With first-class greyhounds and good horses they can often be run down in fair chase; but ordinarily the rider can hope for nothing more than to get within fair shooting-range, and this only by taking advantage of their peculiarity of running straight ahead in the direction in which they are pointed when once they have settled to their pace. Usually antelope, as soon as they see a hunter, run straight away from him; but sometimes they make their flight at an angle, and as they do not like to change their course when once started, it is occasionally possible to cut them off from the point towards which they are headed, and get a reasonably close shot.
STALKING BIG GAME
In the fall of 1896 I spent a fortnight on the range with the ranch wagon. I was using for the first time one of the then new small-caliber, smokeless-powder rifles, a 30–30–160 Winchester. I had a half-jacketed bullet, the butt being cased in hard-metal, while the nose was of pure lead.
While travelling to and fro across the range we usually broke camp each day, not putting up the tent at all during the trip; but at one spot we spent three nights. It was in a creek bottom, bounded on either side by rows of grassy hills, beyond which stretched the rolling prairie. The creek bed, which at this season was of course dry in most places, wound in S-shaped curves, with here and there a pool and here and there a fringe of stunted, wind-beaten timber. We were camped near a little grove of ash, box-alder, and willow, which gave us shade at noonday; and there were two or three pools of good water in the creek bed—one so deep that I made it my swimming-bath.
The first day that I was able to make a hunt I rode out with my foreman, Sylvane Ferris. I was mounted on Muley. Twelve years before, when Muley was my favorite cutting-pony on the round-up, he never seemed to tire or to lose his dash, but Muley was now sixteen years old, and on ordinary occasions he liked to go as soberly as possible; yet the good old pony still had the fire latent in his blood, and at the sight of game—or, indeed, of cattle or horses—he seemed to regain for the time being all the headlong courage of his vigorous and supple youth.
On the morning in question it was two or three hours before Sylvane and I saw any game. Our two ponies went steadily forward at a single foot or shack, as the cow-punchers term what Easterners call “a fox trot.” Most of the time we were passing over immense grassy flats, where the mats of short curled blades lay brown and parched under the bright sunlight. Occasionally we came to ranges of low, barren hills, which sent off gently rounding spurs into the plain.