H tutting from the Ranch. 29 



After all, however, blacktail can only at times be 

 picked up by chance in this way. More often it is need- 

 ful to kill them by fair still-hunting, among the hills or 

 wooded mountains where they delight to dwell. If hun- 

 ted they speedily become wary. By choice they live in 

 such broken country that it is difificult to pursue them 

 with hounds ; and they are by no means such water-lov- 

 ing- animals as whitetail. On the other hand, the land in 

 which they dwell is very favorable to the still-hunter who 

 does not rely merely on stealth, but who can walk and 

 shoot well. They do not go on the open prairie, and, if 

 possible, they avoid deep forests, while, being good 

 climbers, they like hills. In the mountains, therefore, 

 they keep to what is called park country, where glades 

 alternate with open groves. On the great plains they 

 avoid both the heavily timbered river bottoms and the 

 vast treeless stretches of level or rolling grass land ; their 

 chosen abode being the broken and hilly region, scantily 

 wooded, which skirts almost every plains river and forms 

 a belt, sometimes very narrow, sometimes many miles in 

 breadth, between the alluvial bottom land and the prai- 

 ries beyond. In these Bad Lands dwarfed pines and cedars 

 grow in the canyon-like ravines and among the high steep 

 hills; there are also basins and winding^ coulies, filled with 

 brush and shrubbery and small elm or ash. In all such 

 places the blacktail loves to make its home. 



I have not often hunted blacktail in the mountains, 

 because while there I was generally after larger game ; 

 but round my ranch I have killed more of them than of 

 any other game, and for me their chase has always pes- 



