MOUNTAIN GAME; THE WHITE GOAT
Late one August I started on a trip to the Big Hole Basin, in western
Montana, to hunt white goats. With me went a friend of many hunts, John
Willis, a tried mountain man.
We left the railroad at the squalid, little hamlet of Divide, where we
hired a team and wagon from a “busted” granger, suspected of being a
Mormon, who had failed, even with the help of irrigation, in raising a
crop. The wagon was in fairly good order; the harness was rotten, and
needed patching with ropes; while the team consisted of two spoiled
horses, overworked and thin, but full of the devil the minute they
began to pick up condition. However, on the frontier one soon grows to
accept little facts of this kind with bland indifference; and Willis
was not only an expert teamster, but possessed that inexhaustible
fertility of resource and unfailing readiness in an emergency so
characteristic of the veteran of the border. Through hard experience he
had become master of plainscraft and woodcraft, skilled in all frontier
lore.
For a couple of days we jogged up the valley of the Big Hole River,
along the mail road. At night we camped under our wagon. At the mouth
of the stream the valley was a mere gorge, but it broadened steadily
the further up we went, till the rapid river wound through a wide
expanse of hilly, treeless prairie. On each side the mountains rose,
their lower flanks and the foothills covered with the evergreen forest.
We got milk and bread at the scattered log-houses of the few settlers;
and for meat we shot sage fowl, which abounded. They were feeding on
grasshoppers at this time, and the flesh, especially of the young
birds, was as tender and well tasting as possible; whereas, when we
again passed through the valley in September, we found the birds almost
uneatable, being fairly bitter with sage. Like all grouse, they are
far tamer earlier in the season than later, being very wild in winter;
and, of course, they are boldest where they are least hunted; but for
some unexplained reason they are always tamer than the sharp-tail
prairie fowl which are to be found in the same locality.
Finally we reached the neighborhood of the Battle Ground, where a rude
stone monument commemorates the bloody drawn fight between General
Gibbons’ soldiers and the Nez Percés warriors of Chief Joseph. Here, on
the third day of our journey, we left the beaten road and turned toward
the mountains, following an indistinct trail made by wood-choppers.
We met with our full share of the usual mishaps incident to prairie
travel; and toward evening our team got mired in crossing a slough.
We attempted the crossing with some misgivings, which were warranted
by the result; for the second plunge of the horses brought them up to
their bellies in the morass, where they stuck. It was freezing cold,
with a bitter wind blowing, and the bog holes were skimmed with ice;
so that we passed a thoroughly wretched two hours while freeing the
horses and unloading the wagon. However, we eventually got across;
my companion preserving an absolutely unruffled temper throughout,
perseveringly whistling the “Arkansaw Traveler.” At one period, when we
were up to our waists in the icy mud, it began to sleet and hail, and
I muttered that I would “rather it didn’t storm”; whereat he stopped
whistling for a moment to make the laconic rejoinder, “We’re not having
our rathers this trip.”
At nightfall we camped among the willow bushes by a little brook. For
firewood we had only dead willow sticks; they made a hot blaze which
soon died out; and as the cold grew intense, we rolled up in our
blankets as soon as we had eaten our supper. The climate of the Big
Hole Basin is alpine; that night, though it was the 20th of August, the
thermometer sank to 10° F.
Early next morning we struck camp, shivering with cold as we threw the
stiff, frozen harness on the horses. We soon got among the foothills,
where the forest was open and broken by large glades, forming what is
called a park country. The higher we went the smaller grew the glades
and the denser the woodland; and it began to be very difficult to get
the wagon forward. In many places one man had to go ahead to pick out
the way and if necessary do a little chopping and lopping with the axe,
while the other followed driving the team. At last we were brought to a
standstill, and pitched camp beside a rapid, alder-choked brook in the
uppermost of a series of rolling glades, hemmed in by mountains and the
dense coniferous forest. Our tent stood under a grove of pines, close
to the brook; at night we built in front of it a big fire of crackling,
resinous logs. Our goods were sheltered by the wagon, or covered with
a tarpaulin; we threw down sprays of odorous evergreens to make a
resting-place for our bedding; we built small scaffolds on which to dry
the flesh of elk and deer. In an hour or two we had round us all the
many real comforts of such a little wilderness home.
Whoever has long roamed and hunted in the wilderness always cherishes
with wistful pleasure the memory of some among the countless camps he
has made. The camp by the margin of the clear, mountain-hemmed lake;
the camp in the dark and melancholy forest, where the gusty wind booms
through the tall pine tops; the camp under gnarled cottonwoods, on the
bank of a shrunken river, in the midst of endless grassy prairies,--of
these, and many like them, each has had its own charm. Of course in
hunting one must expect much hardship and repeated disappointment; and
in many a camp, bad weather, lack of shelter, hunger, thirst, or ill
success with game, renders the days and nights irksome and trying. Yet
the hunter worthy of the name always willingly takes the bitter if by
so doing he can get the sweet, and gladly balances failure and success,
spurning the poorer souls who know neither.
We turned our horses loose, hobbling one; and as we did not look after
them for several days, nothing but my companion’s skill as a tracker
enabled us to find them again. There was a spell of warm weather which
brought out a few of the big bull-dog flies, which drive a horse--or
indeed a man--nearly frantic; we were in the haunts of these dreaded
and terrible scourges, which up to the beginning of August render it
impossible to keep stock of any description unprotected where they
abound, but which are never formidable after the first frost. In many
parts of the wilderness these pests, or else the incredible swarms of
mosquitoes, blackflies, and buffalo gnats, render life not worth living
during the last weeks of spring and the early months of summer.
There were elk and deer in the neighborhood; also ruffed, blue, and
spruce grouse; so that our camp was soon stocked with meat. Early one
morning while Willis was washing in the brook, a little black bear
thrust its sharp nose through the alders a few feet from him, and then
hastily withdrew and was seen no more. The smaller wild-folk were more
familiar. As usual in the northern mountains, the gray moose-birds
and voluble, nervous little chipmunks made themselves at home in the
camp. Parties of chickadees visited us occasionally. A family of flying
squirrels lived overhead in the grove; and at nightfall they swept
noiselessly from tree to tree, in long, graceful curves. There were
sparrows of several kinds moping about in the alders; and now and then
one of them would sing a few sweet, rather mournful bars.
After several days’ preliminary exploration we started on foot for
white goat. We took no packs with us, each carrying merely his jacket,
with a loaf of bread and a paper of salt thrust into the pockets. Our
aim was to get well to one side of a cluster of high, bare peaks, and
then to cross them and come back to camp; we reckoned that the trip
would take three days.
All the first day we tramped through dense woods and across and around
steep mountain spurs. We caught glimpses of two or three deer and a
couple of elk, all does or fawns, however, which we made no effort to
molest. Late in the afternoon we stumbled across a family of spruce
grouse, which furnished us material for both supper and breakfast.
The mountain men call this bird the fool-hen; and most certainly it
deserves the name. The members of this particular flock, consisting
of a hen and her three-parts grown chickens, acted with a stupidity
unwonted even for their kind. They were feeding on the ground among
some young spruce, and on our approach flew up and perched in the
branches four or five feet above our heads. There they stayed, uttering
a low, complaining whistle, and showed not the slightest suspicion when
we came underneath them with long sticks and knocked four off their
perches--for we did not wish to alarm any large game that might be in
the neighborhood by firing. One particular bird was partially saved
from my first blow by the intervening twigs; however, it merely flew
a few yards, and then sat with its bill open,--having evidently been a
little hurt,--until I came up and knocked it over with a better directed
stroke.
Spruce grouse are plentiful in the mountain forests of the northern
Rockies, and, owing to the ease with which they are killed, they have
furnished me my usual provender when off on trips of this kind, where
I carried no pack. They are marvelously tame and stupid. The young
birds are the only ones I have ever killed in this manner with a stick;
but even a full plumaged old cock in September is easily slain with a
stone by any one who is at all a good thrower. A man who has played
much base-ball need never use a gun when after spruce grouse. They are
the smallest of the grouse kind; the cock is very handsome, with red
eyebrows and dark, glossy plumage. Moreover, he is as brave as he is
stupid and good-looking, and in the love season becomes fairly crazy:
at such time he will occasionally make a feint of attacking a man,
strutting, fluttering, and ruffling his feathers. The flesh of the
spruce grouse is not so good as that of his ruffed and blue kinsfolk;
and in winter, when he feeds on spruce buds, it is ill tasting. I
have never been able to understand why closely allied species, under
apparently the same surroundings, should differ so radically in such
important traits as wariness and capacity to escape from foes. Yet
the spruce grouse in this respect shows the most marked contrast
to the blue grouse and the ruffed grouse. Of course all three kinds
vary greatly in their behavior according as they do or do not live
in localities where they have been free from man’s persecutions. The
ruffed grouse, a very wary game bird in all old-settled regions, is
often absurdly tame in the wilderness; and under persecution even the
spruce grouse gains some little wisdom; but the latter never becomes as
wary as the former, and under no circumstances is it possible to outwit
the ruffed grouse by such clumsy means as serve for his simple-minded
brother. There is a similar difference between the sage fowl and
prairie fowl, in favor of the latter. It is odd that the largest and
the smallest kinds of grouse found in the United States should be the
tamest; and also the least savory.
After tramping all day through the forest, at nightfall we camped
in its upper edge, just at the foot of the steep rock walls of the
mountain. We chose a sheltered spot, where the small spruce grew thick,
and there was much dead timber; and as the logs, though long, were of
little girth, we speedily dragged together a number sufficient to keep
the fire blazing all night. Having drunk our full at a brook we cut two
forked willow sticks, and then each plucked a grouse, split it, thrust
the willow-fork into it, and roasted it before the fire. Besides this
we had salt, and bread; moreover we were hungry and healthily tired; so
the supper seemed, and was, delicious. Then we turned up the collars of
our jackets, and lay down, to pass the night in broken slumber; each
time the fire died down the chill waked us, and we rose to feed it with
fresh logs.
At dawn we rose, and cooked and ate the two remaining grouse. Then we
turned our faces upward, and passed a day of severe toil in climbing
over the crags. Mountaineering is very hard work; and when we got high
among the peaks, where snow filled the rifts, the thinness of the air
forced me to stop for breath every few hundred yards of the ascent.
We found much sign of white goats, but in spite of steady work and
incessant careful scanning of the rocks, we did not see our quarry
until early in the afternoon.
We had clambered up one side of a steep saddle of naked rock, some of
the scarped ledges being difficult, and indeed dangerous, of ascent.
From the top of the saddle a careful scrutiny of the neighboring peaks
failed to reveal any game, and we began to go down the other side. The
mountain fell away in a succession of low cliffs, and we had to move
with the utmost caution. In letting ourselves down from ledge to ledge
one would hold the guns until the other got safe footing, and then
pass them down to him. In many places we had to work our way along
the cracks in the faces of the frost-riven rocks. At last, just as we
reached a little smooth shoulder, my companion said, pointing down
beneath us, “Look at the white goat!”
A moment or two passed before I got my eyes on it. We were looking down
into a basin-like valley, surrounded by high mountain chains. At one
end of the basin was a low pass, where the ridge was cut up with the
zigzag trails made by the countless herds of game which had traveled
it for many generations. At the other end was a dark gorge, through
which a stream foamed. The floor of the basin was bright emerald green,
dotted with darker bands where belts of fir trees grew; and in its
middle lay a little lake.
At last I caught sight of the goat, feeding on a terrace rather over
a hundred and twenty-five yards below me. I promptly fired, but
overshot. The goat merely gave a few jumps and stopped. My second
bullet went through its lungs; but fearful lest it might escape to some
inaccessible cleft or ledge I fired again, missing; and yet again,
breaking its back. Down it went, and the next moment began to roll over
and over, from ledge to ledge. I greatly feared it would break its
horns; an annoying and oft-recurring incident of white-goat shooting,
where the nature of the ground is such that the dead quarry often falls
hundreds of feet, its body being torn to ribbons by the sharp crags.
However, in this case the goat speedily lodged unharmed in a little
dwarf evergreen.
Hardly had I fired my fourth shot when my companion again exclaimed,
“Look at the white goats! look at the white goats!” Glancing in the
direction in which he pointed I speedily made out four more goats
standing in a bunch rather less than a hundred yards off, to one
side of my former line of fire. They were all looking up at me. They
stood on a slab of white rock, with which the color of their fleece
harmonized well; and their black horns, muzzles, eyes, and hoofs looked
like dark dots on a light-colored surface, so that it took me more
than one glance to determine what they were. White goat invariably run
up hill when alarmed, their one idea seeming to be to escape danger
by getting above it; for their brute foes are able to overmatch them
on anything like level ground, but are helpless against them among
the crags. Almost as soon as I saw them these four started up the
mountain, nearly in my direction, while I clambered down and across
to meet them. They halted at the foot of a cliff, and I at the top,
being unable to see them; but in another moment they came bounding and
cantering up the sheer rocks, not moving quickly, but traversing the
most seemingly impossible places by main strength and sure-footedness.
As they broke by me, some thirty yards off, I fired two shots at the
rearmost, an old buck, somewhat smaller than the one I had just killed;
and he rolled down the mountain dead. Two of the others, a yearling
and a kid, showed more alarm than their elders, and ran off at a brisk
pace. The remaining one, an old she, went off a hundred yards, and
then deliberately stopped and turned round to gaze at us for a couple
of minutes! Verily the white goat is the fool-hen among beasts of the
chase.
Having skinned and cut off the heads we walked rapidly onward, slanting
down the mountain side, and then over and down the pass of the game
trails; for it was growing late and we wished to get well down among
the timber before nightfall. On the way an eagle came soaring overhead,
and I shot at it twice without success. Having once killed an eagle
on the wing with a rifle, I always have a lurking hope that some time
I may be able to repeat the feat. I revenged myself for the miss by
knocking a large blue goshawk out of the top of a blasted spruce, where
it was sitting in lazy confidence, its crop stuffed with rabbit and
grouse.
A couple of hours’ hard walking brought us down to timber; just before
dusk we reached a favorable camping spot in the forest, beside a
brook, with plenty of dead trees for the night-fire. Moreover, the
spot fortunately yielded us our supper, too, in the shape of a flock
of young spruce grouse, of which we shot off the heads of a couple.
Immediately afterward I ought to have procured our breakfast, for a
cock of the same kind suddenly flew down nearby; but it was getting
dark, I missed with the first shot, and with the second must have
merely creased the neck, for though the tough old bird dropped, it
fluttered and ran off among the underbrush and escaped.
We broiled our two grouse before our fire, dragged plenty of logs into
a heap beside it, and then lay down to sleep fitfully, an hour or so at
a time, throughout the night. We were continually wakened by the cold,
when we had to rise and feed the flames. In the early morning we again
started, walking for some time along the fresh trail made by a large
band of elk, cows and calves. We thought we knew exactly the trend and
outlet of the valley in which we were, and that therefore we could tell
where the camp was; but, as so often happens in the wilderness, we had
not reckoned aright, having passed over one mountain spur too many,
and entered the ravines of an entirely different watercourse-system.
In consequence we became entangled in a network of hills and valleys,
making circle after circle to find our bearings; and we only reached
camp after twelve hours’ tiresome tramp without food.
On another occasion I shot a white goat while it was in a very curious
and characteristic attitude. I was hunting, again with an old mountain
man as my sole companion, among the high mountains of the Kootenai
country, near the border of Montana and British Columbia. We had left
our main camp, pitched by the brink of the river, and were struggling
wearily on foot through the tangled forest and over the precipitous
mountains, carrying on our backs light packs, consisting of a little
food and two or three indispensable utensils, wrapped in our blankets.
One day we came to the foot of a great chain of bare rocks, and climbed
laboriously to its crest, up cliff after cliff, some of which were
almost perpendicular. Swarming round certain of the rock shoulders,
crossing an occasional sheer chasm, and in many places clinging to
steep, smooth walls by but slight holds, we reached the top. The
climbing at such a height was excessively fatiguing; moreover, it was
in places difficult and even dangerous. Of course it was not to be
compared to the ascent of towering, glacier-bearing peaks, such as
those of the Selkirks and Alaska, where climbers must be roped to one
another and carry ice axes.
Once at the top we walked very cautiously, being careful not to show
ourselves against the sky-line, and scanning the mountain sides through
our glasses. At last we made out three goats, grazing unconcernedly on
a narrow, grassy terrace, which sloped abruptly to the brink of a high
precipice. They were not very far off, and there was a little rock spur
above them which offered good cover for a stalk; but we had to crawl so
slowly, partly to avoid falling, and partly to avoid detaching loose
rocks, that it was nearly an hour before we got in a favorable position
above them, and some seventy yards off. The frost-disintegrated
mountains in which they live are always sending down showers of
detached stones, so that the goats are not very sensitive to the noise;
still, they sometimes pay instantaneous heed to it, especially if the
sound is repeated.
When I peeped over the little ridge of rock, shoving my rifle carefully
ahead of me, I found that the goats had finished feeding and were
preparing to leave the slope. The old billy saw me at once, but
evidently could not quite make me out. Thereupon, gazing intently at
me, he rose gravely on his haunches, sitting up almost in the attitude
of a dog when begging. I know no other horned animal that ever takes
this position.
As I fired he rolled backward, slipped down the grassy slope, and
tumbled over the brink of the cliff, while the other two, a she and
a kid, after a moment’s panic-struck pause, and a bewildered rush in
the wrong direction, made off up a little rocky gully, and were out of
sight in a moment. To my chagrin when I finally reached the carcass,
after a tedious and circuitous climb to the foot of the cliff, I found
both horns broken off.
It was late in the afternoon, and we clambered down to the border
of a little marshy alpine lake, which we reached in an hour or so.
Here we made our camp about sunset, in a grove of stunted spruces,
which furnished plenty of dead timber for the fire. There were many
white-goat trails leading to this lake, and from the slide rock
roundabout we heard the shrill whistling of hoary rock-woodchucks,
and the querulous notes of the little conies--two of the sounds most
familiar to the white-goat hunter. These conies had gathered heaps of
dried plants, and had stowed them carefully away for winter use in the
cracks between the rocks.
While descending the mountain we came on a little pack of snow grouse
or mountain ptarmigan, birds which, save in winter, are always found
above timber line. They were tame and fearless, though hard to make out
as they ran among the rocks, cackling noisily, with their tails cocked
aloft; and we had no difficulty in killing four, which gave us a good
breakfast and supper. Old white goats are intolerably musky in flavor,
there being a very large musk-pod between the horn and ear. The kids
are eatable, but of course are rarely killed; the shot being usually
taken at the animal with best horns--and the shes and young of any game
should only be killed when there is a real necessity.
These two hunts may be taken as samples of most expeditions after
white goat. There are places where the goats live in mountains close
to bodies of water, either ocean fjords or large lakes; and in such
places canoes can be used, to the greatly increased comfort and
lessened labor of the hunters. In other places, where the mountains are
low and the goats spend all the year in the timber, a pack-train can
be taken right up to the hunting grounds. But generally one must go on
foot, carrying everything on one’s back, and at night lying out in the
open or under a brush lean-to; meanwhile living on spruce grouse and
ptarmigan, with an occasional meal of trout, and in times of scarcity
squirrels, or anything else. Such a trip entails severe fatigue and
not a little hardship. The actual hunting, also, implies difficult and
laborious climbing, for the goats live by choice among the highest
and most inaccessible mountains; though where they are found, as
they sometimes are, in comparatively low forest-clad ranges, I have
occasionally killed them with little trouble by lying in wait beside
the well-trodden game trails they make in the timber.
In any event the hard work is to get up to the grounds where the game
is found. Once the animals are spied there is but little call for the
craft of the still-hunter in approaching them. Of all American game the
white goat is the least wary and most stupid. In places where it is
much hunted it of course gradually grows wilder and becomes difficult
to approach and kill; and much of its silly tameness is doubtless due
to the inaccessible nature of its haunts, which renders it ordinarily
free from molestation; but aside from this it certainly seems as if it
was naturally less wary than either deer or mountain sheep. The great
point is to get above it. All its foes live in the valleys, and while
it is in the mountains, if they strive to approach it at all, they must
do so from below. It is in consequence always on the watch for danger
from beneath; but it is easily approached from above, and then, as it
generally tries to escape by running up hill, the hunter is very apt to
get a shot.
Its chase is thus laborious rather than exciting; and to my mind it
is less attractive than is the pursuit of most of our other game. Yet
it has an attraction of its own after all; while the grandeur of the
scenery amid which it must be carried on, the freedom and hardihood of
the life and the pleasure of watching the queer habits of the game, all
combine to add to the hunter’s enjoyment.
White goats are self-confident, pugnacious beings. An old billy, if he
discovers the presence of a foe without being quite sure what it is,
often refuses to take flight, but walks around, stamping, and shaking
his head. The needle-pointed black horns are alike in both sexes, save
that the males’ are a trifle thicker; and they are most effective
weapons when wielded by the muscular neck of a resolute and wicked old
goat. They wound like stilettos and their bearer is in consequence a
much more formidable foe in a hand-to-hand struggle than either a
branching-antlered deer or a mountain ram, with his great battering
head. The goat does not butt; he thrusts. If he can cover his back by
a tree trunk or bowlder he can stand off most carnivorous animals no
larger than he is.
Though awkward in movement, and lacking all semblance of lightness
or agility, goats are excellent climbers. One of their queer traits
is their way of getting their forehoofs on a slight ledge, and then
drawing or lifting their bodies up by simple muscular exertion,
stretching out their elbows, much as a man would. They do a good deal
of their climbing by strength and command over their muscles; although
they are also capable of making astonishing bounds. If a cliff surface
has the least slope, and shows any inequalities or roughness whatever,
goats can go up and down it with ease. With their short, stout legs,
and large, sharp-edged hoofs they clamber well over ice, passing and
repassing the mountains at a time when no man would so much as crawl
over them. They bear extreme cold with indifference, but are intolerant
of much heat; even when the weather is cool they are apt to take their
noontide rest in caves; I have seen them solemnly retiring, for this
purpose, to great rents in the rocks, at a time when my own teeth
chattered because of the icy wind.
They go in small flocks; sometimes in pairs or little family parties.
After the rut the bucks often herd by themselves, or go off alone,
while the young and the shes keep together throughout the winter and
the spring. The young are generally brought forth above timber line, or
at its uppermost edge, save of course in those places where the goats
live among the mountains wooded to the top. Throughout the summer they
graze on the short mountain plants which in many places form regular
mats above timber line; the deep winter snows drive them low down in
the wooded valleys, and force them to subsist by browsing. They are
so strong that they plow their way readily through deep drifts; and a
flock of goats at this season, when their white coat is very long and
thick, if seen waddling off through the snow, have a comical likeness
to so many diminutive polar bears. Of course they could easily be
run down in the snow by a man on snowshoes, in the plain; but on a
mountain side there are always bare rocks and cliff shoulders, glassy
with winter ice, which give either goats or sheep an advantage over
their snowshoe-bearing foes that deer and elk lack. Whenever the goats
pass the winter in woodland they leave plenty of sign in the shape of
patches of wool clinging to all the sharp twigs and branches against
which they have brushed. In the spring they often form the habit of
drinking at certain low pools, to which they beat deep paths; and at
this season, and to a less extent in the summer and fall, they are
very fond of frequenting mineral licks. At any such lick the ground
is tramped bare of vegetation, and is filled with pits and hollows,
actually dug by the tongues of innumerable generations of animals;
while the game paths lead from them in a dozen directions.
In spite of the white goat’s pugnacity, its clumsiness renders it no
very difficult prey when taken unawares by either wolf or cougar, its
two chief enemies. They can not often catch it when it is above timber
line; but it is always in sore peril from them when it ventures into
the forest. Bears, also, prey upon it in the early spring; and one
midwinter my friend Willis found a wolverine eating a goat which it
had killed in a snowdrift at the foot of a cliff. The savage little
beast growled and showed fight when he came near the body. Eagles are
great enemies of the young kids, as they are of the young lambs of the
bighorn.
The white goat is the only game beast of America which has not
decreased in numbers since the arrival of the white man. Although in
certain localities it is now decreasing, yet, taken as a whole, it is
probably quite as plentiful now as it was fifty years back; for in the
early part of the present century there were Indian tribes who hunted
it perseveringly to make the skins into robes, whereas now they get
blankets from the traders and no longer persecute the goats. The early
trappers and mountain-men knew but little of the animal. Whether they
were after beaver, or were hunting big game or were merely exploring,
they kept to the valleys; there was no inducement for them to climb to
the tops of the mountains; so it resulted that there was no animal with
which the old hunters were so unfamiliar as with the white goat. The
professional hunters of to-day likewise bother it but little; they do
not care to undergo severe toil for an animal with worthless flesh and
a hide of little value--for it is only in the late fall and winter that
the long hair and fine wool give the robe any beauty.
So the quaint, sturdy, musky beasts, with their queer and awkward
ways, their boldness and their stupidity, with their white coats and
big black hoofs, black muzzles, and sharp, gently curved span-long
black horns, have held their own well among the high mountains that
they love. In the Rockies and the Coast ranges they abound from Alaska
south to Montana, Idaho, and Washington; and here and there isolated
colonies are found among the high mountains to the southward, in
Wyoming, Colorado, even in New Mexico, and, strangest of all, in one or
two spots among the barren coast mountains of southern California. Long
after the elk has followed the buffalo to the happy hunting grounds the
white goat will flourish among the towering and glacier-riven peaks,
and, grown wary with succeeding generations, will furnish splendid
sport to those hunters who are both good riflemen and hardy cragsmen.