140 Sport and Life. 



game, making the battle a more one-sided one than ever. For 

 modern explosives detonate with a far less loud report than did 

 black powder, and, owing to their smokeless qualities, they do not 

 obstruct the gunner's vision, enabling him to fire ten times the 

 number of shots that he could a generation ago, and kill his victim 

 at distances quite twice as great. 



Though these considerations have apparently very little to do 

 with the subject of this chapter, I am tempted to remind the 

 critical young sportsman, wont to smile at old duffer's performances, 

 of what the last third of a century has done for him. Those who, 

 like myself, passed their apprenticeship to venery with the muzzle- 

 loading rifle, and who killed their first stag with the spherical ball 

 carefully rammed home by their own hand, and fired from a 

 weapon to which the preceding three hundred years had added but 

 comparatively unimportant improvements, will, I am sure, recall 

 experiences to which none of us were strangers. Bighorn stalking 

 was probably richer in such episodes than any other, and my mind 

 is stored with pictures of quietly grazing or resting bands of this 

 noble game that I have watched for hours. Hours which seemed 

 days to the excited hunter, debating with himself whether a shot at 

 150 or 175 yards was to be risked ! An error of forty or fifty yards 

 in estimating the distance, a mistake excusable under most circum- 

 stances, but doubly so in the bright shadowless glare of the 

 western atmosphere, would, one knew perfectly well, turn a hit 

 into a miss, and if the trophy happened to be a really fine one, 

 make one supremely miserable. 



But it is time to introduce the reader to those bizarre mauvaises 

 terres ranges on the elevated steppes of Wyoming, Montana, and 

 Idaho, where bighorn (Ovis montana) loved to roam. Professor 

 Sir A. Geikie has given such a capital, description of this strange 

 scenery with which the bighorn is so closely associated, that I 

 cannot do better than to quote his words* 



They are tracts of irreclaimable barrenness, blasted and left for ever 

 lifeless and hideous. To understand their peculiar features, it is needful 



