THE MULE-DEER 237 



passed, there was not the slightest mark of their bodies, 

 and the alteration in their gait, as shown by the footprints, 

 was hardly perceptible. In one instance, however, where 

 I scared a young buck which ran over a hill and through 

 a wire fence on the other side, I found one of his antlers 

 lying beside the fence, it having evidently been knocked 

 off by the wire. Their antlers were getting very loose, 

 and toward the end of our stay they had begun to shed 

 them. 



The deer were preyed on by many foes. Sportsmen 

 and hide-hunters had been busy during the fall migra- 

 tions, and the ranchmen of the neighborhood were shoot- 

 ing them occasionally for food, even when we were 

 out there. The cougars at this season were preying upon 

 them practically to the exclusion of everything else. We 

 came upon one large fawn which had been killed by a 

 bobcat. The gray wolves were also preying upon them. 

 A party of these wolves can sometimes run down even 

 an unwounded blacktail; I have myself known of their 

 performing this feat. Twice on this very hunt we came 

 across the carcasses of blacktail which had thus been 

 killed by wolves, and one of the cow-punchers at a ranch 

 where we were staying came in and reported to us that 

 while riding among the cattle that afternoon he had seen 

 two coyotes run a young mule-deer to a standstill, and 

 they would without doubt have killed it had they not 

 been frightened by his approach. Still the wolf is very 

 much less successful than the cougar in killing these deer, 

 and even the cougar continually fails in his stalks. But 

 the deer were so plentiful that at this time all the cougars 



