THE MULE-DEER 239 



we had fresh meat at all it was ordinarily venison. In 

 the fall we usually tried to kill enough deer to last out the 

 winter. Until the settlers came in, the Little Missouri 

 country was an ideal range for mule-deer, and they fairly 

 swarmed; while elk were also plentiful, and the restless 

 herds of the buffalo surged at intervals through the land. 

 After 1882 and 1883 the buffalo and elk were killed out, 

 the former completely, and the latter practically, and 

 by that time the skin-hunters, and then the ranchers, 

 turned their attention chiefly to the mule-deer. It lived 

 in open country where there was cover for the stalker, 

 and so it was much easier to kill than either the whitetail, 

 which was found in the dense cover of the river bottoms, 

 or the prongbuck, which was found far back from the 

 river, on the flat prairies where there was no cover at 

 all. I have been informed of other localities in which 

 the antelope has disappeared long before the mule-deer, 

 and I believe that in the Rockies the mule-deer has a 

 far better chance of survival than the antelope has on 

 the plains; but on the Little Missouri the antelope con- 

 tinued plentiful long after the mule-deer had become 

 decidedly scarce. In 1886 I think the antelope were 

 fully as abundant as ever they were, while the mule-deer 

 had wofully diminished. In the early nineties there were 

 still regions within thirty or forty miles of my ranch 

 where the antelope were very plentiful far more so than 

 the mule-deer were at that time. Now they are both 

 scarce along the Little Missouri, and which will outlast 

 the other I cannot say. 



In the old days, as I have already said, it was by no 



