BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA 



419 



As to hunting this beast, Mr. Pike says in his ' Barren 

 Ground of Northern Canada,' ' It is no hard matter to kill 

 caribou in the open country, for the rolling hills usually give 

 ample cover for a stalk, and even on flat ground they are easily 

 approached at a run, as they will almost invariably circle head 

 to wind and give the hunter a chance to cut them off.' 



(5) MULE DEER (C. macrotis) 



To my mind the best deer we have in North America for 

 sport is the beast whose head is here represented, C. macrotis, 

 the mule deer of British Columbia 

 and the naturalists, and the Black-tail 

 of Colorado and elsewhere in the 

 States. More than any other of his 

 kin in this country, C. Mam?/& haunts 

 the open uplands, the largest bucks 

 being found oftener than not right up 

 by the little snow patches, in and on 

 the edge of the sheep land, or if not 

 there, then in the small patches of 

 starved and moss-grown forest at the 

 top of the timber range. Thanks to 

 his predilection for high places and 

 the open, it is often possible to stalk 

 C. macrotis in ' old country ' fashion, 

 instead of crawling about after him in choking timber as a man 

 must after C. columbianus or almost any other American deer ; 

 but to get mule deer a man should rise early in order to see them 

 moving up to their beds for the day. 



The mule deer ruts about the middle of October, his horns 

 being clean as a rule about a fortnight earlier, although I have 

 seen a big buck very high up (10,000 ft.) in Colorado who had 

 not begun to rub in the third week of September. 



One of the writers in a recent book on American big game 

 speaks of the whistling of this deer during the rutting season ; 



E K 2 



Typical mule deer 

 (C. macrotis) 



