We rode out in the early morning, the dogs trotting behind us; and, coming to a low tract of rolling hills, just at the edge of the great prairie, we separated and rode over the crest of the nearest ridge. Just as we topped it, a fine buck leaped up from a hollow a hundred yards off, and turned to look at us for a moment. All the dogs were instantly spinning toward him down the grassy slope. He apparently saw those at the right, and, turning, raced away from us in a diagonal line, so that the left-hand greyhound, which ran cunningly and tried to cut him off, was very soon almost alongside. He saw her, however,—she was a very fast bitch,—just in time, and, wheeling, altered his course to the right. As he reached the edge of the prairie, this alteration nearly brought him in contact with the crossbred, which had obtained a rather poor start, on the extreme right of the line. Around went the buck again, evidently panic-struck and puzzled to the last degree, and started straight off across the prairie, the dogs literally at his heels, and we, urging our horses with whip and spur, but a couple of hundred yards behind. For half a mile the pace was tremendous, when one of the greyhounds made a spring at his ear, but, failing to make good his hold, was thrown off. However, it halted the buck for a moment, and made him turn quarter round, and in a second the deerhound had seized him by the flank and thrown him, and all the dogs piled on top, never allowing him to rise.
Later in the day we again put up a buck not far off. At first it went slowly, and the dogs hauled up on it; but when they got pretty close, it seemed to see them, and letting itself out, went clean away from them almost without effort.
Once or twice we came upon bands of antelope, and the hounds would immediately take after them. I was always rather sorry for this, however, because the frightened animals, as is generally the case when beasts are in a herd, seemed to impede one another, and the chase usually ended by the dogs seizing a doe, for it was of course impossible to direct them to any particular beast.
It will be seen that with us coursing was a homely sport. Nevertheless we had very good fun, and I shall always have enjoyable memories of the rapid gallops across the prairie, on the trail of a flying prongbuck.
Theodore Roosevelt.
After Wapiti in Wyoming
I went into camp, one night in September, on one of the many branches of the upper Snake River, in northwestern Wyoming. It was after a most severe and perplexing day's pack,—one of those days in which "things" go wrong. The packs turned, the cinches refused to hold, and the fresh little Indian pony—for which we had traded a sore-backed packhorse, one cup of sugar, and a half-dozen cartridges, three days previous, with some Bannack Indians who came to my camp-fire on the Snake River—fancied she could put everybody in good temper by having a bucking fit. She had managed to settle one side of her pack on a sharp stub when she came down from a flight, and to punch a fair-sized hole in the canvas cover, which immediately began to flow granulated sugar; but by good luck we managed to catch her lariat and rearrange her pack, minus about one half our supply of sweets. The day was finished with eight horses thoroughly tired, and three men in a condition which admitted of only the fewest words with the longest possible intervals between. Gloom overhung the outfit.
These feelings disappeared as soon as we had finished our supper, and we had just lighted our pipes when, close by our camp-fire, we heard clearly the call of a bull elk. Up to that time I had not had a shot at this, the grandest of all the deer family, and I was quickly on my feet, rifle in hand. Wading the brook, I stalked as hurriedly as I dared toward an opening some forty rods beyond. It was just the last glimmer of daylight, and I made time until I came to the bank, over which I could look into the open park where I felt the royal beast was. What a picture greeted my gaze! The park was perhaps four hundred yards across, and nearly oval in shape, and from the opposite side ran out, nearly to the middle, a plateau some thirty feet in height. On the point of this, standing as immovable as one of Barye's bronzes, was a bull elk with antlers that would please the most fastidious sportsman in the world. In a moment he elevated his head and gave a call ending with those liquid flute-notes that make the blood run quickly in the most phlegmatic hunter's veins. A quick glance showed me that I could not approach him any nearer, and putting up my sight, as I thought, high enough, I pressed the trigger, and saw the bullet strike just under his belly. He whirled and made for cover, and out of pure desperation I gave him another shot, without result. In a shorter time than I have spent in telling this, the twilight had entirely disappeared, and I wended my way back to camp with only the memory of what I had seen to repay me for the wetting which my hurried crossing of the brook had given me.