OF WILD ANIMALS 155 



that such performances are cruel to the animals concerned, 

 but the diving alone is not necessarily so. 



Some deer have far too much curiosity, too much desire to 

 know "What is that?" and "What is it all about?" The 

 startled mule deer leaps out, jumps a hundred feet or more at 

 a great pace, then foolishly stops and looks back, to gratify his 

 curiosity. That is the hunter's chance; and that fatal desire 

 for accurate information has been an important contributory 

 cause to the extermination of the mule deer, or Rocky Moutain 

 "black-tail," throughout large areas. In the Yellowstone 

 Park the once-wild herds of mule deer have grown so tame 

 under thirty years of protection that they completely overrun 

 the parade ground, the officers' quarters, and even enter 

 porches and kitchens for food. 



Several authors have remarked upon the habits of the 

 elephant, llama and guanaco in returning to the same spot; 

 and this reminds me of a coincidence in my experience that few 

 persons will believe when I relate it. 



In the wild and weird bad-lands of Hell Creek, Montana, 

 I once went out deer hunting in company with the original 

 old hermit wolf-hunter of that region, named Max Sieber. 

 With deep feeling Max told me of a remarkable miss that he 

 had made the previous year in firing at a fine mule deer buck 

 from the top of a small butte; for which I gave him my 

 sympathy. 



In the course of our morning's tramp through the very 

 bad-lands that were once the ancestral home of the giant 

 carnivorous dinosaur, yclept Tyrranosaurus rex, we won our 

 way to the foot of a long naked butte. Then Sieber said, 

 very kindly: 



"If you will climb with me up to the top of this butte 

 I will show you where I missed that big buck." 



It was not an alluring proposition, and I thought things 

 that I did not speak. However, being an Easy Mark, I said 

 cheerfully, 



