232 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



was no regular or clearly defined migration of the mule- 

 deer in a mass. Some individuals, or groups of individ- 

 uals, shifted their quarters for a few miles, so that in the 

 spring, for instance, a particular district of a few square 

 miles, in which they had been abundant before, might 

 be wholly without them. But there were other districts, 

 which happened to afford at all times sufficient food and 

 shelter, in which they were to be found the year round ; 

 and the animals did not band and migrate as the prong- 

 bucks did in the same region. In the immediate neigh- 

 borhood of my ranch there were groups of high hills 

 containing springs of water, good grass, and an abun- 

 dance of cedar, ash, and all kinds of brush in which the 

 mule-deer were permanent residents. There were big 

 dry creeks, with well-wooded bottoms, lying among rug- 

 ged hills, in which I have found whitetail and mule-deer 

 literally within a stone's throw of one another. I once 

 started from two adjoining pockets in this particular 

 creek two does, each with a fawn, one being a mule-deer 

 and the other a whitetail. On another occasion, on an 

 early spring afternoon, just before the fawns were born, 

 I came upon a herd of twenty whitetails, does, and young 

 of the preceding year, grazing greedily on the young 

 grass ; and half a mile up the creek, in an almost exactly 

 similar locality, I came upon just such a herd of mule- 

 deer. In each case the animals were so absorbed in the 

 feasting, which was to make up for their winter priva- 

 tions, that I was able to stalk to within fifty yards, though 

 of course I did not shoot. 

 x In northwestern Colorado the conditions are entirely 



