PRAIRIL SPORTS*. 
26 ? 
and currents of air, which so perplex him by their shifts and 
veering among the glens, gorges, and corries of the Scottish 
hills, often bringing him dead to windward of his game, and 
baffling all his hopes of a shot, when he has been manoeuvring 
for hours to work well to leeward of some grand Stag royal, 
and is already flattering himself that he has succeeded. Thus 
far, the prairie stalking is easier than its correspondent sport 
among the hills; but, inasmuch as the grass of the prairies 
affords far less covert for the stealthy sportsman than the tall 
moorland heather,—and as there are neither crags nor cairns, 
beneath the friendly shelter of which to wind the devious way, 
and as yet, again, the water-courses and hollows of the great 
Western Plains are neither so numerous nor so deep as the 
stony rifts and gullies of the mountain torrents, it is harder to 
approach the American than the European game. To take the 
two sports all in all, the pros and cons as to the difficulty would 
seem to be pretty evenly balanced, and it is very clear that no 
bungler or milksop can succeed at either game. 
the best weapon for stalking either of these animals on foot, 
is undoubtedly the heavy ounce-ball rifle, both from the greater 
certainty of its execution at very long ranges, and especially 
across wind; and from the fatal nature of the large wound in¬ 
flicted by its ponderous missile. At no sort of game would the 
double-barrelled, two-grooved rifle I have mentioned, give a 
more decided superiority to its bearer, over the small-bored, 
polygrooved, ill-balanced, single-barrelled piece of the Western 
trapper, than at these monsters of the wilderness. 
In case, however, of the game taking alarm before the hunter 
can get within range of it, or of his coming upon the drove of 
Bison or gang of Elk, while it is in motion, he exchanges his 
travelling horse, or sure-footed mule, for his swiftled thorough¬ 
bred,—his Buffalo-runner, as it is termed in the West,—and 
charges down, at full speed, upon the terrified and scattered 
herds. 
If he be well mounted, he soon finds himself in the middle 
of the huge hairy manes, stunted horns, and glaring eyes of the 
VOL. II. 17 
