SPORT AND TRAVEL 193 



and I half wished that he would bound away and only 

 give me a running shot. However, he never stirred 

 till my bullet struck him full in the chest. Then he 

 came rushing close past me down the hill, but did not 

 roll over dead, though shot right through the heart, 

 till he had run a distance of nearly a hundred yards. 

 He was a beautiful creature, very thick-set and heavy- 

 looking, though symmetrically built. He had already 

 donned his autumn coat of soft grey with a very con- 

 spicuous white rump. The upper half of the tail was 

 white, and here the hair was short ; but the lower part 

 was deep black ending in a small brush. In the black- 

 tailed deer of British Columbia the whole tail is black. 

 Otherwise this species seems to nearly resemble the 

 mule deer, though its ears are smaller, I believe. In 

 the mule deer, the ears are very large actually 

 larger than in its giant cousin, the wapiti and very 

 hairy and fluffy inside. The white patch on the hind- 

 quarters, which extends to a little above the root of the 

 tail in winter, is very conspicuous when a deer of this 

 species is going straight away from one, but is scarcely 

 noticeable in a broadside view. The buck I had just 

 shot carried a rather small but pretty head of nine 

 points. He was in splendid condition (as were all 

 the mule deer bucks I subsequently shot), the fat over 

 his loins and rump being quite an inch and a half in 

 thickness. He had, too, a lot of inside fat. I have 

 never seen any animals put on so much fat over the 

 loins as do the mule deer bucks in the Rocky Moun- 



13 



