OF A RANCHMAN 261 



that most of the Indians (quite successful 

 hunters, to judge by the quantity of smoked 

 venison lying round) were very bad shots 

 indeed. -None of them came anywhere near 

 the hunter who was with me ; nor, indeed, 

 to myself. An Indian gets his game by his 

 patient, his stealth, and his tireless perse- 

 verance; and a white to be really success- 

 ful in still-hunting must learn to copy some 

 of the Indian's traits. 



While the game butchers, the skin hunt- 

 ers, and their like, work such brutal slaugh- 

 ter among the plains animals that these will 

 soon be either totally extinct or so thinned 

 out as to cease being prominent features of 

 plains life, yet, on the other hand, the na- 

 ture of the country debars them from fol- 

 lowing certain murderous and unsports- 

 manlike forms of hunting much in vogue in 

 other quarters of our land. There is no 

 deep water into which a deer can be driven 

 by hounds, and then shot at arm's-length 

 from a boat, as is the fashion with some of 

 the city sportsmen who infest the Adiron- 



