183 EARLY DAY STORIES. 



life never entirely dies out when once it has taken posses- 

 sion of one's being. It is this love and longing for the olden 

 times that is one of the incentives to the writing of these 

 articles. 



During thirty or more years of my frontier life, I hunt- 

 ed some, at least every year — not that I was a professional 

 hunter, making hunting a business, for I was not, but be- 

 cause at first we needed the meat for food, and later partly 

 for the fun of it, and partly because we had become very 

 fond of fresh venison, and longed for it every fall if we did 

 not have it. 



This story, unlike the most of those that have preceded 

 it, will not be an account of a single hunting trip, but in- 

 stead, will tell of some of the rather unusual things that 

 sometimes befall a hunter or a traveler in a wild unsettled 

 country, and at the same time it will, to a certain degree, 

 show off the habits of the wild animals as seen in their na- 

 tive haunts. 



A very attractive way to study the habits of the deer, 

 antelope, elk and other wild denizens of the prairie and of 

 the woods is to watch them unobserved, either from a dis- 

 tance with a field glass, or nearby when screened from their 

 sight. I have done this many times — sometimes when trac- 

 ing the section lines over the prairie with a compass ; some- 

 times when carrying a gun, but when game was not needed, 

 and therefore the gun was not used, and sometimes, when 

 hunting, I have lain concealel for several minutes watch- 

 ing the actions of the game before taking a shot. Upon one 

 or two occasions I waited too long before shooting and lost 

 the chance altogether. 



This happened at one time when I was hunting with 

 D. E. Beckwith in Wheeler and Garfield counties. We had 

 gone into camp in the western part of Wheeler county at 

 a place where there were some high sand hills, known as 



