76 The Wilderness Hunter. 



Besides their brute and human foes, the prong-horn 

 must also fear the elements, and especially the snows of 

 winter. On the northern plains the cold weather is of 

 polar severity, and turns the green, grassy prairies of mid- 

 summer into ironbound wastes. The blizzards whirl 

 and sweep across them with a shrieking fury which 

 few living things may face. The snow is like fine ice 

 dust, and the white waves glide across the grass with a 

 stealthy, crawling motion which has in it something sinister 

 and cruel. Accordingly, as the bright fall weather passes, 

 and the dreary winter draws nigh, when the days shorten, 

 and the nights seem interminable, and gray storms lower 

 above the gray horizon, the antelope gather in bands and 

 seek sheltered places, where they may abide through the 

 winter-time of famine and cold and deep snow. Some of 

 these bands travel for many hundred miles, going and re- 

 turning over the same routes, swimming rivers, crossing 

 prairies, and threading their way through steep defiles. 

 Such bands make their winter home in places like the 

 Black Hills, or similar mountainous regions, where the 

 shelter and feed are good, and where in consequence ante- 

 lope have wintered in countless thousands for untold gen- 

 erations. Other bands do not travel for any very great 

 distance, but seek some sheltered grassy table-land in the 

 Bad Lands, or some well-shielded valley, where their in- 

 stinct and experience teach them that the snow does not lie 

 deep in winter. Once having chosen such a place they 

 stand much persecution before leaving it. 



One December, an old hunter whom I knew told me 

 that such a band was wintering a few miles from a camp 



