This 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. In writing purely of this species, it seems like pedantry to call it by its book name of mule-deer, a name which conveys 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 thus known, 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 animal. 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 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 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 California. 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 different. 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 outside limits of its range have not shrunk materially in the century during which it has been known to white hunters. It was never found until the fertile, moist country of the Mississippi 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 numbers have been woefully 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 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 Government could do much by establishing its forest reserves as game reserves, and putting on a sufficient number of forest rangers who should be empowered to prevent all hunting on the reserves. The State governments can do still more. Colorado 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. As long as the good citizens of a State are indifferent 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, that the people of Montana and Wyoming who dwell alongside the Yellowstone Park are already taking—then 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, of the neighborhoods 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 pleasantest and healthiest of all out-of-door pastimes; whereas, if through their short-sightedness they destroy, or permit to be destroyed, the game, they are themselves responsible for the fact that their children and children’s children will 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 hunting 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 shall 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 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 contrary, never comes down into the dense growths of the river bottoms. Throughout the plains country 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 before 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 different conditions. This is often forgotten even by trained naturalists, who accept the observations made in one locality as if they applied throughout the range of the species. Thus in the generally good account of the habits of this species in Mr. Lydeker’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, the second only partly, 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 forest, and where the opportunities for grazing were small indeed, as we found to our cost in connection 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. Occasionally 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 winter, but it was 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 permanently in the timber.^[3] 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 sometimes wandered to and fro browsing on the mountains, 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 entirely undisturbed, the deer often came down them at a great rate, bouncing along in a way that showed that they had no fear of developing the sprung knees which we should fear for 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 difference 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 individuals, 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 abundant 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 the mule-deer were permanent residents. There were big dry creeks, 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 this region there are no whitetail and never have 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 summer they live and bring forth their young high up in the main chain of the mountains, in a beautiful country of northern forest growth, dotted with trout-filled brooks and clear lakes. The snowfall is so deep in these wooded mountains that the deer would run great risk of perishing if they stayed therein, and indeed could only winter there at all in very small numbers. Accordingly, 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 forerunners have put in their appearance in what has been, during the summer, an absolutely deerless 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 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 mountain-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 pastures 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, and long out of the spotted coat. They were still accompanying their mothers. Ordinarily a herd would consist of does, fawns, and yearlings, the latter carrying their first antlers. But it was not possible to lay down a universal rule. Again and again I saw herds in which there were one or two full-grown bucks 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 sometimes trot slowly off, halting and looking back. On one occasion, in some bad lands, we came upon four bucks which had been sunning themselves on the face of a clay wall. They jumped up and went off one at a time, very slowly, passing 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 certainly 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 the heat. During the heavy snow-storms 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 persecuted. 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 hayricks. 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. 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 altering 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 perceptible. 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. Sportsmen and hide-hunters had been busy during the fall migrations, and the ranchmen of the neighborhood were shooting them occasionally for food, even when we were out there. The cougars at 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 cow-punchers 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 standstill, 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 cougar 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 summer season when the deer had 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 dwell on the plains and those that dwell in the densely timbered regions of the Rockies farther to the northwest. In the summer time they lived high up on the plateaus of the Big Horn, sometimes feeding in the open glades and sometimes in the pine forests. In the fall they browsed on certain of the bushes almost exclusively. In winter 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 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 by that time 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 bottoms, 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 disappeared 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 I think the antelope were fully as abundant as ever they were, while the mule-deer had woefully diminished. In the early nineties there were still regions within thirty or forty miles of my ranch where the antelope 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.

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 clear idea of the extraordinary gait which is the mule-deer’s most striking characteristic. It trots well, 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 leaving 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 resemblance 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 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 associate 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 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 whatever 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 invariably 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 previous year, together. Often, however, these young deer will 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 accompanied 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 Dakotas 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 early in October—sometimes not until November—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 following 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 accumulated. 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 several bucks, one keeping off the others. But generally the biggest bucks collect each for himself 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. 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.^[4] As a matter of fact, while the fawn is so young as to be wholly dependent upon the doe, the buck never comes near either. Moreover, 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 unhesitatingly 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 preservation. 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 are thin, their necks swollen; though they are never as gaunt as wapiti bulls at this time. They then rest as much as possible, feeding all the time to put on fat before winter arrives, and rapidly attaining a very high condition.

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, always tried to avoid killing deer in the spring or early summer, though we often shot buck antelope at those times. The close season for deer varies in different States, and now there is generally 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 continually shifting its exact position, stays permanently in the same tract of country, whereas wapiti are apt to wander.

In the old days, when mule-deer were plentiful in country through which a horse could go at a fair rate of speed, it was 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 often went out, in the fall, after the day’s work was over, and killed a deer before dark. If it was in September, 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 simple. Deer were plentiful. Every big tangle of hills, every set of grassy coulees winding down to a big creek bottom, 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 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 circumstances 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 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 scrambling 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 coulee, and finished him. This was not much over a mile from the ranch-house, and after dressing 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, marksmanship, or plains-craft and knowledge of the animal’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 endurance, 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 unseen. If the country is wild and the deer have not been much molested, he will be 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 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 forward, 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 whitetail is by any means as keen-sighted as the pronghorn 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 the deer’s gaze as it attracts the telescopic 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.

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 picketed 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 wiggling 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 formless outlines, and though I followed them as rapidly 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, prongbuck, and whitetail, our ordinary game was the mule-deer. Around my ranch it was not necessary 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 sometimes 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 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 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, without 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 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. I slipped 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 swinging 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 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 difficulty 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.

The true way to preserve the mule-deer, however, as well as our other game, is to establish on the nation’s property great nurseries and wintering grounds, such as the Yellowstone Park, and then to secure fair play for the deer outside these grounds by a wisely planned and faithfully executed series of game laws. This is the really democratic method of solving the problem. Occasionally 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 ownership is by protecting it in the interest of all against the vandal few. As we grow older I 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 of 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 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.

There are many sides to the charm of big game hunting; nor should it be regarded as being without its solid advantages from the standpoint of national character. Always in our modern life, the life of a highly complex industrialism, there is a tendency to softening of 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 preeminently 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 in a 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 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 is an excellent thing for any man to be a good horseman and a good marksman, to be bold and hardy, and wonted to feats of strength and endurance, to be able to live in the open, and to feel a self-reliant readiness in any crisis. Big game hunting tends to produce or develop exactly these physical 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.