276 SHOOT A PUMA : 



while sitting by the camp-fire. Of course we should not 

 have killed so many, but each of us thought he was having all 

 the sport to himself. 



I was out one day, some miles up the stream, when I came 

 on a fine buck feeding; I managed to dismount and tie up 

 without his seeing me, and keeping in the timber as far as I 

 could, I then began to crawl, getting to within about three 

 hundred yards of him, when something startled him and he 

 cantered round a point of timber. As he did not seem much 

 frightened I followed as fast as I was able, and crawling round 

 the point I could not see the deer, but noticed a small head 

 with pointed ears above some long grass, watching me. I 

 thought it must be a wolf, so, determined to have something 

 for my trouble, I fired, aiming under it, and the head sank and 

 a long tail lashed backwards and forwards as I walked up, and 

 on getting close I saw that I had killed a medium-sized puma, 

 the first that I had ever seen. It is curious, considering that 

 there are a good many of them about, how seldom you see 

 them, though you often find their tracks, and where they have 

 been at the carcass of a deer you may have killed. 



I heard of a shopkeeper from Antonio, in Texas, who came 

 out to a large hay camp, about forty miles north of that place, 

 and who borrowed a soldier's rifle thinking that he might get a 

 shot at a deer, having never killed anything larger than a goose 

 in his -life. He was away some hours and returned in a great 

 state of excitement, saying that he had killed two big animals 

 as large as calves, and when some of the men went with him 

 to see what these were, they found that he had shot two 

 pumas such a chance as might not occur to a professional 

 hunter once in his whole life. 



