158 Hunting Trips of a Ranchman 



very rugged country becomes the favorite abode 

 of the black-tail. 



During the daytime, these deer lie quietly in their 

 beds, which are sometimes in the brush and among 

 the matted bushes in the bottoms of the small 

 branching coulies, or heads of the crooked ravines. 

 More often they will be found in the thickets of 

 stunted cedars clothing the brinks of the canyons or 

 the precipitous slopes of the great chasms into which 

 the ground is cleft and rent; or else among the 

 groves of gnarled pines on the sides of the buttes, 

 and in the basins and pockets between the spurs. 

 If the country is not much hunted over, a buck or 

 old doe will often take its midday rest out in the 

 open, lying down among the long grass or shrub- 

 bery on one of the bare benches at the head of a 

 ravine, at the edge of the dense brush with which 

 its bottom and sides are covered. In such a case, 

 a position is always chosen from which a look-out 

 can be kept all around; and the moment any sus- 

 picious object is seen, the deer slips off into the 

 thicket below him. Perhaps the favorite resting- 

 places are the rounded edges of the gorges, just 

 before the sides of the latter break sheer off. Here 

 the deer lies, usually among a few straggling 

 pines or cedars, on the very edge of the straight 

 side-wall of the canyon, with a steep-shelving slope 

 above him, so that he can not be seen from the 

 summit; and in such places it is next to impossible 

 to get at him. If lying on a cedar-grown spur or 

 ridge-point, the still-hunter has a better chance, for 



