68 THE WILDERNESS HUNTER. 



the river, and were strolling along the sand- 

 bars directly opposite me. Slipping stealthily 

 into the house I picked up my rifle, and 

 slipped back again. One of the deer was 

 standing motionless, broadside to me; it was 

 a long shot, two hundred and fifty yards, 

 but I had a rest against a pillar of the ve- 

 randah. I held true, and as the smoke cleared 

 away the deer lay struggling on the sands. 



As the whitetail is the most common and 

 widely distributed of American game, so the 

 Columbian blacktail has the most sharply 

 limited geographical range ; for it is confined 

 to the northwest coast, where it is by far the 

 most abundant deer. In antlers it is indis- 

 tinguishable from the common blacktail of the 

 Rockies and the great plains, and it has the 

 regular blacktail gait, a succession of stiff- 

 legged bounds on all four feet at once ; but 

 its tail is more like a whitetail's in shape, 

 though black above. As regards methods of 

 hunting, and the amount of sport yielded, it 

 stands midway between its two brethren. It 

 lives in a land of magnificent timber, where 

 the trees tower far into the sky, the giants of 

 their kind ; and there are few more attractive 

 sports than still-hunting on the mountains, 

 among these forests of marvellous beauty and 

 grandeur. There are many lakes among the 

 mountains where it dwells, and as it cares 

 more for water than the ordinary blacktail, it 

 is comparatively easy for hounds to drive it 

 into some pond where it can be killed at lei 

 sure. It is thus often killed by hounding. 



The only one I ever killed was a fine young 



