1 6 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



they were frequently within six feet of a cat, and occa- 

 sionally even poked it in order to make it change its posi- 

 tion, I never saw one. make a motion to jump on them. 

 Two or three times on our approach the cat jumped from 

 the tree almost into the midst of the pack, but it was 

 so quick that it got off before they could seize it. They 

 invariably put it up another tree before it had gone any 

 distance. 



Hunting the bobcat was only an incident. Our true 

 quarry was the cougar. I had long been anxious to make 

 a regular hunt after cougar in a country where the beasts 

 were plentiful and where we could follow them with 

 a good pack of hounds. Astonishingly little of a satis- 

 factory nature has been left on record about the cougar 

 by hunters, and in most places the chances for observa- 

 tion of the big cats steadily grow less. They have been 

 thinned out almost to the point of extermination through- 

 out the Eastern States. In the Rocky Mountain region 

 they are still plentiful in places, but are growing less 

 so; while on the contrary the wolf, which was extermi- 

 nated even more quickly in the East, in the West has 

 until recently been increasing in numbers. In north- 

 western Colorado a dozen years ago, cougars were far 

 more plentiful than wolves; whereas at the present day 

 the wolf is probably the more numerous. Nevertheless, 

 there are large areas, here and there among the Rockies, 

 in which cougars will be fairly plentiful for years to 

 come. 



No American beast has been the subject of so much 

 loose writing or of such wild fables as the cougar. Even 



