THE COLUMBIAN BLACKTAIL 
The Deer That ‘‘ Loves Rare Scenery and the Harmonies of 
Nature ”’ 
BY JAMES E. SAWYERS 
Illustrated from photographs by C. V. Oden, Tom Wharton and the author 
HE Columbian 
black-tailed deer 
is strictly an ani- 
mal of the Pacific 
slope, his habita- 
tion being more 
sharply circum- 
scribed than that 
of any member of 
the deer family. 
And his numerous 
characteristics 
easily distinguish 
him from his 
cousins, the white-tailed and the mule deer, 
or blacktail of the Rockies. It has been said 
that the “‘blacktail is intermediate between 
the white-tailed and the mule deer,” which 
is mostly true in reference to size, but as to 
color and habit he differs widely. 
The blacktail is one of the most hardy 
and graceful of his kind. He comes into the 
world about June, wearing a tawny coat 
with white spots arranged lengthwise along 
his sides, which at a distance blend and 
appear like white stripes. In early autumn 
he sheds and wears a coat of slatish-blue, 
which as the hairs grow longer changes to a 
brownish-gray that harmonizes with the 
many shades of winter brown. In the spring 
this coat fades and begins to shed and by 
early summer he has a new garb of a rich, 
glossy reddish-brown, being darker on the 
older deer. . 
The bucks shed their horns about Janu- 
ary or February, the time depending on the 
locality and the slight variance in seasons. 
Their antlers growrapidly. A light film 
spreads over the wound left by the fallen 
antlers, and shortly the new ones begin to 
grow, and by the first of August the velvet- 
covered head adornments are well developed 
and soon begin to harden. When hardening 
their antlers the old bucks are wary and 

hard to find, for they lie concealed in some 
favoring thicket where their antlers will be 
exposed to the sun, but in a place that 
affords them ample avenues of escape from 
their enemies, and this, too, without being 
observed. 
They seem to prefer hardwood for rub- 
bing posts to scrape off the remnants of 
velvet that hang in strings from the antlers 
at this season. Often the bucks will prod 
the ground around and among roots of 
shrubs or trees when cleansing and polishing 
their antlers. Many times I have watched 
bucks cleansing their antlers, and the antics 
of one in particular afforded me a deal of 
amusement. He would shake his head and 
then plunge forward in a playful mood, 
sometimes swinging his head and bucking 
like a calf at play, then rubbing his antlers 
briskly against a sapling. But the most 
interesting buck that I have ever seen had 
been rubbing his antlers against a burnt 
log, which was shown by the charcoal stick- 
ing to them, and by a goodly supply mixed 
in the hair on his neck and shoulders. Al- 
though I watched him for some time, I was , 
unable to decide what he was until he 
started off. 
The age of this deer cannot be deter- 
mined by the number of points on the 
antlers. While it is usual for a yearling 
buck to have straight antlers, termed spikes, 
yet frequently a yearling buck will have 
well-developed forks, and it is not uncom- 
mon for a buck two or three years old to 
have four or five points on each beam, which 
is the average number for the adult males. 
The antlers of this species are similar to 
those of the mule deer, viz.: they fork 
equally about eight inches above the base, 
and each prong bifurcates or forks again, 
while a small spike usually grows up from 
near the head, termed brow point or dog 
fender. A remarkable characteristic of this 
