146 The Black-Tail Deer. 



beds, which are sometimes in the brush and among the 

 matted bushes in the bottoms of the small branching 

 coulies, or heads of the crooked ravines. More often 

 they will be found in the thickets of stunted cedars 

 clothing the brinks of the canyons or the precipitous 

 slopes of the great chasms into which the ground is cleft 

 and rent ; or else among the groves of gnarled pines on 

 the sides of the buttes, and in the basins and pockets be- 

 tween the spurs. If the country is not much hunted over, 

 a buck or old doe will often take its mid-day rest out in the 

 open, lying down among the long grass or shrubbery on 

 one of the bare benches at the head of a ravine, at the 

 edge of the dense brush with which its bottom and sides 

 are covered. In such a case, a position is always chosen 

 from which a look-out can be kept all around ; and the 

 moment any suspicious object is seen, the deer slips off 

 into the thicket below him. Perhaps the favorite resting- 

 places are the rounded edges of the gorges, just before 

 the sides of the latter break sheer off. Here the deer 

 lies, usually among a few straggling pines or cedars, on the 

 very edge of the straight side-wall of the canyon, with a 

 steep-shelving slope above him, so that he cannot be seen 

 from the summit ; and in such places it is next to impos- 

 sible to get at him. If lying on a cedar-grown spur or 

 ridge-point, the still-hunter has a better chance, for the 

 evergreen needles with which the ground is covered enable 

 a man to walk noiselessly, and, by stooping or going on 

 all fours, he can keep under the branches. But it is at all 

 times hard and unsatisfactory work to find and success- 

 fully still-hunt a deer that is enjoying its day rest. Gen- 



