TEXAS NATURE OBSERVATIONS AND REMINISCENCES. 221 



Bergman — was the champion hun- 

 ter at Boerne in those days, about 

 fifty-two years ago. Whenever he 

 went for deer or turkey there was 

 something doing, and each time 

 a deer fell to his unerring aim. 

 Then the loud sound of a horn 

 could be heard echoing along the 

 hills and throughout the qu-aint 

 old settlement of Boerne. He- al- 

 ways carried a hunter's horn with 

 him and often three or four bug- 

 ling sounds in succession were 

 heard which meant three or four 

 deer, and when in distress or in 

 want of more pack mules he would 



some good hunting dogs with 

 them, and some of the finest hunt- 

 ing hounds I ever went on a pre- 

 serve with were owned by 

 Mr. Walton at the old ranch of 

 Mr. Bart de Witt, some twelve 

 miles below San Antonio. 



The jungles around San Anto- 

 nio in olden times — even those 

 suburban places now occupied by 

 palatial homes in the near sub- 

 urban districts were the haunts of 

 wild animals and reptiles which 

 later on, retreated to more remote 

 and secure places and there killed 

 and annihilated completely later. 



A Large Lynx Devouring Some Water-Fowl; Killed by Mr L. Toudouse at Mitchell's 

 Lake, Many Years Ago. (Photo by the Writer, 1892) 



keep the bugling up for some time 

 until additional help came to him. 

 Wild turkey also, in those days, 

 were as numerous around Boerne 

 as quail and doves around San 

 Antonio to-day. But the onward 

 march of civilization has gradually 

 exterminated a whole lot of game 

 and spoiled the romance of the 

 good olden days, never to appear 

 again. Mr. Bergman, and others 

 of my acquaintance in those days, 

 especially the late veteran Texas 

 deer hunter, Captain Dosch, had 



An occasional deer, coyote or lobo 

 wolf or a wild cat is even now yet 

 but very rarely seen in the jungles 

 around the Leona and other out- 

 side brush thickets, but the dense 

 cactus jungles and brushy hills, 

 especially around Losoya and 

 Mitchell's Lake in olden times 

 abounded with all sorts of large 

 and small wid animals, and it is 

 there where some fifty years ago 

 an old Texas naturalist and hun- 

 ter, the late Leon Toudouse, a tax- 

 idermist of national fame, killed 



