CHAPTER IV 



THE DEER OF THE RIVER BOTTOMS 



OF all the large game of the United States, the 

 white-tailed deer is the best known and the 

 most widely distributed. Taking the Union as a 

 whole, fully ten men will be found who have killed 

 white-tail for one who has killed any other kind 

 of large game. And it is the only ruminant animal 

 which is able to live on in the land even when it 

 has been pretty thickly settled. There is hardly 

 a State wherein it does not still exist, at least in 

 some out-of-the-way corner; and long after the elk 

 and the buffalo have passed away, and when the 

 big-horn and prong-horn have become rare indeed, 

 the white-tail deer will still be common in certain 

 parts of the country. 



When, less than five years ago, cattle were first 

 driven on to the northern plains, the white-tail were 

 the least plentiful and the least sought after of all 

 the large game; but they have held their own as 

 none of the others have begun to do, and are already 

 in certain localities more common than any other 

 kind, and indeed in many places are more common 

 than all other kinds put together. The ranchmen 

 along the Powder River, for instance, now have 

 to content themselves with white-tail venison unless 



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