RED DEER, OR WHITE-TAILED DEER. 391 



On the average red deer are prolific ; and, as the does 

 not unfrequently commence breeding when only a year 

 old, they soon stock a country suited to them when not 

 hunted by men or other carnivora. 



Though my fortune has taken me over a great portion 

 of one widely extended country and into many uninhabited 

 regions, I have never seen any section which could com- 

 pare in numbers of red deer with Southern Texas. In 

 the winter of 1848 the plains at the back of Port La Vaca 

 were alive with them, and I believe that I am well within 

 the mark when I say that I have seen 1,000 in a 

 herd. When collected together in this way it was ex- 

 ceedingly difficult to approach sufficiently near for a 

 successful shot, at least with the muzzle-loading round- 

 bullet rifle of that day. 



I have elsewhere spoken of a lovely valley in the 

 Guadalupe Mountains in which I discovered an Indian 

 camp, long since abandoned except by the dead. A 

 month after that discovery I obtained permission to go on 

 a hunt, and arrived in that valley about noon one day, 

 hunted that afternoon, all next, and until noon the third 

 day. My bag to my own hand was five black bear and 

 twenty-three deer, which altogether being as much as my 

 pack mules could possibly carry, I was forced to return 

 to my post before my hunt was half out. This was an 

 exceptional oasis. The foot of white man had probably 

 never before trod it. The Indians being debarred by 

 superstition from entering it, the game for several years 

 had been entirely undisturbed, and knew nothing of the 

 danger of the presence of man. Deer would stand and 

 look at me within fifty paces, and but that I was young 

 and ardent the sport would soon have degenerated into 

 murder. 



While red deer are not so wary or acute of sense as 

 the elk or black- tail, and are, therefore, much more 

 easily bagged, they are not afflicted with the stupidity of 

 the former nor the curiosity of the latter. No panics of 



