The Mule -deer 31 



been known to white hunters. It was never 

 found until the fertile, moist country of the Mis- 

 sissippi 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 num- 

 bers have been wofully 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 very 

 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 govern- 

 ment could do much by establishing its forest 

 reserves as game reserves, and putting on a suffi- 

 cient number of forest rangers who should be 

 empowered to prevent all hunting on the reserves. 

 The state governments can do still more. Colo- 

 rado 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. 



