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RANCH LIFE AND THE HUNTING TRAIL
by Theodore Roosevelt
CHAPTER 9
THE RANCHMAN'S RIFLE ON CRAG AND PRAIRIE
The ranchman owes to his rifle not only the keen pleasure and
strong excitement of the chase, but also much of his bodily comfort;
for, save for his prowess as a hunter and his skill as a marksman
with this, his favorite weapon, he would almost always be sadly
stinted for fresh meat. Now that the buffalo have gone, and the
Sharps rifle by which they were destroyed is also gone, almost all
ranchmen use some form of repeater. Personally I prefer the
Winchester, using the new model, with a 45-caliber bullet of 300
grains, backed by 90 grains of powder, or else falling back on my
faithful old stand-by, the 45-75. But the truth is that all good
modern rifles are efficient weapons; it is the man behind the gun
that makes the difference. An inch or two in trajectory or a second
or two in rapidity of fire is as nothing compared to sureness of eye
and steadiness of hand.
From April to August antelope are the game we chiefly follow,
killing only the bucks; after that season, black-tail and white-tail
deer. Now and then we get a chance at mountain sheep, and more rarely
at larger game still. As a rule, I never shoot anything but bucks.
But in the rutting season, when the bucks' flesh is poor, or when we
need to lay in a good stock of meat for the winter, this rule of
course must be broken.
The smoked venison stored away in the fall lasts us through the
bitter weather, as well as through the even less attractive period
covering the first weeks of spring. At that time we go out as little
as possible. The roads are mere morasses, crusted after nightfall
with a shell of thin ice, through which the shaggy horses break
heavily. Walking is exceedingly tiresome, the boots becoming caked
with masses of adhesive clay. The deer stay with us all the time; but
they are now in poor condition, the does heavy with fawn and the
bucks with ungrown antlers.
Antelope gather together in great bands in the fall, and either
travel south, leaving the country altogether, or else go to some
out-of-the-way place where they are not likely to be disturbed.
Antelope are queer, freaky beasts, and it is hard to explain why,
when most of these great bands go off south, one or two always stay
in the Bad Lands. Such a band having chosen its wintering ground,
which is usually in a valley or on a range of wide plateaus, will
leave it only with great reluctance, and if it is discovered by
hunters most of its members will surely be butchered before the
survivors are willing to abandon the place and seek new quarters.
In April the prong-horned herds come back, but now all broken up
into straggling parties. They have regular passes, through which they
go every year: there is one such not far from my ranch, where they
are certain to cross the Little Missouri in great numbers each spring
on their return march. In the fall, when they are traveling in dense
crowds, hunters posted in these passes sometimes butcher enormous
numbers.
Soon after they come back in the spring they scatter out all over
the plains, and for four months after their return &emdash;that is,
until August &emdash;they are the game we chiefly follow. This is
because at that time we only hunt enough to keep the ranch in fresh
meat, and kill nothing but the bucks; and as antelope, though they
shed their horns, are without them for but a very short time, and as,
moreover, they are always seen at a distance, it is easy to tell the
sexes apart.
Antelope shooting is the kind in which a man most needs skill in
the use of the rifle at long ranges; for they are harder to get near
than any other game &emdash;partly from their wariness, and still
more from the nature of the ground they inhabit. Many more cartridges
are spent, in proportion to the amount of game killed, in hunting
antelope than is the case while after deer, elk, or sheep. Even good
hunters reckon on using six or seven cartridges for every prong-horn
that they kill; for antelope are continually offering standing shots
at very long distances, which, nevertheless, it is a great temptation
to try, on the chance of luck favoring the marksman. Moreover, alone
among plains' game, they must generally be shot at over a hundred and
fifty yards, and often at between two and three hundred. Over this
distance a man will kill occasionally, &emdash;I have done so myself,
&emdash;but at such long range it is mainly a matter of accident. The
best field-shot alive lacks a good deal of always killing, if the
distance is much over two hundred yards; and with every increase
beyond that amount, the chances of failure augment in geometrical
proportion. Exceptional individuals perform marvelous feats with the
rifle, exactly as still more exceptional individuals perform
marvelous feats with the revolver; but even these men, when they have
to guess their distances, miss very often when firing at game three
hundred yards, or thereabouts, distant.
As in all other kinds of big-game shooting, success in hunting
antelope often depends upon sheer, downright luck. A man may make a
week's trip over good ground and get nothing; and then again he may
go to the same place and in two days kill a wagon-load of venison.
In the fall the prairie fires ravage the land, for at the close of
summer the matted, sun-dried grass burns like tinder, and the fires
are sometimes so numerous as to cover whole counties beneath a pall
of smoke, while at night they look very grand, burning in curved
lines of wavering flame, now advancing fastest at one point, now at
another, as if great red snakes were writhing sideways across the
prairie. The land across which they have run remains a blackened,
charred waste until the young grass begins to sprout in the spring.
The short, tender blades at once change the cinder-colored desert
into a bright emerald plain, and are so much more toothsome than the
dry, withered winter grass that both stock and game forsake the
latter and travel out to the tracts of burned land. The feed on these
places is too sparse to support, of itself, horses or cattle, who
accordingly do not penetrate far beyond the edges; but antelope are
like sheep, and prefer scanty, short herbage, and in consequence at
this time fairly swarm in the burned districts. Indeed, they are
sometimes so numerous that they can hardly be stalked, as it is
impossible to approach any animal without being seen by some of its
countless comrades, which at once run off and give the alarm.
While on these early spring trips we sometimes vary the sport, and
our fare as well, by trying our rifles on the mallards in the reedy
sloughs, or on the jack rabbits as they sit up on their haunches to
look at us, eighty or a hundred yards off. Now and then we creep up
to and kill the cock prairie fowl, when they have gathered into their
dancing rings to posture with outstretched neck and outspread wings
as they shuffle round each other, keeping up a curious clucking and
booming that accord well with their grotesque attitudes.
Late in the season any one of us can usually get antelope in a
day's hunt from the ranch by merely riding off alone, with a good
hunting horse, to a great tract of broken, mound-dotted prairie some
fifteen miles off, where the prong-horns are generally abundant.
On such a trip I leave the ranch house by dawn, the rifle across
my saddle-bow, and some strips of smoked venison in the
saddle-pockets. In the cool air the horse lopes smartly through the
wooded bottoms. The meadow-larks, with black crescents on their
yellow breasts, sing all day long, but the thrushes only in the
morning and evening; and their melody is heard at its best on such a
ride as this. By the time I get out of the last ravines and canter
along the divide, the dark bluff-tops in the east have begun to
redden in the sunrise, while in the flushed west the hills stand out
against a rosy sky. The sun has been up some little time before the
hunting-grounds are fairly reached; for the antelope stands alone in
being a diurnal game animal that from this peculiarity, as well as
from the nature of its haunts, can be hunted as well at midday as at
any other hour. Arrived at the hunting-grounds I generally, but not
always, dismount and hunt on foot, leaving the horse tethered out to
graze.
Lunch is taken at some spring, which may be only a trickle of
water at the base of a butte, where a hole must be dug out with knife
and hands before the horse can drink. Once or twice I have enjoyed
unusual delicacies at such a lunch, in the shape of the eggs of
curlew or prairie fowl baked in the hot ashes.
The day is spent in still-hunting, a much easier task among the
ridges and low hills than out on the gently rolling prairies.
Antelope see much better than deer, their great bulging eyes, placed
at the roots of the horns, being as strong as twin telescopes.
Extreme care must be taken not to let them catch a glimpse of the
intruder, for it is then hopeless to attempt approaching them. On the
other hand, there is never the least difficulty about seeing them;
for they are conspicuous beasts, and, unlike deer, they never hide,
being careless whether they are seen or not, so long as they can keep
a good lookout. They trust only to their own alert watchfulness and
quick senses for safety. The game is carried home behind the saddle;
and the bottom on which the ranch house stands is not often reached
until the moon, showing crimson through the haze, has risen above the
bluffs that skirt the river.
Antelope are very tough, and will carry off a great deal of lead
unless struck in exactly the right place; and even when mortally hit
they sometimes receive the blow without flinching, and gallop off as
if unharmed. They always should be followed up a little distance
after being fired at, as if unhurt. Sometimes they show the rather
curious trait of walking backwards a number of steps just before
falling in death.
Although ordinarily harder to get at than deer, they are far more
frequently killed in what may be called accidental ways. At times
they seem to be heedless of danger, and they suffer from occasional
panic fits of fear or curiosity, when it is no feat at all to slay
them. Hunters can thus occasionally rake very large bags of antelope,
but a true sportsman who only shoots for peculiarly fine trophies, or
to supply the ranch table, will not commit such needless butcheries.
Often accidents have thrown it into my power to make a big killing;
but the largest number I have ever shot was on one day when I bagged
four, all bucks, and then we were sorely in need of fresh meat, and
it was an object to get as much as possible. This day's shooting was
peculiar because it took place during a heavy rain storm, which,
taken in connection with my own remarkable costume, apparently made
the animals act with less than their usual shyness. I wore a great
flapping yellow slicker, or oilskin overcoat, about as unlikely a
garb as a hunter could possibly don; but it seemed to fascinate the
game, for more than once a band huddled up and stood gazing at me,
while I clambered awkwardly off the horse. The cold rain numbed my
fingers and beat into my eyes, and I was hampered by the coat; so I
wasted a good many cartridges to get my four head.
In some places they now seem to have learned wisdom, for the
slaughter among them has been so prodigious that the survivors have
radically changed their character. Their senses are as keen as ever,
and their wits much keener. They no longer give way to bursts of
panic curiosity; they cannot be attracted by any amount of flagging,
or by the appearance of unknown objects, as formerly. Where they are
still common, as with us, they refuse, under any stress of danger, to
enter woodland or thickets, but keep to the flat or broken plains and
the open prairies, which they have from time immemorial inhabited.
But elsewhere their very nature seems to have altered. They have not
only learned to climb and take to the hills, but, what is even more
singular, have intruded on the domain of the elk and the deer,
frequently making their abode in the thick timber, and there proving
the most difficult of all animals to stalk.
In May and June the little antelope kids appear: funny little
fellows, odd and ungainly, but at an astonishingly early age able to
run nearly as fast as their parents. They will lie very close if they
think that they are unobserved. Once several of us were driving in a
herd of cattle while on the round-up. The cattle, traveling in loose
order, were a few paces ahead, when, happening to cast down my eyes,
I saw, right among their hoofs, a little antelope kid. It was lying
flat down with outstretched neck, and did not move, although some of
the cattle almost stepped on it. I reined up, got off my horse, and
lifted it in my arms. At first it gave two or three convulsive
struggles, bleating sharply, then became perfectly passive, standing
quietly by me for a minute or two when I put it down, after which it
suddenly darted off like a flash. These little antelope kids are very
easily tamed, being then very familiar, amusing, and inquisitive
&emdash;much more so than deer fawns, though they are not so pretty.
Within a few days of their birth they stop seeking protection in
hiding and adopt the habits of their parents, following them
everywhere, or going off on their own account, being almost as swift,
although, of course, not nearly so enduring.
Three of us witnessed a rather curious incident last spring,
showing how little the bringing forth of a fawn affects the does of
either deer or antelope. We were walking through a patch of low
brushwood, when up got a black-tail doe and went off at full speed.
At the second jump she gave birth to a fawn; but this did not alter
her speed in the least, and she ran off quite as well and as fast as
ever. We walked up to where she had been lying and found in her bed
another fawn, evidently but a few seconds old. We left the two
sprawling, unlicked little creatures where they were, knowing that
the mother would soon be back to care for them.
Although sometimes we go out to the antelope ground and back in
one day, yet it is always more convenient to take the buckboard with
us and spend the night, camping by a water hole in one of the creeks.
The last time we took such a trip I got lost, and nearly spent the
night in the open. I had been riding with one of my cowboys, while
another acted as teamster and drove the buckboard and pair. We killed
two antelope and went into camp rather early. After taking dinner and
picketing out the four horses we found it still lacked an hour or two
of sunset, and accordingly my companions and I started out on foot,
leaving our teamster in camp, and paying no particular heed to our
surroundings. We saw a herd of prong-horn and wounded one, which we
followed in vain until dusk, and then started to go back to camp.
Very soon we found that we had quite a task before us, for in the dim
starlight all the hollows looked exactly alike, and the buttes seemed
either to have changed form entirely or else loomed up so vaguely
through the darkness that we could not place them in the least. We
walked on and on until we knew that we must be far past the creek, or
coulee, where our camp lay, and then turned towards the divide. The
night had grown steadily darker, and we could hear the far-off mutter
and roll that told of an approaching thunder-storm. Hour after hour
we trudged wearily on, as fast as we could go without stumbling, the
gloom and the roughness of the unknown ground proving serious
drawbacks to our progress. When on the top of a hillock, the
blackness of the hollow beneath was so intense that we could not tell
whether we were going to walk down a slope or over a cliff, and in
consequence we met with one or two tumbles. At last we reached the
top of a tall butte that we knew must be on the divide. The night was
now as dark as pitch, and we were so entirely unable to tell where we
were that we decided to give up the quest in despair and try to find
some washout that would yield us at least partial shelter from the
approaching rain storm. We had fired off our rifles several times
without getting any response; but now, as we took one last look
around, we suddenly saw a flash of light, evidently from a gun, flare
up through the darkness so far off that no sound came to our ears. We
trotted towards it as fast as we could through the inky gloom, and
when no longer sure of our direction climbed a little hill, fired off
our rifles, and after a minute or two again saw the guiding flash.
The next time we had occasion to signal, the answering blaze was
accompanied by a faint report; and in a few minutes more, when it was
close on midnight, we were warming our hands at the great camp-fire,
and hungrily watching the venison steaks as they sizzled in the
frying-pan.
The morning after this adventure I shot an antelope before
breakfast. We had just risen, and while sitting round the smoldering
coals, listening to the simmering of the camp-kettle and the
coffee-pot, we suddenly caught sight of a large prong-horn buck that
was walking towards us over the hill-crest nearly half a mile away.
He stopped and stared fixedly at us for a few minutes, and then
resumed his course at a leisurely trot, occasionally stopping to crop
a mouthful of grass, and paying no further heed to us. His course was
one that would lead him within a quarter of a mile of camp, and,
grasping my rifle, I slipped off as soon as he was out of sight and
ran up over the bluff to intercept him. Just as I reached the last
crest I saw the buck crossing in front of me at a walk, and almost
two hundred yards off. I knelt, and, as he halted and turned his head
sharply towards me, pulled trigger. It was a lucky shot, and he fell
over, with his back broken. He had very unusually good horns; as fine
as those of any of his kind that I ever killed.
Antelope often suffer from such freaks of apathetic indifference
to danger, which are doubly curious as existing in an animal normally
as wary as that wildest of game, the mountain sheep. They are fond of
wandering too, and appear at times in very unlikely places. Thus
once, while we were building the cow corral, in an open bottom, five
antelope came down. After much snorting and stamping, they finally
approached to within fifty yards of the men who were at work, and, as
the latter had no weapons with them, retired unmolested.
In winter the great herds consist of the two sexes; and this is
true also of the straggling parties that come back to us in spring,
soon to split up into smaller ones. During early summer the males may
be found singly, or else three or four together, with possibly a
barren doe or two; while two or three does, with their kids, and
perhaps the last year's young, will form the nucleus of a little
flock by themselves. With the coming of the rutting season they
divide into regular bands, for they are polygamous. Every large,
powerful buck gathers his little group of does, driving out all his
rivals, though perhaps a yearling buck or two will hang round the
outskirts at a respectful distance, every now and then rousing the
older one to a fit of jealous impatience. More often the young bucks
go in small parties by themselves, while those older ones that have
been driven out by their successful rivals wander round singly. The
old bucks are truculent and courageous, and do fierce battle with
each other until it is evident which is master, when the defeated
combatant makes off at top speed. One of these beaten bucks will
occasionally get hold of a single doe, whom he promptly appropriates
and guards with extreme watchfulness; and, not being overconfident in
his own prowess, drives her off very rapidly if any other antelope
show signs of coming near. A successful buck may have from four or
five to ten or fifteen does in his harem. In such a band there is
always an old doe that acts as leader, precisely as with deer and
elk. This doe is ever on the alert, is most likely to take the alarm
at the approach of danger, and always leads the flight. The buck,
however, is prompt to take command, if he sees fit, or deems that the
doe's fears have overpowered her judgment; and frequently, when a
band is in full flight, the buck may be seen deliberately to round it
up and stop it, so that he may gaze on the cause of the alarm
&emdash;a trait the exercise of which often costs him his life. The
bucks occasionally bully the does unmercifully, if they show symptoms
of insubordination. Individual antelope vary very widely in speed.
Once I fairly rode one down, but this is generally an almost
impossible feat. Among deer, the fat, heavy antlered bucks are
usually slower than the does and the young males; but there seems to
be little difference of this sort among prong-horns.
With the first touch of sharp fall weather we abandon the chase of
the antelope for that of the deer. Then our favorite quarry is the
noble blacktail, whose haunts are in the mountains and the high,
craggy hills. We kill him by fair still-hunting, and to follow him
successfully through the deep ravines and across the steep ridges of
his upland home a man should be sound in wind and limbs, and a good
shot with the rifle as well. Many a glorious fall morning I have
passed in his pursuit; often, moreover, I have slain him in the
fading evening as I walked homeward through the still dim twilight
&emdash;for all wild game dearly love the gloaming.
Once on a frosty evening I thus killed one when it was so dark
that my aim was little but guess-work. I was walking back to camp
through a winding valley, hemmed in by steep cedar-crowned walls of
clay and rock. All the landscape glimmered white with the new-fallen
snow, and in the west the sky was still red with the wintry sunset.
Suddenly a great buck came out of a grove of snow-laden cedars, and
walked with swift strides up to the point of a crag that overlooked
the valley. There he stood motionless while I crouched unseen in the
shadow beneath. As I fired he reared upright and then plunged over
the cliff. He fell a hundred feet before landing in the bushes, yet
he did not gash or mar his finely molded head and shapely, massive
antlers.
On one of the last days I hunted, in November, 1887, I killed two
black-tail, a doe and a buck, with one bullet. They were feeding in a
glen high up the side of some steep hills, and by a careful stalk
over rough ground I got within fifty yards. Peering over the brink of
the cliff-like slope up which I had clambered, I saw them standing in
such a position that the neck of the doe covered the buck's shoulder.
The chance was too tempting to be lost. My bullet broke the doe's
neck, and of course she fell where she was; but the buck went off, my
next two or three shots missing him. However, we followed his bloody
trail, through the high pass he had crossed, down a steep slope, and
roused him from the brushwood in a valley bottom. He soon halted and
lay down again, making off at a faltering gallop when approached, and
the third time we came up to him he was too weak to rise. He had
splendid antlers.
Sometimes we kill the deer by the aid of hounds. Of these we have
two at the ranch. One is a rough-coated, pure-blood Scotch
stag-hound, named Rob. The other, Brandy, is a track-hound,
bell-mouthed, lop-eared, keen-nosed, and not particularly fast, but
stanch as Death himself. He comes of the old Southern strain; and,
indeed, all the best blooded packs of American deer-hounds or
fox-hounds come from what was called the Southern Hound in early
seventeenth century England. Thus he is kin to the hounds of
Bellemeade, wherewith General Jackson follows the buck and the gray
fox over the beautiful fertile hills of middle Tennessee; and some of
the same blood runs in the veins of Mr. Wadsworth's Genesco hounds,
behind which I have ridden as they chased the red fox through the
wooded glens and across the open fields of the farms, with their high
rail fences.
I often take Rob out when still-hunting black-tail, leading him
along in a leash. He is perfectly quiet, not even whimpering; and he
is certain to overhaul any wounded deer. A doe or a flying buck is
borne to the ground with a single wrench, and killed out of hand; but
a buck at bay is a formidable opponent, and no dog can rush in full
on the sharp prong points. If the two dogs are together, Rob does
most of the killing; Brandy's only function is to distract the
attention of an angry buck and then allow Rob to pin him. Once a
slightly wounded and very large black-tail buck, started just at
nightfall, ran down to the river and made a running bay of nearly two
hours, Rob steadily at him the whole time; it was too dark for us to
shoot, but finally, by a lucky throw, one of the men roped the
quarry.
Not only will a big black-tail buck beat off a dog or a wolf
coming at him in front, but he is an awkward foe for a man. One of
them nearly killed a cowboy in my employ. The buck, mortally wounded,
had fallen to the shot, and the man rushed up to stick him; then the
buck revived for a moment, struck down the man, and endeavored to
gore him, but could not, because of the despairing grip with which
the man held on to his horns. Nevertheless the man, bruised and cut
by the sharp hoofs, was fast becoming too weak to keep his hold, when
in the struggle they came to the edge of a washout, and fell into it
some twelve or fifteen feet. This separated them. The dying buck was
too weak to renew the attack, and the man crawled off; but it was
months before he got over the effects of the encounter.
Sometimes we kill the white-tail also by fair still-hunting, but
more often we shoot them on the dense river bottoms by the help of
the trackhound. We put the dogs into the woods with perhaps a single
horseman to guide them and help them rout out the deer, while the
rest of us, rifle in hand, ride from point to point outside, or else
watch the passes through which the hunted animals are likely to run.
It is not a sport of which I am very fond, but it is sometimes
pleasant as a variety. The last time that we tried it I killed a buck
in the bottom right below our ranch house, not half a mile off. The
river was low, and my post was at its edge, with in front of me the
broad sandy flat sparsely covered with willow-brush. Deer are not
much afraid of an ordinary noisy hound; they will play round in front
of him, head and flag in air; but with Rob it was different. The
gray, wolfish beast, swift and silent, threw them into a panic of
terror, and in headlong flight they would seek safety from him in the
densest thicket.
On the evening in question one of my cowboys went into the brush
with the hounds. I had hardly ridden to my place and dismounted when
I heard old Brandy give tongue, the bluffs echoing back his
long-drawn baying. Immediately afterwards a young buck appeared,
coming along the sandy river-bed, trotting or cantering; and very
handsome he looked, stepping with a light, high action, his glossy
coat glistening, his head thrown back, his white flag flaunting. My
bullet struck him too far back and he went on, turning into the
woods. Then the dogs appeared, old Brandy running the scent, while
the eager gaze-hound made wide half-circles round him as he ran;
while the cowboy, riding a vicious yellow mustang, galloped behind,
cheering them on. As they struck the bloody trail they broke into
clamorous yelling, and tore at full speed into the woods. A minute or
two later the sound ceased, and I knew that they had run into the
quarry.
Sometimes we use the hounds for other game besides deer. A
neighboring ranchman had a half-breed fox-and-greyhound, who,
single-handed, ran into and throttled a coyote. I have been very
anxious to try my dogs on a big wolf, intending to take along a
collie and a half-breed mastiff we have to assist at the bay. The
mastiff is a good fighter, and can kill a wildcat, taking the
necessary punishment well, as we found out when we once trapped one
of these small lynxes. Shep, the collie, is an adept at killing
badgers, grabbing them from behind and whirling them round, whereas
Brandy always gets his great lop-ears bitten. But how they would do
with a wolf I cannot say; for one of these long-toothed wanderers is
usually able to outrun and outfight any reasonable number of common
hounds, and will kill even a big dog very quickly.
A friend of mine, Mr. Heber Bishop, once coursed and killed a wolf
with two Scotch deer-hounds. After a brisk run the dogs overtook and
held the quarry, but could not kill it, and were being very roughly
handled when Mr. Bishop came to their assistance. But a ranchman in
the Indian Territory has a large pack of these same Scotch dogs
trained especially to hunt the wolf; and four or five of the fleet,
high-couraged animals can not only soon overhaul a wolf, but can
collar and throttle even the largest. Accidents to the pack are, of
course, frequent. They say that the worry is enough to make one's
hair stand on end.
Before leaving the subject, it is worth noting that we have with
us the Canada lynx as well as his smaller brother; and, more singular
still, that a wolverine, usually found only in the northern forests,
was killed two winters ago in a big woody bottom on the Little
Missouri, about forty miles north of Medora. The skin and skull were
unmistakable; so there could be no doubt as to the beast's identity.
I have had good sport on the rolling plains, near Mandan, in
following a scratch pack of four fleet, long-legged dogs. One was a
wire-haired Scotch deer-hound; his mate was a superb greyhound, the
speediest of the set. Both were possessed of the dauntless courage
peculiar to high-bred hunting dogs. The other two were mongrels, but,
nevertheless, game fighters and swift runners: one was a lurcher, and
the other a cross between a greyhound and a fox-hound &emdash;the
only one of the four that ever gave tongue. The two former had been
used together often, and had slain five coyotes, two deer
(white-tails), and an antelope. Both the antelope and the deer they
had fairly run down, having come up close on them, so that they had
good send-offs; but there is a wide individual variation among game
animals as regards speed, and those that they caught &emdash;at any
rate the antelope &emdash;may not have been as fleet as most of their
kind. They were especially fond of chasing coyotes, and these they
easily overtook.
When at bay the coyotes fought desperately but unavailingly, the
two hounds killing their quarry very quickly, one seizing it by the
throat and the other by the flanks, and then stretching it out in a
trice. They occasionally received trifling injuries in these
contests. The animal that gave them most trouble was a badger which
they once found and only killed after prolonged efforts, its squat,
muscular form and tough skin making it very difficult for them to get
a good hold.
We did not have time to go far from Mandan, and so confined our
coursing to jack rabbits, swifts, and foxes. Of the latter, the great
red prairie fox, we saw but one, which got up so close to the dogs
that it had no chance at all, and after a fine burst of a few hundred
yards was overtaken and torn to pieces. The swifts are properly
called swift foxes, being rather smaller than the southern gray fox.
Ever since the days of the early explorers they have been reputed to
possess marvelous speed and their common name of "swift," by which
they are universally known, perpetuates the delusion; for a delusion
it emphatically is, since they are, if anything, rather slow than
otherwise. Once, in a snow storm, I started one up under my horse's
feet while riding across the prairie, overtook him in a few strides,
and killed him by a lucky shot with the revolver. The speed of the
coyote also has been laughably exaggerated. Judging by the records of
the hounds, the antelope is the fastest plains' animal, the
white-tail deer and the jack rabbit coming next; then follow, in
order, the coyote, the fox, and the swift, which is the slowest of
all. Individuals vary greatly, however; thus a fast jack rabbit might
well outrun a slow deer, and of course both coyote and fox will
outlast the swifter jack rabbits. Several dogs should run together,
as otherwise a jack or a swift, although overtaken, may yet escape by
its dexterity in dodging. The cactus beds often befriend the hunted
animals, as the dogs rush heedlessly into them and are promptly
disabled, while a rabbit or a fox will slip through without injury.
Two or three of us usually went out together. Our method of
procedure was simple. We scattered out, dogs and men, and rode in an
irregular line across the country, beating with care the most likely
looking places, and following at top speed any game that got up.
Sometimes a jack rabbit, starting well ahead, would run for two miles
or over, nearly in a straight line, before being turned by the
leading hound; and occasionally one would even get away altogether.
At other times it would be overhauled at once and killed instantly,
or only prolong its life a few seconds by its abrupt turns and
twists. One swift gave us several minutes' chase, although never
getting thirty rods from the place where it started. The little
fellow went off as merrily as possible, his handsome brush streaming
behind him, and, though overtaken at once, dodged so cleverly that
dog after dog shot by him. I do not think that a single dog could
have killed him.
Coursing is the sport of all sports for ranchmen, now that big
animals are growing scarce; and certainly there can be no healthier
or more exciting pastime than that of following game with horse and
hound over the great Western plains.
Ranch Life and
the Hunting Trail Continued
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