Jack the Young Trapper: An Eastern Boy's Fur Hunting in the Rocky Mountains

by George Bird Grinnell

"All right," said Jack; "I'm ready."

"Well," said Hugh, "let's go on now, and I reckon this is as good a time as any to christen those rubber boots that we bought in Laramie. We are likely to find it pretty wet down there, and I don't care to take a horse in those thick willows until I find out a little about them myself. An old beaver meadow is a mighty mean place to take horses. There are bogs and beaver sloughs and old abandoned beaver holes, and it's easy for a horse to fall down, and sometimes mighty hard to get him up again."

Hugh and Jack donned their rubber boots, and taking their rifles, started down toward the main stream. The meadow here was miles in width and it was quite uncertain how far they could go. As well as they could see, much of the meadow was overgrown with tall willows, but on the other hand, there seemed to be many open, grassy meadows.

Before plunging into the willows they followed along the edge for some little distance and at last Hugh said, "Let's turn in here, son, there seems to be a game trail running in the direction we should go." Sure enough, they found a well-traveled and dry game trail which showed that last autumn it had been traveled by bands of elk, for the bark was rubbed off the willows as high as Hugh's head, where great horns of the bulls had forced the stems of the brush apart on either side of the trail. The way led just in the direction they wanted to go, that is, across the valley, and ten or fifteen minutes' brisk tramping brought them to the edge of a green, grassy meadow of considerable extent. Just as they reached the edge of the willows Hugh paused and motioned with his hand, beckoning Jack to come up to his side. "Look there, son," he said, pointing, and Jack saw, only about forty yards away, two bob-cats pulling and tearing at some small thing on the ground, a little distance out in the meadow. Hugh said, "You try to kill the one that is nearest to the brush, and I'll see if I can take the other one on the jump." Jack leveled his rifle and took a careful side aim at the breast of one of the cats, which stood facing him. On the crack of the gun the one he had fired at fell over, while the other jumped high in the air, and when it struck the ground again stood looking to see whence the noise had come. It looked only for an instant, for then Hugh's gun also spoke, and the animal fell over.

"Well," said Hugh, as he reloaded his gun, "I wouldn't have looked for those two bob-cats in such a place as this. I reckon their hides are not worth much, but they might make you a pair of shaps, son; let's go over and get them and see what it is that they were eating."

Walking over to the place, they found that the bob-cats had been devouring the carcass of a little spotted fawn.

"Look there, now," said Hugh; "that's the sort of work these fellows are at day in and day out all the year round. Of course, after a while the fawns get too big and shy for them to tackle, but these bob-cats are all the time killing something that ought to be allowed to live. I suppose that every two or three days for the next month or two each of these cats will kill a young deer, or a young antelope, or maybe a young elk. That would make twenty head of young game animals to a cat each summer. It's mighty lucky that there ain't any more of those fellows in the mountains than there is." He stooped over and looked at the head of the lynx he had shot, and then at the one that had fallen to Jack's gun. The latter was shot through the neck and showed a small hole where the bullet went in and a large one where it came out. The lynx he had killed had only one bullet hole in its neck, the ball having entered its mouth and having knocked out some of its front teeth.

"You ought to shoot closer, son," he said to Jack. "Every hole cut in a skin takes a little off its value. You might remember this."

Two Bob-Cats Pulling and Tearing at Some Small Thing on the Ground.—[Page 106.]