TRACKS AND TRACKING 



August. The old bucks are first in selecting 

 their does, but they have to leave their respective 

 adherents on account of the stronger young bucks, 

 which fight off their old and emaciated rivals. 

 During the rutting season all bucks have such an 

 emphatically disagreeable odor that it is abso- 

 lutely impossible to eat the meat; afterward they 

 are but skin and bones,, and before they can pick 

 up again and are fit for food, they shed their 

 horns. The sportsman, in consequence of the 

 law, which opens the shooting season for antelope 

 September 1st, is put to two disagreeable alter- 

 natives: either to shoot a buck and let the meat 

 rot, saving horns and skin as a trophy of the 

 sport (?), or to kill a doe or fawn, to feast on 

 excellent venison, and incidentally hasten the 

 extermination of the most beautiful creature of 

 the plains. 



Sport with antelope bucks in the full sense of 

 the word, can be had only during the summer 

 months ; then they tax the hunter's skill, and their 

 meat is fit for the table of an epicure. 



When their natural range is absorbed by pri- 

 vate preserves, or when human progress is ad- 



66 



