HUNTING IN CATTLE COUNTRY 137 



instance, in the belief as to the relative worth of the sport 

 furnished by the chase of the different creatures; but 

 sometimes there is a direct conflict of fact. Colonel 

 Dodge, for instance, has put it upon record that the wapiti 

 is an exceedingly gentle animal, less dangerous than a 

 whitetail or blacktail buck in a close encounter, and that 

 the bulls hardly ever fight among themselves. My own 

 experience leads me to traverse in the most emphatic 

 manner every one of these conclusions, and all hunters 

 whom I have met feel exactly as I do; yet no one would 

 question for a moment Colonel Dodge's general com- 

 petency as an observer. In the same way Mr. Grinnell 

 has a high opinion of the deer's keenness of sight. Judge 

 Caton absolutely disagrees with him, and my own ex- 

 perience tends to agree with that of the Judge at least 

 to the extent of placing the deer's vision far below that 

 of the prongbuck and even that of the bighorn, and only 

 on a par with that of the wapiti. Yet Mr. Grinnell is 

 an unusually competent observer, whose opinion on any 

 such subject is entitled to unqualified respect. 



Difference in habits may be due simply to difference 

 of locality, or to the need of adaptation to new conditions. 

 The prongbuck's habits about migration offer examples 

 of the former kind of difference. Over portions of its 

 range the prongbuck is not migratory at all. In other 

 parts the migrations are purely local. In yet other re- 

 gions the migrations are continued for great distances, im- 

 mense multitudes of the animals going to and fro in the 

 spring and fall along well-beaten tracks. I know of one 

 place in New Mexico where the pronghorn herds are ten- 



