THE MULE-DEER 247 



shooting. The successful hunter should possess good eyes, 

 good wind, and good muscles. He should know how to 

 take cover and how to use his rifle. The work is suf- 

 ficiently rough to test any man's endurance, and yet there 

 is no such severe and intense toil as in following true 

 mountain game, like the bighorn or white goat. As the 

 hunter's one aim is to see the deer before it sees him, 

 he can only use the horse to take him to the hunting- 

 ground. Then he must go through the most likely 

 ground and from every point of vantage scan with mi- 

 nute care the landscape round about, while himself un- 

 seen. If the country is wild and the deer have not been 

 much molested, he will be apt to come across a band 

 that is feeding. Under such circumstances it is easy to 

 see them at once. But if lying down, it is astonishing 

 how the gray of their winter coats fits in with the color 

 of their surroundings. Too often I have looked carefully 

 over a valley with my glasses until, thinking I had 

 searched every nook, I have risen and gone forward, only 

 to see a deer rise and gallop off out of range from some 

 spot which I certainly thought I had examined with all 

 possible precaution. If the hunter is not himself hidden, 

 he will have his labor for his pains. Neither the mule- 

 deer nor the whitetail is by any means as keen-sighted as 

 the pronghorn antelope, and men accustomed chiefly to 

 antelope shooting are quite right in speaking of the sight 

 of deer as poor by comparison. But this is only by com- 

 parison. A motionless object does not attract the deer's 

 gaze as it attracts the telescopic eye of a prongbuck; but 

 any motion is seen at once, and as soon as this has oc- 



