helping to puzzle him,—and in his
anger and eagerness he did not think of danger
until it was too late. On another occasion I got
up to two bulls that were fighting, and killed
both. In the fights, weight of body seems to
count for more than size of antlers.

The Wapiti or Round-horned Elk 157

Once I spent the better part of a day in following
a wapiti bull before I finally got him. Generally
when hunting wapiti I have been with either one
of my men from the ranch or a hunter like
Tazewell Woody, or John Willis. On this par-
ticular occasion, however, I happened to be alone;
and though I have rarely been as_ successful
alone as when in the company of some thoroughly
trained and experienced plainsman or mountain-
man, yet when success does come under such
circumstances, it is always a matter of peculiar
pride.

At the time, I was camped in a very beautiful
valley high among the mountains which divide
southwestern Montana from Idaho. The weather
was cold, and there were a couple of inches of
snow on the ground, so that the conditions were
very favorable for tracking and stalking. The
country was well wooded, but the forest was not
dense, and there were many open glades._ Early
one morning, just about dawn, the cook, who had
been up for a few minutes, waked me, to say that
a bull wapiti was calling not far off. I rolled out
of my bed and was dressed in short order.
The bull had by this time passed the camp, and
was travelling toward a range of mountains on
the other side of the stream which ran down the
valley bottom. He was evidently not alarmed, for
he was still challenging. I gulped down a cup of

158 Deer and Antelope of North America

hot coffee, munched a piece of hardtack, and
thrust four or five other pieces and a cold elk
tongue into my hunting-shirt, and then, as it had
grown light enough to travel, started after the
wapiti. I supposed that in a few minutes I
should either have overtaken him or abandoned
the pursuit, and I took the food with me simply
because in the wilderness it never pays to be
unprepared for emergencies. The wisdom of such
a course was shown in this instance by the fact
that I did not see camp again until long after
dark.

I at first tried to cut off the wapiti by trotting
through the woods toward the pass for which I
supposed he was headed. The morning was cold,
and, as always happens at the outset when one
starts to take violent exercise under such circum-
stances, the running caused me to break into a
violent perspiration; so that the first time I
stopped to listen for the wapiti a regular fog
rose over my glasses and then froze on them.
I could not see a thing, and after wiping them
found I had to keep gently moving in order to
prevent them from clouding over again. It is on
such cold mornings, or else in very rainy weather,
that the man who has not been gifted with good
eyes is most sensible of his limitations. I once
lost a caribou which I had been following at
speed over the snow because when I came into

The Wapiti or Round-horned Elk 159

sight and halted the moisture instantly formed
and froze on my glasses so that I could not see
anything, and before I got them clear the game
had vanished. Whatever happened, I was bound
that I should not lose this wapiti from a similar
accident.

However, when I next heard him he had evi-
dently changed his course and was going straight
away from me. The sun had now risen, and
following after him I soon found his tracks. He
was walking forward with the regular wapiti
stride, and I made up my mind I had a long
chase ahead of me. We were going up hill, and
though I walked hard, I did not trot until we
topped the crest. Then I jogged along at a good
gait, and as I had on moccasins, and the woods
were open, I did not have to exercise much
caution. Accordingly, I gained, and felt I was
about to come up with him, when the wind
brought down from very far off another challenge.
My bull heard it before I did, and instantly
started toward the spot at a trot. There was not
the slightest use of my attempting to keep up
with this, and I settled down into a walk. Half
an hour afterward I came over a slight crest, and
immediately saw a herd of wapiti ahead of me,
across the valley and on an open hillside. The
herd was in commotion, the master bull whistling
vigorously and rounding up his cows, evidently

160 Deer and Antelope of North America

much excited at the new bull having approached.
There were two or three yearlings and two-year-
old bulls on the outskirts of the herd, and the
master bull, whose temper had evidently not been
improved by the coming of the stranger, charged
these and sent them rattling off through the
bushes. The ground was so open between me
and them that I dared not venture across it, and
I was forced to lie still and await developments.
The bull I had been following and the herd
bull kept challenging vigorously, but the former
probably recognized in the latter a heavier
animal, and could not rouse his courage to the
point of actually approaching and doing battle.
It by no means follows that the animal with
the heaviest body has the best antlers, but the
hesitation thus shown by the bull I was follow-
ing made me feel that the other would probably
yield the most valuable trophies, and after a
couple of hours I made up my mind to try to
get near the herd, abandoning the animal I had
been after.

The herd showed but little symptoms of mov-
ing, the cows when let alone scattering out to
graze, and some of them even lying down. Ac-
cordingly, I did not hurry myself, and spent con-
siderably over an hour in slipping off to the right
and approaching through a belt of small firs.
Unfortunately, however, the wind had slightly

Lhe Wapiti or Round-borned Elk 161

shifted, and while I was out of sight of the herd
they had also come down toward the spot from
whence I had been watching them. Accord-
ingly, just as I was beginning to creep forward
with the utmost caution, expecting to see them at
any moment, I heard a thumping and cracking of
branches that showed they were on the run. With
wapiti there is always a chance of overtaking
them after they have first started, because they
tack and veer and halt to look around. Accord-
ingly I ran forward as fast as I could through the
woods; but when I came to the edge of the fir
belt I saw that the herd were several hundred
yards off. They were clustered together and
looking back, and saw me at once.

Off they started again. The old bull, however,
had neither seen me nor smelt me, and when I
heard his whistle of rage I knew he had mis-
interpreted the reason for the departure of
his cows, and in another moment he came in
sight, evidently bent on rounding them up.
On his way he attacked and drove off one of
the yearlings, and then took after the cows,
while the yearling ran toward the outlying bull.
The latter evidently failed to understand what
had happened; at least he showed no signs of
alarm. Neither, however, did he attempt to
follow the fleeing herd, but started off again on
his own line.

M

162 Deer and Antelope of North America

I was sure the herd would not stop for some
miles, and accordingly I resumed my chase of the
single bull. He walked for certainly three miles
before he again halted, and I was then half a mile
behind him. On this occasion he struck a small
belt of woodland and began to travel to and fro
through it, probably with an idea of lying down.
I was able to get up fairly close by crawling on
all fours through the snow for part of the dis-
tance; but just as I was about to fire he moved
slightly, and though my shot hit him, it went a
little too far back. He plunged over the hill
crest and was off at a gallop, and after running
forward and failing to overtake him in the first
rush, I sat down to consider matters. The snow
had begun to melt under the sun, and my knees
and the lower parts of my sleeves were wet from
my crawl, and I was tired and hungry and very
angry at having failed to kill the wapiti. It was,
however, early in the afternoon, and I thought
that if I let the wapiti alone for an hour, he would
lie down, and then grow stiff and reluctant to get
up; while in the snow I was sure I could easily
follow his tracks. Therefore I ate my lunch and
then swallowed some mouthfuls of snow in lieu
of drinking.

An hour afterward I took up the trail. It was
evident the bull was hard hit, but even after he
had changed his plunging gallop for a trot he

The Wapiti or Round-borned Elk 163

showed no signs of stopping; fortunately his trail
did not cross any other. The blood signs grew
infrequent, and two or three times he went up
places which made it difficult for me to believe
he was much hurt. At last, however, I came to
where he had lain down; but he had risen again
and gone forward. Fora moment I feared that
my approach had alarmed him, but this was evi-
dently not the case, for he was now walking. I
left the trail, and turning to one side below the
wind I took a long circle and again struck back
to the bottom of the valley down which the wapiti
had been travelling. The timber here was quite
thick, and I moved very cautiously, continually
halting and listening, for five or ten minutes.
Not a sound did I hear, and I crossed the valley
bottom and began to ascend the other side with-
out finding the trail. Unless he had turned off
up the mountains I knew that this meant he must
have lain down; so I retraced my steps and with
extreme caution began to make my way up the
valley. Finally I came to a little opening, and
after peering about for five minutes I stepped
forward, and instantly heard a struggling and
crashing in a clump of young spruce on the
other side. It was the wapiti trying to get on
his feet. I ran forward at my best pace, and as
he was stiff and slow in his movements I was
within seventy yards before he got fairly under

164. Deer and Antelope of North America

way. Dropping on one knee I fired and hit him
in the flank. At the moment I could not tell
whether or not I had missed him, for he gave no
sign; but, running forward very fast, I speedily
saw him standing with his head down. He
heard me and again started, but at the third
bullet down he went in his tracks, the antlers
clattering loudly on the branches of a dead
LrEe:

The snow was melting fast, and for fear it might
go off entirely, so that I could not follow my back
track, I went up the hillside upon which the wap-
iti lay, and taking a dead tree dragged it down
to the bottom, leaving a long furrow. I then
repeated the operation on the opposite hillside,
thus making a trace which it was impossible for
any one coming up or down the valley to overlook ;
and having conned certain landmarks by which
the valley itself could be identified, I struck
toward camp at a round trot; for I knew that if
I did not get into the valley where the tent lay
before dark, I should have to pass the night out.
However, the last uncertain light of dusk just
enabled me to get over a spur from which I
could catch a glimpse of the camp-fire, and as
I stumbled toward it through the forest I heard
a couple of shots, which showed that the cook
and packer were getting anxious as to my where-
abouts.

frie DEER AND THE ELK OF THE
PACIFIC COAST

T. S. VAN DYKE

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CHAPTER

THE ELK OF THE PACIFIC COAST

Tue elk was once found on the great prairies
of the Mississippi watershed. But so was the
deer. For there were belts of timber lakes sur-
rounded with a heavy growth of reeds, and swales
full of slough grass with plenty of rough cover
about the bluffs and river-bottoms that intersected
it in all places. But who would expect the elk to
be at home where the land was too bare for the
deer, and only the antelope roamed the many
leagues that seemed fit but for wild cattle and
horses. Yet it seems certain that the bands of
elk that once roamed the great San Joaquin Val-
ley in California surpassed all that has been told
in song or story about the elk of the Rocky Moun-
tain parks or plateaus. Leagues away from any-
thing approaching cover, they lived upon plains
as open as any on which the buffalo ever flour-
ished. For before the discovery of gold there
was no demand for them except at long intervals,
when a travelling native found it a little easier to
lasso one for camp than one of the cattle that on

167

168 The Elk of the Pacific Coast

the great expanse were about as swift of foot and
even more wild.

But the miners soon created a demand for meat,
and travelling bands of explorers also murdered
everything in sight much as the white man always
does. Even the great novelist Dumas turned
market hunter as soon as he landed here in 1849,
and one of his first performances was to kill an
elk in the Sacramento Valley, on whose wide
plains bands were roaming the same as cattle.

It was but a short time before the newcomers
began to make great corrals with wings of miles
in length, into which they drove wild cattle and
horses, for there were thousands that had never
felt the branding iron and no one claimed. Along
with them went antelope and elk in great numbers,
and their fate was the same. Some of the meat was
sold fresh and some dried, but waste and destruc-
tion was the rule; and the big bands of elk began
to seek the cover of the great tule marshes along
the streams and lagoons. The tule is a spongy,
round reed, some fifteen feet long, growing from
shallow water, and so dense that half a dozen
stalks to the square foot, an inch to an inch and
a half in diameter, are common. Back of this, on
the dryer ground, are cattails and flag, very rank
and tall, so that the whole is about equal to the
heaviest canebrake, though not quite as stiff in the
individual stalk. Most of the lakes and sloughs

The Elk of the Pacific Coast 169

of the San Joaquin Valley are very broad and
shallow, with a vast margin between high and low
water that has a dense growth of this cover, which
also runs over many of the islands of the rivers
far up the Sacramento and the other streams lead-
ing into San Francisco Bay.

Instead of going to the mountains, which spread
their robes of chaparral and timber down to the
edge of the plains and higher up offering fastnesses
as good as any of the Rocky Mountains, the elk
retreated from the open plains with the advent of
the American, and hid in the vast tule swamps
that covered hundreds of thousands of acres.
Here they made great trails that ramified until
lost in myriad mazes, while hogs that had gone
wild made it extremely interesting for the hunter
who dared enter on foot, especially if he had a dog
to retreat between his legs at the first charge of a
big boar. As it was impossible to see any dis-
tance even on horseback, and the mud was too
thick for horses, the elk were quite safe for a time.
But as the swamps began to be drained and the
cover burned off, and roads made through the
drying ground, it was again the same old story of
the white man. By 1875 the antelope were a curi-
osity on the great plains, where so many thousands
lately glimmered through the dancing heat, while
the elk were almost as rare in the great tule
swamps that so lately seemed inaccessible. By

170 The Elk of the Pacific Coast

1385 only one band was left, and that was on the
immense ranch of Miller and Lux in the upper
part of the valley, some twenty miles from Bakers-
field. In 1895, when I last saw this herd, it was
under rigid protection of the herdsmen of the
ranch, and though even wilder than in the years
gone by, and roaming a part of the Coast Range
where the grizzly yet laughed at his pursuers, no
one ventured to trouble them. They then num-
bered about twenty-eight. It is said there are
now over one hundred, and they have been turned
over to the care of the Lodge of Elks in Bakers-
field. But the turning over is merely nominal,
for they are as wild as ever. It means only that
any man who dares shoot one will repent it.
These are the last wild elk known south of
Mendocino or Humboldt County in the far north
of the state—the lonely survivors of countless
thousands.

South of this point some fifty miles the great
valley is brought to a close by the Sierra Nevada
swinging around to join the Coast Range. But
in doing so it falls several thousand feet into the
low pass of Tehachipi, through which the South-
ern Pacific Railroad goes. This is broad, open
and low and has for a century been a thoroughfare
for cattle, antelope, and everything else that travels.
South of it in Antelope Valley is as good feed as
in the San Joaquin, while farther south is still

The Elk of the Pacific Coast 171

better pasturage with abundance of country in
the mountains that is the natural home of the
deer. Yet I can find no evidence of the elk ever
having passed south of this mysterious line,
though so open and so easy. The oldest Indian
and Mexican settlers know nothing of him even
by tradition, except as the great aéce of the north-
ern plains.

Nor does he seem to have gone into the high
ranges of the Sierra Nevada even in summer,
though nothing is wanting there that an elk
should desire to complete his happiness. Heavy
forests, broad meadows, rocky glens, secluded
thickets, and all that one could wish he ignored
to stay on the great, dry, blazing plains; and left
them only for the still less attractive tule swamps.
No trace is found of his existence over the range
on the east, and strangely enough he does not
seem to have spent much time in the Coast
Range. Much less did he cross it, and scarcely
ever was seen on the rich slopes that roll away to
the silvery sea in such long swells of the finest
feed in the world. He appears no more until we
reach the great redwoods of the northern coast of
California, where he made his last camp. Here
the vast forest with its tremendous undergrowth
maintained him for a time, but the insatiate greed
of the white man for “heads” and for elk teeth
for watch-charms was fast consigning this grand

172 The Elk of the Pacific Coast

deer to the things that were, when the hand
of the law stepped in. Public sentiment sustains
the law, and few are those who now dare molest
the elk that remain. But for their remoteness
they would long since have been sought out, but
it was too far from market in early days, and was
always uncomfortably wild for the tenderfoot and
his murderous guide.

In Oregon the elk fared better, and better yet
in Washington and British Columbia, though
murdered by thousands. But the vast forests
were too big for the leg, if not for the heart, of
man. Thousands of square miles yet remain
where the foot of man is hardly known, thou-
sands more where it is very difficult for him to
go with a horse and almost useless to go without
one. This leaves plenty of room for one who
can find pleasure in hunting such a grand ani-
mal and be satisfied with one or two. Hence
there are still large areas on the upper coast
where the elk is yet very abundant and always
will be. And here,and not in California, is where
he should be sought by one who wants to see him
at his best in the most splendid home nature has
given his race.

Modes of hunting elk on the Pacific coast
have always been of the simplest kind. There
were no greater hunters in the world than the
old Spanish Californians, who lassoed the largest

The Elk of the Pacific Coast 173

grizzlies by the light of the moon and dragged
them bound on rawhide to fight the wild bull of
the hills at their numerous festas. To them the
gun was ridiculous for such work, and generally
the last thing they used on game. They had
their pick of horses which, for their weight and for
swift work on rough ground, have had no superiors
in the world. To run down an elk and rope it
was for them a trick so simple that they never did
it unless for a change of meat. They had thou-
sands of cattle raised only for their hides and
tallow; and why kill an elk when no more skill
was required than to rope a cow? They rarely
failed to uncoil the rope for a deer if they could
catch one far enough from the hills, and they
loved to match their fleetest horses against the
antelope; while they rarely failed to make a dash
at a coyote or a wolf when the plain gave a good
chance fora race. The great herds of elk, how-
ever, they rode by, not in disdain, but with none
of the American’s love of murder.

But the miners came, and they brought a string
of camp followers, with gamblers and loafers of
every kind who loved play better than mining.
These speedily went to work like swine in a
garden of roses. Delighted to find that he could
ride into a band of elk without tumbling off the
horse, the new American cowboy rioted in herds
where he could put a pistol against the flank of

174 The Elk of the Pacific Coast

the biggest bull, most of them being so clumsy
that any fool that could coil a noose could lasso
one. Fora time this murder was the only hunt-
ing done for elk. But as they began to retreat
to the cover of the tules, and the price of meat
rose with the demand from the mines, the natives
began to watch for elk outside the tules at day-
light, while hunters by the score with rifles fol-
lowed them in all directions. In the northern
part of the state the elk left the valleys as early
as 1855, to retire to the majestic silence of the
great redwoods of the Coast Range, where he
could be found only by true still-hunting. And
even there the great bands were no longer seen,
but only scattered bunches of a dozen or so, with
plenty of single ones. The day passed very
quickly when one could go wait beside some
grassy glade to see a score come in from the
woods to feed, and stand so confused when the
leader fell that the butcher might pile the rest
almost one upon another. This day is about
gone even in the farther north, where few hunt-
ers have ever penetrated, for, like the deer, the
elk has learned from civilization.

In judgment of a certain kind the elk is: far
superior to the deer. The deer merely laughs
at civilization so long as it gives him, leaves
him, a certain amount of cover with half a
chance to feed and rest. He cares nothing for

The Elk of the Pacific Coast 175

noise if not too close. I have known the wildest
Virginia deer lie all day within plain sound of
the axe, and where the choice vocabulary of the
teamsters in the pinery could be plainly heard in
the clear cold air. Yet by no amount of inge-
nuity could one get within rifle shot unless the
combination of softness in the snow, openings
in the brush for quiet walking, rolling ground
behind which to keep out of sight, with the wind
and other conditions all right, conspired to help
out the most extreme care of which man is
capable. So I have known the mule-deer time
and again spend the day on the hillside, where
he can plainly hear the hunter calling up his
dogs, and discussing with his companions the
chances of getting venison. And generally the
chances are rarely worse than on just such
ground. The deer seems to love to take
chances on such matters, and knows so well
the distance of sounds that he is_ rarely
deceived in that way. For the report of a
rifle a little too far to be dangerous he cares
no more than for distant thunder, trusting to
his judgment to avoid any possible interview
with the owner of it.

But the elk will have none of this intellectual
treat. Though he may act the fool worse than
any of the deer tribe when hit with a bullet or
when shot at close by, the sound of shooting

176 The Elk of the Pacific Coast

is apt to start him moving out of the country
at a pace few care to follow. He knows some-
thing is wrong, and cares not to trust himself
to decide so important a matter. If such noise
should be near enough to alarm a deer, he would
only go half a mile or so, stop and look around
awhile, go another quarter, perhaps, and look a
little more, then fall to feeding a bit, listen
awhile, and finally lie down again, within sound,
probably, of that same rifle. But the elk will
travel over hill and dale, crossing vast gulches
and scaling stupendous heights for league upon
league until away beyond all danger. And even
then he may keep travelling for a day or two
more. No matter how much you may scare the
deer, he will be back to the same ground before
long, for he has been twisting and turning and
doubling on his course during most of the run,
however long it may be. But you may not see
the elk again that season if you have once run
him out with noise. And it is almost equally
futile to try to overtake him in a stern chase
when on such a journey. He can walk too fast
and too far, while as a trotter he is a master even
among great windfalls. With his long legs he
can cross a log so large that few horses care to
leap it even where raised in the woods. The
great horns, which look all the time as if they
would entangle him in the first bush, he carries

The Elk of the Pacific Coast 177

with lordly grace through fallen tree tops, tangles
of vine-maple, ivy, grapevine, and all the net-
work of the woods, the same as a deer, which
means the same as a rabbit or bird. Although
his weight makes the track of his big hoof very
easy to follow on almost any kind of ground, the
contract for overhauling him is a good one to
sublet. For even if you succeed, it will be
leagues away from your starting-point and
probably in country so rough that you cannot
even take out the coveted horns. For this chase
must be on foot for much chance of success.
With a horse you are apt to make too much
noise and cannot afford the time to stop for
him to feed. You will probably have to lie out
one night at least, and have to make camp
where night overtakes you without hunting
feed for the horse. I have known two Indians
follow a dozen elk on snow over a hundred miles,
and would not have overtaken them then had
the elk not been intercepted by a hunter with
a dog, which so confused them they huddled
up while the man shot the whole band. This
was many years ago in Northern Wisconsin,
but the elk is the same traveller all over the
Pacific coast.

When the elk once starts on a trip even when
not suspecting danger the work is bad enough,
and about the only chance there is for the hunter

178 The Elk of the Pacific Coast

nowadays is to find him where he is at perfect
rest. That is where everything is to his liking,
but especially silence and remoteness from any
trace of man, or any of his works. The elk is
the most omnivorous of the vegetarians. He
loved all the wild, dry feed of California as much
as the cattle and horses, and became equally fat
on it. In the woods he likes all the grasses,
bushes, and herbs, so that one need never
inquire on what he is feeding. You want
mainly to know whether there are any other
hunters ahead of you on his range, and if so
you may almost as well stay home. The next
question is that of feed for your horse, for the
elk will thrive where a horse will starve. And
though he may not starve, he may fall off so
in a few days from the scarcity of grass in the
deep shades that you may have to come out on
foot.

You should also go prepared to camp on the
trail even without the horse. For if you leave
fresh tracks too late in the evening to work
them out, and attempt to go to a distant camp
and come back and pick them up again in the
morning, you may be left too far in the rear.
This trick, that can so often be used to advan-
tage with deer, will not do for so wide a ranger
as the elk. For this trip neither can you load
yourself down with a blanket, but must depend

The Elk of the Pacific Coast 179

on fire to keep you warm; and you had better
carry provisions enough for at least two days.
For a good chance to trail up a band of elk, or
even a single one, is now so rare that if you have
gone to the trouble of going so far and spending
the time and money necessary, you cannot afford
to let the question of comfort interfere with your
further proceedings. And though the nights
may be cold, you cannot dress very warm, as you
will have to move rapidly by day.

Unless you have a very rare dog, he will be of
little or no use to you in this chase. You must
go too fast for him to “slowtrack,” and you can-
not trust him to bring such game to bay. While
elk will often turn and fight a dog much more
quickly than deer, especially cows with calves,
they are more likely on rough ground to depend
on leaving him in the rear. Or if the dog over-
takes the elk, it will be so far ahead of you and in
such broken ground that before you can come
up with the procession the dog will have been
whipped, or retired to some bush for rest, or gone
off to hunt much-needed water.

Subject to these inconveniences, which, for a
tough person, amount to almost nothing, such a
chase will take you now among the grandest
scenery the forest primeval has left to offer. On
this coast are still millions of acres where the axe
has left no scar, some of it too rough even for our

180 The Elk of the Pacific Coast

great government to survey, but where Nature
has done all she could to pile sublimity on high
and yet leave soil enough for the shaggy robe of
timber that makes the mountains still the home
of the elk. In other places she has substituted
shade and silence hedged about with such a vast
tangle of green, brown, and grey from great trunks
and broken limbs that you feel still more as if you
were living in a different sphere.

Here you may find great hills standing almost
on end, ridge joining ridge in endless chain, where
you may descend a thousand feet from the top
only to find it break off in a precipice of dozens
or hundreds of feet into a canyon still farther be-
low. Nowhere can you find a place where you
can take your horse down, and if you find one
where you can make a toboggan of your trousers,
it is by no means certain that you can return. I
was once on such a ridge for four days with a
party of four and nine horses. It was but six
miles long and not over two thousand feet above
the gulches that yawned all around it into the dif-
ferent forks of the Coquille River in Oregon, yet
we had to spend all our time in trying to descend
to the river. A big drove of elk was just ahead
of us, their tracks were everywhere, and many
more were on the same ground. Everything
showed that we were in their chosen home.
There was hardly a sapling of any size from

The Elk of the Pacific Coast 181

which a long strip of bark had not been rubbed
by the elk cleaning the velvet from their horns,
either in that year or the one before. Horns in
all the stages of decay were around us, with elk
trails innumerable. But there was no trail of man
to tell us where we could go, no feed but wild
peas and a few small patches of grass that the
horses would eat up over night, so that we would
have to move on in the morning. Shade almost
solid ruled over all. The Douglas fir towered
one hundred and fifty feet on the hills, with trunks
like shipmasts mingling their feathery tops so as
to shut out the sun, while down in the gulches
the great Port Orford cedar deluged the depths
with heavier gloom. Through the few openings
from which we could look out upon the world,
there was nothing in sight but ridge after ridge,
cutting the sky line with serried ranks of pine, and
great gulches between, hazily blue with solid tim-
ber. The whole was interlaced with such a tangle
of fallen trees that one would suppose an elk safe
anywhere.

But the wary animal knew better. Though no
white man penetrated those shades except at in-
tervals of years, the elk took no chances on the
movements of the butcher. Hence, when done
feeding he wandered off to the heads of the great
slides and washes that broke in ragged seams
from the tumbling hills. There, where the pine

182 The Elk of the Pacific Coast

sprung in lusty life from the chinks in great layers
of conglomerate that looked as if they could sup-
port nothing, and giant ferns choked the spaces
between the fallen trunks that could not lie save
for their erect brethren which held them in place,
the elk lay down to ruminate. One would sup-
pose this a fine place to slip upon him and take
him at a disadvantage. And so it was, but not
exactly like slipping upon an old cow under a
tree in the pasture.

In the first place, the eye becomes so used to
the big timber that after a while it begins to look
much smaller than it really is. But in the mean-
time you have not had your eye fixed on elks’
heads so as to see how they dwindle on such a
landscape. On the contrary, they increase in size
in proportion to the time you spend without see-
ing one. So that when you do see it you may
not notice the tips of a pair of mere sticks that,
like a thousand odd bits of dead branches, rise
just a little over the level of the fallen logs. If
you do, and recognize the points by their sheen,
you may have an easy task, for the elk with all his
care to keep man at a distance is a great fool
when he fails. When man is near, the elk is an
idiot compared with the deer and the antelope.
About all you have to do is to avoid his nose.
You need trouble yourself little about those senses
that make the deer so difficult to circumvent, —

The Elk of the Pacific Coast 183

sight and hearing. Yet if he does see you and
takes a notion to go, it may be but one plunge
into the dark depths and your hunt is over with
that one.

Not so very much better is your chance when
you see a dark brown or yellowish gray line fade
in the darkness as you are travelling along. The
heavier the windfalls the faster the elk seems to
go, and the more the necessity of his rising into
sight to pass over the fallen timber as the deer
does, the more he fails to swing high enough to
give you a shot from the saddle. Vainly you
spring from the horse to scramble on a log so as
to get high enough. By the time you are there
the brown or gray line is low, or perhaps nothing
is in sight but a white patch that makes a beauti-
ful target if it would only stay in view long enough
for you to raise the rifle.

Yet this is the very sublimity of forest, draped
in silence so broad and impressive that you can
hear the distant footfall of your game, and still
farther off hear the crack of brush as it leaves
you forever. Not the bark of a squirrel or the
chirp of a bird may break the silence for hours.
All the conditions of the hunt are here, nature
at her grandest and wildest, with about all that
you call success depending on your own skill
and endurance.

Such is much of the country you will now find

184 The Elk of the Pacific Coast

in the lower part of the Coast Range of Oregon,
but you will not find it so much more easy in
those portions of the Cascades where the elk
yet lingers. The greater part of this range is
more easy to penetrate with a horse on account
of the greater abundance of grass. Over much
of it one can also go with a wagon. There you
may find the deer in all the abundance you wish;
but to find the greater elk you must go to where
the streams that drain the mighty western face
break in deep gorges from the upper slopes.
There again you will find the land rising on
end to meet you, the forest shaggy with bristling
trees whose tops interlace into eternal shade,
torn and ragged hillsides where the fallen logs
almost slide at your touch, jagged rocks that
topple over depths so blue that you dare not
step on them to look for your game. Many a
band of elk yet lingers around the head waters
of these streams, and with the increasing vege-
tation, caused by stopping the fires in the forest
reserve, they will all increase as the years go on
and interest in game protection proceeds at its
present pace. But even if you should fail to see
one, you will be well rewarded, for only on this
northern coast can Nature duplicate such charms
as she here spreads along the path of him who
loves her for her own sake instead of a pair of
horns to fasten on a wall.

The Elk of the Pacific Coast 185

Perhaps, though, you are not adapted to climb-
ing such rough hillsides and scrambling over such
great windfalls on slopes so steep that you know
not where you may land on the other side. Well,
in the deep silence where the redwoods have not
yet felt the hand of man, you may find smoother
slopes and forest aisles that reach farther with-
out a bend, with vaster columns of fluted brown
supporting the great canopy of green that shuts
out nearly all the sun. The dim, religious light
that sleeps in this great temple is well suited
to set off to the utmost the rich colors of the elk,
but you must have keen eyes to see. If you
have never been here before, you will naturally
be looking for something the size of a horse on
the open plain, with the additional advantage of
horns so large that they will sparkle afar through
the gloom. Little do you imagine that you cannot
see more than the tips of them, and these tips so
lost in the great jumble of dead branches, which
twist in a thousand directions, that your eye
might rest on them without recognition. Even
in the more open places ferns rise upon ferns to
hide the legs of the tallest elk, while salal and
a score of other shrubs which flourish in the
shade are so rank that a patch of hair is the
most you can see. And if your game starts to
run, you will see little more than a succession
of such patches moving in a panorama of sur-

186 The Elk of the Pacific Coast

prising shortness. Yet the feeling of awe which
overcomes you, with the consciousness that the
great game is all about you, staring at you, per-
haps, over the very next log, and that nothing
in nature is at fault but your eyes, makes the
hunt a continuous pleasure, though it is very
likely to end about where it began.

And thus it will be as you go farther into the
north, where the increasing rainfall makes the
woods more sombre. More elk, for a while, at
least; but also more ferns, higher salal, ranker
vine-maple, more expansive salmon berries, and
trees standing even more like brothers, with
dimmer light falling from the sky through the
damper air and more sombre shades in these
shorter corridors of the forest. With the increas-
ing rain come increasing wet spots that may bog
your horse, an increase in the dampness on the logs
that may let you slide off into some mire covered
with a growth of ferns so rank you could not see
it. Waindfalls with great tangles of moss adding to
the confusion of the vines multiply, fallen trees
piled high on each other and becoming all the time
more difficult to go around as well as to cross over,
confront you, until at last the obstacles are such
that the best horse is a burden to you. It is not
much farther to where you are a burden to your-
self, where you could not see an elk if there were
a score within a few rods, where you would not

The Elk of the Pacific Coast 187

attempt to alone pack out the finest horns in the
woods, and where you might never be able to find
them again if you left them to go for help. Im-
mense areas of such ground yet remain that for
ages will remain the nursery of the elk; but on
the great plains and lower slopes of California, as
well as in the more open woods of the Coast
Range and the beautiful upper slopes of most of
the Cascades, he is gone probably forever. For,
while easily tamed and restored in a park, there
will always be too much shooting on_ these
grounds to suit him, with too many hunters
who will evade the law often enough to make it
a little too human for the taste of this fastidious
deer.

Nothing can be done with the elk by fire hunt-
ing, because he moves so little at night, and he
cares so little for salt on this coast that a salt
lick is of no use. Driving with hounds, as with
deer, is quite out of the question, so that the
hunting is narrowed down to still-hunting. Deer
care little for dogs, but have a mortal fear of the
sly step of man, and the elk has even greater
fear. It would be strange, therefore, if still-hunt-
ing, which so quickly changes the habits of the
deer and even the antelope, should not have the
same effect on the elk. Deer soon learn to feed
entirely by night where it is too dangerous by
day, as in a vineyard or alfalfa patch, and even

188 The Elk of the Pacific Coast

when on native feed learn to stop sooner and go
much farther back into rougher ground to lie
down. The elk is naturally a day feeder, though,
like the cow and the horse, he can eat at night if
he chooses. It has not taken him long to learn
that it is far safer to breakfast before daylight
and get out of the way, to go without lunch and
dine very late, so as to remain during the day
stowed away in some wild place where no man is
likely to intrude. He used to love the open sand-
bar of a stream to lie on during the day in order
to escape flies or mosquitoes. He now finds it
safer to bear a few flies for the sake of keeping
out of sight. So he used to lie in the! summae
times, to harden his horns, as the old hunters
say. But now he is an ardent admirer of shade,
and cares little for sunshine except on cold days
or frosty mornings. And even then you had
better spend most of your time looking for him
in shade, that will hide his coat better than sun-
shine. But he has not yet learned the advantage
of silence, as has the quail of this coast in the
last few years, so that his shrill whistle of defiance
to some rival bull still pierces the depths of the
forest in rutting time, and gives even the tyro the
best of opportunities for his undoing.

It seems an incongruity in nature that this
grand deer, which appeals so vividly to our im-
agination, and in everything imposing easily sur-

The Elk of the Pacific Coast 189

passes all the antlered tribes of earth, should fall
such an easy victim to the tenderfoot just at the
time when it would seem the most easy to escape.
But the elk often fails just where the deer begins
to show his wisdom. With the deer the hunter's
real troubles generally begin when he is within a
few hundred feet of his game, but with the elk
they generally end at such a point. Too often,
when one simple twist around a big log would
take him out of sight, and when a dozen little
rough gulches, such as shelter him so well when
lying down, are there ready to engulf his fleeting
form, he will stand like a goose and await the
hunter’s lead. And then, instead of running away
like the stricken deer, the elk often stands to see
if there is any more coming. More easy to hit
and more easy to kill, ignorant of the many ways
in which the deer throws his pursuer off his
bleeding trail, the elk is quite apt to be too easy
a victim for almost any one with a good rifle
who can once get within fair shooting distance.
But just there is the rub. While the elk has
learned little about handling himself in the im-
mediate presence of man, he knows better than
all other game how to beat him with distance.
And in this he improves each year, although he
may not see a man or hear the sound of a rifle
in all that time. It seems a wonderful intuition,
with which he is gifted even more than the bear.

190 The Elk of the Pacific Coast

The elk of California, especially on the southern
valley, is a trifle smaller than that of the farther
north and a little smaller than the elk of the
Rocky Mountains. But the difference is not
very great. A good bull stands about fourteen
hands high, or about the height of the native
horse. Farther north, larger ones are found, and
some of the grandest horns ever seen have come
out of the deep dark woods, where one might
suppose nature would make the horns smaller so
as to enable the animal to thread the heavy brakes
with greater ease. Like elk elsewhere, they vary
very much in the horns, as also in size, weight,
and proportions. It is doubtful if any California
elk ever weighed over eight hundred pounds
unless unusually fat, while the majority run much
below that.

The general colors are the same as those of elk
elsewhere, with the same general build. In fact,
he has suffered less from change of habitat than
almost any of our large game animals. His natural
history, times, and mode of breeding, and all else,
are much the same as elsewhere, except where
persecution has compelled him to abandon some
of his old habits that might lead him into trouble,
such as spending too much time wallowing in
mudholes, standing around in open water, lying
out in the open in large droves, migrating on
old well-worn trails, etc. He seems to know more

The Elk of the Pacific Coast 191

about the white man than any other animal, and
when you consider the space that must now be
traversed to insure an acquaintance with one in
his wild state, the elk of the Pacific Coast is prob-
ably the hardest game animal to secure by any
means of hunting.

CHAPTER If

THE MULE-DEER

THE range of the mule-deer on the western
slope of our country is far more varied than that
of any other deer. Not only does he at times go
well into the range of the blacktail, and at all
times find himself at home in the heavy timber
or dense brush apparently essential to the exist-
ence of the blacktail, but he is equally at home
on great open tablelands and even plains where
one would expect to find only the antelope.
The sole condition is enough gullies, piles of
rock, patches of timber or brush, hiding-places
of almost any kind, or ground rough enough to
enable him to dodge pursuit. And even these
do not have to be so very plenty or very close to-
gether. He has not the slightest fear of desola-
tion or aridity, and on the worst of deserts, where
many a man and horse, and even the tough
donkey, have lain down to rise no more, the
mule-deer may be found happy and fat. All he
needs is enough rough ground and cactus. Mes-

192

The Mule-deer 193

quite beans may in places help round out his
sleek sides, while mescal and lechuga may relieve
the monotony of his diet; but if he can get
enough prickly pear, he will make you as fine
venison as you ever saw, and in places be so
abundant as to make fine hunting for those that
can endure the heat and dryness. You need not
trouble yourself in the slightest with the question
of how a deer can live where there is no water
for many a league. All he wants is the juicy
lobe of the prickly pear. This he eats, spines and
all, though they are sharp as the finest needles
and strong enough to go through an ordinary
boot-top, if you kick a little too hard. Strangely
enough, these needles do not seem to hurt the
mouth or tongue, though they can be plainly seen
glistening in the contents of the deer’s stomach
when opened. They are then softened, but such
cannot be the case when they are swallowed.
When on this food deer not only can go without
water, but often go without it when it is perfectly
convenient. On the great Mexican desert known
as the Bolson de Mapimi, I hunted for several
weeks in 1884, stopping at a railroad station
twenty-five miles from anywhere, and known to be
twenty-five miles from any other water. Several
hundred feet from the station the leakage from
the water cars of the railroad made a shal-
low pond some fifty feet long and a dozen wide.

194 Deer of the Pacific Coast

To the leeward of this fresh tracks of deer could
be found almost any morning, all near enough to
smell the water, but not one of them going to it.
I had plenty of other most positive proof that the
deer there, as well as the antelope, did not go to
water, though the days were hot enough to make
a man want water as much as in midsummer.
For many a league there was no green feed ex-
cept some of the varieties of cactus, and every
deer and antelope that I opened in this vicinity
was filled with it. The same is true in parts of
Sonora and in much of Lower California (Mexico).
In the latter there are large areas abounding in
deer as fat as you could wish, yet where you will
have great trouble to find water for camp. And
where you do find water such ground is often the
finest in the world to hunt on after you under-
stand the peculiarities of the desert. You can
learn to love the desert as well as the timber.

In California I never knew deer eat cactus but
once. That was in a year of severe drouth, and
the only fat deer I saw that year was a buck that
was full of our thorniest cactus. Here their fa-
vorite food is the leaf of the live-oak or live-oak
brush, which is almost invariably found in them.
The evergreen leaves of the wild lilac, wild cherry
and buckthorn, with the lucerne and wild buck-
wheat which robe much of the hills, the moun-
tain-mahogany, and some of the sumacs, they also

The Mule-deer 195

eat. I have never known them eat hay as the
Virginia deer will sometimes do when very hun-
gry, and they rarely touch any of the alfileria,
burr-clover, or other of the nutritious fodder
plants of which cattle are here sofond. But they
will eat alfalfa and nibble growing grain — prob-
ably because they think they are doing mischief,
this deer being the master of his tribe in that
line.

When I first came to California in 1875, I
heard much talk of a huge burro (donkey) deer
that lived on the desert slope of the main chain
of the Sierra Nevada, which continues all the way
down through the Mexican territory of Lower
California. I afterward saw several and was in-
clined to believe them different from those on the
western slope. Later I became convinced that
it was a case of bad observation, and that abnor-
mally large specimens of the mule-deer are found
through its entire range. Though my deer-hunt-
ing reaches over thirty-five years, I never actually
weighed one until last year, 1901, when we hap-
pened to stop where there were scales, with a big
buck just killed. Without the entrails or shanks
it weighed one hundred and sixty pounds. The
fat plainly showed it had fallen off a little, and a
month earlier was probably ten pounds heavier.
He probably weighed as he stood full two hun-
dred pounds and probably weighed two hundred

196 Deer of the Pacific Coast

and ten the first of July, which is the climax of
fatness in most animals in California. This was
a fair, average big buck such as most people
would guess two hundred and twenty-five pounds
dressed. I have seen several that would weigh
something more, but for one such there are a
dozen that will not dress one hundred and twenty.
’ The largest I ever shot was in Durango, Mexico,
and it was plainly larger and fatter than this one.

Most any one would have taken it for a differ-
ent deer, but it was identical with the common
deer of southern California.

But on the desert side of the mountains in
northern California is found what is called the
“mule-tailed deer,” a mule-deer so different from
the common one that it is probably correct to
consider it another variety. This deer will aver-
age larger than the mule-deer of the south,
though it is doubtful if any will exceed some of
the specimens found at times along the whole
lower coast. This mule-tailed deer may have
occasionally straggled to the southern deserts
and given rise to the idea of another deer. Or
the confusion of names and the extra large bucks
sometimes found among the common mule-deer
may account for it. I have never known the
“mule-tailed” deer to reach the coast or interior
valleys of California, and the only one known
west of the Sierra Nevada and south of the

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RANGE OF BLACK-TAIL DEER
(ODOCOILEUS COLUMBIANUS

AND SUBSPECIES)
By Dr. C. Hart Merriam

BORMAY & CO.,NiYs

The Mule-deer 197

central part of the state is the common mule-
deer. 7

On the other hand, it is quite certain that far
down in Lower California is a very small specimen
of the mule-deer that occasionally reaches into
California. Though I have never seen it, I have
seen its antlers, and know of three being killed
a hundred miles north of the Mexican line. The
largest, a four-year-old buck in good condition,
weighed only fifty pounds, and the next largest,
a barren doe and fat, weighed but forty. This
deer hardly ever comes out of the very heaviest
brush. It is quite an accident to see one at all,
and little is known of its habits. It is so small
that it cannot be mistaken for the common deer,
and there can be no mistake about a set of full
antlers such as I have seen in Lower California.
But it is too rare to hunt.

Over all this range the common mule-deer is
found, from coast to mountain top, in all sorts of
cover and absence of cover, so long as there is
enough rough ground for which he can steer
if trouble arises. Though a clumsy-looking ani-
mal compared with the blacktail or the Virginia
deer, the mule-deer is still full of grace and
beauty. His awkwardness is only when unsus-
picious, at which time deer and antelope gener-
ally lack the elegant lines they have when looking
for danger. The ears, eight inches long and

198 Deer of the Pacific Coast

seven wide, that a moment ago looked so stupid
when they were thrown back and the animal had
its head down, suddenly round out to a graceful
oval the minute they are thrown forward in quest
of danger, and seem not a whit too large, even in
the fawn, on which they are almost as large as on
the adult. The angularity of a moment ago gives
sudden place to flowing lines that are pretty even
in a poor deer and charming on a fat one.

Still more surprising is the change when the
mule-deer concludes that danger is imminent.
Though he knows right well how to canter, and
can lay himself to the ground in dead run like a
horse if necessary, he seems to enjoy leaping high,
as if to tempt your fire, and for this he prefers
the bouncing gait. All four hoofs strike the
ground with one far-sounding thump which sends
it aloft much higher than the common leap of
the Virginia deer. The feet are gathered closely
up as it rises, held so till on the descent, when
they are again thrown downward like steel springs
to spurn the ground. This makes a gait that is
exceedingly pretty, though on principle much
more tiresome than the lower loping pace of
other deer. The animal is all the time throwing
itself higher than is needed, thus lengthening the
time between the points of striking ground with-
out increasing the distance between them. The
consequence is that, because it will not let itself

The Mule-deer 199

out to a dead run until pretty well tired with the
other pace, a good dog can overtake a mule-deer
on open ground much more quickly ‘than the
Virginia deer.

But it is not necessary to squander sympathy on
this account. The deer rarely strays from rough
ground more than enough to encourage the dog
at the start. The minute he is among brush and
rocks the sympathy is all needed by the dog. If
there is anything in the shape of brush that this
deer cannot smash or twist through without ap-
parent delay to his rapid foot, I have not yet seen
it. The chaparral of southern California is wholly
unique, that of the northern mountains being mere
oak openings compared with most of it. Manza-
nita, scrub-oak, thorny lilac, adenostama, cercocar-
pus, and mountain-mahogany, with laurel, choke-
cherry and baccharis, stiff and unyielding, with
fifty times the number of twigs and branches
needed for lusty life, all are trying to strangle
each other with a myriad arms, beginning the
strife often at a point where a man would have
to crawl to get through and sometimes rising
fifteen feet in the struggle. This makes a vest
of evergreen that rolls for miles over hill and dale,
with shining boulders projecting here and there,
and groves of live-oak massed in the heads of
little gulches or engirdling some tiny meadow.
So dense is the mass of green and so small the

200 Deer of the Pacific Coast

shades that the surface looks like velvet, here
brightly green where the sun strikes it, there
darkly blue where it sleeps in shade, but generally
a mass of sparkling light from the great number
of very smallleaves. But the boulders that glisten
above it are nothing to those that lie below, and
in its natural state it is about the hardest com-
bination that man or dog is ever likely called to
encounter.

Such is the chosen home of this deer, although
he loves the heavy timber of the mountains and
the dense jungles of the river bottoms quite as
well as any other deer. The only possible chance
a few years ago was to catch the game outside of
this, and even then it took a deadly rifle to make
sure of covering. For if the deer once got into
that heavy brush, a few yards of attempted track-
ing were generally enough for you, and if the day
were hot a few feet would often do. But there
was much of this that was low enough, so you
could see the head or even the back of a deer,
and from an early day much of the heavier stuff
was burned off, with openings of different sizes
here and there on which one could see almost
the whole of the body.

The most interesting deer-hunting on this coast
used to be on the more open portions of such
ground and around the patches of chaparral, while
the heavy stuff that had been swept by fire, when

The Mule-deer 201

not so dry as to consume the stubs too much, was
the grandest of all places to see this deer perform.
Other deer leaping through the wildest windfalls
are but an approach to the skill with which this
mule-deer defied both rifle and dog. On almost
any rough ground and especially up hill, common
dogs are soon willing to resign; but it is in burnt
chaparral, where black stubs that are all the stiffer
for being burnt curl upward from six to eight feet
and almost dense enough for a cornfield, with
enough granite boulders among the rows to rep-
resent giant pumpkins, that this deer exhibits
best. Through this he riots with his loftiest
jumps and most erratic twists. The sticks he
sweeps so gayly aside throw back the largest dog,
many deflect the best-aimed bullet, while the ever
changing curve from high to low and from side
to side leave you wondering where you are to aim.
Nothing in all my field experience was ever quite
so interesting as being one of a party posted on
the ridges around such a brushy basin, each one of
us emptying the whole magazine of his repeater at
a two-hundred-pound buck in wild career through
the middle of it, and half a dozen “deer dogs”
led by a great Scotch deerhound of tremendous
speed struggling vainly in his rear; yet the quarry,
dashing sunlight from his glittering antlers at the
farther edge, skipped gayly up a gulch of rocky
stairs from which the last bullet sung on high a

202 Deer of the Pacific Coast

despairing tenor to the last yelp of the bruised
and breathless pack. |

From 1875 to 1885 I lived where deer were so
plentiful that going out to find fresh tracks was
like going to the corner grocery. In the greater
part of the section there were no hunters but my-
self, and deer so abundant that I made my own
game laws, with no one to protest. Compelled to
spend most of my time in the hills to regain lost
health, I had little to do but study nature; and
manya deer have I tracked up without a gun,
and many a one have I let go unshot at simply
because I did not want it, enjoying the hunt just
about the same. In this way I knew many a deer
nearly as well as if he were hanging under the
tree at the house, for I rarely troubled those near
by, but kept them for emergencies, short hunts,
and hunts without a gun. Educated on the wary
Virginia deer, I at first felt nothing but contempt
for a deer that one can get a shot at with boots
on and stiff overalls scratching the dry brush.
But time soon gave me a high respect for the
mule-deer; and it has been constantly growing
as the animal keeps pace with modern guns and
ammunition.

Every one who has hunted deer much some-
times wonders if the animal has not a sixth sense.
So often when you have the wind just right, are
certain you are making no noise, while still more

The Mule-deer 203

certain you are out of sight behind some ridge,
and just when you are sure you have the game
in your hand, you find the tracks of its speedy
disappearance. No matter how softly you have
lowered your moccasined foot through the snow,
or how carefully you have eased off every twig
along your course that could scrape on the softest
cloth, or how carefully you have kept the wind in
your face, out of sight and even off the trail most
of the time to avoid the danger of the deer’s
watching that track, — you find it suddenly gone;
jumped, too, so far away that you could not even
hear its bounding feet on the frozen ground or
catch the slightest glimpse of its rapid flight.
Such disappointments make one love deer-hunt-
ing more than any other kind, and the mule-deer
of this coast has a goodly store of them in hand
for any one who will follow him long enough.
One who has been out only a few times may
stumble over a blockhead, of which the propor-
tion is much greater than among Virginia deer.
But one who hunts on the same ground long
enough to know almost every individual deer, and
notes to-day the tracks of yesterday and the day
before, as well as those of the last hour, will be
much surprised to learn how many deer have
slipped away from him without his suspect-
ing it.

In addition to this mysterious sense, their ears

204 Deer of the Pacific Coast

are as keen as those of any deer, and their knowl-
edge of the scent of a man I have found fully
developed in fawns on ground that I knew posi-
tively had not known the step of man since their
birth. Though their eyes are dull for an object
at rest, they have that same wonderful quickness
to detect motion which makes the hunting of
other deer so difficult. I have seen one watch
the motion of my companion on a ridge so far off
that the sharpest eyes of man could hardly say
with certainty what it was. And I have seen
scores of them jump and run from their beds at
the sight of my head rising slowly over a ridge
two hundred yards away, while the flash of a rifle
on the shoulder will send many a one flying at
twice that distance.

This deer is apt at first to excite only your
contempt by his stupidity in lying still until you
are very near him and then showing himself.
But you will soon find this the exception, and for
every one you get in that way, several dozen
escape you by close hiding. For in that respect
this deer is a master. From a distance I once
saw one enter a bit of isolated brush of not over
an acre and a quarter in extent. I did not want
it, but did want to see it run. First I stood on
a slope some feet above and threw rocks in, but
nothing moved. Then I went into the brush
with the same result, going all through it, making

The Mule-deer 205

much noise, and kicking here and there. Then
I circled it, but there was no track going out,
while the one going in was plain enough; and
I had been all the time in such plain sight that
the game could not have gone out without my
seeing. Then I tried tracking the deer around
in the brush. The tracks multiplied all the time,
showing plainly that the beast was sneaking
around in the cover. After spending about an
hour in the cover and an hour on the hillside
above, waiting for the deer to move, I gave up.
If this is not shrewdness, what is? The amount
or quality of the noise you make does not change
the case in the slightest. You may sometimes
start one by getting to the windward, but gener-
ally not, for when the deer is playing this game
it knows perfectly well that you are a man, and a
man that will finally get tired. Often, instead of
sneaking, they will lie still until you almost tread
on them and then dash into a little gulch or
around some rock or through a bunch of dense
brush that gives you not a second of time to
shoot, and then they are gone forever. Several
times I have been close enough to breathe the
dust raised from the dry ground by their plung-
ing feet. A friend riding along a hillside trail in
dense brush one day, just ahead of me, saw one
lying under a manzanita with head down and
eyes up watching him. As his rifle was lying

206 Deer of the Pacific Coast

across the saddle in his lap he just tipped it over
and fired. His horse sprung from under him so
quickly that my horse almost trod on him as he
rolled over the ground, but he bagged the game,
and its coat was blackened with the powder. They
also drop their heads and so crouch in low brush,
that a very large buck can almost sneak out of
sight in a good potato patch. When you have
been taken in a few times in this way, your respect
for the animal increases rapidly.

And it increases still more when this deer starts
in full career, for there is no more magnificent
target for the rifle than when he concludes that
hiding may be a failure and that flight is safer.
Where the chaparral is high he may run through
without bounding above it. But where it is about
six feet, or even seven, he seems to take special
pleasure in drawing your fire by swinging full
above it where entirely unnecessary. This makes
the deer’s course a line of glistening curves on
which it is very difficult to make calculation,
especially when he works into the combination
a new twist to one side or the other at almost
every spring, beside varying the height of every
leap. Asarule your sole reliance in such case
is speed of fire. On open ground you can make
calculations on the up-and-down motion as well
as on the forward — that is, sometimes — and fire
every shot as you should, as if it were your last.

The Mule-deer 207

But in heavy brush every leap is liable to be the
last, for at any moment the game drops out of
sight and sneaks away, or goes off on a low trot
with head down, or even breaks into a low run,
in all of which he is as perfect as in his lofty
bounding. Keeping a string of empty shells
hot from the ejector of the repeater revolving
in whizzing curves above your head is ruinous
to good shooting, but in many cases it is the only
chance. And when the firing pin clicks dead on
the empty barrel and the brush closes forever on
the last curve of shining fur, I never feel badly,
for if there is anything I love it is game that
knows how to escape. Such work should be
prepared for by much fine target practice off-
hand, as this snap shooting tends to destroy
that extreme fineness of sight and touch on the
trigger, on which in the long run success with the
rifle most depends.

This deer is probably the most mischievous of
his race. Most all deer eat turnips, beans, and a
few other things, and occasionally nip grain. But
the mule-deer will spoil from thirty to fifty of the
largest bunches of grapes in a night, and later in
the season will finish off the leaves and shoots,
besides cleaning up the new wood on deciduous
fruit trees. Apples, Japanese persimmons, pears,
quinces, almost anything in reach, he spoils with
a single bite and passes on to another, as he does

208 Deer of the Pacific Coast

with a bunch of grapes. Bean vines, melons,
squashes, and many other things he harvests often
more completely than the settler would if he had
a chance.

Few things in California have been more amus-
ing than the efforts of many a settler near the
base of the hills to reimburse his loss by killing
one of these mischievous deer for the table. After
deciding to have some venison of his own fatten-
ing, and buying a new rifle with plenty of shine
on it, he discovers that the deer which people tell
him are on foot morning and evening in the hills,
don’t exist around his place. This is true mainly
when they are living on the native feed of the
hills. When they are raiding fine raisin grapes,
they wait until night has drawn her heaviest cur-
tains over the eyes of the tenderfoot. By the
time it is light enough to read on the bare ground
the record of their banquet, they are far up the
hillside again. Being well dined, they have no
use for any of the native feed they got along with
while the grapes were growing. They have noth-
ing farther to do but lie down in the heaviest
brush, and smile at the sound of heavy boots
scraping and stumbling up the hill. If the
breath of the owner of the boots holds out for
the thousand feet or more of ascent generally
necessary, they smile still more as he puffs and
pants around in the chaparral, which he reaches

The Mule-deer 209

about the time the sun blazes high through the
clear, dry air of autumn and before a particle of
the daily sea breeze has risen. And little more
does he see if he goes there in the evening to
await the deer’s rising and coming out on the
open ground. Raisin grapes are very substantial,
being both food and drink, and after a night’s
banquet on them, early rising for the deer the
next evening would be quite absurd.

After returning from the hills a few times, hot,
hungry, and disgusted, without seeing a hair or
hearing the sound of a hoof, he concludes to
watch for them in the vineyard. The seven-foot
fence he has built around it they leap like birds,
or if there is an opening in it large enough to let
a decent dog through, the largest buck will go
through it or under it, antlers and all, especially if
it is of barbed wire. This is their especial delight,
and a deer will go several yards to find a good
place it can use as a backscratcher rather than
lose its advantage by jumping it. As nearly every
kind of trap, noose, or pitfall fails to stop the
marauder, the owner thinks he has a certainty in
the enclosure.

But even on open ground game is very hard to
see at night and still harder to shoot, especially
by one not used to it, and deer see almost as well
as by day and can smell and hear even better.
While some will not enter the vineyard at all,

210 Deer of the Pacific Coast

others care nothing for the presence of man, and
come so near that he can hear them eating.
Still, he cannot see them, for the grapevines are
much higher and the deer much lower than they
seem when seen apart. Even by moonlight, when
often most sure of success, the hunter is often
deceived the worst. Although I have seen many
a man try this watching, I never knew but one to
succeed. He did it by digging a pit in the
ground where it commanded a view of a knoll
against the sky. During the season he managed
in this way to get six deer, and in the operation
his vineyard of ten acres was mostly destroyed.
Many would imagine that the concentration of
deer at such a place would make the surrounding
hills fine for hunting; but unless you are on the
hilltop, a mile or more away, by daylight your
chances will be slight, and you will discover that
there are several other directions they can take
as well as the one you have chosen for them.
Another way is to track them out, find where
they went, and go at evening to wait for them to
rise; but this is slow also, as the settler found,
for when thus feeding the deer seems perfectly
aware that he is doing mischief, and appears to
know that somebody seeks recompense.

An apparent confirmation of this is the entirely
different action of the same deer when they quit
feeding on the cultivated place and resort to

The Mule-deer 211

nature’s orchard. When acorns are falling, deer
go to the groves of live-oaks in the little valleys
and canyons along the base of the hills, where the
feed is concentrated, instead of spending time
with the scattered trees along the hills. But the
very same deer that would not go near the vine-
yard until after night, and went out before day-
light to lie down at once in the heaviest cover,
now stray from the hills into these groves as early
as four o’clock in the afternoon and sometimes an
hour earlier. And in the morning they lounge
about as late even as ten o'clock, and nearly
always as late as nine, nibbling acorns and stand-
ing around in the sunny spots before moving off
to the hills. Those deer that went into the hills
earlier went slowly, did not go very far, and
lingered long on foot before lying down for the
day.

The hunting in some of these groves used to
be the easiest on earth. Many were like old Eng-
lish parks, filled with oaks that were old settlers
before the falling of the acorn that made the keel
of the Mayflower. In many places they covered
the ground with almost solid shade, with the
ground nearly always rolling enough to enable
one to keep out of sight, generally with a gully or
ravine winding through it just deep enough to
permit one to travel with ease on some old cattle
trail, and just low enough to hide, yet allow you

212 Deer of the Pacific Coast

to see over each bank. As the breeze from sea
by day or land at night can nearly always be pre-
dicted to a certainty, and follows the run of the
water, there was nothing to do but lounge through
one of these parks, to most of which you could
easily drive, even in the earliest days. For years
I did most all my reading and writing under a
natural arbor of wild grape in one of these, about
a quarter of a mile from the house, with others
equally wild within a short ride. Nothing was
plainer than that the deer well knew the difference
between them and the vineyard or garden. They
showed no more watchfulness than when in the
hills, and often seemed actually more careless, as
in some places they would spend the day there
lying under the trees just like cattle.

Persecution and the rapid settlement of the
country have not only reduced the numbers of
the mule-deer very greatly, but decidedly changed
his habits. He no longer spends the day in the
sumac of the lower hills, or lies beneath the sweep-
ing sycamore in the edge of the valley. No more
will you find the big buck under the heteromeles
on the hillside that looks out upon the distant
sea, or under the grapevine in the river bottom,
or even in the dense chaparral, unless it is well up
the mountain’s breast and in its roughest brakes.
Less often do they come to the vineyard or orchard
even in the darkest night, or if they do it is to go

The Mule-deer 213

still higher up and farther back into the hills than
ever before. The day when one could wander
about at random among our hills is past. For
any approach to certainty one must now locate
the general whereabouts of the game by its tracks
—no easy matter when we are limited to bucks,
a law we now respect because of its rigorous
necessity. By the time this is done it is apt to
be too late to find his especial whereabouts of that
day. The only way is to be there at or near day-
light the next morning, on the highest ridges that
will give you a view of the situation. Or you
may stay and wait until evening brings them again
to their feet. But there is some danger they will
have discovered you, and you will be quite certain
not to see one. Being there in the morning early
enough often means camping very near, and some-
times on the high ridges without water, so that
the pursuit of the mule-deer is no longer the joy
of the tenderfoot who wants to kill a deer. An
old fool deer yet remains here and there that the
tenderfoot may stumble over, but the “ picnic”
part of the hunting is gone forever. But he who
loves hunting for its own sake and not for count
or heads enjoys the chase as much as ever. The
mule-deer will outlast all his enemies, for there is
too much wild country that can never be cleared.
Yet much of the future hunting will be in pre-
serves, and most of it mere murder; for the mule-

214 Deer of the Pacific Coast

deer when not troubled becomes disgustingly
tame, Just as he becomes dangerously familiar as
a pet. He is the worst of his race in this respect,
and the baby fawn that seems so innocent will
butt you over or strike you with its feet before it
is half grown.

I have not yet been able to discover that perse-
cution makes this deer watch its back track before
being started. Even after being started it is not
so particular as the Virginia in this respect, and
it is much more easy to see again and even to
get a good shot at, though as a rule it does not
pay to try. He will often stop on the upward
slope of the next hill after running over a ridge,
and often, if he is running then, a ball that ploughs
the dry dirt ahead of him will turn or daze him
long enough to give you a shot or two. So that
if you are near the crest of a ridge when one runs
over, it will generally pay to run to the top of it.

In rainy weather the movements of this deer
are irregular after he once begins to travel. Dur-
ing a storm he generally moves little, keeping in
heavy brush about the heads of deep gulches or
sheltering rocks. But after the rain is over he
will go almost anywhere and travel farther than
before, so that tracking by your knowledge of
his habits is much more difficult than when the
ground is dry. In the dry summer of southern
California his habits are very regular when not

The Mule-deer 215

too much disturbed. If you find a fresh track
in the morning leading up hill from a spring you
may be quite certain he is not going down hill
again that morning, at least not very far, and may
be quite confident of finding his track along the
upper slope. If not, then it is pretty good evi-
dence that he has lain down somewhere on the
face of the hill. The same when he has left
feeding-ground at the base of the hill. If the
hill is not too small, he is not likely to go
down the other side for the sake of going up
another hill. So, if not bothered too much, most
of his days will be passed in an orbit of little
over three miles in diameter, and often much
less. This is generally around some common
centre, like a good spring or feeding-ground, or
extra good hiding-place into which to run. On
this area the deer will often not move over a mile
in a day, swinging from one side to the other,
spending two or three days here and two or three
there. You need not look for them to-day where
you started them yesterday, but in a few days
they will be there again or somewhere very near.
For on the greater part of the range there is no
migration of this deer to speak of. It will move
off the higher mountains down the sides when the
snow is deep, but that is not far. And once ina
while deer move into some locality from a dis-
tance, and also become scarce for a time. But

216 Deer of the Pacific Coast

such things are at long intervals and irregular.
So acorns and a vineyard or orchard may con-
centrate them, but they have not come far, and as
a rule their movements are influenced little by
the question of food or weather.

In the high mountains the period of seclusion
seems to last longer than along the coast. As
late as the middle of July, at four thousand feet,
I have hunted for ten days where I could find
plenty of fresh tracks at daylight around the
edges of small patches of brush of only a few
acres each, where I could easily circle and find
positive proof that they had not gone out, yet I
could be there at the first glimmer of dawn, and
again at the last hour or so of daylight, on a com-
manding position, with a good glass, yet see never
a sign of fur or horns. This is often bad enough
along the lower levels, but does not last as long
as in the mountains. The length of the breeding
season probably has something to do with it, for
spotted fawns may be seen in the mountains as
late as July, while at the coast the spots are off
early in June.

Driving with hounds to runways is even less of
a success with the mule-deer here than with the
blacktail in the North. While he likes an easy
road when undisturbed as well as any, he cares
not where he goes when alarmed: plunges into
the thickest masses of rock or brush, or both; up

The Mule-deer 217

hill or down is all the same to him, here clatter-
ing down the rocky bottom of a steep wash, there
skipping gayly from side to side of a steep gully
up which the dog can hardly scramble, thrown
back by the brush in the bottom and on the sides.
You may run the same deer off the same hill a
dozen times, and he will take a different course
every time. It is, therefore, too difficult to estab-
lish runways even by trial. The dryness of the
air and the heat which impair the scent of a dog
after a short run are also greater than in the
North, while water to refresh the dogs is much
more scarce. A two-mile run, which sets the
average dog thinking, is nothing for the deer
even with the lofty leaps that are so tiresome.
At three miles the yelp of the dog becomes a
wail of despair, and the longest run I ever knew
was but four miles when the dog gave up. This
buck slipped away in fine style, though very fat,
but a few weeks afterward I found him miserably
emaciated, probably from the run in the heat.
Had the dog been as fat as the deer, he would
not have lasted half a mile.

Still there are places where dogs may be used
to advantage, such as a hill that is a mere spur
of a larger hill from which it is separated by “a
saddle.” It may have a top like a table covered
with several acres of brush with open flanks. If
this stood off alone it would be too small to have

218 Deer of the Pacific Coast

any game on it. But being part of a larger range,
it may have several deer on its top, if they are not
hunted too much. A dog need not stand high in
the “Kennel Register” to hustle the deer about
so that they will run around on the open flanks or
start to cross the saddle for the larger hill. The
same is true where brush is in scattered patches
with good openings between, or the game is in
brushy ravines with good ridges to stand on, and
similar combinations. And you need have no
compunctions against using hounds under such
circumstances, for the game will likely give you
and the dogs the most interesting experience you
ever had.

This deer is plainly a tougher animal than the
Virginia deer, and will readily carry several bullets
away into brush where you will never find him
without a good dog. I found an ounce round
‘ball with seven drams of the very strongest
powder none too effective for hunting around
the patches of heavy brush, in spite of the talk
about “spoiling all the meat,” “ ruining the hide,”
etc. Letting a wounded one alone so as to get
stiff and sick, which is so often a success with
the Virginia deer, especially in very cold weather,
is generally a failure on this deer. I have known
one go seven miles without stopping when shot a
little too far back with a Winchester .50-caliber
express, and be extremely lively the next day.

The Mule-deer 219

The surest way with a wounded one is to chase
it up as fast as possible before it finds its pace
after recovering from the first shock. For if he
once gets into heavy brush, you are quite likely
to be the permanent proprietor of the shock, espe-
cially on a hot day.

The early summer coat of the mule-deer is
yellowish tan color, which in July falls rapidly
off, leaving a fine glossy black which soon takes
a gray tinge as the hairs increase in length. The
coat becomes rapidly gray, and so continues
through the winter until late in the spring.
Black still persists along the brisket and on the
forehead, but most of the coat is a glossy, iron
gray that shines afar in the sun, and is so often
the only thing by which you can detect the
animal at a distance, that shining spots on the
landscape and especially in brush must always be
examined, no matter what their shape. With the
warm weather of late spring the gray falls rapidly
away into the yellow, which seldom lasts over
three months, while the black period is sometimes
not more than three weeks, or even less.

The antlers are, if possible, more irregular than
those of the blacktail, and afford no indication of
the deer’s age that is of value. When in the vel-
vet they seem darker than the velvet of the Vir-
ginia deer, and when out of the velvet they at
first seem more brown. Most of them are forked

220 Deer of the Pacific Coast

horns with few or no points, so that a fine pair
need not be expected. They are of all shapes,
sizes, and degrees of branching, so that no one
can say just what the average is. They start
from the bony crest of the forehead, instead of the
skin on the back of the neck, as seen in some
celebrated pictures. And, instead of lying along
the back, as some artists have them, they point
forward, so that a dog that is not pretty quick will
be impaled in a twinkling without much lowering
of the deer’s nose. The antlers are carried late
into winter, and often are not shed before the
latter part of February. The new growth begins
at once, so that by the middle of July the velvet
is generally off and the antlers trim and clean.
The mooted question of what becomes of deer’s
horns that are shed is not so difficult to answer
here. I have found them in all stages of disin-
tegration from “weathering” —the same as the
rocks. Strangely enough this takes place, as
with the rocks, even faster where there is little
or no rain than where there is plenty. On the
desert, horn is hke a plough-handle or a wagon-
tongue, only more so. Without use and without
rain they “weather” away.

In size and proportions this deer varies even
more than the Virginia. A good-sized buck
will measure six feet from tip of nose to root of
tail without special stretching out. That is

The Mutle-deer 221

about as he would stand with nose a little out-
stretched in feeding. But as deer are never as
high as they seem in pictures, he will be but
twenty inches high at the brisket. The length
of the shank of hind leg is the same, with a
girth at the shoulder of three feet ten inches for
a fat one. This makes a very handsome animal,
though its height at the top of the shoulder will
not be over forty inches. Its great elasticity and
quickness when in motion make it look larger
and far more imposing than when undergoing
measurement after death.

The tail varies greatly with the individual as
well as with the age. It is from six to eight
inches long, often so short on the largest deer as
to appear stubby. On the greater part of the
under side a narrow strip is naked, while the rest
is a warm white. In diameter it generally nar-
rows from the base to within a third or a fourth
of the end, where it suddenly widens out into a
tuft of longer hairs, mainly black. A strip of
brownish gray, or brown, runs down the top to
near the end, but most of the tuft is quite black,
while most of the rest is quite white. Being set
against a large white patch on the rump, some
ten inches wide, this black is so conspicuous that
it is not strange it has received among most hunt-
ers the name of “blacktail,’ which properly be-
longs to the Columbia deer of the North. This

222 Deer of the Pacific Coast

tail is hardly seen in running, as it is generally
carried down. And even when carried half up,
or even horizontal as it sometimes is, it is hardly
noticed like the tail of the Virginia deer, which
so strikes the eye at the first jump.

The tail of the “ mule-tailed”” deer is from one-
third to one-half longer, of about equal diameter
throughout, with no very distinct tuft, but rather
a bunch of black hairs in the end. All the rest
is a warm white, sometimes with a tawny tinge,
hairs all longer than in the tail of the other ex-
cept at the end, where they are not long enough
to form any distinct tuft. The white runs to the
under side, where there is little or no sign of a
naked stripe. Some of the color of the back
reaches an inch or two down on the upper side
of the tail. This deer has also a broader section
of white under the throat, but it has the same
black forehead, the same general expression, ears,
and shape as the other, with the same light cin-
namon on the legs, black brisket, white rump.
Sportsmen differ about its classification as a sepa-
rate variety; but there is no deer in southern
California having that kind of a tail or so much
white on the throat. It is generally supposed
a larger deer, and it is quite probable that there
are fewer small specimens among it than among
the deer of the South. But there are some in the
South as large as any deer in America that are

The Mule-deer 223

plainly of the stubby-tailed variety; and the uni-
formity of their tails is so great that the difference
between them and the tail of the other can hardly
be attributed to age or accident. All of them
are misrepresented by the great American artist.
They do not have great calf snouts, but fine black
noses, and they do not stand with their mouths
open and antlers laid back, screaming at each
other. They can do some effective fighting at
times, though half a dozen bucks may, during
rutting time, be on such friendly terms that one
who is cool can bag them all without leaving his
tracks. They do not snort as much as the Vir-
ginia deer, and when they do the snort lacks
most of the hollow whistling sound of the latter.

One seeing the feed on most of their range
would imagine that the mule-deer of the south
of California would rarely make good venison.
It is quite the reverse, and an animal entirely
devoid of fat is both tender and juicy, provided
it is not emaciated from sickness. Yearlings and
does, unless barren, rarely have any fat on them,
and the best three-year-old buck rarely has
enough to brag of. None ever get as fat as the
Virginia deer in the East, but they are all good
venison just the same. The proportion of bucks,
too, that are musky in rutting time is far less
than on the Atlantic coast. Most large deer
with necks swelled to the greatest capacity are

224 Deer of the Pacific Coast

perfectly free from it. Once in a great while
there is a very strong one, and I once had a pork
barrel ruined by trying to extract the flavor from
a big buck by pickling it. I met another once
at night that must have been fifty yards away, and
was brought to a sudden halt by the strong flavor
of muskrat coming down a little gulch on the
evening breeze. He gave a snort and ran, but
the stream of scent remained for a minute or so
longer. Such cases, however, are extremely rare,
and the deer is nearly always worth your labor.
The mule-deer of the southern coast of the Pa-
cific is a special blessing to many because he is
at his best in summer, when they can get away
from business; whereas at that time still-hunting
is almost an impossibility in the rainy lands be-
cause of the great density of the cover when the
green of summer is at its height. But still-hunt-
ing here is then about the same as in the fall, ex-
cept that the period of seclusion is not as fully
over. On the other hand, the venison is at its
fattest, while the weather is as charming for camp-
ing as one could wish and rarely too warm for
morning or evening hunting. One is not driven
to lick-watching, fire-hunting, or any of the miser-
able modes of murder resorted to at that time in
the East by those who must have a deer. But
one can here enjoy to the full that satisfaction
which results from matching one’s self with un-

The Mule-deer 226

aided wits against an animal knowing so well how
to care for itself, that when you seek it you had
better leave in camp everything in the nature of
a gillie or a guide or even your best hunting com-
panion, or you will only double the chances of its
slipping away unsuspected. And you had better
wear soft moccasins as well as in the East, and
take every other precaution consistent with cover-
ing ground enough. When you have learned him
well you will say that the mule-deer is the peer
of any game, next to the Virginia, and almost
equal to him.

Norte. — Much that applies with equal force to modes of hunting
this deer has been stated under the title of the blacktail, and could

not well be repeated without trespassing on the patience of the
reader who knows how to apply the principles.

CHAPTER 11

THE COLUMBIA BLACKTAIL

Wir the exception of a few Virginia deer in
southern Arizona, which belong really to Sonora,
the deer of the entire western slope of the con-
tinental divide has a shorter tail than the Vir-
ginia deer, with black hairs in the end. In most
of them the tail is short, with a tuft of hair, mostly
black, at the end. As the tail is not carried up,
but droops over the white rump so as to make
the black show plainly, all the deer of the Pacific
coast and the interior basin to the Rocky Moun-
tains are called the “ blacktail ” by way of distinc-
tion from the Virginia deer, which, over all that
range, is called the “ whitetail.”

But there is a plain difference between the deer
of the southern half of California and those of the
northern half. The latter inhabit the whole coast
west of the crest of the Sierra Nevada, while the
deer of the southern half run the whole length
of Lower California (Mexico). The dividing line
between the two is not easy to define, but it is a
strip of fifty to seventy miles wide about the
centre of the state. The deer of the southerm
half is called the mule-deer by those who know
the difference, and those of the north the black-

226

The Columbia Blacktail 227

tail, or Columbia blacktail when they wish to be
more particular. Beyond this belt the mule-deer
is very rare on the range of the blacktail, while
the blacktail is practically unknown on the range
of the mule-deer.

The line between their eastern and western
range is much more easy to define in the case of
the blacktail. While the mule-deer at all points
passes to the east over the crest of the Sierra
Nevada, the blacktail does not pass it to any
extent; and it is the same on the continuation of
the great range into the Cascades of Oregon. I
have found them as far east as Klamath Lake,
but this is but a few miles over the crest of the
range, the general character of the woods and
feed being the same. Eastward of that the mule-
deer only is found.

The blacktail seems to care little for open coun-
try, and is found almost entirely in timber or heavy
brush. The evergreen brush, or chaparral, that
robes many of the hills of northern California with
miles of wavy folds, is one of his favorite abodes.
While the greater part of this is too dense for the
hunter to penetrate with comfort, and too high for
him to see anything until almost upon it, there are
many openings which he can thread with ease,
many points upon which he can sit and look down
upon the dozens of acres where a pair of horns
may come surging into sight above the sea of

228 Deer of the Pacific Coast

verdure, or a curve of glistening hair may rise
and fall like the dolphin through the wave as the
deer discovers the hunter’s presence. Though
the greater number will be found in the heavy
timber which covers most of the range of this deer,
throughout the southern part of its range it will
be found from coast to mountain top in this heavy
brush almost as much as in the timbered portions.

In the mountains the blacktail roves to the
highest points on which there is soil enough to
show his footstep; and often, where there is not,
the mark where his sharp feet have scraped upon
the rock may be seen. But these tracks are made
mainly at night, and apparently the deer goes there
out of curiosity. The maker of such tracks is
hardly ever found there by daylight, nor does he
leave any bed or other sign of staying long. He
spends the day far below, where the arctic willow
nods over the bubbling spring, where the snowy
columbine gives place to the red one, where the
tiger-lily flames in the little green meadow and the
mountain-alder rears its brilliant green. But even
this is too high for most of them. For, unless
much persecuted, the majority of deer will be
found, not where the chinquapin is dwarfed by
cold to a mere mat along the ground, on the top
of which one can almost walk, but where the
sunny tinge of the golden-leaved live-oak warms
the heavy shades, where the sugar-pine bends its

The Columbia Blacktail 229

flattened crown over the tall shaft of the incense-
cedar that rises red and shaggy from the hillside
below; and even farther down where the alder
weaves arcades over the hissing brook in which
the trout begin to flash, where the call of the
mountain-quail rings along the tumbling hills, and
the wings of the dove whistle through the silvery
sheen of the fir. From there down to the foot-
hills, and in their shaggy pockets, and so on to
the very shore of the shining sea, this deer will
be found wherever there is cover enough to fur-
nish hiding.

Before the snow is deep nearly all the deer
leave the high mountains, and in the Cascades
most of them start even before the falling of any
snow that is to be permanent. They wander
down into the lower and more brushy portions
of the range, sometimes on well-defined trails,
but quite as often without any. Here, too, there
is plenty of snow on the higher hills, and most
of the deer keep in the lower flats and brushy
gorges or go on to the Coast Range. Here they
join a number of their fellows that did not go to
the mountains, but remained all summer in the
Coast Range. The principle on which only a
portion of these deer travel so regularly to the
high mountains every spring is not known. It is
plainly not for want of food, for the necessities of
breeding, to escape gnats, flies, or other such

230 Deer of the Pacific Coast

cause; because the numbers that remain are very
great, and they fare as well and keep as fat as
those that go away. In some places, as in south-
western Oregon, the number remaining is plainly
greater than those that depart, and the hunting
is better there than in the Cascades to which the
others have gone. When they return and unite
with those that have stayed, their numbers are
often very great, and on snow it is very easy to
kill several ina day. It is under such conditions
that the mighty hunters of Oregon do much of
their work. It is mainly by loafing along the
trail during the migration that “ Old Bill” So-and-
so kills three hundred a year. And “Old Pete”
What-you-call-him goes a hundred or more better
by following them to the coast, where he used
often to make his winter camp and slaughter deer
solely for the skins. As much of the migration
is during the rutting time, when the bucks are
more careless than usual, it is an easy matter for
one with the patience to sit on a log and wait,
to kill plenty of game by simply knowing the
lines of migration. And these they often narrow
up with a brush fence, along which the deer wan-
der far if undisturbed rather than leap it. Here
at an opening the butcher is often placed on a
scaffold; and the world thinks him a mighty hun-
ter because he kills so many, a wondrous shot
because he does it with the old-fashioned Win-

The Columbia Blacktail 231

chester. But in spite of all, plenty of deer are
still left on these ranges, and will be to the
end of time. There are too many million acres
of timber and brush the plough can never invade ;
and the heavy hand the law has now laid on the
game butcher, and the market-shooter, and the skin-
hunter will only tighten its grip as the years come.

As we go north from the southern part of
Oregon the timber becomes more dense with the
increasing rainfall, and the bushes whose twigs
the deer loves become more scarce in the sombre
shades. The deer does not like to go far for
feed, and likes it tender and succulent, and the
great ferns which rise out of the gloom and damp-
ness are not to his taste. The blacktail is there-
fore growing scarcer. Though still found far in
the north, it is in limited numbers, and in places
he disappears almost entirely. Over the greater
part the timber is becoming such a tangle of
fallen trees, broken limbs with spots of swampy
ground, through all which so many big ferns and
other things that love damp shades struggle up
higher than your head, that real pleasure is nearly
out of the question even if game were very abun-
dant. Feed for your horse is too scarce and too
hard to carry even where a horse can travel well.
And a hundred deer might stand within a hun-
dred yards without your seeing one of them,
while as many dogs might run them in as many

age Deer of the Pacific Coast

directions without giving you a shot that you
could make except by chance. The best hunting
is farther south, where the timber is more open
and the brush lower. Nothing can surpass that
part of southwestern Oregon which the blank
space on the map shows unsurveyed, especially
on the head waters of the Coquille River and in
the Rogue River Mountains. It is so rough that
the hunter almost never goes there, while the
scarcity of feed in places makes it no trifling
matter to keep your horses strong enough to take
you out again. But it is a grand, picturesque
country, the natural home of the elk as well as
the deer, abounding in grouse, mountain-quail,
and trout, and well worth a visit by one who
wants to see the wild and the new, far beyond the
orbit of the tenderfoot or his stylish guide.

Like other deer the blacktail rarely touches
grass. He loves the tender leaves and twigs of
the salal, huckleberry, and other shrubs _ that
abound on the greater part of his range. So
numerous are these that he can always get
enough, and you need never trouble yourself to
know what he is living on. It will cut very little
figure in your hunting, and aid you very little in
tracing a deer’s movements as it often does in
many other countries. In a few places their
movements might be influenced by acorns in
season, but for only a short time, if at all.

The Columbia Blacktail 233

The same is true of the water. Springs and
creeks are so common on most of this deer’s
home that its movements are little affected by
watering, while the browse is so succulent on a
thousand shrubs that it often goes days or weeks
without drinking at all. For these, and other
reasons hereafter noticed, the hunting of the black-
tail lacks the attraction that the Virginia deer
affords in many parts of the East, and the mule-
deer in many parts of southern California.
There is too much ground on which there is
nothing to do but rove the woods and shoot
when you happen to see something. This is
tame beside working out the whereabouts of your
game by your knowledge of its habits, and match-
ing your skill against its wariness from morning
until night.

The habits of the blacktail are much the same
as those of his family in general. Mainly a rover
of the night, he prefers a good moon, though
quite able to manage his legs in the deepest
darkness. During the ten or twelve days when
the moon is the brightest, you may find plenty of
fresh tracks in the morning as soon as it is light
enough to see. But the area you can traverse
without seeing one of the deer that made them
is quite as astonishing as it is elsewhere. Hav-
ing been induced by the moon to be on foot most
of the night, the game has a full stomach, all the

234 Deer of the Pacific Coast

exercise it needs, before daylight, and has wan-
dered off to some good place to lie down for the
day. This early lying down often causes more
early rising in the evening, but as a rule even the
evening hunting is very unsatisfactory when the
moon is at or near the full.

The nature of the ground is generally such
that it is very difficult to track this deer except
on snow. To track to advantage without snow
the ground must be free enough from vegetation
to enable you to see several yards ahead on the
trail. For if you have to keep your eyes fixed
on the ground near by to pick out single tracks,
your work is far too slow, and you have not the
range of vision needed to see the game before it
can see you. This alone calls for all the eyesight
you have. On ground where the movements of
deer are quite regular it is not necessary, and
seldom advisable, to keep on the trail all the time.
It should often be left in places and a detour
made to avoid wind or get a better place of obser-
vation, or a bit of ground where you will make
less noise. In such case, by your knowledge of
the deer’s habits, you can generally pick up the
track farther on. Buton the home of the black-
tail the ground is generally so covered with
grass, herbs, or shrubs that the trail cannot be
seen at a glance even by the best-trained eye, so
that tracking without snow is entirely too slow.

The Columbia Blacktail 235

Like other deer this child of suspicion so quickly
learns the difference between the step of a horse
bearing a man and the step of one without that
little can be gained by hunting on horseback.
The knowledge seems almost intuitive; though, if
belled cattle are ranging the woods, deer can be
deceived by a bell on the horse, and also by a bell
on the man without a horse. But this does not
last long, and only the first inventors of the trick
are likely to profit by it.

The blacktail is also a difficult deer to drive,
surround, or cut off. Though if left alone he will
generally take an easy path, like the mule-deer
he will go anywhere when alarmed, and is quite
likely to go where you least suspect. For this
reason there is no use in two or more trying to
hunt together except in rare cases around some
point or some brushy basin where one may go
around to where the deer may come out. The
surest way is alone and on foot.

On most of the territory covered by this deer
there are few places where one can stop at a
house and go out in the morning or evening
with much chance of a successful hunt. Farm-
houses are not scattered through these great
woods as they once were in so many parts of the
East. A pack train is generally necessary, for
there are not many places where good hunting
can be had even with a wagon. Although you

236 Deer of the Pacific Coast

may not be a butcher or care a cent for “heads”
or “trophies,” which generally mean throwing
away a whole animal, you may still have a pardon-
able pride in shooting at a little more than you
can yourself consume. If so, you will probably
be unable to give the meat away, and find very
little fun in turning the camp into a butcher
shop todry it. I have been in the Coast Range
of Oregon for three weeks at a time where I could
see from ten to twenty deer a day in merely rid-
ing through the woods. There was nothing to
do but look at them, however, for not a sign of
man or any of his works was there for many a
long league. All this is very pleasant, and, for
those who have had a surfeit of hunting, as good
as shooting, but it does not satisfy the majority of
hunters.

In many other places the timber and brush
are so dense that, though deer are very plentiful,
there is nothing to do but wait around some
opening for a deer to come out. To one who
loves the chase solely for the opportunity to
play his wits against the shrewdness of the game,
this is intolerable. For such the remedy in either
case is to select big bucks and start them going.
When the Columbia blacktail starts on his rico-
chet course through fallen timber or rocks, or
even on quite open ground, you are in no immi-
nent danger of being troubled by the question

THE RETURN FROM THE HUNT

The Columbia Blacktail 237

of what to do with your game. For you will
find many unsuspected rocks to dash your bullet
into leaden spray, and many a big log to absorb
it just about the time the game vanishes in grace-
ful curve over its top.

Subject to these limitations, the hunting of the
blacktail is in many ways the finest now to be
found. On much of its range, such as the upper
tiers of the Cascade Range, the grass is so plenty
you can camp almost anywhere, while the woods
are generally so open that travel alone is a delight.
Here are meadows and open glades around which
in summer you may see many a pair of velvet
horns rise from the low brush when the sun-
light begins to gild the tips of the towering
pine, with plenty of ridges just right for walk-
ing and commanding a good view of the slopes
below. Mosquitoes, flies, and other torments are
almost unknown; cool nights and bright days
that are none too hot are generally a certainty ;
and while rain is a possibility, it 1s quite safe to
start on a long trip with no tent but the starry
sky, as in the greater part of California.

The eyes of the blacktail seem fully as keen
as those of the Virginia deer, but, like the mule-
deer, he is not so easily started by noise. This
is not because his ears are at allinferior. He is
simply taking chances instead of leaving chances
well in the rear, as the Virginia deer generally

238 Deer of the Pacific Coast

does nowadays. Nor does it prove that quiet
walking is not important. On account of the
nature of much of the ground you must make
considerable noise, or you cannot move fast
enough. And you will find many a deer that
-must have heard you coming, but does not run
without waiting to see what you are. These
deer hear you and are generally calculating on
outwitting you by hiding. But they often change
their minds when they find you coming closer,
and too often they cannot resist the temptation to
stop a second to see if it is really worth while
to run at all. After much hunting they learn
to act on the presumption of danger; but even
then you occasionally meet a very great fool of a
deer which will persist in staring at the new
rifle of the rawest tenderfoot that ever, with
hobnailed boots, smashed dead sticks it was more
easy to step over. Meeting such a deer often
makes the novice think he is a born hunter, but
if he will keep on a while he will recover from
the delusion, and begin to wonder what has be-
come of his keen eye and steady hand.

One is apt to conclude that noise is of little
account in hunting; but time will surely show
that, for every deer he sees when making a noise,
two or three slip away before he can come within
sight of them, some in full bound, whose tracks
he may find when too late, others sneaking quietly

The Columbia Blacktail 239

off into the brush, that would have remained in
the open had they not heard the step of man.

For much the same reasons many think the
keenness of a deer’s nose overestimated. But
the more one hunts the more one will be amazed
at the distance a deer can smell a man on a very
light breeze, and the quickness with which it will
run as well as the distance it will go before stop-
ping; for when a deer runs from noise it is often
mere suspicion, he is not sure what the scent is.
The same is sometimes the case when he runs
from the sight of a man, though not so often.
But when one runs from the scent of man it is
because he knows full well what it is. He stops
not to farther question, and is so fully satisfied at
once that you are not likely to catch sight of
him that day. And this sense is so transmitted
by descent that the youngest fawn to leave its
mother will run from the distant scent of man
without stopping to look back until well out of
sight. This seems in many cases almost absurd,
and especially where the air is so deadened by
heavy timber that there is no apparent motion
in it. But the exceptions are caused by cross
currents that carry the scent away, and not by any
lack of keenness in the nose of the deer, or by
any lack of fear when the first particle of scent
strikes it. In this respect the blacktail is as hard
to circumvent as any of his family.

240 Deer of the Pacific Coast

Like other deer, this one is very stupid about
making out the figure of a man at perfect rest,
but amazingly quick to detect his slightest mo-
tion and know what it imports. There is no way
of avoiding this, and between deer and hunter
the advantage lies with the one at rest when
the other comes in sight. Not much can be
gained by wearing clothes of any special color.
Dull brown or gray are less striking colors than
others, though turkey-red or something no fool
can mistake for a deer are nowadays more desir-
able. In timber, even with plenty of snow, deer
can see you so plainly when moving across the
trunks of trees that there is no perceptible advan-
tage in white clothes.

The most difficult trick of the blacktail to cir-
cumvent is his hiding or skulking in brush, and
letting you pass very close to him, well knowing
you do not see him. All deer seem to learn that
in very dense cover this is generally safer than
running. I have had the Virginia deer lie still
in the long slough grass of the prairie and in the
reeds of river bottoms until I was within a few
feet. But the deer of the Pacific coast escape in
this way more than deer elsewhere, especially in
the heavy chaparral which robes in eternal green
so much of the southern part of the range of the
blacktail. Nor does he require such dense cover
for this purpose as one would imagine from expe-

The Columbia Blacktail 241

rience with the Virginia deer. In a little valley
of a few acres in the wildest part of the Coast
Range of Oregon we camped at noon, and two of
our party went out to shoot some mountain-quail
which were running about in all directions in
great numbers. One had a shotgun and the
other a twenty-two rifle, with which they fired
fully thirty shots, besides making a great amount
of noise. For an hour before that our party of
four had been making the usual noise incidental
to stopping to camp and get dinner. After din-
ner I set out for the woods with my rifle, passing
within twenty feet of a clump of brush some fifty
feet in diameter. The brush was thin and stood
alone well out in the valley, the rest of which was
covered with grass. My two companions had
been shooting all around it. After I was well
past it, a large doe bounded out of it in full sight
of all of us, and vanished like an arrow in the
dense timber on the side. As we were many a
league beyond the last sign of man, fresh or old,
it was not likely that that deer had ever known
much of the ways of man.

A “slow-tracking” dog, or bird dog trained to
point deer the same as birds, is the only thing
you can rely on in still-hunting to find a skulking
deer. For if the ground is such that you can
follow the trail yourself, they will often sneak
quietly around, if the brush is large enough in

242 Deer of the Pacific Coast

extent, or slip out of a small patch with head down
and noiseless trot, where it may take you too long
to untangle the network of tracks so that you can
be sure to find the track on which it slipped away.
Such a dog is hard to get in training, and harder
still to keep on account of the great temptation
to let him chase a crippled deer some day when
you want venison. Very few dogs can be in-
dulged in that amusement without becoming
speedily convinced that you know nothing of
hunting, that you are entirely too slow, and that
the game is sure to escape your antiquated
methods. Especially is this the case on ground
where it is expedient to leave the trail for a short
cut, or for some better point of view, or to avoid
wind, and pick it up farther on. The temptation
for the dog to show you he knows better is very
great, and if he has the wind of the deer, he is
very apt to slip away and find the game at his
best pace. Still more apt is he to break away
after the first shot, especially if the deer is wounded
or is in plain sight upon an opposite hillside.
Nothing sets a dog more crazy than catching a
crippled deer. By allowing this just once in each
case I ruined three of the best dogs I ever had
—one a Laverack setter, one a hound, and one a
Scotch terrier, all trained to point deer and all
docile and obedient in all respects until I yielded
to the temptation to let them chase a cripple that

The Columbia Blacktail 243

was a little too fast for me. Before that they
would point as well as any dogs on birds; the
setter just as if on birds, but with nose far higher,
the hound by sitting up on his haunches and
looking around at me and tossing his nose high
in air, the terrier by rising much of the time on
his hind legs and sniffing high in air. The first
two I could trust a hundred yards ahead with per-
fect safety. The terrier I kept mostly at heel,
but in another year he would have been as safe
to trust ahead as the others.

The bird dog seems best adapted for this pur-
pose because more likely to take the wind rather
than the foot-scent. But the work of “a slow-
track dog” is quite as effective in most cases and
just as interesting. He is generally some old
hound or combination of hound and mongrel that
smells his way across bushes, grass, and weeds,
even of the dryest, in a manner quite marvellous.
The way he can smell the touch of a deer’s leg
against a single spear of grass when the track
shows you that the deer passed hours before, is as
interesting as any of the sights of the field. With
such dogs you can enjoy hunting almost as well
without the rifle as with one. No training seems
required except to let the dog know what you
want by ignoring all other game and keeping
him absolutely at heel until he has outgrown the
temptation to chase anything.

244 Deer of the Pacific Coast

In the sense in which success is understood
in most parts of the East, driving this deer with
hounds can hardly be called such on the greater
part of its range, while on much it is quite sure
to be a failure. There are places, like The Lake
of the Woods or Diamond Lake, where it could
no doubt be driven to water. But still-hunting
is there so much better, it would be foolish to
take dogs so far. In parts of northern California
dogs are often used to drive deer out of heavy
brush. If this is in a basin surrounded by ridges
on which men can be posted so as to have a fair
view of the proceedings, this will do very well.
But on the greater part of the Pacific coast, deer
have no regular runways as in many parts of the
East. Though they prefer open places when not
in haste, when they are in haste they go any-
where. In dodging into unsuspected ravines,
twisting around big rocks, and dashing over big
logs, the blacktail is equalled only by the mule-
deer. In heavy brush and rocks the mule-deer
can far surpass him, but on most ground the
blacktail is as much ahead of the Virginia deer
in this respect as the latter is in flirting his snowy
tail over some distant ridge at the first crackling
of a dry twig under the hunter’s foot.

On the southern part of its range hounding the
blacktail becomes even more difficult in many
places on account of the scarcity of water. When

The Columbia Blacktail 245

the air is hot and very dry, the dog’s scent is soon
impaired by running, especially in rough or brushy
ground. He does not pass water often enough to
drink, and has few or no wet weeds or grasses to
run through to wet his coat. Hence still-hunting
is in most cases the more satisfactory way of
hunting.

As is usual in all still-hunting, the greater num-
ber of deer are lost by the inability of the hunter
forsee them) beforethey can see “him: On the
enormous background on which most of the black-
tail must be detected by the eye this is even more
difficult than in most of the woods of the East.
Almost everywhere in heavy timber it takes the
finest of eyesight to see a deer before he is descend-
ing over some distant log or wheeling around the
upturned butt of some great fallen tree — gone
just as you raise the rifle and often before. The
deer with individual hairs glistening on its back,
with dew claws and even the split in the hoofs
all in plain sight, exists only in the mind of the
artist of pavement education. No such animal is
seen in nature. Nor does the deer in the woods
correspond much better to the picture you have
formed in your mind from seeing a deer in a park
or stuffed ina museum. Generally you see none
of the legs, and unless the game is in motion rarely
see more than half of the body. But at the time
you most want to catch sight of it — before it can

246 Deer of the Pacific Coast

see you—a deer more often has its head down
like that of an old cow, or stuck in a bush feed-
ing, or out-of sight around some log from which
the shoulder or other part of the body can hardly
be distinguished. Except when he raises his
head, once in a while, to look around for danger,
the most shapely old buck has none of the grace-
ful form of the artist’s deer, but is more often a
mere spot or patch of brown, gray, or even nearly
black, with some white occasionally showing.
The consequence is that it takes long training of
the eye to see such an animal quickly enough to
get a standing shot, if it is at rest, while to see
one lying down is only a rare accident in the
woods. And even from the very best eyes the
majority of deer escape because they are so very
quick to detect the slightest motion of the hunter,
who has to keep moving in order to cover enough
ground.

All these difficulties are increased on most of
the ground that forms the home of the blacktail.
A deer always looks small enough over the sights of
the rifle, but among the great redwoods, Port Orford
cedars, sugar-pines, and firs of this coast the black-
tail often looks more like a rabbit. For this reason
there are vast areas on which true still-hunting
is about impossible. Fire-hunting could rarely
be a success, for lakes are not abundant on most
of the range, while nearly all the streams are too

The Columbia Blacktail 247

swift and turbulent for floating. And it is also
quite certain that the deer of this coast does not
have the love for water at night the Virginia deer
shows on most of its range.

Very little can be done by making a salt lick
or using a natural one. On much of this coast
deer will not lick salt at all, while on other parts
they do it very sparingly. Such hunting is too
slow for the market-shooter and too tame for the
sportsman. But there is still enough open and
beautiful territory to make the hunting of this
deer one of the most charming amusements the
land beyond the pave can offer. And there is no
more stirring target for the rifle than this trim
little creature leaping the fallen trunks of the
great trees that shade itshome. Nature presents
no fairer sight than the Virginia deer leaping the
logs that lie piled here and there in ruinous con-
fusion in the windfall. But that deer runs like a
horse, and the logs are small compared with those
in the home of the blacktail. The blacktail is a
bouncing deer —all four feet striking the ground
together, and throwing the animal much higher at
each stroke than it would rise ina canter. Hence
its course is often the wildest ricochet ; and, though
it waves aloft no snowy flag as if in mockery of
your hopes, the elevation of the head is greater,
while you can easily imagine the big bright eyes
watching at the top of the spring your vain efforts

248 Deer of the Pacific Coast

to connect with the delusive curve. For one who
loves the rifle as much for what cannot be done
with it as for what can, there is no finer target
than this. When on the ground it is out of sight,
and so quick is its twist from side to side that
you have no idea where it will again appear above
the logs. Nor will it avail you much if you do,
for by the time the fur comes into sight at the top
of the next lofty curve you have no more than
time enough fora snap shot. And should you
succeed in getting the sights on the exact centre
when you fire, the mark is certain to be above or
below that point by the time the lead arrives.
Try to avoid this by aiming lower, and the bullet
may send the bark flying under the deer’s legs
with a whiz that switches him on a tangent, and
disarranges all the feeble calculations you have so
far been able to make.

If you aim higher as the deer is rising, you then
tempt another danger, always too great — over-
shooting. There is no royal road out of the diff-
culty, and even when you hit one in the head or
back of the neck, although it is quite certain you
did not aim there, your pride is quite pardonable,
and you will love the windfall only the more. It
is just possible, too, that you may be mistaken
about the importance of hitting something all the
time. It took me eleven days where deer were
very plenty, thirty-five years ago, just to get sight

The Columbia Blacktail 249

of the first deer. It was more than eleven more
before I was able to hit one. Yet I never enjoyed
anything so much as the consciousness that the
game was all around me and that only my own
stupidity was at fault.

At first the tyro wants a deer and cares very
little how he gets it. Well, there are everywhere
plenty of open places, until you get far into the
North, where the openings are too barren or defi-
cient in such shrubs as the deer loves. But every-
where on the southern half of the playground of
this deer there are grand open ridges only partly
covered with timber, having long avenues down
which you can see clearly for many a rod. So
there are sunny slopes on which deer stand to
catch the morning sun before going off to lie
down for the day, and big shady flats where on a
hot morning they may stay as long in the shade
before going to rest. Then there are plenty of
sharp ridges ending in points over which the
chinquapin waves, with the grand madrono and
the laurel, but with plenty of open spots on which
the deer will often stop to survey the landscape
as he comes up from below, and where, in cool
weather, he prefers to lie in the sun rather than
in the depths of the timber.

As a rule it will rarely pay you to look for this
deer in bed. In this respect he is the worst of
his tribe. Unless you have snow to track on, or

250 Deer of the Pacific Coast

bare ground where a track shows several yards
ahead so that to the practised eye the trail appears
to stand up out of the ground, it is rarely worth
while to look for one in bed. To see them is
next to impossible on most ground, while jumping
one out of bed in such a way as to get a shot is
almost as uncertain, and pays only when you have
nothing to do but tramp. Especially is this the
case with the blacktail. It has a greater variety
of places for lying down than any other deer, and
they are scattered over a much larger area. In
the greater part of the woods it may lie down
anywhere, and even in the open country there is
still so much brush into which it is quite apt to
go, that you had better confine your hunting to
morning and evening.

And you need not expect much success early
in the summer. For the blacktail has everywhere
the same period of seclusion that other deer have,
especially on this coast. In May and June and
the early part of July they move very little, and
that generally by night. Not having to go to
water to escape flies or mosquitoes, or for drink
while the young leaves are tender and juicy, they
remain most of the time quiet in the deep thickets,
rocky glens, and rugged gulches or windfalls,
where you may generally make all the noise you
wish without making one even run in such a way
that you can see him. Even tracks may be so

The Columbia Blacktail 251

scarce that you may think they have all left the
country.

But toward August deer begin to move about
more, until it sometimes seems as if there must
have been a migration from some distant point.
The fawns are now large enough to take care of
themselves, and though they may stay with the
mother, she does not hesitate to leave them and
they are equally indifferent about losing her, both
well knowing that it is an easy matter to come
together again. The rutting time is also begin-
ning along the coast and in the midland ranges,
though it is later in the mountains. Consequently
the bucks begin to move over a larger area, stay
on foot much longer in the morning, and rise much
earlier in the evening. Deer now seem to love
open ground as much as they before avoided it.
Far away your eye may catch one by the sheen
of the sun on his lengthening hair, or, if in shade,
you may see him equally well by the dark spot
his autumn coat makes against the ground. It
takes keen eyes to do even this, and still keener
to detect one in brush by the faint movement it
may make in feeding, or when it shows only one
ear, round as a lobe of prickly pear and very much
like it, or when there is but a bit of rump with the
little black tail projecting from a bush.

The action of the bucks during the rutting time
is much like that of the other deer. The does

252 Deer of the Pacific Coast

act about the same as at any other time of year,
but the bucks become more careless when on foot,
travelling faster and farther, feeding less, and
remaining on foot even during the whole of the
day at times. During this time you may often
see them on foot in the middle of the day, though
they have probably lain down and risen again,
unless on trail of a doe. In the latter case they
are quite careless and fall an easy victim to one
who happens in the way andcan keep cool. Some-
times several are on the same trail, and the sound
of the rifle that brings the first to the ground has
little or no effect on the others if they do not see
the hunter move. But unless a buck is on his
travels, he is apt to be as wary at this time of year
as at any other, as when he is feeding, or has gone
off to lie down for the day. It is not safe to be
careless in any respect even at the height of the
rutting season, or “running time” as it is gener-
ally called.

Like other deer the blacktail watches its back
track after being started, but I never could see
that they watched it before being started. Even
in lands as wild as Minnesota and Wisconsin
were thirty-five years ago I soon discovered that
the Virginia deer knew enough to watch its back
track before being alarmed, and in places prac-
tised it so well that it could be tracked success-
fully only by half circles, keeping on the side out

The Columbia Blacktail 253

of sight of the trail and swinging in only often
enough to be sure I was on it. The blacktail
often lies down on points that command a view
of the back track as well as a much larger area,
but I cannot discover that it is done purposely,
and on all its range it is probably safe enough to
keep on the track, where you can follow it at all.
The blacktail is a smaller and more graceful
animal than the mule-deer, bearing much the
same relation to it that a thoroughbred Jersey
bears toa Durham. But this is only when you
compare the two side by side in a park. In the
woods none but the expert can note the differ-
ence, and it will puzzle him if the deer is run-
ning. Though its ears are larger than those
of the Virginia deer, being nearly seven inches
long by six wide on a big buck, or nearly an
inch larger each way than the ear of the Vir-
ginia, it is in other respects even finer-limbed
and neater-looking. Its forehead is_ broader,
and its nose a trifle sharper, with the intervening
bridge narrower, making a more expressive face,
which is still farther beautified by large bright
eyes, that outshine those of the other deer.
This one varies greatly in size and form,
scarcely any two individuals being alike. All
that I have seen average decidedly smaller than
the eastern deer that I have known. I never
weighed one or got figures from any one that

254 Deer of the Pacific Coast

are reliable. But I am certain that very few
of the bucks will weigh over one hundred and
twenty pounds, dressed. Does are not likely to
run over eighty or ninety at best. The length
of a good buck from tip of nose to root of tail
as he stands is about five feet three inches, with
a girth of three feet at the shoulder. Its height
at the brisket is about eighteen inches, or about
the same as the shank of the hind leg. More
will fall short of these figures than come up to
them, though some are longer legged, and some
longer or deeper bodied than others. The red
or bay coat of early summer has a richer tinge
than on the Virginia deer, and more of this
remains visible in the gray coat of winter than
on the other. In other respects the coat is much
the same.

Always bad enough as an index of age in any
deer, the antlers of the blacktail are still worse.
They are generally delicate and well propor-
tioned, but most of them are merely forked
horns, presenting few points compared with the
age of the buck. A good pair will be twenty-
two or three inches long, with a spread of two
feet or even more, though it is often less. What
in the East would be called a very fine head is
rare among these deer.

A careless eye would note little difference
between the tail of the blacktail and that of

The Columbia Blacktail 256

the mule-deer. But it is considerable. Both
are of about the same length, rarely over seven
inches, and in marked contrast with that of the
Virginia deer. But the tail of the blacktail is
nearly uniform in size from base down, except
at the tip, which comes to a sudden point with
a slight upward curve. It is quite black on
top, and about halfway down this shade spreads
around to the sides, shading into brown, and
that into white on the under side. This white
is wider at the root, narrowing to the tip, which
is nearly all black except for a few brownish-
white hairs. The tail is round and quite even
in circumference as compared with other deer
tails. It is carried a little higher than the tail
of the mule-deer, though this cannot be noticed
unless the animals are at rest. There is little
or no elevation of the tail in running, and when
the blacktail is under full headway one would
hardly suspect it had a tail.

The feet are so nearly of the same size and
shape as those of other deer that one cannot
tell the difference in the track. And its general
habit of straggling here and there, crossing and
recrossing its trail as it gets near the time for
lying down, is so like the movement of the mule-
deer, that when one is on the border line of the
ranges of the two it is impossible to tell by the
track which one made it.

256 Deer of the Pacific Coast

Though these two range together over a con-
siderable space near the centre of California, and
the rutting time is there about the same for each,
I can find no evidence of the two intermingling.
It is possible that they do, for one must be some-
thing of an expert to detect a hybrid. The ordi-
nary hunter is too intent on meat, hides, or heads,
to notice such trifles as the tail. Without this
one could be easily deceived. But it is probable
that they do not mix, for careful examination
shows them essentially different deer.

Norte. — Much that has been said of the hunting of the blacktail
applies as well to the mule-deer, while much of the article on the
mule-deer applies as well to the blacktail. To repeat the same
under each would be tiresome to the reader, and unnecessary for

those who already know enough of deer to be interested in these
two varieties.

Tie CARIBOU

By DANIEL G. ELLIOT

THE CARIBOU

Amonc the larger members of the deer tribe
inhabiting North America the caribou may fairly
claim a place. Less imposing in appearance than
the gigantic moose or majestic elk or wapiti,
and, when undisturbed and removed from danger
possessing a careless, indeed a slouchy carriage,
yet this deer, with his often splendid antlers,
palmated and many-pointed, his hairy muzzle,
peculiar among the deer tribe, and deeply cleft
hoofs, and his compact, sturdy frame, is one of
the really notable wild denizens of our northern
forests and wind-swept arctic plains. His range
in North America, under various names, is as
wide as the continent itself, and extends from
the northern borders of the United States to the
Arctic Sea, the Barren-Ground animal not often
passing south of 59° N. lat. although in 1856
they migrated to latitude 47° in great numbers
to Lake Huron. The Woodland do not go north
of 60°, and probably only a comparative few reach
that latitude.

Caribou are divided into two classes, the Wood-
land, embracing those which are habitually dwell-

259

260 The Caribou

ers of the forests, rarely venturing any distance
from the shelter of the woods; and the Barren-
Ground, or those inhabiting the vast tundras of
Arctic America, which regularly migrate from the
forest to the open plains, and seek the depths of
the woods only as a refuge from the fierce storms
of winter. When moving slowly along, nipping
a tender branch from a wayside bush or seizing
a mouthful of moss from the wet “savanne,” the
caribou, with low-hanging head, apparently over-
weighted by the great antlers, the hoofs clicking
as with lazy effort they are successively drawn
from the reluctantly yielding ooze of the marsh,
presents anything but an attractive appearance.
Yet look at the same individual when the tainted
air brings to his sensitive nostrils the scent of a
dangerous adversary; how changed he suddenly
becomes! The listless, careless pose gives place
to one animated and full of spirited attention; the
head is lifted and carried proudly aloft, crowned
by its noble weapons of offence and defence;
the ears, from their drooping attitude, the tips
directed backward, are thrown forward and seem
to quiver with excitement as in quick movement
they seek to locate the avenue of the enemy's
approach; the legs are rigid, each muscle drawn
and tense, ready to respond to the first call for
supreme exertion. And then the foe appearing,
how grand and animated is the animal’s move-

THE CARIBOU OF THE BARREN GROUNDS

The Caribou 261

ment as, in a Stately trot, with head and tail
uplifted, the clicking hoofs, like castanets, beating
time to the swift action of the limbs, the proud
deer passes rapidly from view over the yielding
moss of the treacherous swamp. The Woodland
caribou is a shy, suspicious animal in those locali-
ties where he has had the opportunity of making
the acquaintance of his great enemy, man, and
when frightened and fully satisfied that danger
is near, he will never cease travelling until he
has placed a great distance between himself and
the cause of his fears. Restless in the extreme,
they are ever roving the forest, and travel many
miles every day and night.

In order to consider the habits of the caribou,
it will be necessary to divide them into their two
classes, the Woodland and the Barren-Ground,
and take each separately. While numerous spe-
cies and races have been made of these, by those
who believe that the infinite variations of nature
must be followed by an infinity of names, yet for
the purpose of recounting the caribou’s mode of
life all these deer, irrespective of their habitat, are
practically one species, for their ways differ only in
degree. The Woodland, which we will first con-
sider, as their name implies, are mainly dwellers
of forest lands, and are usually found in the
swamps, where the trees are few, though their
margins are bordered by the dense woods. In

262 The Caribou

such places they find in abundance the moss
which forms their chief subsistence, and also in
the proper season the buds of various shrubs of
which they are very fond.

In the spring the Woodland caribou seek the
sides of the mountains, and in summer are usually
found near their summits, hiding during the day
in dense thickets, coming out at night to wander
about their chosen locality. At this season the
horns are tender and in the velvet, and the animals
do not roam about much, food being usually plenti-
ful on every side. Should there bea lake in their
vicinity, which is indeed usually the case, its banks,
that are generally muddy, will be found each morn-
ing covered with the fresh tracks of the deer that
have wandered around it during the night. The
woods also that are much frequented by caribou
have many weill-beaten paths ramifying in all di-
rections through them, made by these animals in
their marches from place to place; and to follow
one of these is not only to find, often, the only
method of traversing the forests, but the shortest
way of reaching some desired spot, for the deer
seem to prefer a direct route between two points.
The female caribou, which also carries antlers
much smaller and weaker than those of the male,
brings forth her young in the spring usually one
only, but occasionally two are produced — minia-
ture representatives of the adult animal. In the

The Caribou 263

autumn short migrations northward are made, and
the higher parts of the mountains are deserted
for the valleys where food can be more readily
obtained. The summer coat is a dark gray or
mouse color, with a white caudal patch and white
under parts. The depth and shade of the darker
hues varies greatly even among individuals from
the same locality, and the size of the caudal patch
is rarely the same in any two individuals. In
winter the neck becomes nearly pure white and
the body is often of a very light hue. The ant-
lers vary to a degree that is absolutely without
limit both as to size and shape, and not only do
those of different individuals vary, but the two
beams with their tines exhibited by any deer differ
from each other, and the yearly antlers of the
same caribou rarely have any resemblance one
with the other.

The methods of hunting the Woodland caribou
are few and simple. In September, after the vel-
vet has been rubbed away, the law generally per-
mits these animals to be killed. At this time,
the rutting season is beginning, and the bulls are
getting restless and commence to travel the woods
seeking the cows, and their hoarse call, something.
between a grunt and a bark, can often be heard
in the early mornings, occasionally even during
the day. There is no snow upon the ground,
and tracking would be fruitless, for although the

264 The Caribou

imprint of this deer’s hoof in the soft ground
is large and readily seen, yet the impossibility of
moving through the swamps and bushes without
noise would make such a method of pursuit of
little avail, as the deer, learning of his foe’s pres-
ence, would betake himself to distant pastures
long before a shot were possible, or even a sight
of himself obtained, for, it must be understood,
the Woodland caribou, unlike his rather stupid
brother of the plains, is a wide-awake and suspi-
cious animal. Still-hunting, therefore, and that
of the “stillest” kind, and one not at all usually
conceived by the term, is the only one promising
success.

This method of still-hunting consists of taking
a position in a Swamp, or “savanne ” as it is usually
called, and waiting for the appearance of the deer
as it passes by, either in search of food or of other
individuals of its species. These swamps are
usually surrounded by thick woods, and occasion-
ally are of very considerable extent, carpeted with
moss sometimes two feet or more in depth and
saturated with water, and the dreary view is
broken at intervals by clumps of bushes or small
trees scattered here and there at irregular inter-
vals. Upon some fallen log or stump, or bit of
moss slightly drier than the rest and partly hid-
den from view by surrounding bushes, growing
or artificially placed, the hunter seats himself and

The Caribou 265

prepares for a long vigil, perhaps lasting the en-
tire day. Oh, the weariness of it! Afraid hardly
to move, every sense alert and on the strain, listen-
ing for the unmistakable “squash” of the deer’s
hoof as it is drawn from mud and water, fearing
to smoke lest the telltale perfume announces one’s
presence to the watchful game, and mosquitoes
and black flies having a merry and never end-
ing banquet from every exposed portion of the
hunter’s person unless thickly covered by some
anti-poison abomination, pursuit (if it can be
called) of this deer at such times and in such
places cannot be considered either a pleasure or
within the true meaning of sportsmanship. If
the caribou should wander that way, and the
chances are ten to one it will not, a point-blank
shot at a few paces is afforded, requiring about as
much skill to bring down the quarry as it would
to shoot a cow in a barnyard.

Frequently, too, even although it may be as late
as the middle of October, so irregular are these
deer in shedding the velvet from their horns, that
after enduring the torments of foes in the air with
their varied means of torture and those arising
from stiffened muscles and cold winds, the hunter
may only be rewarded by an animal carrying the
coveted antlers not yet come to their matured
perfection. But even then few complain, for the
vast majority of these “hunts” draw a blank, the

266 The Caribou

chances being so very few of the deer in those
vast marshes coming where the sportsman has
located himself, and if it does draw near, the
hunter’s presence is likely to be detected in time
for the animal to make its escape.

Another method, and one that savors much
more of true sportsmanship, is stalking. In many
parts of eastern North America, vast tracts of
treeless land, covered with rocks and moss, are
found within forest districts, called “barrens.”
To these the caribou resort, sometimes in herds
of hundreds of individuals, while in the forest only
a comparatively few animals are found together.
The hunter from some point of vantage sweeps
the ground before him with a powerful glass, and
when some fine “head” is discovered, methods
for getting within shot of the animal, possibly a
mile away, are considered and a plan of approach
determined upon. Then follows an exhibition of
a hunter’s skill and sagacity against the natural
attributes of the deer, whose powers of scent and
sight, with those of its companions, are to battle
with man’s experience and fertility of resource.
As the stalk proceeds every rock and inequality
of the ground is seized upon as a point of vantage,
every breath of air considered lest an unwelcome
scent be carried to the trembling nostrils ever
ready to detect its presence. As the distance
between pursuer and pursued lessens, redoubled

The Caribou 267

care and vigilance is exercised, and the halts of
the hunter become more numerous and of longer
duration. In the meanwhile the object of all this
solicitude and strenuous endeavor is either quietly
chewing the cud as he rests in his grassy bed,
scanning at times the landscape before him, or
seizing mouthfuls of moss as he slowly moves
among the cows, upon whose more watchful
guardianship he relies when in their company.
But the breeze brings no hostile odor, and quiet
reigns, disturbed only by some wild bird’s cry as
it flies over the barren. And now the supreme
moment has arrived, the last crouching move-
ment has been successfully made, the desired
spot from which a sure shot could be directed
has been reached, and the deer, unconscious of
danger, stands proudly erect, gazing over the land
he knows so well, at the mercy of his greatest
enemy. A rising, fleeting vapor above a near-
lying rock, a sharp crack hardly disturbing the
silence of the wide barren, and the lordly bull
falls headlong to the ground, while the cows,
startled, trot rapidly away for a short distance and
then turn and stop, to learn the cause of their
fears.

One other way of capturing caribou is attempted,
and of all those adopted is probably the most
successful. This is following the animal on snow-
shoes. Caribou are very swift, their gaits being

268 The Caribou

the walk, trot, and gallop. The one most usual to
them is the trot, and the spreading of their great
hoofs, which are split apart nearly to the hock,
renders them able to carry the animal over snow
or soft ground much in the manner that a snow-
shoe does a man. In the winter the frog of the
caribou’s hoof becomes entirely absorbed, leaving
the interior a concave shape, the edges all around
become of almost razor sharpness, giving the
animal a firm hold on the ice or hardened crust,
preventing it from slipping. Captain Campbell
Hardy, a British army officer who knew as much
about caribou and their ways as any man of his
time, mentions as a fact, in his “ Forest Life in
Acadie,” that these animals crossed from New-
foundland to the mainland in winter on the ice,
and that Nova Scotia animals have been killed
measuring four feet six inches at the withers, thus
equalling in height the most extreme dimensions
of any Newfoundland specimens of which I have
any knowledge. On the ice the pursuit of cari-
bou is vain, for it can travel much faster on the
slippery surface than any other creature, and if it
suddenly sees a new danger ahead it has the habit
of squatting on its haunches, and in this ludicrous
attitude slides along until the impetus of its pace
has been exhausted, and then rises and shoots off
in another direction. In the snow its tracks are
clearly seen and easily followed. When first en-

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SNIVLNNOW UYVISSVO SNIVLNNOW UVISSVO

The Caribou 269

countered the hunter endeavors to determine the
route the animal has taken and then studies the
direction of the wind to ascertain if it is favorable
for the pursuit, that is, blowing from the animal
toward him. If not, before following his quarry,
the sportsman makes a détour so that no scent
may be carried to the deer, which may be slowly
walking along, or resting in some thicket. As
the hunter proceeds, eagerly regarding the prints
in the snow, the chances are that the deer, one or
more as the case may be, will suddenly dash out
from some near thicket and disappear before him
in a perfect cloud of snow thrown up by their
broad hoofs. Then the chase commences, to be
decided by sheer endurance or possibly a lucky
chance shot at a moment when the caribou may
stop and turn to have a look at their enemy.
Unlike other deer, caribou have no difficulty in
travelling over light snow, only sinking into the
drifts to a moderate depth; and their first endeavor
is to reach the frozen surface of some lake or
stream, for it is useless to follow this animal upon
the ice, as on its slippery expanse it can easily
outstrip all its pursuers. Failing this refuge, it
plunges on through forest and swamp and barren,
and he who hopes to overtake and secure this
deer over a snow-mantled land must have muscles
of steel and expansive lungs. Instances are known
when it has taken several days of constant going

270 The Caribou

on snow-shoes before the band that was being
pursued was finally overtaken. When hard
pressed, and their efforts to baffle their pursuers,
in woods or swamps or tangled thickets, have
proved unavailing, caribou will take to the moun-
tains and seek their summits, thus adding greatly
to the toil and exposure of the hunt. In New-
foundland in certain localities this deer is fre-
quently killed in the water, being pursued in boats
when crossing lakes, for it is a famous swimmer
and does not hesitate to cross a wide expanse of
lake or stream.

This method of hunting will probably by some
be considered as not altogether savoring of true
sportsmanship.’ But, my critical friend, have you
ever tried to follow a Woodland caribou in win-
ter through the forests and barrens, mountains,
swamps, and valleys? It is man’s endurance pitted
against that of the deer, reinforced on the latter’s
side by its native wariness and ability to baffle
pursuit, while the snow-shoe is but little superior
to the broad hoofs of the deer in passing over or
through snow, and on the ice the hunter is hope-
lessly outclassed. Many unfortunates have re-
turned to camp weary and worn from a long and

1 It is emphatically unsportsmanlike to follow caribou or any other
of the deer family on snow which requires snow-shoes. Ona light
tracking snow it is fair and good sport, but when the animal sinks

to its hocks it is a cruel game and excusable only when meat is
needed. — EpITOR.

The Caribou 271

fruitless chase at such seasons after this caribou,
wiser and sadder men.

In Newfoundland great herds of caribou have
roamed for a longer period than the mind of man
can fathom; and from their heavy antlers and
some other slight characters these animals have
been characterized as a distinct species. Migrat-
ing regularly to the southward in the autumn
and northward in the spring, favorable oppor-
tunities were given to hunters to watch for them
on their usual routes and kill as many as they
pleased, for they are gentle animals in that island
and permit one to approach closely before mak-
ing an effort to escape. But this misplaced
confidence in the deer’s greatest enemy was fear-
fully abused, and a single butcher (no other term
will properly designate the creature), as I have
been informed, killed as many as forty to fifty deer
in a single foray, leaving most of the carcasses to
rot upon the ground. Then the legislature in-
tervened and passed a law compelling all non-
residents of the island to pay a large sum for a
permit to shoot deer, and limiting the number of
animals that could be killed. Prospects for the
caribou looked brighter, and for some years only
a fairly reasonable number were killed annually,
the limitation in the number that could be shot
having cooled the ardor of those whose chief
delight was in the shedding of blood and piling

272 The Caribou

up the bodies of the slain for the scavengers of
the forests, more humane than the butchers, to
clear away. But a few years ago progress in the
shape of a railroad appeared, and the iron tracks
crossed the island from St. Johns to Port aux
Basques, thus traversing some of the best caribou
grounds. The result was a natural one, not only
could distant localities be easily reached, but
hunters of high and low degree every year
scatter themselves in the vicinity of the track
across the island, and any luckless deer that at-
tempts to pass the line encounters a fusillade of
bullets from hidden riflemen. What chance have
the deer under such circumstances to escape death?
Only one, and that doubtless will occur to them
before they are exterminated: restrict their south-
ern migration to above the danger line, and find
peace and safety in the fastnesses of the north.

In their northward migrations in the Arctic
regions the Woodland caribou often travel in
immense herds, equalling in former times at least
those witnessed to-day of the Barren-Ground cari-
bou in certain parts of its dispersion. Over the
eastern side of the continent they pass north in
May and return again in July, and from November
to April, it is stated, they are rarely to be found
within ninety or one hundred miles of the coast.
They are easily killed when on these journeys,
and Richardson states that eighty carcasses were

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The Caribou 273

brought into York Factory in one day and many
others were refused because they had no salt to
preserve them, but the Indians kept on slaying the
animals for the skins long after they had ceased
to care for the flesh. And this was in the days of
bows and arrows and spears, before the advent of
the magazine gun and long-range rifle. Weights
of individuals of the deer tribe, unless the animal
is placed upon the scales, are at best but guesses,
and in the absence of any authenticated figures
it may be said that a bull Woodland caribou from
the Canadian forests in prime condition may weigh
as much as five hundred pounds, but of course
the average weight will be much less, and probably
nearer three hundred to three hundred and fifty.
The Barren-Ground caribou is a smaller ani-
mal than the Woodland, and the horns, although
perhaps of an equal spread in the majority of
instances, are lighter and more slender in beam
and tines, and with less palmation and fewer
points. This deer is a plain-dweller, and roams
over the vast tundras of the desolate Arctic
regions, its southern boundary line trending more
to the north as its range is extended to the west
even to the Coppermine and Mackenzie rivers,
and the northern limit of the Woodland caribou
is also pushed farther into the Arctic regions,
until the ranges of the two forms overlap and the
animals must mingle together. The winters are

274 The Caribou

passed, according to Richardson, in the woods
between the sixty-third and sixty-sixth degree of
latitude, where they subsist on lichens, moss, and
the long grass of the swamps. In summer the
herds migrate northward, the females leaving the
woods or their vicinity, where they have passed
the winter, in May,' and are followed by the bulls
in June, reaching the vicinity of the Arctic Sea
late in May or early in June, and the thick winter
coat is shed in July, and the dark brown one
of summer is assumed. The hair is at first
flexible and soft, but becomes brittle as it grows
in length. This, however, can be said of the
hair of all caribou, for there is little or no differ-
ence in the texture of their coats. The hair
near the roots is white, and as it increases in size,
both in length and circumference, the colored
points are broken or worn away and the lighter
color becomes the dominant one over the body
of the animal. In spring the Barren-Ground
caribou seeks the coasts of the Arctic Ocean
and visits its many islands, finding ample pas-
ture in the valleys and moist places, where the
withered grass of the previous year is still stand-
ing in the form of well-aired hay. The animals
remain near the salt water until about Septem-

1In all that section of the Barren Grounds immediately east of

the Mackenzie River the females leave the timber about March, the
bulls following in April. — EpiTor,

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The Caribou 2°76

ber,| when the return journey to the wooded

country in the south is commenced, and _ their
winter quarters are reached in October. The
bulls go deep into the forests, but the females
remain near its edges, and leave before the bulls
on the spring journey, very early in the year, to
give birth to their young near the sea. During
the summer the Barren-Ground caribou assemble
in enormous herds, sometimes of many thousands,
and it has taken more than one day for such a
herd to pass any particular place. In certain
portions of the Barren Grounds they resort to the
vicinity of lakes and feed on tender grasses and
various lichens. They are stupid creatures, easily
demoralized, and when panic-stricken run aim-
lessly about, while the hunter in their midst is
busy slaying them. Four and five hundred have
been killed at one time by a band of Indians, so
easily are they rendered helpless by fear. In their
migrations these caribou do not always follow the
same route yearly, but vary it to the east or west
as fancy or stress of circumstances may cause
them to change; and because the animals were
plenty in certain places one year, is no reason to
expect them to be there the next, for it frequently
happens that where thousands passed during one

1 The bulls do not go down to the water, but meet the cows on their
return from the coast, and, so far as my observation goes, the herds stay
for the greater part somewhat back from the actual coast, — EDITOR.

276 The Caribou

season, not one may be found in the same district
the next. In winter their food consists of lichens
and moss, which they obtain by scraping away the
snow with the hoof. In the autumn, especially at
the end of the rutting season, caribou are thin and
in poor condition, and they do not become really
fat until the following summer. The greatest
amount of fat is found on the back and rump,
and is sometimes two or three inches in depth.
This is called by the white hunters’ “ depouzdle,”
and is highly prized and an article of trade.
The females lose this deposit soon after giv-
ing birth to their young. The flesh of this deer
is tender, and of fine flavor when the animal is
in good condition and not eaten too soon after
killing. But the flesh of a thin caribou has
about as much flavor as a chip, and equally
as tender. The Indians and Eskimo depend
greatly upon the deer for their subsistence, and
every part of the animal is utilized in some way.
The flesh, of course, is eaten, the stomach and
intestines also; even the points of the antlers,
when in the soft condition, are considered a
delicacy. The leg bones are broken for the
marrow they contain, which is eaten raw, if
wood for a fire is not available, and the blood
is mixed with meat and forms a rich soup. In

1 This is a relic of the old-time voyageur and French-Canadian
hunter. — EDITOR.

The Caribou 277

fact, no part of the animal’s body that can be
masticated is rejected, even the lichens and
such vegetable matters as are found in the
stomach being also eaten. The skin with the
hair on is used for clothing, and no garment so
successfully resists the Arctic cold as this, it is
so light, and so impervious to the wind, which
always blows a gale on the Barren Grounds.
When dressed it becomes very soft and pliable,
and when a number of hides are sewn together
they make an excellent tent for summer, large
enough for a numerous family. Cut into thongs
of various sizes, it makes very strong bowstrings,
wherever those ancient weapons of the chase
are still used, and lines for nets and cords for
deer snares; when cut into strings it is called
babiche and is used for shoe-lacing; in fact, it
is utilized for the many purposes that civilized
peoples employ ropes and cords. A split shin
bone makes a good knife, and fish-hooks and
spears are made from the horns, while the ten-
dons of certain muscles make very fine and
strong thread for sewing with the bone needle.

When travelling during the summer, caribou
go in great herds, and the Indians lie in wait for
them and kill many when the animals attempt to
cross rivers or lakes. Many are also taken in
traps or pounds, into which the unsuspecting deer
walk through a narrow entrance, which is then

278 The Caribou

closed, and the animals are killed usually by shoot-
ing them from the outside through the branches
of the trees that form their prison. Stabbing the
animals when feeding on rocky ground is also
resorted to, and the Eskimo are such adepts at
this method of hunting that they frequently
get within a few paces of the game before
shooting. Caribou are afflicted with great curi-
osity, and will approach closely any object that
is new or strange, provided it is motionless; and
of this weakness the Eskimo takes advantage.
Having placed himself behind a rock in the vi-
cinity of some deer that are feeding, he imitates
their hoarse bellow to attract their attention;
and in a short time some of them will certainly
draw near to investigate the quiet figure from
near which the sound proceeds, circling round
and round and gradually drawing near until one
or more usually pay for their weakness with their
lives. Probably no animal is so easily approached
as are these Barren-Ground caribou in the sum-
mer time, and enormous numbers are slain every
year, SO many, indeed, that it would seem the
race must become extinct in a comparatively
brief period. In their dispositions they are not
unlike sheep in some particulars, especially in
following a leader; and sometimes a herd will
run the gantlet of a line of hunters simply
because one stupid animal had gone that way

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The Caribou 279

and the rest are determined to follow the lead
set them. So many caribou have been slaugh-
tered on the barrens and tundras of the Arctic
regions, both east and west of the mountains,
that in certain districts their numbers have
been greatly reduced, and in some the animals
have disappeared altogether. In Alaska not
many years ago caribou were plentiful down to
the shores of Bering Sea, but now one must
travel in many places something like a hundred
miles inland before finding them in any number.
On the Kenai Peninsula and surrounding dis-
tricts head hunters, both white and red, have
nearly exterminated the species, and the in-
creased means of transportation to and through
their country, the large number of hunters, added
greatly to annually, and the improved firearms,
would seem to foretell the extinction in a brief
period of this fine animal in the regions where
he is accessible.

Caribou, like all deer, shed their horns every
year, the time when this takes place varying
apparently slightly according to locality; but be-
tween the beginning of December and the middle
of January, with possibly very few exceptions, all
horns of bulls have been dropped, the exceptions
being some young bulls, that carry their horns
until spring. The old bulls shed first and then
the young males, the females often retaining

280 The Caribou

theirs until their young are born. While very
much smaller than those of the males, the female
antlers are a very efficient means of defence, for,
being composed of short beams armed with sharp
spikes, they form a very dangerous weapon when
wielded by an enraged animal as powerful as a
caribou in her own defence or that of her young.
During growth they are covered with a furry,
velvety skin, which is full of blood-vessels, tender
and very sensitive, and which bleeds profusely if
lacerated. The beam has various degrees of
curvature, and the tines are of all shapes and
sizes and modes of palmation.

The members of the two great divisions, the
Woodland and Barren-Ground, resemble each
other closely in their habits, varying only as the
different configuration of their districts causes
them to adopt a slightly changed mode of life. In
essential particulars they exhibit but few varia-
tions from each other, the larger number of which
have been mentioned and some considerably en-
larged upon, and there are not many distinct
characters possessed by either. Still, in parlance
of the day, these dwellers of the woods and plains
represent different sfeczes, how many is a matter
that cannot be said to be as yet satisfactorily de-
termined. East of the mountains, on the cheer-
less plains of Arctic America and in the great
island of Greenland, two species are recognized,

Sea earn VINSNINAd IVNax NOGURD S,au0jS ‘[ “y ‘iauojs uafiSuny
‘00T “@ Arey Aq ‘TogT ‘aystuddog VINSNINGd IVNaM

‘eYse[y ‘e[Nsulued Ieuey UO punoy

The Caribou 281

Rangifer arcticus and Rangifer grenlandicus.
These races are lighter in color than the Wood-
land caribou and rarely assume the dark-blue
coat worn by the latter in the autumn before the
white of winter appears. But this question of
color cannot be accepted in any way as a main
factor for determining the specific or even racial
value of these animals, for it not infrequently hap-
pens that those caribou that have been killed in
the same locality and at the same season present
in their different coats all shades from an almost
soiled white to a mouse color. Asa rule, I think
it may be said that the Woodland animal is usually
darker than his relative of the plains, but it would
be difficult to distinguish one Woodland caribou
from another, taken at the same season, by color
alone, no matter from what part of North America
they come. The two animals above mentioned
are smaller than the Woodland caribou, and it
is much easier to distinguish these from their
southern relatives than it is to find characters to
separate them from each other. Both of the
Arctic forms have slender antlers with few points,
and there does not seem to be much difference
in the color of their coats; and while these
animals from the different localities have been
recognized as distinct for a long period, yet it
can hardly be said that any character has been
described by which the deer of the mainland

282 The Caribou

could definitely be distinguished from those of
Greenland. The figures here given of the two
forms show how the antlers vary both between
individuals of the same species and of the two
species themselves, and the one is no greater
than the other. It is not improbable they cross
from the island to the mainland on the ice,
and vice versa, and a Greenland animal shot
among a herd of the Barren-Ground deer would
probably never exhibit any signs of his nativity
nor be considered as differing from the caribou
among which he was killed; and the same may be
said of a mainland deer procured in Greenland.
Island forms that have become separated and
have no access to a continent as a rule will in
time develop characters that distinguish them
from their mainland ancestors; but when com-
munication has not been entirely cut off, the
question naturally arises as to whether or not a
mingling of the two forms has not been continued,
even though at irregular intervals, and a produc-
tion of a distinct variety been delayed if not pre-
vented. In the present case more material is
needed of both species before any definite opinion
can be formed. At present they are difficult to
distinguish from each other by any of the char-
acters thus far produced.

It may be well here, before proceeding to the
Woodland caribou, to consider for a moment the

The Caribou 283

reindeer of Scandinavia, which is the typical form
of these animals and characterized by Linnzeus as
Rangifer tarandus. It is nearest allied to the
Barren-Ground caribou of all the forms found on
the North American continent, but is a larger,
stouter animal and will weigh from two hundred
and fifty to three hundred and twenty pounds.
In the style of the antlers there is a great resem-
blance to those of the Barren-Ground caribou, but
they are heavier. It extends its range into Russia,
but in certain parts of Asia it appears to be re-
placed by a larger form that in Siberia approaches
in size and appearance our Woodland caribou.

The reindeer is regarded as distinct from the
North American forms and stands as the type
of the genus. In the island of Spitzbergen there
is yet another form of reindeer that seems to
have more claims to be regarded as a distinct
species than have the great majority of its kindred.
While the antlers approximate the Scandinavian
type, they are smaller and with a shorter beam.
But the chief characteristic is the shape of the
nasal bones, which are expanded at both extremi-
ties and greatly constricted in the middle, and
there is also a difference in the superior border,
thus varying greatly in shape from the nasals of
the Scandinavian deer, which increase regularly
in width from the anterior end to the maximum
diameter of the lachrymal vacuities.

284 The Caribou

Farther south we reach the Woodland caribou,
represented east of the Rocky Mountains by also
two forms, known as &. cartbou and R&R. terre
nove, the latter’s claim for separation resting
chiefly upon the greater size of the body and
antlers, more particularly the latter. All deer
vary so greatly in size, even among individuals of
the same species, that it would be advisable to
have data gathered from a large number of individ-
uals before it could be determined that the size
of either closely allied species was the greater, and
that has not yet been produced to prove that the
Newfoundland deer is larger than that of the
continent. The antlers on the average appear
heavier than those seen on the mainland, yet in
many ways they closely resemble each other, and
antlers are not infrequently obtained from eastern
North America as heavy and wide-spread, and
provided with as many points, as those procured
in Newfoundland; and it is doubtful if any one
could accurately state to which form they should
be attributed. The final status of these animals
can only be determined by the acquisition of ample
material of both forms, which up to this time has
not yet been obtained. The large antlers of the
Newfoundland caribou here figured belong to the
type specimen, and are of a rather unusual size.

No other species are to be met with until the
Rocky Mountains are passed, and then three

GONVINSEeD CNV INHaYD CGCNVINAaYD

dr

The Caribou 285

have been described, R. montanus from British
Columbia, 2. s¢fozez from the Kenai Peninsula,
Alaska, and R. dawsonz from the Queen Charlotte
Islands. Taking the last-named first, it has been
pretty conclusively proved by Mr. Osgood that
no caribou are found on the Queen Charlotte
Islands, and none have ever been known to
live there in the memory of man. Its habitat
must therefore have been given erroneously, and
the specimen came undoubtedly from the main-
land and is not specifically distinct from FR. mon-
tanus. RR. stoner, from the Kenai Peninsula pos-
sesses no characters not found in &. montanus,
and cannot be separated from it... This reduces
the western forms to one only, A. montanus,
claimed to be specifically separable from the
R. caribou of the East, the chief points of differ-
ence being its large size; but the measurements
given — 46} inches at the withers, and 95 inches

1 The question of species among caribou is one under very active dis-
cussion, and there appear to be no sufficient data at hand to warrant defi-
nite conclusions. Mr. A. J. Stone, who has had more practical experience
in the field among caribou than any of the present students of the animal,
has recently (March, 1902) returned from Alaska and British Columbia,
bringing specimens which tend to show a new mountain specimen from
that Mr. Thompson Seton described as the 2. montanus. Mr. Stone also
brought out half a dozen specimens each of what he claims to be entirely
new species and that have been named respectively &. granti and RX. os-
borni. In each case he has secured enough specimens of each to show a
consistent adherence to type. To be sure, all these are mere variations, —
in most cases but slight, — yet they appear to be distinct. The full story
of the caribou may not be written for a year or so yet. — EpIToR.

286 The Caribou

from tip of nose to root of tail—do not ex-
ceed and in some instances may not equal the
dimensions of Woodland caribou from the East.
The describer, Mr. Thompson Seton, states that
the “antlers are not noticeably different from
those of the Woodland species, but in general are
distinguished by their great number of points.”
It will be noticed that the differences from
other forms claimed for this one are of the
slightest value, and it would seem that it will be
necessary to find more important ones before it
can be satisfactorily established as a species dis-
tinct from the eastern animal. When we con-
sider the endless variation that exists among
caribou, both in color and in the shape and size
of the antlers, even among animals belonging in
the same herd, the difficulty of finding a recog-
nizable permanent character to separate those of
one district from those of another becomes ap-
parent; and it cannot be said that this has yet
been successfully accomplished, at least as regards
the animals belonging to the two divisions, Wood-
land and Barren-Ground. Between the deer of
the Arctic regions, including Greenland and those
of the forest lands to the south, distinctions appear
recognizable in the lighter beam and fewer points
of the antlers, and possibly in the smaller size of
the northern animal, which is claimed to be very
noticeable; indeed, Richardson states that he has

VASVIV VSV Ty

i:

VASVIV

The Caribou 287

“seen a Canadian voyageur throw a full-grown
doe on his shoulder and carry it as an English
butcher would a sheep,” and that the bucks
weigh, “when in good condition, from ninety to
one hundred and thirty pounds,” and the average
weight of ninety-four deer shot by Capt. M’Clin-
tock’s men in the Arctic regions, after they had
been cleaned and dressed for the table, was only
sixty pounds. This statement and the weight
given certainly describe a very small deer, which,
if of average size, would alone indicate an animal
different from the Woodland species. As _ to
the other forms, the Greenland as distinct from
the Barren-Ground species, the Newfoundland, the
eastern mainland animal, and the one from the
western portion of the continent, as separable
from each other, our material at present is not
sufficient for a definite decision to be reached,
for much has yet to be learned regarding the
variations of these animals, both seasonal and
individual. As far as one is able to judge by
the knowledge we have at present, it does not
seem probable that any more tenable species than
the three Woodland and two Barren-Ground of
this paper will be recognized, with the possibility |
of one or more of these being reduced to a race
or the synoptical list; for most of the work done
with these animals has been based upon very
insufficient material and scant knowledge.

hae MOOSE, WHERE IT LIVES AND
HOW ITF LIVES

By ANDREW J. STONE

tiie MOOSE: WHERE IT.LIVES AND
HOW. It LIVES

THE moose is distinctly the most individual
character among the deer family. It is the giant
of the cervede. It is the hardiest and the most
capable of self-protection. It will be the last of
the deer family to become extinct in America,
unless perhaps with the single exception of the
whitetail deer in the rugged wilds of southeast-
ern Alaska, and in a few favorable localities in
the states where well protected. It roams more
of the forest country of America than any other
species of the deer family. The greatest and wild-
est wilderness in the world is its home. Nearly
all of the forest country of the whole of North
America north of the United States, and a part
of some of our northern tier of states, is occupied
by it, and the term “forest country” is here meant
to apply to all the country upon which timber
grows — even though ever so sparse and dwarfed.
It is the most cunning of all the large animals of
North America, and the most capable of eluding
its pursuers.

291

292 Deer and Antelope of North America

Stories of its wonderful size, of its magnificent
spreading antlers, of its capabilities of detecting
and escaping enemies, of its wonderful strides in
running, and of its mysterious and noiseless move-
ments, have long been favorites around the camp-
fire, at the club, and around the home fireside.
The man who has acquired so thorough a knowl-
edge of the habits of the moose as to enable him,
unaided, to seek the animal in its native haunts
and by fair stalking bring it to bay, has reached
the maximum standard of the American big-game
hunter.

Species and Characteristics. — There are in
America two known species; the Ales ameri-
canus of Maine and Lower Canada and Axes
gigas of the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska. The im-
mense expanse of country between these widely
separated localities is inhabited by the moose, and
whether the two species blend in this intervening
country, gradually losing their individuality or
specific character, or whether the boundaries of
the range of each are clearly defined, or whether
there is yet another species in the great country
between the two localities from which these
types have been described, is a matter yet to be
determined.

When we consider the many surprises the
North has furnished us within the last few years
in the way of new forms in large mammals, we

pag cen ag aE
~~

-

me

Ba SO" ae

The Moose 293

need not be surprised if the great moose range
on the head waters of the Liard, Peace, Stickine,
and Yukon should give us the third variety. The
animals of that country are very large, are darker
than the moose of Maine and Lower Canada —
even darker than those of the Kenai, yet their
antlers are not nearly so massive as those grown
on the Kenai Peninsula. These two facts were
obtained by personal observation, but I never
secured specimens sufficiently perfect to permit
the establishing of their identity. There is a
large area of country farther north in which I
am convinced the moose differ in character from
those in any part of the country just mentioned;
and one may readily infer there is yet much to
learn about the moose.

Just how the moose from different sections of
their ranges may vary in size is yet a matter
largely of opinion. A more complete compila-
tion of carefully made measurements from a
series of adults from widely separated ranges
will be necessary to determine this, as well as
other points of great interest concerning this
animal.

The moose of the Kenai Peninsula are reputed
by many to be the largest in America, and from
such measurements as it is possible for me to
secure I might accept that conclusion. But there
are so many magnificent ranges from which we

294 Deer and Antelope of North America

have no data, that we must await definite knowl-
edge. In the Cassiar Mountains and on the
Upper Liard River in northwest British Colum-
bia, and again in the country around the head
waters of the McMillan, Stewart, and Peel rivers,
Northwest Territory, are the two ideal moose
ranges of America. From neither have we a
single specimen to give us positive knowledge of
the character of the local moose. Nor has suffi-
cient knowledge been obtained to warrant a de-
scription.

To the north of the Porcupine and around the
head waters of the Colville rivers in Alaska is yet
another large moose range from which we have
no real facts to rely upon. We have in museum
collections a few specimens from southern Can-
ada and Maine and again from the Kenai Penin-
sula in western Alaska, and these persuade us that
the animals of the Kenai are not only larger than
those in Canada and Maine, but they grow a much
larger head of antlers. The table of measurements
on the opposite page clearly shows the compara-
tive size of adult males.

There is no other wild animal in America that
grows so rapidly as the moose. The calves are
small when very young, but they grow with
almost startling rapidity. A calf secured by me
on the Liard River, in the latter part of May, and
not more than one week old, measured: length,

The Moose 295

37 inches, tail, 14 inches, femur to humerus, 204
inches, across chest, 44 inches, height at shoulders,
33 inches, depth of body, 94 inches, height at
elbow, 21 inches. One secured by me on the
Kenai Peninsula, October 30, evidently just about
five months old, measured: length, 88 inches, tail,

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Three - year-old female,
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Three -year-old male,
Mackenzie River ...]| 993 313] 55 | 134 | 66 | 41 | 25
Adult male, Kenai Penin-

4

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5
5

Adult male, Kenai Penin-

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Adult male, Kenai Penin-

SOLE. 5 SAA a perma aean 108 Se SA ikon 177 gor |e 37
Adult male, Maine... .]! 98 48 69 32

4 inches, femur to humerus, 54 inches, across
chest, 11 inches, height at shoulders, 67} inches,
height at elbow, 4o inches. It had grown in
five months 41 inches in length, 344 inches in
height, 64 inches in width of chest, and 19 inches
in length of foreleg below the elbow. A carefully
estimated weight of the five-months-old calf as
it stood alive was fully 600 pounds; the one a
week old about 65 pounds. Comparative meas-
urements prove, however, that the first season ex-
periences the most rapid growth. Comparing these

296 Deer and Antelope of North America

measurements of the calves with that of the three-
year-old bull and again with the adults, it is plain
the animal does not grow so fast after it leaves
its mother, and that the rapidity of growth is de-
creased as it nears maturity. This would vary
with different animals, and there are individual
animals which attain a size perhaps much greater
than that of their neighbors, but my experience
teaches me that adult animals of any given species
are very uniform in size, much more than they
really look to be. The tape line in the hands of
one who knows how to use it reduces the size of
what seems to be an especially large individual
to a place very near that of its relatives. The
above table shows how very uniform are the three
adult males from the Kenai Peninsula. It is the
result I have also found in many other species.
The general contour of the surface anatomy of
animals varies so exceedingly as to influence their
appearance and often greatly deceive one concern-
ing the animal’s real size. I have looked at ani-
mals and remarked before measuring that they
were very large or very small, only to find their
actual size, when the tape line was applied, to
vary very slightly from the uniform size of adults
of the species. One who did not understand
measuring animals might have made any of the
above adult moose twelve inches taller, and have
really thought he was making an honest measure-

The Moose 297

ment; but a large bull moose is a heavy animal,
and does not stand on stretched legs or on the
tips of his long toes; so, too, the top of his shoul-
ders is at the surface of the skin and not at the
end of his long mane.

I have collected many interesting statistics
during my travels through the great country
of the moose, bearing upon their size, weight,
measurements of hoofs, joints, and many parts
of the animal’s anatomy. The weight of the
four quarters of adult moose as they are sledded
in to the Hudson’s Bay Company posts in winter,
when they are generally poor, ranges from
350 to 500 pounds. This would refer to females
as well as to males. I have taken from adult
males very poor hams which weighed as high as
110 pounds, and I know of a fat bull killed near
Fort Norman on the Mackenzie whose four
quarters weighed 700 pounds.

When on the Liard River in the winter of
1897-1898, an Indian brought ina skin froma bull
moose, just as he would take it, minus the skin
from head and legs. It weighed go} pounds,
after fleshing, 72 pounds, after hair was removed,
514 pounds, made into rawhide, 94 pounds, into
dressed skin, 54 pounds. This was not a large
pelt. Many of the hides complete as the natural-
ists will take them, weigh, when green, close to
150 pounds.

298 Deer and Antelope of North America

From careful observation, I believe the moose
to reach maturity at about six years of age. To
just what age it may live must be conjecture,
but approximately I would judge from what I
have been able to learn that the maximum period
is not far from twenty years. Old animals are
easily distinguished by their worn and broken
teeth, and by the gray hairs around the nose and
at the edge of the hoofs.

The color of the moose changes from an ashy
brown to almost black, varying among animals
of different ages and with the seasons of the
year, and with different localities. The moose
of Maine and Lower Canada are much lighter in
the color of the body than those farther to the
north and west, and their legs are almost white,
while those on the Liard River and the Kenai
Peninsula have quite dark hair on their legs.
The hair is very coarse, and in the winter is very
thick and long, while for additional warmth is
grown a light coating of soft wool-like hair or
fur of a medium shade of brown. I made what
I consider a rather remarkable discovery in speci-
mens killed by me on the Kenai Peninsula.
Between the toes of these animals grew a bunch
of hair of a perfect emerald green.

The young calves are of a light red with dark
dorsal stripe. With the coming of the fall their
coats grow darker and the dorsal stripe loses its

MOOSE ANTLERS FROM ALASKA

The Moose 299

prominence through the sides shading up to it.
The moose of the Kenai has only very recently
been described by Mr. Gerrit S. Miller, Jr., of
the Biological Survey at Washington as Ales
gigas. He classifies it as being a larger and
more richly colored animal than the eastern
moose. In his description of “A new moose
from Alaska,” he says: “The moose of Alaska
has long been known to be the largest of the
American deer, but hitherto it has not been
directly compared with true Ales americanus.”
The color of the Axes gigas is not so dark or
rich as that of the Liard River moose, and when
we obtain specimens from other parts of the
North, from the centre of such great ranges as
that of the Liard or Koyukuk rivers, we will
likely find animals fully as large as those of the
Kenai Peninsula, but not wearing such large
antlers.

I am thoroughly of the belief that the North
will produce a third variety of moose (and fourth
is not impossible); but only a careful and intelli-
gent study of these animals by one trained to
the work, with complete series of specimens and
full measurements and data, from the ranges
mentioned, can determine sufficiently their rela-
tive character, size, and habits; and ultimately
decide the question of species.

More is known of the antlers of the moose

300 Deer and Antelope of North America

than of all the rest of its anatomy. It is not that
they are really the most important feature of the
animal, but because few entire specimens have
ever been taken by naturalists; and the interest
of the average sportsman centres in the head of
antlers. I have seen a great many heads from
Lower Canada and Maine, the Liard, the Mac-
kenzie, and the Yukon rivers, and the Kenai
Peninsula, and there is no question that the
antlers grown by the moose of the Kenai are not
only very much the largest in America but of dis-
tinctive character. The spread is greater, the
palmation wider, and the general contour very
different from those observed from any other
locality.

Nine heads secured on the Kenai, fall of 1900,
ranged in spread from fifty-six to seventy-four
inches. The average spread of the nine heads
was slightly above sixty-five inches. A head
from Maine or Lower Canada above sixty inches
in spread is rare, and what might be considered
ten good heads would probably average in width
but slightly over fifty inches. The antlers lose
the velvet the last of August and the first of
September. Adult males shed their antlers the
latter part of December, but young males usually
carry theirs from thirty to sixty days later, and I
have heard of instances where they were retained
until the first of April, but such cases must be
very rare.

The Moose 301

The dewlap or bell worn by the bull moose is
always very narrow in the young animals, but
often quite long. I have seen them almost a foot
in length. As the animal grows older the dewlap
grows shorter and wider, extending farther along
the throat, until in old animals it becomes a long
but very shallow pouch.

Range.— The range of the moose in America
extends as far east as New Brunswick and as far
west as the limits of tree growth on the Alaskan
Peninsula, south into Montana and Idaho,’ and
north to within a few miles of the Arctic coast or
to the limits of tree growth. Only a small per
cent of all this vast territory is entirely lacking in
moose, though they are very unevenly distributed.

They do not inhabit that large tract of land
known as the Barren Grounds, which lies between
the Mackenzie River and Hudson Bay; and the
strip of country extending to Lake Superior east
of south of the Barrens is almost or completely
Jacking in moose, although the greater part of it
would seem well adapted to their requirements.

The moose is not a migratory animal, but fre-
quently surrenders territory on account of the
encroachments of civilization, and perhaps at
times from other causes; but what might seem
surprising to even the well-informed upon the

1 A very few are said to still range in the Wind River Mountains,
Wyoming, where once they were fairly plentiful. — EpITor.

302 Deer and Antelope of North America

subject is that they have, during the past fifty
years, acquired a large amount of territory in the
North. I believe they have acquired within our
present history of them almost or quite as much
territory as they have lost, and that their range is
almost or quite as large at the present day as it
ever has been. They are now numerous in a
very large territory in northwest British Colum-
bia, through the Cassiar Mountains, on Level
Mountain, and throughout the head waters of the
Stickine River, where thirty years ago they were
unknown. They are now abundant on the Kenai
Peninsula, Alaska, and in other sections of the
North where at one time they did not exist. Acqui-
sition of territory by so wary an animal as the
moose can only be accounted for in one way.
Many years ago the Indian tribes occupying these
sections were very numerous and inimical to
moose life, but, since the Indians have dwindled
from thousands to insignificant numbers, the
moose finds comparatively unmolested life. This
I know to be the case on the Kenai and in the
country referred to in northwest British Colum-
bia; and there are many similar changes in con-
ditions in other parts of the North, notably in the
Nahanna River country, north of the Liard, where
the entire tribe of Indians that once hunted the
country have died out, to the very great increase
of moose,

Spread, 67 inches

Spread, 72 inches
MOOSE ANTLERS FROM ALASKA

The Moose 303

Moose are now extinct in all the eastern states
except in Maine, where they are more plentiful
and more hunted than in any other section in
America. That they continue plentiful is due to
the excellent game laws and the fact that there is
no avenue of escape. In Canada the situation is
different ; the moose have been driven back north,
into an unlimited country of retreat. In Wash-
ington, Idaho, Montana, and in some parts of
southern Canada moose are almost extinct. They
are found to some extent in all parts of the Mac-
kenzie and Yukon river basins; and they are
most abundant in the countries of the two
Nahanna rivers which empty into the Liard
and Mackenzie respectively; in the country of
the Gravel River, a tributary of the Mackenzie ;
in the head waters of the Stickine and Liard
rivers; in the region of the Teslin Lake and
north, just west of the Rockies to the head waters
of Peel River; on the Upper Koyukuk north of
the Yukon; on the Tananna south of the Yukon;
on the Kenai Peninsula; around the head of
Cook Inlet; and they are also plentiful in most of
the timbered regions west of Hudson Bay.

They do not approach the Pacific coast in
Washington, British Columbia, or in southern or
southeastern Alaska, but on the Kenai and Alas-
kan peninsulas they range down to salt water.

The Mackenzie Delta was at one time a favor-

304 Deer and Antelope of North America

ite range of the moose, but there they have been
fearfully reduced in numbers. The Indians claim
that several years of great spring freshets, which
overflowed the islands at the season of the year
when the calves are very young, causing death in
the cold flood, was responsible for the great re-
duction in moose. Knowing the delta I believe
their theory correct. One Indian told me that
for several years after the floods had subsided, he
hunted the delta and killed many cow moose, but
they were always without calves. I sledded the
length of the delta three times and boated it
once through its entire length, and saw signs of
not more than five or six moose in the six hun-
dred miles of travel.

Habits. — The habits of the moose vary with
the different sections of the country in which
they range. Animals, like people, to some extent
must conform to their surroundings. The habits
of the moose in the far North and West differ
from those of southern Canada and Maine in
many ways. In the North and West they do not
yard up in winter, and consequently do not live
much on the bark of trees in that season, they
do not feed to any extent on lily pads; do not
run so much in the timber; and in some sec-
tions they range much higher in the mountains.
Bulls do not, in response to the hunter’s birch-
bark-horn call,in imitation of the cow, come down

The Moose 305

to the camp to be killed, like their cousins in
Lower Canada and Maine.

Moose yard not from preference but from ne-
cessity. Their favorite winter range is in sparsely
timbered countries, in the hills abounding in wil-
lows and alders. In Lower Canada and in Maine
the snowfall is often very deep, and when the
winds drive it drifting into the open or partially
timbered ridges, piling it deep among the willows
where these animals like to feed, they seek timber
where the snow, unaffected by the wind, remains
at uniform level. Experience has taught them
where to find food at such times, and they hunt
the poplar or aspen groves and remain there
indefinitely, living upon the bark they gnaw from
the trees. Contrary to general impression, the
snow does not pile up so deeply in the North,
and consequently the animals remain in their
favorite feeding-grounds in the hills until the
snow, either from the winds or the warmth of a
coming spring sun, takes on a crust which will
bear the wolf —the only enemy of moose beside
man. When the snow is soft the wolf never
troubles the moose, for well it knows this big
deer is more than a match under such conditions ;
but when the wolf can run on top of the snow, the
moose is at his mercy; a band of them will bring
down the most powerful bull. Unlike the cari-
bou the moose is a heavy animal with small feet

306 Deer and Antelope of North America

in proportion to its size, and they can never run
on top of the snow. The wolves thoroughly
understand this, and a band will systematically
plan an attack and execute their plans with de-
liberation. Surrounding the moose, some will
attract its attention by jumping at its head, while
others cut its hamstrings. To escape this dan-
ger northern moose leave the hills in March and
April and go down into the timber of the lowland
where the snow is yet soft. The wolf does not
destroy a very large number of moose, but when
driven to extreme hunger will devise many kinds
of methods for their capture, and, strange to say,
will attack the largest bull as readily as the
smaller cow. I account for this by the fact that
as cows, calves, and young animals, with some-
times an adult bull, all run together, their com-
bined resistance is too much for the wolf, whereas
some of the old bulls are frequently found alone.
On the Liard River, in the winter of 1897-1898,
the wolves killed and ate a very large bull within
one mile of the little fur trading post at which I
lived. The snow at that time was soft in the
hills, but crusted on the river where the winds
swept up and down. Realizing they could not
capture the bull in the hills, they drove him
on to the river. The river was wide, and as he
went plunging through the crust into the deep
snow beneath, they overtook and slaughtered him

The Moose 307

with ease. The moose knew his situation per-
fectly. There were wolves to his right, left, and
rear, but he simply miscalculated his ability to
gain the opposite side of the river. Knowing the
cunning of these animals, I believe his object in
crossing the river was to reach some locality he
knew, and where he would have a greater advan-
tage over his enemies than in the country where
they first disturbed him. Perhaps the snow was
not of sufficient depth in the section he was leav-
ing to give him the advantage he wanted, and he
knew a locality in which it was. Animals are much
better reasoners than generally supposed, and the
moose is one of the deepest of the animal king-
dom.

During the summer and autumn the moose of
Lower Canada and Maine feed extensively on
pond-lilies and other succulent plants which grow
in the marshy lakes and around the water’s edge,
and it is not uncommon for them to shove their
heads completely under water in search of this
kind of food." This character of plant life is
much less common in the farther North, and the
moose do not seem to feed upon it where it does
occur. I saw pond-lilies growing in the Dease

1The moose does on occasion, when feeding in a lake or pond, go
completely under the water and out of sight after an especially suc-
culent lily root. This is disputed by some, but it is a fact, none the
less. — Epiror.

308 Deer and Antelope of North America

Lake country, in the Liard River country, about
60° N., to the west of the Mackenzie 66.30° N.,
in the country north of the Porcupine 70° N., and
on the Kenai Peninsula 60° N. Moose abound
in all the localities mentioned, yet although I
searched carefully for it, I could find no trace of
their feeding on the lilies. Certain varieties of
willows are their favorite food, though they feed
upon alder, aspen, and sometimes birch and bal-
sam. They snap off branches, thick as one’s
finger, as readily as most ruminants nip blades of
grass, and will ride down a young tree to secure
its tender top branches. Lowlands along the
streams and around the marshy lakes are their
favorite feeding-grounds in spring and summer,
but with the approach of fall they begin to work
their way into the hills. High rolling country
which has been run over by fire, and followed by
one or two seasons’ growth of willows, is their
very choicest feeding-ground. The new growth
of willows after a fire is always exceptionally lux-
uriant; the new shoots being large and tender.
The short neck of the moose unfits it for feeding
on the ground, and rarely are the willows clipped
below a height of thirty inches. Their long heads
and great height naturally fit them for such feed-
ing, but they seem to delight in doing so, and
will often rear on their hind legs to secure some
especially tempting twig. I have seen where

The Moose 309

they have clipped branches fully ten feet above
the ground.

It is during the mating season, September and
October, that bull moose become most coura-
geous and reckless. They are ready for battle,
and they do battle in royal manner among them-
selves for the possession of the cow.

While on the Kenai, in the fall of 1900, I
heard three combats in progress during my hunt
on the peninsula. The thumping of their antlers
can often be heard for a mile, and to the ear of
the trained hunter the sounds are unmistakable.
I had left camp but a couple of miles behind one
morning when I heard the clashing of antlers.
I hurried in the direction of battle as rapidly as
possible, but was greatly retarded in my progress
by fallen timber and tangled brush, and although
the affray must have kept up fully thirty minutes,
I failed to reach the scene in time for the finish.
I found the place where it had occurred, an open
spot about fifty feet across, surrounded by an
enormous growth of alders on all sides. It was
just such a secluded spot as men might select for
duel. The earth was fearfully dug up by the
hoofs of the moose and the surrounding alders
broken down in many places, while great locks of
long brownish gray hair bestrewed the ground.
Both animals had disappeared, and although I was
very near when the battle ended, I heard no cry

310 Deer and Antelope of North America

of defeat; the unfortunate, like the brave spirit
he must have been, suffered his mental and physi-
cal pains in silence.

Like all the deer family at this season of the
year, they are very curious as well as very reck-
less, and frequently pay for it with their life.
Although retaining a certain amount of fear of
man, yet their proud spirit so dislikes to acknowl-
edge it at such a time that they will often stop in
plain view of him to exchange glances at short
range.

So great, too, is the bull’s curiosity at this sea-
son that he will seek out any unusual noise. Just
here I want to correct a very general impression
that the bull moose can be called by the use of
the birch-bark horn, in the belief that he is ap-
proaching a female. No bull was ever half so
stupid; such a thing is entirely unreasonable.
He is simply attracted by the unusual sound, and,
being exceedingly curious, endeavors to locate the
meaning of this strange thing in his home. The
pounding on a tree with a club by the Tahltan or
Kaska Indians in northwest British Columbia
(among the best moose hunters in America) or
pounding the willows with a dry shoulder blade
of the animal, by the Liard River Indians, will

1 Mr. Stone’s opinion on this subject differs from that of experi-
enced hunters. There is convincing evidence that the bull is deceived
into believing the horn call to be the call of the cow. — EDITOR.

The Moose 311

serve exactly the same purpose; or almost any
other unusual noise would bring the bull within
the sound just as readily. There is no animal in
the world whose sense of hearing is more acute,
and no hunter with any knowledge of the moose
will call it stupid; yet hunters tell how their guide
brought up a bull by imitating the call of a cow.
How many of these hunters ever heard the call
of a cow moose to give them authority to decide
how perfectly the birch-bark horn in the hands of
their guide imitated the cow’s call.’

The moose inherits faculties for reasoning the
few simple things that ordinarily come to his life,
and along with many other animals is capable of
detecting the slightest variation in sound. Not
only do animals recognize the cry of their own
kind, but the cry of an individual. To know
animals requires something more than careless
observation. One must study them long and
earnestly, and when we do this we can find rea-
sons for everything they do. I want no better
comparison than I can find in the seals. On the
Pribilof Islands, during the seal breeding season,
one hundred thousand puppies are congregated
at one time and left by their mothers who go to
sea in search of food, often being gone two and

1 This totally disagrees with abundant evidence to the contrary.
— EDITOR.

2 The cow’s call is quite familiar to those who have had much
calling experience in the Maine woods. — EDITOR.

312 Deer and Antelope of North America

three days. The little fellows get very hungry
during this absence and set up a constant cry.
When a mother lands she goes about among the
thousands hunting her own; thousands of little
voices are constantly coming to her ears—to
man they all sound alike, but the seal mother
detects her own from nine hundred and ninety-
nine thousand other voices; yet some would have
us believe that the bull moose is so stupid as not
to know the difference between the call of his
mate and the call of a birch-bark horn. I could
make innumerable comparisons along this same
line, but am willing to allow the readers to draw
their own conclusions. I simply assert that when
a moose approaches such a horn he does so as he
would almost any other strange noise, and he
knows that he is not approaching a mate. Under
the excitement of the moment he may do foolish
things, but he is not a fool.

The long legs of the moose enable them to
travel with ease through miry swamps, deep snow,
and among fallen timber. They do not drag their
feet through the snow, breaking trail as they go,
like cattle, but lift their feet above its surface
every step, even though it may reach a depth of
twenty-four to thirty inches. Several animals will
walk one behind the other, stepping in the same
tracks with such care as to leave the impression
of but one animal having passed. They can step

The Moose 313

over logs of surprising height. I have seen the
snow piled upon logs to the height of three feet
above the ground, yet undisturbed by them in
stepping over. They trot or run with a long,
swinging stride, and rarely leap, and then never
more than one or two jumps when suddenly
frightened. They travel with great rapidity and
ease; they can run through thick timber and
brush, scarcely creating a sound. Often the in-
experienced hunter is very sure he has his moose
in a certain thicket or brush, only to find, after a
very careful approach, its bed in the leaves yet
warm, and the animal perhaps two miles away.
So acute is their sense of smell and hearing, and
so careful, silent, and mysterious their movements,
that they not only detect the enemy under cir-
cumstances that would seem impossible, but they
escape him without giving the slightest notice of
departure, running through all sorts of tangles
without so much as snapping a twig. If the
moose is suddenly alarmed and recognizes itself
observed by an enemy, it does not endeavor to
conceal its movements. If in the brush or timber,
it will make a bound and go crashing through,
smashing everything on its road in the most wild
and reckless manner; if in the open, it will give
you one quick glance and move off in a long,
swinging, and usually rapid trot, but never at its
best speed so long as in sight, for the moose is

314 Deer and Antelope of North America

proud and dislikes the idea of expressing fear.
Watch it carefully, just as it rounds the hill and
realizes it is about passing out of your sight, it
will suddenly stop and give you one very short
look and then away with all the speed it possesses.
Though proud, the moose is full of fear, and feel-
ing now it is out of your sight, loses no time in
leaving you far behind.

The moose cannot be considered cowardly or
timid, yet the instances are very rare where it has
been known to attack man. Although a large
and powerful animal it fears man, and always
avoids contact if possible. If cornered or seri-
ously wounded, it will sometimes show fight, —
most animals will do this, —but the hunter has
been injured much oftener by the common Vir-
ginia deer than by the moose. Near Fort Nor-
man on the Mackenzie, a few years ago, a wounded
bull charged and killed an Indian hunter who in his
effort to escape was held by his clothing catching
ona snag. Had the bull missed him in his first
charge he would not have renewed it; few wild
animals will return to a charge, failing in the first."

I stopped three days at a trading post on the
Upper Liard River in the fall of 1897. The trader

1 The sladang of the Malay Peninsula is about the only one which,
having missed on his first charge, will almost invariably return to
the attack; but several species, notably the African buffalo, the

grizzly bear, the tiger, and the black leopard, may usually be de-
pended on to return to the attack. — EDITOR.

Spread, 74 inches

Spread, 64 inches
MOOSE ANTLERS FROM ALASKA

The Moose 315

told me that he had a pet moose calf from the
spring before. It was running loose in the forest,
and he told me it would often be gone for three
days at a time. It was not at home when I
reached the post, and he was very anxious for it
to come that I might see it. The second day at
noon, while we were eating dinner in the cabin,
the door standing wide open, we heard the jingle
of a bell, and the trader said, “ There comes Jen-
nie.” Sure enough she came as fast as her legs
could bring her (and she was not riding a bad set
of legs). She ran right in at the door, for she
was accustomed to coming into the cabin. The
moment she saw me, however, she looked at me
very hard, her eyes grew larger, she sniffed the
air, and she backed quietly out of the door. She
objected to strangers. She would play with the
trader, but would not let me get near her. I had
a splendid opportunity of studying the movements
of this animal, the way it carried its feet, legs, and
head, and many of its manceuvres, all of which
were extremely interesting. Often when desir-
ing to play it would stand on its hind legs and
strike at its owner with its fore feet in a very
reckless and vicious manner.

The young of the moose are dropped the latter
part of May. The first calving rarely ever pro-
duces more than one, but adult females very fre-
quently bring forth two, and I have heard of

316 Deer and Antelope of North America

triplets. I left the Liard River the 21st of May
for the Nahanna Mountains, following up a small
stream. On my way into the mountains I sawa
great many tracks of moose, which my Indians
assured me were those of females, but I did not
see the track of a single calf. I was not hunting
for moose, but was travelling through a splendid
moose country, and was given the opportunity of
making some important observations. On May
26 I killed a cow and a calf; the calf could
scarcely have been a week old.

I returned to the Liard by the same route I
had gone on May 30, and young calf tracks
were numerous in the sands along the stream,
and from numerous observations I have made I
believe the majority of the calves are dropped
between May 20 and June 20. I have, how-
ever, discovered frequent irregularities in the
breeding of many varieties of wild animals, and
such irregularities, though not common, are
found among the moose. While on the Kenai
Peninsula in November, 1900, I ran across a
young cow with a calf not more than eight weeks
old. I spent ten days in trying to secure the pair,
but failed, owing to the difficulty of travel in the
deep snow, but we ran across their tracks every
day during this time, and I saw them on several
occasions. A calf always remains with the mother
during its first winter, and sometimes longer. It

The Moose au,

is a very common sight to see a mother with her
year-old and baby moose together. But when a
mother is preparing for a new offspring she en-
deavors to forsake the company of her one-year-
old, and she is usually successful. She will resort
to methods that indicate her cunning and reason-
ing power. She will wander about in a valley
near some stream, and while her yearling is lying
down she will feed off alone to the stream and
swim across, then run rapidly down the other side
around a bend out of sight, and again taking to
the stream may swim down it for a mile or so
and out again, keeping up this game until she is
confident of having lost the yearling completely.
After this, another move which is a very common
one is to swim to some island in the stream,
which she will travel all over for the purpose of
ascertaining if it is free from enemies. If she
finds it to be, she will remain there until her calf
is about two weeks old, when she will start with
it to the mainland. The little fellow will have
no difficulty in keeping afloat, but the rapid cur-
rent nearly everywhere in the northern rivers
would carry it down stream if left alone, and the
fond mother understands this, and with the affec-
tion that a moose mother knows she gets below
it, so that the calf swimming and resting against
the mother’s side is steered in safety to the main-
land.

318 Deer and Antelope of North America

Moose are great swimmers and think nothing
of crossing lakes and streams miles in width.
Notwithstanding the strong tides of Kachemak
Bay, Cook Inlet, a young bull, only two or three
years ago, swam from a point near Yukon Island
across Kachemak Bay to Homer Spit, a distance
of over eight miles. I have travelled the same
course in a light-boat, with good oarsmen, going
with the tide, and we were over two hours row-
ing it. Just how long the moose was in swim-
ming it I did not learn, but I was assured by a
man — entirely responsible — who was living on
Homer Spit, and who saw the feat, that the
animal was not at all exhausted when he landed.

Possibilities of Extinction. — The moose will
not soon become extinct. The advent of the
prospector in Alaska, thousands of men scattered
through its range armed with the best of rifles,
is creating awful havoc in its numbers, and very
especially is this the case in the region of the
Klondyke and Stewart rivers. Sportsmen and
professional hunters are combining to make its
existence on the Kenai Peninsula intolerable.
And in almost all parts of the North the sleuth-
like Indian is on its trail, equipped with modern
rifle and plenty of ammunition. The moose is
having a very different time from what it had a
few years ago, but its wits, always alert, are
being further trained, and its wonderful sense of

The Moose 319

smell and hearing help out of manya scrape. So
keen are its perceptions of danger, and so silently
and rapidly can it leave all danger behind, that the
best trained hunter is repeatedly made to recog-
nize his own stupidity when the wits of the two
are brought into competition. Some of the many
other circumstances favoring the moose are the
splendid cover of their range, their failure to
herd in large numbers like the caribou, their
great strength and hardihood, the immensity of
their territory, so far removed from contact with
civilization, and the fact that while Indians are
now much better equipped than in former years
for moose destruction, their numbers are rapidly
decreasing rather than increasing. Around the
head waters of the Stickine, Pelly, Liard, and
Nelson rivers in northwest British Columbia, is
a country of vast extent shut in from all the rest
of the world, a great untrodden wilderness. It
is a favorite range of the moose. The Indians,
one of its enemies, are dying; and no better
proof of the inability of the wolf to cope with the
moose under ordinary circumstances is necessary
than that right in the very heart of this great
moose range I have known wolves in awful hun-
ger to prey upon their own numbers through
inability to capture the moose.

Hunting.— To become a successful moose
hunter is to reduce hunting to a science, and to

320 Deer and Antelope of North America

undertake to describe the features involved and
the methods of the hunt in detail would require
a volume; moreover the art is one that can be
acquired only by actual experience, and all that
could be written for the uninitiated would be of
but slight service. To know how to hunt any
animal is to know its habits and peculiarities.
The habits of the moose are not so difficult to
learn, but he lives so much in the thick brush
that many of his little eccentricities are hard to
understand, and require much time and patience
to master them. Very much depends upon the
time of year in which one is hunting, as to the
methods employed. September 15 to November
15 is the best season, but in countries where it is
necessary to protect the animals they should not
be hunted before the 15th of October. When
the hunter pitches his camp right in the thick
of a moose country he should select, if possible,
some very secluded nook. He should avoid, as
much as possible, chopping, or making any kind
of noise. He must live quietly, avoid unnecessary
big camp-fires, and leave the pipe in camp when
setting out for the hunt. The scent of the pipe
will travel much farther on the wind than the
scent of the hunter. Decide upon the country to
be hunted; ascertain the direction of the wind,
and make your detour so as to penetrate the
hunting-ground in the face of the wind. If the

The Moose 321

wind shifts, change the course of travel to suit,
or work back and forth, quartering to the wind.
Be very careful in turning a point of the woods
or in mounting the crest of a ridge. Eyes and
ears should be alert; don’t be in a hurry; the
greatest precaution is always necessary. Keep a
sharp lookout for footprints; if fortunate enough
to find fresh ones, ascertain the general direction
in which the animal is feeding, If trace of the
hoofs is lost, observe the croppings from the brush,
the direction the grass or weeds are bent, the
freshly overturned leaf, and, better than all, esti-
mate if the animal had passed this point since
the wind was from the present point of the com-
pass; if it has, you can afford to take chances on
its feeding and travelling with the wind. Note
the contour of the country ahead, and calculate
upon the character of it as nearly as possible, and
where the animal in its leisure would be most
likely to wander; skirt this at a safe distance
either to right or left, as most favorable, keeping
to the highest ground as affording an opportu-
nity to overlook the route taken by the quarry.
Never get in a hurry; never allow yourself to
get in the wind of the animal. If now and then
the locality favors doing so, climb a tree and care-
fully scan the country in every direction. Re-
member, when it gets along toward ten o’clock
the animal is very apt to lie down for a rest, and

322 Deer and Antelope of North America

will likely remain very nearly where it stops
feeding until well into the afternoon. This is
the time of day for the hunter to rest —all save
his eyes; the eyes must never rest while moose
hunting.

If in pursuing the moose in this manner the
course of its path becomes uncertain, the hunter
may select some favorable point and approach
at right angles for the purpose of determining
whether or not he has passed the animal or if
it has changed its course; but he must remember
that when the time comes for the animal to rest
it nearly always doubles back to the right or left
of its trail a short distance. One very striking
peculiarity in the animal’s actions at such a time
is that just before lying down it will run for a
short distance, as if in play, stopping suddenly,
as if acting under orders, when reaching the point
upon which it desires to rest. Very especially is
this little run apt to be indulged in if there are
two or more animals together. It cost me two or
three moose to learn this. I was once following
three animals in deep snow. I was to the left of
them, and had travelled such a distance that I
became anxious to locate their trail, and I cau-
tiously made my way to the right to intersect
their course, if possible. I did not go more than
three hundred yards until I came into their very
fresh trail. I climbed a tree and scanned the

The Moose 323

country ahead, locating nothing more than the
trail for some distance through the snow. I fol-
lowed this for a short space, and came to where
the animals had been running, making great
strides. I calculated that it was all up with me,
but decided to follow their tracks around a point
that I might get one more look in the direction
they had gone, the perfectly natural instinct of
a hunter. This was a fatal move; they had
stopped short, and were lying down just behind
a bunch of spruce not three hundred yards from
where they had left a walk. On my approach
they said good-by through this clump of pines
which screened them from a rifle ball.

A breezy day is always best for moose hunting,
as the bluster of the wind makes it unnecessary
for the hunter to be absolutely noiseless. The
same general principles may be applied in hunt-
ing moose in any part of their country — pre-
suming that the hunter stalks his own game
unsupported by guides or Indians. Few hunters
who visit the Maine woods for moose acquire
knowledge of the hunt that would be very help-
ful to them, if thrown upon their own resources
in trackless regions of great extent. There is no
game field in America that so nearly affords the
hunter a parlor moose hunt as the woods of
Maine; but the man who simply enjoys camp
life, and is not especially desirous of becoming

324 Deer and Antelope of North America

an expert hunter, will find greater pleasure in the
game fields of Maine than in wilder and more iso-
lated regions.

Previous to the advent of the rifle in the North,
the natives secured nearly all their moose by set-
ting rawhide snares for them, but now they much
prefer the rifle. In winter when the snow is deep
they will often put on a very large pair of snow-
shoes (a shoe slightly longer than they are tall)
and with these travel with very great ease over
the deepest, softest snow in pursuit of this royal
game. Often when fortunate enough to run onto
the fresh trail of an animal they will follow it for
two or three days if necessary, rather than come
to camp without it. In the practice of this sort
of hunting they often perform some remarkable
feats, things that but few white men would care
to undertake, for there are few white men that
care to or can follow so powerful an animal, until
it is run to a standstill, when it has once made up
its mind to leave him behind.

I have known but one white man capable of
doing this, or who had really trained himself to
do it. He lived and hunted in the Cassiar coun-
try, northwest British Columbia. He told me he
once followed a moose for three days in bitter
cold weather before killing it. When he did get
it he was a long way from home, and very much
worn out. He dressed the animal before it had

The Moose 325

time to freeze, and then after a hearty feed of
steaks decided to have a well-earned rest before
returning home. Spreading the large skin on
the top of the snow, hair side up, then his own
single blanket on top of that, he rolled himself up
in them completely and fell asleep. When he
awoke the next day the heavy green skin had
frozen solid and held him perfectly fast. He rec-
ognized his unenviable position, and commenced
to struggle violently for freedom. Luckily he was
very near the edge of a bench of earth several feet
high, which in his struggle he rolled down. The
moose skin struck a tree at the bottom and being
frozen very hard broke from the jar and released
him. I can readily believe this, because extreme
low temperature would render such a green skin
almost as brittle as glass.

ce My

Fee 9 8 ee +t

INDEX

Adirondacks —
Game preserves, II, 19.
Moose extermination, 6,
Wapiti extermination, 131-132.

Bad Lands [continued] —
Mule-deer haunts, 10, 31, 34, 37,

45» 49, 53, 67.
Whitetail range, 34.

Whitetail hunting, etc., 66, 72, 83. | Barren-ground caribou —

Alaska —
Caribou decrease, 279.
Kenai Peninsula, see that title.
Moose ranges, 294, 299, 303, 318.
Alces americanus — species of
moose, 293, 299.
Alces gigas — species of moose, 293,
299.
Alleghany Mountains —
Wapiti extermination, 132.
Whitetail range, 66, 71.
Antelope —
Little Missouri range, 46.
Pronghorn, see that title.
Antlers and horns —
Caribou, 259, 260, 263, 279-280,
284.
Columbia blacktail, 254.
Elk, 190.
Moose, 299-300.
Mule-deer, 9-10, 29-30.
Pacific coast mule-deer, 219-220,
Pronghorn antelope, shedding
horns, 98.
Wapiti, 131.
Whitetail, see that title.
Arctic regions — caribou range, 260,

272, 273, 274.

Bad Lands —
Blacktail range, Io.

Breeding, 274-276.
Characteristics and habits, 273-
280.
Differences from other species,
261, 280-282, 286-287.
Flesh of, 276.
Horn-shedding, 279.
Migration, 274, 275.
Range — Arctic regions,
272; 273) 274.
Utility as food, clothing, etc.,
276-277.
[See also Caribou. ]
Bears —
Black bear ranges, 66.
Grizzly bear, shooting, 80.
Big Horn Mountains —
Mule-deer habits, 44-45.
Wapiti extermination, 134.
Bighorn —
Extermination compared with
wapiti, IOI,
Hunting, qualities developed by,
80.
Range of, 67.
Bird dog trained to point deer, 241,
243.
Bison, see Buffalo.
Black bear and whitetail ranges, 66.
Black Hills, pronghorn wintering
place, 103, 104.

260,

327

328

Blacktail —
Bounding movement, 77.
Columbia blacktail, see that title.
Mule-deer of the Pacific coast,
see that title.
Rocky Mountain blacktail, see
Mule-deer.
Bolson de Mapimi — mule-deer hunt-
ing, 193.
British Columbia —
Caribou species, 285.
Elk hunting, 172.
Moose ranges, 294, 302.

Bronx Zoological Garden —
Antelope, tameness, etc., 108-109.
Wapiti and whitetail breeding, 61.

Buffalo —

Extinction of, 16, 17.
Name, origin of, 3, 7.
Butchery of game, 18, 20-22, 25,
230-231, 271-273.

Cactus — food of mule-deer, 192-194.
California —
Chaparral, 199, 227.
Deer ranges, 226, 227, 256.
Elk —
Decrease, 166, 171, 172, 187.
Size of, 190.
Mule-deer, 194, 195, 196, 197,
226.
Canada —
Moose ranges in Lower Canada,
292, 298, 307.
Mule-deer ranges, 30.
Caribou —
Antlers, 259, 260, 263, 279-280,
284.
Appearance, 259-260.
Barren-ground caribou, see that
title.
Habits, 261.
Range, 6, 259.
Species, distinction between, 259,
261, 280-287.

Index

Caribou [continued | —
Woodland caribou, see that title.
Cascades —
Deer ranges, 227, 229, 237.
Elk hunting, 184, 187.
Cassiar Mountains — moose range,
294, 302.
Caton, Judge —deer’s vision, opin-
ion, 102,

Chaparral of California, 199, 227.
Coast blacktail, see Mule-deer of
the Pacific coast.

Coast Range —
Biacktail range, 229, 236, 241.

Elk decrease, 170, 171, 174,
187.
Colorado —
Extermination of deer compared,
IOI.

Mule-deer habits, 38-42.
Preservation of game, 22, 31, 32,
63.

Pronghorn range, 103.

Wapiti range, 133, 134, 146.
Columbia blacktail —

Antlers, 254.

Bouncing movement, 247-248.

Breeding, 251-252.

Compared with Virginia and
mule-deer, 253-256.
Description, tail, horns, etc., 226,

253-256.
Food, 231, 232.
Habits, 233.
Hunting, difficulties, etc., 235-
253.
Dogs trained to point deer,
241.
Hounding, 244-245.
Skulking in brush, 240, 241.
Still-hunting, 241-245.
Tracking, 233-234, 252-253.
Keenness of senses —scent of
man, 237-239.
Migration, 229-230, 251.

Index

Columbia blacktail [continued] —
Range, 226-232.

Heavy brush, 227, 236.
Watching back track, 252.
Watering, 233.

Coquille River — blacktail hunting,
232.

Crusting — method of hunting deer,
75, 82.

Deer —
Habits, variability of, 101-103.
Hunting, see that itdle.
Nomenclature of, see that title.
Preservation, see that title.
Species of, 4-5.
[See also names of species, Moose,
Caribou, etc.
“ Depoutllé” —fat of caribou, 276.
Dodge, Col.— characteristics of
wapiti, 102.
Dogs —
Hounds, see that title.
Pointing deer—still-hunting
blacktail, 241.
Pronghorn hunting, 127.

Elk —
Round-horned, see Wapiti.
Yellowstone Park preservation,

a
Elk of the Pacific coast —
California, see that title.
Feeding and hiding, 187-188.
Habits, 190.
Horns, 190.
Hunting, 172-191.
Chasing elk, 177-179.
Forest scenery, 179-184.
Judgment of elk compared
with deer, 174-176, 182,
189.
Retreat and decrease of elk,
167-172, 174.
Size of, 190.

Bac

Elkhorn ranch-house —

Pronghorn hunting, 112.

Wapiti hunting, 151, 152.

[ See also Little Missouri. ]
Eskimo — caribou hunting, 278.
Extermination of game, prevention,

see Preservation.

Fire-hunting —
Columbia blacktail, 246.
Whitetail, 82-86,

Game, see Deer.

Game laws, see Preservation of game.

Greenland — species of caribou, 282,
286.

Greyhounds — pronghorn hunting,
127.

Grinnell, G. B. — deer’s vision, opin-
ion, 102.

Grizzly bear, shooting, 80,

Horns, see Antlers and horns,
Horseback hunting, 11, 80, 82, 89,
115-122, 127.
Hounds, hunting with —
Blacktail, 244-245.
Mule-deer, brush cover, 199, 201,
216-218.
Whitetail, 86-90.
Hunting —
Bighern, 80.
Columbia blacktail, see that title.
Costume, 13.
Dogs, see that title.
Elk of the Pacific coast, see that
title,
Equipment, 13-14.
Fire-hunting, see ¢hat ttle.
Horseback hunting, 11, 80, 82,
89, 115-122, 127.
Hounds, see that title.
Jacking, 82, 84.
Judgment of deer compared with
elk, 174-176, 182, 189.
Long Island methods, 88,

339

Hunting [continued |] —

Moose, see that title.

Mule-deer, 52-61.

Mule-deer of the Pacific coast,
see that title.

Preservation of game, see that
title.

Pronghorn, see that title.

Qualities developed by, 24-27,
79-82.

Rifle for, 12.

Shifting for one’s self, 14-16, 79.

Spanish Californians, skill of, 172.

Virginia deer, 175.

Wagon trips, 119-121, 124.

Wapiti, 140, 147-164.

Whitetail, see chat title.

Woodland caribou, see that title.

Ice — caribou pursuit, 268, 269.
Indians —
Caribou destruction,
277.
Moose hunting, 302, 304, 319.

273) 275»

Jacking — whitetail sport, 82, 84.

Kenai Peninsula, Alaska —
Caribou decrease and species, 279,
285.
Moose range, 292-294, 298, 299,
302, 309, 318.

Liard River moose, 294, 298, 299,
302, 303, 314, 316.
Little Missouri —
Antelope range, 46.

Elkhorn ranch-house, see chat
title.

Extermination of deer compared,
100.

Mule-deer haunts and habits, 31,
37) 45> 53:

Pronghorn migration, 103, 104.
Types of country, 67-68,

Index

Little Missouri [continued | —
Wapiti range, 151.
Whitetail habits, 72.
Long Island, deer-hunting methods,
88.
Louisiana, whitetail habits, etc., 71,
89.
Lower California mule-deer, 194,
195, 197, 226.

MclIllhenny, J. A.— whitetail habits,
etc., 71, 89.
Mackenzie delta, moose range, 303.
Maine —
Game laws enforcement, increase
of moose, 70.
Moose ranges, 292-294, 298, 303,
397, 323-
hunters — destruction of
game, 21-22.
Mexico, mule-deer hunting, 30, 193,
194.
Migration of deer —
Caribou, 271, 272, 274, 275.
Columbian blacktail, 229-230,
251.
Mule-deer, 37-38.
Pronghorn, 103.
Wapiti, 145, 146.
Miller, G. S.— Kenai moose, 299.
Mississippi valley, whitetail range, 66.
Missouri River —
Whitetail range, 100.
[ See adso Little Missouri. }
Montana —
Deer extermination, 69.
Mule-deer preservation,
laws, 32, 63.
Wapiti range, 133, 134.
Moose —
Antlers, 299-300.
Breeding, moose fights, etc., 309=
310, 315-317.
Call, imitation and recognition
of, 310-312.

Market

game

Index

Moose [coztinucd | —
Calves, 294, 298.
Pet calf incident, 315.
Charging, 143, 314.
Color, 298.
Extinction possibilities, 6, 69-71,
303, 304, 318-319.
Food, 307-309.
Habits, 304-318.
Hunting, 292, 319-325.
Frozen skin anecdote, 325.
Still-hunting, 80.
Measurement, rapid growth, 294—
297.
Range, 5-6, 294, 301-304.
Forest country, 291.
Winter range, 305.
Species and characteristics, 292-
301.
Swimming, 317-318.
Weight, 297.
Wolves, enemy of moose, 305-
307; 319.
Mule-deer, ov Rocky Mountain black-
tail —
Breeding, 49-51.
Description of, 9-10, 28-30.
Enemies of, 43.
Gait, 47, 77.
Habits, variation in, 33-47.
Horns, 9-10, 29-30.
Hunting, 52-61.
Migration, 37-38.
Name, 28.
Preservation, 31-33, 61-64.

33%

Mule-deer of the Pacific coast [cox-
tinued | —
Destruction of grapevines, etc.,
207-210.
Food, 192-195.
Gait, 198.
Habits and movements, 212-216.
Hunting, 175, 198-207, 210-219.
Brush — deer cover, 199-201,

204-207.
Hounds, use of, 199, 201,
216-218.
Lower Californian deer, 194, 195,
197, 226.
Range, 192-197, 227.
Senses, 202-204,
Shrewdness, 205.
Varieties, 195-197, 222.
Venison, 223.
Watering, 193-194.
Weight, 195, 196.
“ Mule-tailed deer” variety, 196,

222.

Nahanna River country — moose
ranges, 302-303, 316.
Names of deer, see Nomenclature.
Naturalist qualities of hunter, 26-27.
New England —
Moose decrease, 69-71.
Whitetail range, 69-71.
Newfoundland, caribou, hunting, etc.,
268, 270, 271, 283.
New Hampshire, game preserves, 11,
19.

Range — rates of extermination, | New Mexico, pronghorn herds, 103.

10, 30-35, 61-69, 99-100.
Wire fences, passing through,
42-43-
Young, 48-49.

Mule-deer of the Pacific coast —
Antlers and horns, 219-220.
Compared with Columbia black-

tail, 253-256.
Description, 10, 197, 219-223.

Nomenclature of deer, 2-4.
Mule-deer, 28.
Virginia deer, 4.
Wapiti, 7.
Whitetail, 9.
Northwest Territory, moose ranges,
294.
Nova Scotia, caribou specimens,
268,

352

Oregon —
Blacktail hunting, 230, 232.
Elk hunting, 172, 182.

Pacific coast —
Blacktail, see Mule-deer of the
Pacific coast.
Elk of the Pacific coast, see that
title.
Wapiti range, 9.
Plains —
Pronghorn ranges — attraction of
hunting, 98, 104-105, 119,
122.
Types of country along plains
river, 67-68.
Prairies, see Plains.
Preservation of game —
Adirondacks, 11, 19.
Bronx Zoological Garden, see thaz
title.
Butchery of game, 18, 20-22, 25,
230-231, 271-273.
Civilized countries, game pre-
served by sportsmen, 148.
Game laws enforcement, 19-20,
22, 31-33, 63, 70.
Mule-deer, 31-33, 61-64.
New Hampshire, 11, 19.
Rates of extermination in differ-
ent localities, 16-18, 46,
69-71, 99.
Whitetail, 70.
Yellowstone Park, elk preserva-
tion, 23.
Prickly pear — mule-deer food, 193.
Trofessional hunters, destruction of
game, 21-22.
frongbuck, see Pronghorn antelope.
Pronghorn antelope, ov prongbuck —
Breeding, 109-110.
Enemies, III.
Gait, 77.
Hair, 10, 98.
Horns, shedding, 98.

Index

Pronghorn antelope [continued ] —
Hunting, 111-130.
Greyhound chasing, 127.
Running, pronghorn dislike to
abandon course, 128-130.
Slinging carcass to saddle, 119.
Wagon trips, 119-121, 124.
Water scarcity, 116.
Migration, 103.
Observation and curiosity in time
of danger, 106, 114, 123.
Range of, 10, 68-69.
Broken country avoided, 105.
Extermination compared with
other deer, 98-Io1!.
Plains, 98, 104-105, 119, 122.
Wintering places, 103-105.
Young, taming, etc., 107-109.

Queen Charlotte Islands — caribou
species, 285.

R. caribou, R. terrenove, and others
— species of caribou, 284-
286.
Raigifer arcticus — caribou species,
281.
Rangifer grenlandicus — caribou
species, 281.
Rangifer tarandus — reindeer
Scandinavia, 283.
Reindeer of Scandinavia and Spitz-
bergen — species of cari
bou, 283.
Rifle for deer hunting, 12.
Rocky Mountain blacktail, see Mule-
deer.
Rocky Mountains —
Elk, size of, 190.
Extermination of deer compared,
99-100.
Mule-deer range, 10, 30, 31.
Wapiti range, 9, 133, 140, 150,
152, 153s 154+
Whitetail range, 66.

of

Index

333

Rogue River Mountains, blacktail | Virginia deer [continued | —

hunting, 232.
Round-horned elk, see Wapiti.

Sacramento valley elk, 168, 169.
San Joaquin valley elk, 167, 169.

Leaping movement, 247.
Name, 4.
Watching back track, 252.

Wagon trips, 119-121, 124.

Scandinavia reindeer — species of | Wapiti, or round-horned elk —

caribou, 283.
Sheffield, J. R.— moose and deer in
northern Maine, 70.
Shooting, see Hunting.
Sierra Nevada —
Deer ranges, 226, 227.
Mule-deer, 195.
“ Slow-tracking dog’ — blacktail
still-hunting, 241, 243.
Snow —
Caribou chase, 267-270.
Whitetail habits in winter, 74-76.
Soldiers — hunters’ qualities, 24, 79,

82.

Spanish Californians, hunting skill,
172;

Spitzbergen reindeer — species of

caribou, 283.
Stalking caribou, 266.
Still-hunting —
Columbia blacktail, 241-245.
Elk, 187.
Moose, 80.
Pacific coast mule-deer, 224.
Whitetail, 81.
Woodland caribou, 264-265.
Stone, A. J.—caribou specimens,
[ote] 285.
Swamps— caribou still-hunting, 264.

Virginia deer —

Compared with Columbia black-
tail, 253-255.

Distinction from Pacific coast
blacktail, 226.

Food, 195.

Gait, 198, 199.

Hunting chances, 175.

Antlers, 131.

Banding into herds, 138.

Breeding, 136-142, 156.

Calves, 139, 141.

Challenge, 137, 154, 156.

Characteristics, 102,

Charging, 143.

Description, 8.

Extermination compared with
other deer, 8, 100-101,
131-135, 145, 149.

Fighting, 141-142.

Gait, 141, 144.

Hunting, 140, 147-164.

Beauty of country, 149-151.

Migration, 145, 146.

Name, 7.

Range, 6, 8, 9.

Scent, 155.

Stupidity in time of danger,
135-136.

Washington state, elk hunting, 172.
Water —

Columbia blacktail, watering, 233.
Mule-deer of Pacific coast, water-
ing, 193-194.
Prongbuck hunting, 116.
Whitetail —
Antlers, 9.
Interlocked antlers — white-
tail fight, 76-77.
Breeding, 71, 74, 76.
Extermination compared with
other deer, 65-71, 99-100.
Feeding, 72-74.
Habits, variation in, 65, 71-77,96.
Hunting, 78-97.
Crusting, 75, 82.

334 Index

Whitetail [continued |] — Woodland caribou [continued |] —
Hunting [continued | — Habits, 261-262.

Fire-hunting, 82-86. Hoofs, 268.

Hounding, 86-90. Hunting, 263-273.

Still-hunting, 81. Ice, pursuit on, 268, 269.
Movements, grace of, 77. Newfoundland, butchery,
Name, 9. 271.

Preservation, 70. Snow-shoes, chasing deer on,

Range, 9, 30, 33-34. 267-270.

Snow season, 74—76. Stalking, 266.

Swimming, 87. Still-hunting, 264-265.

Virginia deer, see that title. Migration, 271, 272.

Yards formed by, 74-76. Weight, 273.
Wilcox, A. — wapiti hunting, 136. [ See also Caribou. }
Wolves — enemies of deer, 44, 305- | Wyoming —

307, 319. Deer extermination, 69.

Woodland caribou — Mule-deer preservation, 32, 63,

Antlers, 263. 69.

Breeding, 262, 263. Wapiti range, 133, 134, 146.

Color, 263.
Differences from other species, | Yards, whitetail, 74-76.

161, 280-287. Yellowstone Park —
Food, 262. Elk preservation, 23.
Forest dwellers, 260, 261. Wapiti range, 134, 146.

F.C.

AMERICAN SPORTSMAN’S LIBRARY
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