HUNTING IN CATTLE COUNTRY 145 



buck is always associated with the open prairies during 

 the spring, summer, or early fall. It has happened that 

 I have generally pursued the bighorn in bitter weather; 

 and when we laid in our stock of winter meat, mule- 

 deer was our usual game. Though I have shot prongbuck 

 in winter, I never liked to do so, as I felt the animals 

 were then having a sufficiently hard struggle for existence 

 anyhow. But in the spring the meat of the prongbuck 

 was better than that of any other game, and, moreover, 

 there was not the least danger of mistaking the sexes, 

 and killing a doe accidentally, and accordingly I rarely 

 killed anything but pronghorns at that season. In those 

 days we never got any fresh meat, whether on the ranch or 

 while on the round-up or on a wagon trip, unless we shot 

 it, and salt pork became a most monotonous diet after a 

 time. 



Occasionally I killed the prongbuck in a day's hunt 

 from my ranch. If I started with the intention of prong- 

 buck hunting, I always went on horseback; but twice I 

 killed them on foot when I happened to run across them 

 by accident while looking for mule-deer. I shall always 

 remember one of these occasions. I was alone in the Elk- 

 horn ranch-house at the time, my foreman and the only 

 cowpuncher who was not on the round-up having driven 

 to Medora, some forty miles away, in order to bring down 

 the foreman's wife and sister, who were going to spend 

 the summer with him. It was the fourth day of his ab- 

 sence. I expected him in the evening and wanted to have 

 fresh meat, and so after dinner I shouldered my rifle and 

 strolled off through the hills. It was too early in the 



