ROCKY MOUNTAIN MULE DEER 
to drive him out have failed. He has, perhaps, the keenest scent and the 
best hearing of all the deer tribe . . . but cannot see as well as the antelope, 
for I have stood within ten or twenty feet of several passing bands which 
failed to distinguish me from a stump or rock.” 
Though by no means so numerous as it once was, this deer 
still lingers in most of the rougher parts of its range. In Cali- 
fornia it is partial to the chaparral of the coastal slope and 
thicketed mountain valleys. The delightful writings of John 
Muir abound in pictures of the life of this deer in the unvisited 
—_ 
Mee w Dy hed : 
= ae ip 7 Ane = _ Ee ee =m ae 
THE MULE DEER OF COLORADO. 
wilds of the Sierras. Throughout the plains country it is the 
deer of the “badlands,”’ whose rough ravines are filled with 
patches of ash, buck brush, cedar, and dwarf pine; and among 
the Rockies it frequently resorts to elevations, “where the cover- 
ing is so scanty that the animal must be perpetually on the 
watch, as if it were a bighorn or prongbuck.”’ The most notice- 
331 
