80 IN THE BIG HORfr -MOUNTAINS. 



and counted his tracks. He had made just four jumps from 

 where the ball struck him, and had fallen stone dead, for the 

 snow where he lay showed that he had not moved a foot after 

 he fell. 



So much for the effectiveness of the explosive bullet. I 

 examined the wound and found that the ball had entered his 

 flank just behind the last rib (he was running quartering from 

 me) had exploded on entering the body, blown a large hole 

 through the skin a few inches ahead of where it entered, and 

 passing on diagonally through his chest, had lodged near the 

 point of the opposite shoulder. With this same shot from a 

 solid bullet, he would have run anywhere from three hundred 

 yards to a mile, but with this explosive missile his intestines, 

 lungs, liver, and other internal improvements were so muti- 

 lated, that if he had been a buffalo or a grizzly he could not 

 have survived the shock much longer than he did. And this 

 was done with a .40 caliber rifle, which brother Van Dyke 

 protests is no account for anything larger than a jack rabbit 

 or a woodchuck. 



I next took up the trail of the young buck, and when I 

 reached the place where he was when I shot, was rewarded by 

 finding plenty of hair and two or three small pieces of flesh 

 on the snow. Ten feet further on, the crimson fluid had 

 gushed from the wound in a stream that showed unmistakably 

 that that animal's career was soon to be drawn to a close also. 

 But I had not given him so dead a shot as the other one, and 

 he led me a most tedious chase through the thick underbrush 

 before I succeeded in overtaking him. When I did reach 

 him, I found that I had also hit him in the flank low down, 

 and, as he was running broadside to me, the ball passed 

 through him at right angles, coming out on the opposite side. 

 It had exploded when it struck, however, and torn a hole 

 through him that you could easily have passed an ordinary 



