n8 Hunting Trips of a Ranchman 



White-tail are very canny, and know perfectly 

 well what threatens danger and what does not. 

 Their larger, and to my mind nobler, relation, the 

 black-tail, is if anything easier to approach and kill, 

 and yet is by no means so apt to stay in the im- 

 mediate neighborhood of a ranch, where there is 

 always more or less noise and confusion. The bot- 

 tom on which my ranch house stands is a couple 

 of miles in length, and well wooded ; all through last 

 summer it was the home of a number of white-tails, 

 and most of them are on it to this moment. Two 

 fawns in especial were really amusingly tame, at 

 one time spending their days hid in an almost im- 

 penetrable tangle of bullberry bushes, whose hither 

 edge was barely a hundred yards from the ranch- 

 house; and in the evening they could frequently be 

 seen from the door, as they came out to feed. In 

 walking out after sunset, or in riding home when 

 night had fallen, we would often run across them 

 when it was too dark to make out anything but 

 their flaunting white tails as they cantered out of 

 the way. Yet for all their seeming familiarity they 

 took good care not to expose themselves to danger. 

 We were reluctant to molest them, but one day, 

 having performed our usual weekly or fortnightly 

 feat of eating up about everything there was in the 

 house, it was determined that the two deer (for 

 it was late in autumn and they were then well 

 grown) should be sacrificed. Accordingly one of 

 us sallied out, but found that the sacrifice was not 

 to be consummated so easily, for the should-be vie- 



