Deer of the River Bottoms. 103 



but they have held their own as none of the others have 

 begun to do, and are already in certain localities more 

 common than any other kind, and indeed in many places 

 are more common than all other kinds put together. The 

 ranchmen along the Powder River, for instance, now have 

 to content themselves with white-tail venison unless they 

 make long trips back among the hills. The same is rap- 

 idly getting to be true of the Little Missouri. This is 

 partly because the skin and meat hunters find the chase 

 of this deer to be the most tedious and least remunera- 

 tive species of hunting, and therefore only turn their at- 

 tention to it when there is nothing else left to hunt, and 

 partly because the sheep and cattle and the herdsmen who 

 follow them are less likely to trespass on their grounds 

 than on the grounds of other game. The white-tail is the 

 deer of the river bottoms and of the large creeks, whose 

 beds contain plenty of brush and timber running down 

 into them. It prefers the densest cover, in which it lies 

 hid all day, and it is especially fond of wet, swampy 

 places, where a horse runs the risk of being engulfed. 

 Thus it is very rarely jumped by accident, and when the 

 cattle stray into its haunts, which is but seldom, the cow- 

 boys are not apt to follow them. Besides, unlike most other 

 game, it has no aversion to the presence of cattle, and in 

 the morning and evening will come out and feed freely 

 among them. 



This last habit was the cause of our getting 1 a fine 

 buck a few days before last Christmas. The weather was 

 bitterly cold, the spirit in the thermometer sometimes 

 going down at night to 50 below zero and never for over 



