Vol. LXXXIX 
OCTOBER. 1919 
No. 10 
A DEER HUNT IN THE BLACK HILLS 
TELLING OF A TRIP INTO THE LIMESTONE COUNTRY OF SOUTH DAKOTA MADE 
A NUMBER OF YEARS AGO WHEN FARE DAYS OF SPORT WERE ACHIEVED 
By RAY FROST 
Contents Copyright. 1919. by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
W ELL down toward the south-east- 
ern foothills of the Black Hills 
country of South Dakota is the 
last remnant of what was once a bust- 
ling, thriving mining camp, with a popu- 
lation of perhaps 3,000 people. Stories 
of three dollars to the pan at Captain 
Jack’s Dry Diggings had started a stam- 
pede that created it almost over night. 
The presence of hundreds of rockers 
lining the little stream running 
through the town suggested the 
name Rockerville. 
The pay-dirt was hauled from 
the neighboring dry gulches to 
the rockers, where was extracted 
the gold-dust that passed over 
the bars of the saloons and 
dance halls that quickly followed 
the coming of the miners. 
A good many years after that 
when only an occassional gray- 
beard, scratching and panning 
around the old workings, re- 
mained of the thousands of 
roystering miners of earlier 
days, and the old town of Rock- 
erville had dwindled away to a 
hum-drum mountain village, our 
family was one of the score that 
still remained. 
In the second epoch of the 
camp’s existence, an 'ample 
stream of water had been 
brought in an immense flume 
from Spring Creek Canyon, and 
the bars and gulches worked 
with hydraulic monitors. 
When the water began to 
freeze in the flume in the fall, 
and the season’s run was wound 
up, we usually made preparations for a 
hunt in the Limestone, and it is the story 
of one of these trips that I propose to 
relate. 
My brother Win, our friend Ben, and 
I had been partners in piping out a gulch 
that summer, and when the freeze-up 
came, we hitched up a pair of old mules 
we had, and, loading our supplies and 
guns in a heavy mountain wagon, took 
the road to the higher part of the Hills. 
We usually relied on an 18 foot tar- 
paulin to protect our bed from the snow, 
both beneath and from overhead, but on 
this occasion we took along a 10 x 12 
wall tent, for we expected to be out 4 or 
5 weeks, and thought it might be a little 
more comfortable in case of extremely 
cold weather. 
We stowed aboard 5 sacks of oats for 
The last, lone outpost in the Black Hills 
the mules, rolls of bedding, 100 pounds of 
flour, a large and a small grub box, and 
guns wrapped in blankets. Ben had bor- 
rowed a 44 single-shot rim fire Ballard; 
my brother had a 45-105 single-shot Win- 
chester; while I boasted a similar arm of 
40-90 caliber and 11 pounds weight, with 
a single set trigger. 
It was just before the laws restricting 
the number of deer killed went into ef- 
fect, and years after the time when they 
had roamed the forest in any consider- 
able numbers. Reserved as a hunting 
ground for the Indians, the Hills were 
not opened for settlement until 1876. 
Until that time this region fairly 
swarmed with game, which the primitive 
methods of the Indians scarcely served to 
diminish. It must not be understood, 
however, that this game would exist 
there today, had the Indians re- 
mained in possession of the 
Black Hills country and been 
permitted to do unrestricted 
hunting, for no white men have 
ever so quickly and completely 
stripped any region of game, as 
have the Indian hunters of re- 
cent years in many parts of the 
West. 
At the time of which I write, 
deer were probably not much 
more plentiful in the Limestone 
than they are today. As today, 
large parties hunted for weeks 
without killing a deer. Other 
men more familiar with the 
ways of the game, and being 
better shots, brought back their 
winter’s meat. 
I N a geological sense, the his- 
tory of the Black Hills is un- 
usually interesting. Where 
they now stand, an oval area of 
a hundred miles north and 
south, by a little less from east 
to west, was once the limestone 
bed of an inland sea. A mighty 
upthrust of slate and other older 
forms of rock, forced through a 
weak spot in the earth’s crust by the cool- 
ing contraction of the surface, lifted the 
bed of limestone high in the air, and pro- 
jected the slate formation, now in a vor- 
tical position, through a fault extending 
60 miles north and south, with an aver- 
age width of 30. Inconceivable changes of 
climate, and thousands of years of tor- 
rential rains, have so worn down the area 
of soft slate formation, that, with the ex- 
