196 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



types alluded to above, that in which the mule-deer is 

 found offers the greatest chance of success to the rifle- 

 bearing hunter, because there is enough cover to shield 

 him and not enough to allow his quarry to escape by 

 stealth and hiding. On the other hand, the thick river 

 bottoms offer him the greatest difficulty. In consequence, 

 where the areas of distribution of the different game ani- 

 mals are about equal, the mule-deer disappears first be- 

 fore the hunter, the prongbuck next, while the whitetail 

 holds out the best of all. I saw this frequently on the Yel- 

 lowstone, the Powder, and the Little Missouri. When 

 the ranchmen first came into this country the mule-deer 

 swarmed, and yielded a far more certain harvest to the 

 hunter than did either the prongbuck or the whitetail. 

 They were the first to be thinned out, the prongbuck last- 

 ing much better. The cowboys and small ranchmen, 

 most of whom did not at the time have hounds, then 

 followed the prongbuck; and this, in its turn, was killed 

 out before the whitetail. But in other places a slight 

 change in the conditions completely reversed the order 

 of destruction. In parts of Wyoming and Montana the 

 mountainous region where the mule-deer dwelt was of 

 such vast extent, and the few river bottoms on which the 

 whitetail were found were so easily hunted, that the 

 whitetail was completely exterminated throughout large 

 districts where the mule-deer continued to abound. 

 Moreover, in these regions the table-lands and plains 

 upon which the prongbuck was found were limited in 

 extent, and although the prongbuck outlasted the white- 

 tail, it vanished long before the herds of the mule-deer 



