The Columbia Blacktail 231 



Chester. But in spite of all, plenty of deer are 

 still left on these ranges, and will be to the 

 end of time. There are too many million acres 

 of timber and brush the plough can never invade ; 

 and the heavy hand the law has now laid on the 

 game butcher, and the market-shooter, and the skin- 

 hunter will only tighten its grip as the years come. 

 As we go north from the southern part of 

 Oregon the timber becomes more dense with the 

 increasing rainfall, and the bushes whose twigs 

 the deer loves become more scarce in the sombre 

 shades. The deer does not like to go far for 

 feed, and likes it tender and succulent, and the 

 great ferns which rise out of the gloom and damp- 

 ness are not to his taste. The blacktail is there- 

 fore growing scarcer. Though still found far in 

 the north, it is in limited numbers, and in places 

 he disappears almost entirely. Over the greater 

 part the timber is becoming such a tangle of 

 fallen trees, broken limbs with spots of swampy 

 ground, through all which so many big ferns and 

 other things that love damp shades struggle up 

 higher than your head, that real pleasure is nearly 

 out of the question even if game were very abun- 

 dant. Feed for your horse is too scarce and too 

 hard to carry even where a horse can travel well. 

 And a hundred deer might stand within a hun- 

 dred yards without your seeing one of them, 

 while as many dogs might run them in as many 



