HUNTING IN CATTLE COUNTRY 135 



exterminated from the narrow strips which it inhabited 

 long before the mule-deer vanished from the high hills, 

 or the prongbuck from the great open plains. But along 

 great portions of the Missouri there are plenty of white- 

 tails yet left in the river bottoms, while the mule-deer 

 that once dwelt in the broken hills behind them, and the 

 prongbuck which lived on the prairie just back of these 

 bluffs, have both disappeared. In the same way the mule- 

 deer and the prongbuck are often found almost inter- 

 mingled through large regions in which plains, hills, and 

 mountains alternate. If such a region is mainly moun- 

 tainous, but contains a few valleys and table-lands, the 

 prongbuck is sure to vanish from the latter before the 

 mule-deer vanishes from the broken country. But if the 

 region is one primarily of plains, with here and there 

 rows of rocky hills in which the mule-deer is found, the 

 latter is killed off long before the prongbuck can be 

 hunted out of the great open stretches. The same is true 

 of the pronghorn and the wapiti. The size and value of 

 the wapiti make it an object of eager persecution on the 

 part of hunters. But as it can live in the forest-clad fast- 

 nesses of the Rockies, into which settlement does not go, 

 it outlasts over great regions the pronghorn, whose abode 

 is easily penetrated by sheep and cattle men. Under any- 

 thing like even conditions, however, the prongbuck, of 

 course, outlasts the wapiti. This was the case on the Lit- 

 tle Missouri. On that stream the bighorn also outlasted 

 the wapiti. In 1881 wapiti were still much more plenti- 

 ful than bighorns. Within the next decade they had 

 almost totally disappeared, while the bighorn was still 



