BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA 423 
Let me be honest to the little beast. On nearly every occa- 
_ sion C. virginianus has got the best of me (I never hunted him 
with dogs or torches, or any other such abomination, and never 
mean to), but once on a red-letter day I caught a big buck of 
his kind dreaming on a hardwood hill. He was two hundred 
yards off, and though the bullet from my Express broke his 
foreleg, he jumped ‘at a stand’ a log by his side over which I 
_ could not look, though I stand nearly six feet in my boots, and 
_ gave me an hour’s excessively hard work before I killed him. 
_ I should think that about 150 Ibs. would be the extreme weight 
of the largest bucks of this variety when cleaned, but there are 
stories of exceptionally large white-tail bucks in the Okanagan 
district of British Columbia, and the heads which come from 
that country are certainly very fine. Mr. Rowland Ward gives 
_ 27% ins. as the length and 1g ins. as the span of the best head 
Of this deer known to him. 
(7) Tue Biack-Tam (C. columbianus) 
- ™ Although not quite so exasperating an animal as C. virginia- 
_ nus, this, the common deer of Vancouver Island, of the islands 
all along the Pacific coast from Victoria to Alaska, and of the 
_ Pacific slope generally, is desperately fond of thick timber and 
_ the deep jungles of noisy sal lal bush. In size C. columbianus is 
considerably smaller than the mule deer : a buck which would 
| weigh 175 lbs. would be a big buck for Vancouver Island, and 
' Tam not aware that the deer of this island are smaller than 
4 those of the mainland. But if C. columbianus is small, he is 
' atleast abundant. A week from the date of writing this, a 
_ friend of mine and myself saw fourteen deer in two days’ still 
_ hunting within a drive of Victoria, and a grateful memory of 
" my dinner reminds me that the venison of a yearling buck 
| hung for one week is as good meat as any Esau ever brought 
() home to Isaac. In 1892 a couple of half-breeds sold over 
"| eighty bucks in Victoria in two months, and in 1893 the same 
__ two (excellent shots and woodsmen) are reported to have killed 
