Ranching in the Bad Lands 43 



at a wild animal as at a target. I have killed rather 

 more game than most of the ranchmen who are my 

 neighbors, though at least half of them are better 

 shots than I am. 



Time and again I have seen a man who had, as 

 he deemed, practiced sufficiently at a target, come 

 out "to kill a deer" hot with enthusiasm; and nine 

 out of ten times he has gone back unsuccessful, even 

 when deer were quite plentiful. Usually he has been 

 told by the friend who advised him to take the trip, 

 or by the guide who inveigled him into it, that "the 

 deer were so plenty you saw them all round you," 

 and, this not proving quite true, he lacks persever- 

 ance to keep on; or else he fails to see the deer at 

 the right time ; or else if he does see it he misses it, 

 making the discovery that to shoot at a gray object, 

 not over-distinctly seen, at a distance merely guessed 

 at, and with a background of other gray objects, is 

 very different from firing into a target, brightly 

 painted and a fixed number of yards off. A man 

 must be able to hit a bull's-eye eight inches across 

 every time to do good wfork with deer or other 

 game ; for the spot around the shoulders that is fatal 

 is not much bigger than this ; and a shot a little back 

 of that merely makes a wound which may in the end 

 prove mortal, but which will in all probability allow 

 the animal to escape for the time being. It takes a 

 good shot to hit a bull's-eye off-hand several times 

 in succession at a hundred yards, and if the bull's- 

 eye was painted the same color as the rest of the 

 landscape, and was at an uncertain distance, and, 



