The Mule- deer 61 



fading into the color of the background and 

 halted, looking sharply around. Before he could 

 break into flight my bullet went through his 

 shoulders. 



Twice I have killed two of these deer at a 

 shot ; once two bucks, and once a doe and a 

 buck. 



It has proved difficult to keep the mule-deer 

 in captivity, even in large private parks or roomy 

 zoological gardens. I think this is because 

 hitherto the experiment has been tried east of 

 the Mississippi in an alien habitat. The wapiti 

 and whitetail are species that are at home over 

 most of the United States, East and West, in rank, 

 wet prairies, dense woodland, and dry mountain 

 regions alike ; but the mule-deer has a far more 

 sharply localized distribution. In the Bronx 

 Zoological Gardens, in New York, Mr. Hornaday 

 informs me that he has comparatively little diffi- 

 culty in keeping up the stock alike of wapiti and 

 whitetail by breeding as indeed any visitor can 

 see for himself. The same is true in the game 

 preserves in the wilder regions of New York and 

 New England ; but hitherto the mule-deer has 

 offered an even more difficult problem in captivity 

 than the pronghorn antelope. Doubtless the 

 difficulty would be minimized if the effort at 

 domestication were made in the neighborhood of 

 the Rocky Mountains. 



