178 The Black-Tail Deer. 



ahead under a bluff the gleam of the camp fire, as it was 

 reflected back from the canvas-topped prairie schooner, 

 that for the time being represented home to us. 



This was much the best shot I ever made ; and it is just 

 such a shot as any one will occasionally make if he takes 

 a good many chances and fires often at ranges where the 

 odds are greatly against his hitting. I suppose I had 

 fired a dozen times at animals four or five hundred yards 

 off, and now, by the doctrine of chances, I happened to 

 hit ; but I would have been very foolish if I had thought 

 for a moment that I had learned how to hit at over four 

 hundred yards. I have yet to see the hunter who can hit 

 with any regularity at that distance, when he has to judge 

 it for himself ; though I have seen plenty who could make 

 such a long range hit now and then. And I have noticed 

 that such a hunter, in talking over his experience, was 

 certain soon to forget the numerous misses he made, and 

 to say, and even to actually think, that his occasional hits 

 represented his average shooting. 



One of the finest black-tail bucks I ever shot was 

 killed while lying out in a rather unusual place. I was 

 hunting mountain-sheep, in a stretch of very high and 

 broken country, and about mid-day, crept cautiously up 

 to the edge of a great gorge, whose sheer walls went 

 straight down several hundred feet. Peeping over the 

 brink of the chasm I saw a buck, lying out on a ledge 

 so narrow as to barely hold him, right on the face of 

 the cliff wall opposite, some distance below, and about 

 seventy yards diagonally across from me. He lay with 

 his legs half stretched out, and his head turned so as 



