THE CHASE. 61 



actly to the conduct of the barren-ground caribou under similar 

 circumstances. 



They have often been killed by the hunter, who has ridden 

 upon them on horseback when they were asleep and alone. If 

 the instant the animal starts the horseman will stop he is almost 

 sure of a shot. Under these circumstances the antelope will 

 make but a few bounds before he will stop and look around to 

 see what has alarmed him, when he may be taken at short range. 

 The white tent of the hunter on the plains or in the ravines so 

 attracts the curiosity of the Prong Buck that he will go quite up 

 to it for a close inspection of it if he sees no one about it or in the 

 neighborhood, and many a one who has been laying in camp 

 from indisposition or for rest has thus secured antelope chops for 

 supper as a surprise to his wearied comrade, who may have been 

 unfortunate during the day, and when wending his weary way 

 back sadly thought of an empty larder near the camp fire. 



I have seen accounts of coursing the antelope with greyhounds, 

 but my information is not sufficient to enable me to speak ad- 

 visedly on the subject, never having participated in the sport 

 myself, nor conversed with one who has done so. I can imagine 

 no finer game for this sport than the Prong Buck. A practically 

 limitless plain, smooth and level, with no impediments to ob- 

 struct the view or the chase, presents the fittest ground for such 

 sport. With an animal so fleet that he would leave the hounds 

 far in the rear for the first few miles, yet always in sight so as 

 to stimulate the dogs in the pursuit, whose better wind would 

 soon tell, they would, before many miles were passed over, run 

 into the quarry. 



After the}^ obtained horses, and before they procured fire-arms, 

 the aborigines pursued the antelope on horseback. Under date 

 of August 14, 1805, Lewis and Clark gave an account of a hunt 

 on the pass of the Rocky Mountains, between the head waters of 

 the Missouri River and Lewis River. They say : " The chief 

 game of the Shoshonees, therefore, is the antelope, which, when 

 pursued, retreats to the open plains, where the horses have full 

 room for the chase. But such is its extraordinary fieetness and 

 wind, that a single horse has no possible chance of outrunning it, 

 or tiring it down; and the hunters are therefore obliged to resort 

 to stratagem. 



"• About twenty Indians, mounted on fine horses, and armed 

 with bows and arrows, left the camp. In a short time they 

 descried a herd of ten antelopes ; they immediately separated into 



