148 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



started by dawn. The prongbucks are almost the only 

 game that can be hunted as well during the heat of the 

 day as at any other time. They occasionally lie down for 

 two or three hours about noon in some hollow where they 

 cannot be seen, but usually there is no place where they 

 are sure they can escape observation even when resting; 

 and when this is the case they choose a somewhat con- 

 spicuous station and trust to their own powers of observa- 

 tion, exactly as they do when feeding. There is there- 

 fore no necessity, as with deer, of trying to strike them at 

 dawn or dusk. The reason why I left the ranch before 

 sunrise and often came back long after dark was because 

 I had to ride at least a dozen miles to get out to the ground 

 and a dozen to get back, and if after industrious walking 

 I failed at first to find my game, I would often take the 

 horse again and ride for an hour or two to get into new 

 country. Prongbuck water once a day, often travelling 

 great distances to or from some little pool or spring. Of 

 course, if possible, I liked to leave the horse by such a 

 pool or spring. On the great plains to which I used to 

 make these excursions there was plenty of water in early 

 spring, and it would often run, here and there, in the 

 upper courses of some of the creeks which, however, 

 usually contained running water only when there had 

 been a cloudburst or freshet. As the season wore on the 

 country became drier and drier. Water would remain 

 only in an occasional deep hole, and few springs were left 

 in which there was so much as a trickle. In a strange 

 country I could not tell where these water-holes were, but 

 in the neighborhood of the ranch I of course knew where 



