Throughout most of the ranch country there are two kinds of deer, the black-tail and the white-tail. The white-tail is the same as the deer of the East; it is a beautiful creature, a marvel of lightness and grace in all its movements, and it loves to dwell in thick timber, so that in the plains country it is almost confined to the heavily wooded river bottoms. The black-tail is somewhat larger, with a different and very peculiar gait, consisting of a succession of stiff-legged bounds, all four feet striking the earth at the same time. Its habits are likewise very different, as it is a bolder animal and much fonder of the open country. Among the Rockies it is found in the deep forests, but it prefers scantily wooded regions, and in the plains country it dwells by choice in the rough hills, spending the day in the patches of ash or cedar among the ravines. In 1882 the black-tail was very much more abundant than the white-tail almost everywhere in the West, but owing to the nature of its haunts it is more easily killed out, and in 1897, through both species has decreased in numbers, the white-tail was on the whole the more common.
My ranch-house was situated on a heavily wooded bottom, one of the places where the white-tail were found. On one occasion I killed one from the ranch veranda, and two or three times I shot them within half a mile of the house. Nevertheless, they are so cunning and stealthy in their ways, and the cover is so dense, that usually, although one may know of their existence right in one’s neighborhood, there is more chance of getting game by going off eight or ten miles into the broken country of the black-tail.
One Christmas I was to be at the ranch, and I made up my mind that I would try to get a good buck for our Christmas dinner; for I had not had much time to hunt that fall, and Christmas was almost upon us before we started to lay in our stock of winter meat. So I arranged with one of the cow-boys to make an all-day’s hunt through some rugged hills on the other side of the river, where we knew there were black-tail.
We were up soon after three o’clock, when it was yet as dark as at midnight.
We had a long day’s work before us, and so we ate a substantial breakfast, then put on our fur caps, coats, and mittens, and walked out into the cold night. The air was still, but it was biting weather, and we pulled our caps down over our ears as we walked towards the rough, low stable where the two hunting-ponies had been put overnight. In a few minutes we were jogging along on our journey.
