Ranching in the Bad Lands 45 



in antelope hunting, the kind in which most long- 

 range shooting is done; and at half that distance 

 a very good shot, with all the surroundings in his 

 favor, is more apt to miss than to hit. Of course 

 old hunters the most inveterate liars on the face of 

 the earth are all the time telling of their wonder- 

 ful shots at even longer distances, and they do occa- 

 sionally, when shooting very often, make them, but 

 their performances, when actually tested, dwindle 

 amazingly. Others, amateurs, will brag of their 

 rifles. I lately read in a magazine about killing 

 antelopes at eight hundred yards with a Winchester 

 express, a weapon which can not be depended upon 

 at over tw)o hundred, and is wholly inaccurate at 

 over three hundred, yards. 



The truth is that, in almost all cases, the hunter 

 merely guesses at the distance, and, often perfectly 

 honestly, just about doubles it in his own mind. 

 Once a man told me of an extraordinary shot by 

 which he killed a deer at four hundred yards. A 

 couple of days afterward we happened to pass the 

 place, and I had the curiosity to step off the dis- 

 tance, finding it a trifle over a hundred and ninety. 

 I always make it a rule to pace off the distance after 

 a successful shot, whenever practicable that is, 

 when the animal has not run too far before drop- 

 ping, and I was at first both amused and somewhat 

 chagrined to see how rapidly what I had supposed 

 to be remarkably long shots shrank under actual 

 pacing. It is a good rule always to try to get as 

 near the game as possible, and in most cases it is 



