242 Life-histories of Northern Animals 



and rested. But the buck was still fresh, and he set out racing 

 by himself as though bent on using up all his surplus energies. 

 Rushing at full gallop round and round the bushes, here and 

 there, anywhere, to keep going, and yet close to the band, he 

 must have run ten minutes, all alone, at full speed, while the 

 hunter watched, and still seemed fresh as ever. 



On another occasion McFadden saw a dozen kids and 

 two or three big bucks at play in the same way. 



As September passes the band increases, the merry games 

 relax not; and the good fellowship existing is exemplified when 

 Fox or Coyote menace any of the young. Each one seems now 

 to act for the good of the entire herd. A mid-September inci- 

 dent of Antelope hunting in Jackson's Hole recurs to me: I 

 had crawled through brush and sage for half a mile after a 

 mixed band of 40. I was within 300 yards and, in cover of a 

 certain clump of sage, expecting to get within 100 yards, before 

 selecting my specimen, when a loud "kau" afar to my right 

 called my att'entlon to the fact that I was in plain view of a 

 young sentinel buck whose head showed above the sage 200 

 yards to my left. In an instant every crupper-disk was flashing 

 and the band lined up. The next moment I knew they would 

 be going. I turned my sights on the nearest — it was the senti- 

 nel — and now — he is among the specimens on view in the 

 National Museum. 



MATING This ideal family gathering is broken up at length, not 



by any outside enemy, but by the annual mating (one cannot 

 call it pairing) season. Toward the end of September the 

 kids of the year are weaned, and about the same time the pro- 

 creative instinct is aroused in the bucks. At first the feeling is 

 one merely of fevered unrest without definite purpose; sudden 

 impulses drive them to expend their energies in aimless exer- 

 cise. The Honourable T. Roosevelt writes :^^ 



"Of all the game the Prongbuck seems to me the most 

 excitable during the rut. The males run the does much as do 



^*Deer Family, 1903, pp. 109-110. 



