258 Hunting the Mule -Deer in Colorado. 



friendly savages to a more remote point, and then the most timid of 

 pilgrims may revel in the plenty of a region where I have seen five 

 thousand elk in view at once, — the number estimated by men of life- 

 long experience as herders, — and where I have known one man to 

 kill forty bulls at a single stand. May a merciful Providence impel 

 our legislators to invent some means of controlling the waste of this 

 wealth ! But, as I have said, total extermination is impossible. 

 This is demonstrated in the case of the animal I am about to 

 describe, which persists in using even those foot-hill regions of 

 Boulder County, where mining, milling, grazing, and agriculture 

 make together one of the thriftiest localities of the new West. Year 

 after year he continues to startle the plowman or the herders by his 

 sudden appearance, and a fortunate pistol-shot sometimes secures 

 him for the larder ; but of hunting, properly, there is little done now 

 in the regions of the great tellurium discoveries, that have converted 

 into swarming camps the hills over which, during my novitiate, I 

 ranged with Hank Green, the Tourtillots, "Big" Osborne, and old 

 Levi Van Rensselaer. If any of the Boulder boys wish to enjoy 

 a good old-fashioned hunt to-day they go up to St. Vrains, Big 

 Thompson, or the Cache La Poudre, or over the range into North or 

 Middle Park. From this region west and south is the heart of the 

 hunting, particularly in that portion reached by the Gunnison and 

 its tributaries. Here roam all the varieties of game animals known 

 to this latitude in America, with, I believe, one exception : the red, 

 or Virginia, deer has never been found west of the range, except as a 

 mongrel. If desirable, the element of danger may be sought in pur- 

 suit of the range and cinnamon, — the first a cousin of the true Ursus 

 horribilis, somewhat stunted by change of habitat, but none the less 

 ugly, — or the less ferocious brown and black bears, or the puma (of 

 whom beware !), or the other cats and lynxes, or the sluggish but 

 courageous wolverine. 



The mule-deer does not bear an undisputed name. 1 knew him 

 at first as the black-tail, as he is almost universally called here. A 

 recent issue of the " Rocky Mountain News " contains an indignant 

 protest from one of our hunters against the liberty " eastern " nat- 

 uralists have taken in rechristening, as he supposes, this animal. 

 The fact is, however, that whether the difference claimed between 

 this variety and that of the Pacific coast* really exists or not, the 



* Cariacus Columbianus, or black -tail deer. 



