224 THE PRESENT AND FUTURE 



tana, because so many deer were there it did not seem to spell 

 extermination. Now conditions have changed. Since last 

 winter's great slaughter in northwestern Montana, of eleven 

 thousand hungry deer, the species has been so reduced that 

 it is no longer right to kill mule deer anywhere in our coun- 

 try, and a universal close season for five years is the duty 

 of every state which contains that species. 



The Real Black-Tailed Deer, of the Pacific coast 

 (Odocoileus columbianus) , is, to most sportsmen of the Rocky 

 Mountains and the East, actually less known than the okapi! 

 Not one out of every hundred of them can recognize a mounted 

 head of it at sight. It is a small, delicately formed, delicately 

 antlered understudy of the big mule deer, and now painfully 

 limited in its distribution. It is the deer of California and 

 western Oregon, and it has been so ruthlessly slaughtered 

 that to-day it is going fast. As conditions stand to-day, and 

 without a radical change on the part of the people of the 

 Pacific coast, this very interesting species is bound to disap- 

 pear. It will not be persistent, like the white-tailed deer, but 

 in the heavy forests it will last much longer than the mule 

 deer. 



My information regarding this deer is like the stock of 

 specimens of it in museum collections — meagre and unsatis- 

 factory. We need to know in detail how that species is faring 

 to-day, and what its prospects are for the immediate future. 

 In 1900 I saw great piles of skins from it in the fur-houses of 

 Seattle, and the sight gave me much concern. 



The Caribou Generally. — I think it is not very diffi- 

 cult to forecast the future of the genus Rangifer in North 



