THE MULE-DEER, OR ROCKY MOUNTAIN BLACKTAIL
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.
Footnote 3:
I call particular attention to this fact concerning the white goat, as
certain recent writers, including Mr. Madison Grant, have erroneously
denied it.
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.
[Illustration:
THE RANCH-HOUSE
]
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.
Footnote 4:
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.
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.
[Illustration:
THE RANCH VERANDA
]
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.