3 o AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



not again wander until they are hungry. The males 

 travel very long distances in the mating season. Their 

 breeding-time is evidently irregular. We found kittens 

 with their eyes not yet open in the middle of January. 

 Two of the female cougars we killed were pregnant 

 in one case the young would have been born almost im- 

 mediately, that is, in February; and in the other case in 

 March. One, which had a partially grown young one 

 of over fifty pounds with it, still had milk in its teats. 

 At the end of January we found a male and female to- 

 gether, evidently mating. Goff has also found the young 

 just dropped in May, and even in June. The females 

 outnumber the males. Of the fourteen we killed, but 

 three were males. 



When a cougar kills a deer in the open it invariably 

 drags it under some tree or shelter before beginning to 

 eat. All the carcasses we came across had been thus 

 dragged, the trail showing distinctly in the snow. Goff, 

 however, asserted that in occasional instances he had 

 known a cougar to carry a deer so that only its legs trailed 

 on the ground. 



The fourteen cougars we killed showed the widest 

 variation not only in size but in color, as shown by the 

 following table. Some were as slaty-gray as deer when 

 in the so-called " blue " ; others, rufous, almost as bright 

 as deer in the " red." I use these two terms to describe 

 the color phases; though in some instances the tint was 

 very undecided. The color phase evidently has nothing 

 to do with age, sex, season, or locality. In this table the 

 first cougar is the one killed by Stewart, the sixth by 



