120 BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA. 



numerous, they gather together every winter for a great 

 annual slaughter. With snow-shoes and repeating-rifles, 

 they will swoop down on a Deer-yard, and before the 

 affrighted animals can escape through the deep drifts, 

 many of them will be stretched out on the snow. Their 

 flesh is cut into strips, and converted into jerked venison. 

 One of the localities where the Black-tail are found in 

 the greatest abundance is in Southern Oregon, among the 

 foot-hills of the Siskiyou Mountains. Here the country is 

 largely timbered with huge pines, with but little under- 

 brush, which makes hunting easy, and the recollections of 

 the evils that have been perpetrated in this fair region, by 

 the skin-hunter and jerked-venison fiend, are enough to 

 chill the blood of any lover of the Cervidce. These skin- 

 hunters are about as mean a set of scoundrels as ever went 

 unhung. A couple of these sneaking apologies for men, 

 who are thoroughly acquainted with the country, and well 

 armed, will start out, and, will, in a single day, kill and skin 

 a dozen, and sometimes two dozen, Deer. The hides only are 

 taken, the carcasses being left to form food for birds and 

 animals of prey. The jerked-venison fellow is one degree 

 higher than the skin-hunter, for he saves the hams also, 

 which he cures and sends to market. I have known a single 

 shooter — I can not call him hunter, much less sportsman — to 

 sit on a ridge which commanded a couple of ravines, and in 

 a single evening shoot down fourteen Black-tailed Deer as 

 they came down to the creek to drink. Thanks to our 

 sportsmen's clubs, these matters are being looked into, and 

 the evils somewhat abated. 



As Black- tailed Deer inhabit almost all kinds of country, 

 they are hunted in different manners. Still-hunting is 

 doubtless the most humane and sportsmanlike manner of 

 hunting them, but some gentlemen, who are undoubtedly 

 sportsmen, insist upon pursuing them with hounds. The 

 only instance in which this is excusable is where the brush 

 is very dense and the game scarce, for, as a hounder ex- 

 plained to me, one might, under such circumstances, still- 



