BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA 419 
-_ Asto 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) Mute 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 { 
__ kinim this country, C. macrotis 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 i. 
_ the open, it is often possible to stalk mead eae ie 
_ C. macrotis in ‘old country’ fashion, C. macrotis) 
' 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 degun to rub in the third week of September. 
') _ One of the writers in a recent book on American big game 
"speaks of the whzst/ing of this deer during the rutting season ; 
ZE2 
