The Whitetail Deer 89 



hounds the conditions are changed. To ride a 

 horse over rough country after game always 

 implies hardihood and good horsemanship, and 

 therefore makes the sport a worthy one. In very 

 open country, — in such country, for instance, as 

 the whitetail formerly frequented both in Texas 

 and the Indian Territory, — the horseman could 

 ride at the tail of the pack until the deer was 

 fairly run down. But nowadays I know of no 

 place where this is possible, for the whitetail's 

 haunts are such as to make it impracticable for 

 any rider to keep directly behind the hounds. 

 What he must do is to try to cut the game off 

 by riding from point to point. He then leaps 

 off the horse and watches his chance for a shot. 

 This is the way in which Mr. McIUhenny has 

 done most of his deer hunting, in the neighbor- 

 hood of his Louisiana plantation. 



Around my ranch I very rarely tried to still- 

 hunt whitetail, because it was always easier to get 

 mule-deer or prongbuck, if I had time to go off 

 for an all-day's hunt. Occasionally, however, we 

 would have at the ranch hounds, usually of the 

 old black-and-tan southern type, and then if we 

 needed meat, and there was not time for a hunt 

 back in the hills, we would turn out and hunt one 

 or two of the river bottoms with these hounds. 

 If I rode off to the prairies or the hills I went 

 alone, but if the quarry was a whitetail, our chance 



