i8o HUNTING TRIPS 



ing back for a horse. Each took an antler, 

 and the body slipped along very easily; 

 but so intense was the cold that we had to 

 keep shifting sides all the time, the hand 

 which grasped the horn becoming numb 

 almost immediately. 



White-tail are very canny, and know per- 

 fectly well what threatens danger and what 

 does not. Their larger, and to my mind 

 nobler, relation, the black-tail, is if any 

 thing easier to approach and kill, and yet 

 is by no means so apt to stay in the imme- 

 diate neighborhood of a ranch, where there 

 is always more or less noise and confusion. 

 The bottom 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 amusing- 

 ly tame, at one time spending their days hid 

 in an almost impenetrable tangle of bull- 

 berry bushes, whose hither edge was barely 

 a hundred yards from the ranch-house ; and 



