26 The Wilderness Hunter 



kind, and its antlers are marvels of symmetrical 

 grandeur. 



The woodland caribou is inferior to the wapiti 

 both in size and symmetry. The tips of the many 

 branches of its long irregular antlers are slightly 

 palmated. Its range is the same as that of the 

 moose, save that it does not go so far southward. 

 Its hoofs are long and round ; even larger than the 

 long, oval hoofs of the moose, and much larger than 

 those of the wapiti. The tracks of all three can be 

 told apart at a glance, and can not be mistaken for 

 the footprints of other game. Wapiti tracks, how 

 ever, look much like those of yearling and two- 

 year-old cattle, unless the ground is steep or muddy, 

 in which case the marks of the false hoofs appear, 

 the joints of wapiti being more flexible than those of 

 domestic stock. 



The whitetail deer is now, as it always has been, 

 the best known and most abundant of American big 

 game, and though its numbers have been greatly 

 thinned it is still found in almost every State of the 

 Union. The common blacktail or mule deer, which 

 has likewise been sadly thinned in numbers, though 

 once extraordinarily abundant, extends from the 

 great plains to the Pacific; but is supplanted on the 

 Puget Sound coast by the Columbian blacktail. The 

 delicate, heart-shaped footprints of all three are 

 nearly indistinguishable; when the animal is run 

 ning the hoof points are of course separated. The 



