HUNTING FROM THE RANCH; THE BLACKTAIL DEER
No life can be pleasanter than life during the months of fall on a
ranch in the northern cattle country. The weather is cool; in the
evenings and on the rare rainy days we are glad to sit by the great
fireplace, with its roaring cottonwood logs. But on most days not a
cloud dims the serene splendor of the sky; and the fresh pure air is
clear with the wonderful clearness of the high plains. We are in the
saddle from morning to night.
The long, low, roomy ranch house, of clean hewed logs, is as
comfortable as it is bare and plain. We fare simply but well; for the
wife of my foreman makes excellent bread and cake, and there are plenty
of potatoes, grown in the forlorn little garden-patch on the bottom. We
also have jellies and jams, made from wild plums and buffalo berries;
and all the milk we can drink. For meat we depend on our rifles; and,
with an occasional interlude of ducks or prairie chickens, the mainstay
of each meal is venison, roasted, broiled, or fried.
Sometimes we shoot the deer when we happen on them while about our
ordinary business,--indeed throughout the time that I have lived on the
ranch, very many of the deer and antelope I killed were thus obtained.
Of course while doing the actual round-up work it is impossible to
attend to anything else; but we generally carry rifles while riding
after the saddle band in the early morning, while visiting the line
camps, or while in the saddle among the cattle on the range; and get
many a shot in this fashion.
In the fall of 1890 some friends came to my ranch; and one day we
took them to see a round-up. The OX, a Texan steer-outfit, had sent
a couple of wagons to work down the river, after beef cattle, and
one of my men had gone along to gather any of my own scattered steers
that were ready for shipping, and to brand the late calves. There were
perhaps a dozen riders with the wagons; and they were camped for the
day on a big bottom where Blacktail and Whitetail creeks open into the
river, several miles below my ranch.
At dawn one of the men rode off to bring in the saddle band. The rest
of us were up by sunrise; and as we stood on the veranda under the
shimmering cottonwood trees, reveling in the blue of the cloudless sky,
and drinking in the cool air before going to breakfast, we saw the
motley-colored string of ponies file down from the opposite bank of the
river, and splash across the broad, shallow ford in front of the ranch
house. Cantering and trotting the band swept toward the high, round
horse-corral, in the open glade to the rear of the house. Guided by the
jutting wing which stuck out at right angles, they entered the open
gate, which was promptly closed by the cowboy who had driven them in.
After breakfast we strolled over to the corral, with our lariats, and,
standing by the snubbing-post in the middle, roped the horses we wished
for the party--some that were gentle, and others that were not. Then
every man saddled his horse; and at the moment of mounting for the
start there was, as always, a thrill of mild excitement, each rider
hoping that his own horse would not buck, and that his neighbor’s
would. I had no young horses on the ranch at the time; but a number
of the older ones still possessed some of the least amiable traits of
their youth.
Once in the saddle we rode off down river, along the bottoms,
crossing the stream again and again. We went in Indian file, as
is necessary among the trees and in broken ground, following the
cattle-trails--which themselves had replaced or broadened the game
paths that alone crossed the plateaus and bottoms when my ranch house
was first built. Now we crossed open reaches of coarse grass, thinly
sprinkled with large, brittle cottonwood trees, their branches torn and
splintered; now we wound our way through a dense jungle where the gray,
thorny buffalo bushes, spangled with brilliant red berry clusters,
choked the spaces between the thick-growing box-alders; and again the
sure-footed ponies scrambled down one cut bank and up another, through
seemingly impossible rifts, or with gingerly footsteps trod a path
which cut the side of a butte or overhung a bluff. Sometimes we racked,
or shacked along at the fox trot which is the cow-pony’s ordinary gait;
and sometimes we loped or galloped and ran.
At last we came to the ford beyond which the riders of the round-up had
made their camp. In the bygone days of the elk and buffalo, when our
branded cattle were first driven thus far north, this ford had been
dangerous from quicksand; but the cattle, ever crossing and recrossing,
had trodden down and settled the sand, and had found out the firm
places; so that it was now easy to get over.
Close beyond the trees on the further bank stood the two round-up
wagons; near by was the cook’s fire, in a trench, so that it might not
spread; the bedding of the riders and horse-wranglers lay scattered
about, each roll of blankets wrapped and corded in a stout canvas
sheet. The cook was busy about the fire; the night-wrangler was
snatching an hour or two’s sleep under one of the wagons. Half a mile
away, on the plain of sage brush and long grass, the day-wrangler was
guarding the grazing or resting horse herd, of over a hundred head.
Still further distant, at the mouth of a ravine, was the day-herd of
cattle, two or three cowboys watching it as they lolled drowsily in
their saddles. The other riders were off on circles to bring in cattle
to the round-up; they were expected every moment.
With the ready hospitality always shown in a cow-camp we were pressed
to alight and take dinner, or at least a lunch; and accordingly we
jumped off our horses and sat down. Our tin plates were soon heaped
with fresh beef, bread, tomatoes, rice, and potatoes, all very good;
for the tall, bearded, scrawny cook knew his work, and the OX outfit
always fed its men well,--and saw that they worked well too.
Before noon the circle riders began to appear on the plain, coming
out of the ravines, and scrambling down the steep hills, singly or
in twos and threes. They herded before them bunches of cattle, of
varying size; these were driven together and left in charge of a
couple of cow-punchers. The other men rode to the wagon to get a hasty
dinner--lithe, sinewy fellows, with weather-roughened faces and fearless
eyes; their broad felt hats flapped as they galloped, and their spurs
and bridle chains jingled. They rode well, with long stirrups, sitting
straight in the deep stock saddles, and their wiry ponies showed no
signs of fatigue from the long morning’s ride.
The horse-wrangler soon drove the saddle band to the wagons, where it
was caught in a quickly improvised rope-corral. The men roped fresh
horses, fitted for the cutting-work round the herd, with its attendant
furious galloping and flash-like turning and twisting. In a few minutes
all were in the saddle again and riding toward the cattle.
Then began that scene of excitement and turmoil, and seeming confusion,
but real method and orderliness, so familiar to all who have engaged
in stock-growing on the great plains. The riders gathered in a wide
ring round the herd of uneasy cattle, and a couple of men rode into
their midst to cut out the beef steers and the cows that were followed
by unbranded calves. As soon as the animal was picked out the cowboy
began to drive it slowly toward the outside of the herd, and when it
was near the edge he suddenly raced it into the open. The beast would
then start at full speed and try to double back among its fellows;
while the trained cow-pony followed like a shadow, heading it off at
every turn. The riders round that part of the herd opened out and the
chosen animal was speedily hurried off to some spot a few hundred yards
distant, where it was left under charge of another cowboy. The latter
at first had his hands full in preventing his charge from rejoining the
herd; for cattle dread nothing so much as being separated from their
comrades. However, as soon as two or three others were driven out,
enough to form a little bunch, it became a much easier matter to hold
the “cut,” as it is called. The cows and calves were put in one place,
the beeves in another; the latter were afterward run into the day-herd.
Meanwhile from time to time some clean-limbed young steer or heifer,
able to run like an antelope and double like a jack-rabbit, tried to
break out of the herd that was being worked, when the nearest cowboy
hurried in pursuit at top speed and brought it back, after a headlong,
break-neck race, in which no heed was paid to brush, fallen timber,
prairie-dog holes, or cut banks. The dust rose in little whirling
clouds, and through it dashed bolting cattle and galloping cowboys,
hither and thither, while the air was filled with the shouts and
laughter of the men, and the bellowing of the herd.
As soon as the herd was worked it was turned loose, while the cows and
calves were driven over to a large corral, where the branding was done.
A fire was speedily kindled, and in it were laid the branding irons of
the different outfits represented on the round-up. Then two of the best
ropers rode into the corral and began to rope the calves, round the
hind legs by preference, but sometimes round the head. The other men
dismounted to “wrestle” and brand them. Once roped, the calf, bawling
and struggling, was swiftly dragged near the fire, where one or two
of the calf-wrestlers grappled with and threw the kicking, plunging
little beast, and held it while it was branded. If the calf was large
the wrestlers had hard work; and one or two young maverick bulls--that
is, unbranded yearling bulls, which had been passed by in the round-ups
of the preceding year--fought viciously, bellowing and charging, and
driving some of the men up the sides of the corral, to the boisterous
delight of the others.
After watching the work for a little while we left and rode homeward.
Instead of going along the river bottoms we struck back over the
buttes. From time to time we came out on some sharp bluff overlooking
the river. From these points of vantage we could see for several miles
up and down the valley of the Little Missouri. The level bottoms were
walled in by rows of sheer cliffs, and steep, grassy slopes. These
bluff lines were from a quarter of a mile to a mile apart; they did not
run straight, but in a succession of curves, so as to look like the
halves of many amphitheatres. Between them the river swept in great
bends from side to side; the wide bed, brimful during the time of
freshets, now held but a thin stream of water. Some of the bottoms were
covered only with grass and sage brush; others were a dense jungle of
trees; while yet others looked like parks, the cottonwoods growing in
curved lines or in clumps scattered here and there.
On our way we came across a bunch of cattle, among which the sharp eyes
of my foreman detected a maverick two-year-old heifer. He and one of
the cowboys at once got down their ropes and rode after her; the rest
of us first rounding up the bunch so as to give a fair start. After a
sharp run one of the men, swinging his lariat round his head, got close
up; in a second or two the noose settled round the heifer’s neck, and
as it became taut she was brought to with a jerk; immediately afterward
the other man made his throw and cleverly heeled her. In a trice
the red heifer was stretched helpless on the ground, the two fierce
little ponies, a pinto and a buckskin, keeping her down on their own
account, tossing their heads and backing so that the ropes which led
from the saddle-horns to her head and hind feet never slackened. Then
we kindled a fire; one of the cinch rings was taken off to serve as a
branding iron, and the heifer speedily became our property--for she was
on our range.
When we reached the ranch it was still early, and after finishing
dinner it lacked over an hour of sundown. Accordingly we went for
another ride; and I carried my rifle. We started up a winding coulie
which opened back of the ranch house; and after half an hour’s canter
clambered up the steep head-ravines, and emerged on a high ridge which
went westward, straight as an arrow, to the main divide between the
Little Missouri and the Big Beaver. Along this narrow, grassy crest we
loped and galloped; we were so high that we could look far and wide
over all the country round about. To the southward, across a dozen
leagues of rolling and broken prairie, loomed Sentinel Butte, the chief
landmark of all that region. Behind us, beyond the river, rose the
weird chaos of Bad Lands which at this point lie for many miles east
of the Little Missouri. Their fantastic outlines were marked against
the sky as sharply as if cut with a knife; their grim and forbidding
desolation warmed into wonderful beauty by the light of the dying
sun. On our right, as we loped onward, the land sunk away in smooth
green-clad slopes and valleys; on our left it fell in sheer walls.
Ahead of us the sun was sinking behind a mass of blood-red clouds; and
on either hand the flushed skies were changing their tint to a hundred
hues of opal and amethyst. Our tireless little horses sprang under us,
thrilling with life; we were riding through a fairy world of beauty and
color and limitless space and freedom.
Suddenly a short hundred yards in front three blacktail leaped out of
a little glen and crossed our path, with the peculiar bounding gait of
their kind. At once I sprang from my horse and, kneeling, fired at the
last and largest of the three. My bullet sped too far back, but struck
near the hip and the crippled deer went slowly down a ravine. Running
over a hillock to cut it off, I found it in some brush a few hundred
yards beyond and finished it with a second ball. Quickly dressing it, I
packed it on my horse, and trotted back leading him; an hour afterward
saw through the waning light the quaint, home-like outlines of the
ranch house.
After all, however, blacktail can only at times be picked up by
chance in this way. More often it is needful to kill them by fair
still-hunting, among the hills or wooded mountains where they delight
to dwell. If hunted they speedily become wary. By choice they live in
such broken country that it is difficult to pursue them with hounds;
and they are by no means such water-loving animals as whitetail. On
the other hand, the land in which they dwell is very favorable to the
still-hunter who does not rely merely on stealth, but who can walk and
shoot well. They do not go on the open prairie, and, if possible, they
avoid deep forests, while, being good climbers, they like hills. In the
mountains, therefore, they keep to what is called park country, where
glades alternate with open groves. On the great plains they avoid both
the heavily timbered river bottoms and the vast treeless stretches
of level or rolling grass land; their chosen abode being the broken
and hilly region, scantily wooded, which skirts almost every plains
river and forms a belt, sometimes very narrow, sometimes many miles
in breadth, between the alluvial bottom land and the prairies beyond.
In these Bad Lands dwarfed pines and cedars grow in the canyon-like
ravines and among the high steep hills; there are also basins and
winding coulies, filled with brush and shrubbery and small elm or ash.
In all such places the blacktail loves to make its home.
I have not often hunted blacktail in the mountains, because while there
I was generally after larger game; but round my ranch I have killed
more of them than of any other game, and for me their chase has always
possessed a peculiar charm. We hunt them in the loveliest season of
the year, the fall and early winter, when it is keen pleasure merely
to live out-of-doors. Sometimes we make a regular trip, of several
days’ duration, taking the ranch wagon, with or without a tent, to
some rugged little disturbed spot where the deer are plenty; perhaps
returning with eight or ten carcasses, or even more--enough to last a
long while in cold weather. We often make such trips while laying in
our winter supply of meat.
At other times we hunt directly from the ranch house. We catch our
horses over night, and are in the saddle for an all-day’s hunt long
before the first streak of dawn, possibly not returning until some
hours after nightfall. The early morning and late evening are the
best time for hunting game, except in regions where it is hardly
ever molested, and where in consequence it moves about more or less
throughout the day.
During the rut, which begins in September, the deer are in constant
motion, and are often found in bands. The necks of the bucks swell and
their sides grow gaunt; they chase the does all night, and their flesh
becomes strong and stringy--far inferior to that of the barren does
and yearlings. The old bucks then wage desperate conflicts with one
another, and bully their smaller brethren unmercifully. Unlike the elk,
the blacktail, like the whitetail, are generally silent in the rutting
season. They occasionally grunt when fighting; and once, on a fall
evening, I heard two young bucks barking in a ravine back of my ranch
house, and crept up and shot them; but this was a wholly exceptional
instance.
At this time I hunt on foot, only using the horse to carry me to and
from the hunting-ground; for while rutting, the deer, being restless,
do not try to escape observation by lying still, and on the other hand
are apt to wander about and so are easily seen from a distance. When I
have reached a favorable place I picket my horse and go from vantage
point to vantage point, carefully scanning the hillsides, ravines, and
brush coulies from every spot that affords a wide outlook. The quarry
once seen it may be a matter of hours, or only of minutes, to approach
it, according as the wind and cover are or are not favorable. The walks
for many miles over the hills, the exercise of constant watchfulness,
the excitement of the actual stalk, and the still greater excitement
of the shot, combine to make still-hunting the blacktail, in the sharp
fall weather, one of the most attractive of hardy outdoor sports. Then
after the long, stumbling walk homeward, through the cool gloom of the
late evening, comes the meal of smoking venison and milk and bread, and
the sleepy rest, lying on the deer-skins, or sitting in the rocking
chair before the roaring fire, while the icy wind moans outside.
Earlier in the season, while the does are still nursing the fawns, and
until the bucks have cleaned the last vestiges of velvet from their
antlers, the deer lie very close, and wander round as little as may be.
In the spring and early summer, in the ranch country, we hunt big game
very little, and then only antelope; because in hunting antelope there
is no danger of killing aught but bucks. About the first of August we
begin to hunt blacktail, but do not kill does until a month later--and
then only when short of meat. In the early weeks of the deer season
we frequently do even the actual hunting on horseback instead of on
foot; because the deer at this time rarely appear in view, so as to
afford chance for a stalk, and yet are reluctant to break cover until
very closely approached. In consequence we keep on our horses, and so
get over much more ground than on foot, beating through or beside all
likely-looking cover, with the object of jumping the deer close by.
Under such circumstances bucks sometimes lie until almost trodden on.
One afternoon in mid-August, when the ranch was entirely out of meat, I
started with one of my cow-hands, Merrifield, to kill a deer. We were
on a couple of stout, quiet ponies, accustomed to firing and to packing
game. After riding a mile or two down the bottoms we left the river and
struck off up a winding valley, which led back among the hills. In a
short while we were in a blacktail country, and began to keep a sharp
lookout for game, riding parallel to, but some little distance from,
one another. The sun, beating down through the clear air, was very hot;
the brown slopes of short grass, and still more, the white clay walls
of the Bad Lands, threw the heat rays in our faces. We skirted closely
all likely-looking spots, such as the heavy brush-patches in the
bottoms of the winding valleys, and the groves of ash and elm in the
basins and pockets flanking the high plateaus; sometimes we followed a
cattle trail which ran down the middle of a big washout, and again we
rode along the brink of a deep cedar canyon.
After a while we came to a coulie with a small muddy pool at its mouth;
and round this pool there was much fresh deer sign. The coulie was but
half a mile long, heading into and flanked by the spurs of some steep,
bare hills. Its bottom, which was fifty yards or so across, was choked
by a dense growth of brush, chiefly thorny bullberries, while the sides
were formed by cut banks twelve or fifteen feet high. My companion rode
up the middle, while I scrambled up one of the banks, and, dismounting,
led my horse along its edge, that I might have a clear shot at whatever
we roused. We went nearly to the head, and then the cowboy reined up
and shouted to me that he “guessed there were no deer in the coulie.”
Instantly there was a smashing in the young trees midway between us,
and I caught a glimpse of a blacktail buck speeding round a shoulder
of the cut bank: and though I took a hurried shot I missed. However,
another buck promptly jumped up from the same place; evidently the two
had lain secure in their day-beds, shielded by the dense cover, while
the cowboy rode by them, and had only risen when he halted and began
to call to me across them. This second buck, a fine fellow with big
antlers not yet clear of velvet, luckily ran up the opposite bank, and
I got a fair shot at him as he galloped broadside to me along the open
hillside. When I fired he rolled over with a broken back. As we came up
he bleated loudly, an unusual thing for a buck to do.
Now, these two bucks must have heard us coming, but reckoned on our
passing them by without seeing them; which we would have done had they
not been startled when the cowboy halted and spoke. Later in the season
they would probably not have let us approach them, but would have run
as soon as they knew of our presence. Of course, however, even later
in the season, a man may by chance stumble across a deer close by. I
remember one occasion when my ranch partner, Robert Munro Ferguson, and
I almost corralled an unlucky deer in a small washout.
It was October, and our meat supply unexpectedly gave out; on our
ranch, as on most ranches, an occasional meat famine of three or
four days intervenes between the periods of plenty. So Ferguson and
I started together, to get venison; and at the end of two days’ hard
work, leaving the ranch by sunrise, riding to the hunting grounds and
tramping steadily until dark, we succeeded. The weather was stormy and
there were continual gusts of wind and of cold rain, sleet, or snow. We
hunted through a large tract of rough and broken country, six or eight
miles from the ranch. As often happens in such wild weather the deer
were wild too; they were watchful and were on the move all the time.
We saw a number, but either they ran off before we could get a shot,
or if we did fire it was at such a distance or under such unfavorable
circumstances that we missed. At last, as we were plodding drearily up
a bare valley, the sodden mud caking round our shoes, we roused three
deer from the mouth of a short washout but a few paces from us. Two
bounded off; the third by mistake rushed into the washout, where he
found himself in a regular trap and was promptly shot by my companion.
We slung the carcass on a pole and carried it down to where we had left
the horses; and then we loped homeward, bending to the cold, slanting
rain.
Although in places where it is much persecuted the blacktail is a shy
and wary beast, the successful pursuit of which taxes to the uttermost
the skill and energy of the hunter, yet, like the elk, if little
molested it often shows astonishing tameness and even stupidity. In
the Rockies I have sometimes come on blacktail within a very short
distance, which would merely stare at me, then trot off a few yards,
turn and stare again, and wait for several minutes before really taking
alarm. What is much more extraordinary, I have had the same thing
happen to me in certain little hunted localities in the neighborhood
of my ranch, even of recent years. In the fall of 1890, I was riding
down a canyon-coulie with my foreman, Sylvane Ferris, and a young
friend from Boston, when we almost rode over a barren blacktail doe.
She only ran some fifty yards, round a corner of the coulie, and then
turned and stood until we ran forward and killed her--for we were in
need of fresh meat. One October, a couple of years before this, my
cousin, West Roosevelt, and I took a trip with the wagon to a very
wild and rugged country, some twenty miles from the ranch. We found
that the deer had evidently been but little disturbed. One day while
scrambling down a steep, brushy hill, leading my horse, I came close on
a doe and fawn; they merely looked at me with curiosity for some time,
and then sauntered slowly off, remaining within shot for at least five
minutes. Fortunately we had plenty of meat at the time, and there was
no necessity to harm the graceful creatures. A few days later we came
on two bucks sunning themselves in the bottom of a valley. My companion
killed one. The other was lying but a dozen rods off; yet it never
moved, until several shots had been fired at the first. It was directly
under me, and, in my anxiety to avoid overshooting, to my horror I
committed the opposite fault, and away went the buck.
Every now and then any one will make most unaccountable misses. A few
days after thus losing the buck I spent nearly twenty cartridges in
butchering an unfortunate yearling, and only killed it at all because
it became so bewildered by the firing that it hardly tried to escape. I
never could tell why I used so many cartridges to such little purpose.
During the next fortnight I killed seven deer without making a single
miss, though some of the shots were rather difficult.