The Mule- deer 39 



beautiful country of northern forest growth, 

 dotted with trout-filled brooks and clear lakes. 

 The snowfall is so deep in these wooded moun- 

 tains that the deer would run great risk of perish- 

 ing if they stayed therein, and indeed, could only 

 winter there at all in very small numbers. Ac- 

 cordingly, when the storms begin in the fall, 

 usually about the first of October, just before the 

 rut, the deer assemble in bands and move west 

 and south to the lower, drier country, where the 

 rugged hills are here and there clothed with an 

 open growth of pinyon and cedar, instead of the 

 tall spruces and pines of the summer range. The 

 migrating bands follow one another along definite 

 trails over mountains, through passes and valleys, 

 and across streams ; and their winter range 

 swarms with them a few days after the fore- 

 runners have put in their appearance in what 

 has been, during the summer, an absolutely deer- 

 less country. 



In January and February, 1901, I spent five 

 weeks north of the White River, in northwestern 

 Colorado. It was in the heart of the wintering- 

 ground of the great Colorado mule-deer herd. 

 Forty miles away to the east, extending north, 

 lay the high mountains in which these deer had 

 spent the summer. The winter range, in which 

 I was at the time hunting cougars, is a region of 

 comparatively light snowfall, though the cold is 



