Mule-deer 125 



from high, bleak, and stormy, to low, warm, and sheltered, it 

 fails not to travel in due season, and settle in bands where there 

 is sufficient promise of food and cover. 



In the Bitterroots of Idaho the Blacktail seemed scarce 

 when I camped there in September and October, 1902. I did 

 not see half a dozen during that time, and the tracks were far 

 from plentiful. Yet every winter, the guides assured me, 700 

 to 800 Blacktail could be seen in a six-mile walk along that 

 same creek. 



The best-defined migration that I know of takes place 

 each year in the Colorado Rockies. All summer long the Deer 

 on the Flat-tops flourish, as already described, but the first 

 touch of winter, usually in the early part of October, sends out 

 the whole population, almost in a body, to seek some winter 

 range where the snow is less dangerously deep. 



Following the well-known, well-worn pathways, they travel 

 steadily downward and westward. Their numbers increase 

 as they go and the pathways become more worn and less numer- 

 ous until, after a journey of 100 to 150 miles, they reach the 

 open and semi-arid brakes of the Uintah country in Utah. 



By coming here they eliminate at least the danger of deep 

 snow, but the region is full of enemies, and the survivors of 

 the host very gladly turn their noses to the hills again, as soon 

 as the melting of the upper snow permits it. 



In Manitoba I have seen no sign of such migration. The 

 Deer that frequent the sandhills south of Carberry are, so 

 far as I know, quite stationary. For the obvious reason that 

 there they find plenty of cover and food, and not too much snow, 

 they cannot better themselves by any seasonal change of sur- 

 roundings. 



In my many hunting-trips in the hills about Carberry, home 

 during the early 8o's, I noticed that the Blacktail was satisfied 

 with a very small home ground, if let alone. I knew a band 

 of three or four Deer that spent several weeks in a wood of less 

 than 100 acres, on the north side of Mitchell's Plain. When at 

 length driven out of this they circled around Chaska-water, 



