26 Hunting Trips of a Ranchman 



in exceptional cases, or where an Indian reservation 

 is thrown open. Those that are now in will continue 

 to make money ; but most of those who hereafter take 

 it up will lose. 



The profits of the business are great; but the 

 chances for loss are great also. A winter of unusual 

 severity will work sad havoc among the young 

 cattle, especially the heifers ; sometimes a disease like 

 the Texas cattle fever will take off a whole herd ; and 

 many animals stray and are not recovered. In fall, 

 when the grass is like a mass of dry and brittle tin- 

 der, the fires do much damage, reducing the prairies 

 to blackened deserts as far as the eye can see, and 

 destroying feed which would keep many thousand 

 head of stock during winter. Then we hold in 

 about equal abhorrence the granger who may come 

 in to till the land, and the sheep-owner who drives 

 his flocks over it. The former will gradually fill up 

 the country to our own exclusion, while the latter's 

 sheep nibble the grass off so close to the ground as 

 to starve out all other animals. 



Then we suffer some loss in certain regions very 

 severe loss from wild beasts, such as cougars, 

 wolves, and lynxes. The latter, generally called 

 "bob-cats," merely make inroads on the hen-roosts 

 (one of them destroyed half my poultry, coming 

 night after night with most praiseworthy regular- 

 ity), but the cougars and wolves destroy many 

 cattle. 



The wolf is not very common with us; nothing 

 like as plentiful as the little coyote. A few years 



