148 THE WILDERNESS HUNTER. 



when taken unawares by either wolf or cou- 

 gar, its two chief enemies. They cannot 

 often catch it when it is above timber line ; 

 but it is always in sore peril from them when 

 it ventures into the forest. Bears, also, prey 

 upon it in the early spring ; and one mid- 

 winter my friend Willis found a wolverine 

 eating a goat which it had killed in a snow- 

 drift at the foot of a cliff. The savage little 

 beast growled and showed fight when he came 

 near the body. Eagles are great enemies of 

 the young kids, as they are of the young lambs 

 of the bighorn. 



The white goat is the only game beast of 

 America which has not decreased in numbers 

 since the arrival of the white man. Although 

 in certain localities it is now decreasing, yet, 

 taken as a whole, it is probably quite as plen- 

 tiful now as it was fifty years back ; for in the 

 early part of the present century there were 

 Indian tribes who hunted it perseveringly to 

 make the skins into robes, whereas now they 

 get blankets from the traders and no longer 

 persecute the goats. The early trappers and 

 mountain-men knew but little of the animal. 

 Whether they were after beaver, or were 

 hunting big game, or were merely exploring, 

 they kept to the valleys ; there was no induce- 

 ment for them to climb to the tops of the 

 mountains ; so it resulted that there was no 

 animal with which the old hunters were so 

 unfamiliar as with the white goat. The pro- 

 fessional hunters of to-day likewise bother it 

 but little ; they do not care to undergo severe 

 toil for an animal with worthless flesh and a 

 hide of little value for it is only in the late 



