The Black-Tail Deer. 157 



men ; but their judgment did not equal their zeal, and 

 lack of training made them on the whole more bother 

 than advantage. 



But much more than good shooting is necessary 

 before a man can be called a good hunter. Indians, for 

 example, get a great deal of game, but they are in most 

 cases very bad shots. Once, while going up the Clear 

 Fork of the Powder, in Northern Wyoming, one of my 

 men, an excellent hunter, and myself rode into a large 

 camp of Cheyennes ; and after a while started a shooting- 

 match with some of them. We had several trials of skill 

 with the rifle, and, a good deal to my astonishment, I 

 found that most of the Indians (quite successful hunters, 

 to judge by the quantity of smoked venison lying round) 

 were very bad shots indeed. None of them came any- 

 where near the hunter who was with me ; nor, indeed, to 

 myself. An Indian gets his game by his patience, his 

 stealth, and his tireless perseverance ; and a white to be 

 really successful in still-hunting must learn to copy some 

 of the Indian's traits. 



While the game butchers, the skin hunters, and their 

 like, work such brutal slaughter among the plains animals 

 that these will soon be either totally extinct or so thinned 

 out as to cease being prominent features of plains life 

 yet, on the other hand, the nature of the country debar? 

 them from following certain murderous and unsportsman 

 like forms of hunting much in vogue in other quarters of 

 our land. There is no deep water into which a deer can 

 be driven by hounds, and then shot at arm's-length from 

 a boat, as is the fashion with some of the city sportsmen 



