Part 4

This looked pretty bad, and I felt rather blue as I climbed up to look at the trail of the spike. I was cheered to find blood, and as there was a good deal of snow here and there it was easy to follow it; nor was it long before we saw the buck moving forward slowly, evidently very sick. We did not disturb him, but watched him until he turned down into a short ravine a quarter of a mile off; he did not come out, and we sat down and waited nearly an hour to give him time to get stiff. When we reached the valley, one went down each side so as to be sure to get him when he jumped up. Our caution was needless, however, for we failed to start him; and on hunting through some of the patches of brush we found him stretched out already dead.

This was satisfactory; but still it was not the big buck, and we started out again after dressing and hanging up the deer. For many hours we saw nothing, and we had swung around within a couple of miles of the horses before we sat down behind a screen of stunted cedars for a last look. After attentively scanning every patch of brush in sight, we were about to go on when the attention of both of us was caught at the same moment by seeing a big buck deliberately get up, turn round, and then lie down again in a grove of small, leafless trees lying opposite to us on a hill-side with a southern exposure. He had evidently very nearly finished his day’s rest, but was not quite ready to go out to feed; and his restlessness cost him his life.

As we now knew where he was, the work was easy. We marked a place on the hill-top a little above and to one side of him; and while the cow-boy remained to watch him, I drew back and walked leisurely round to where I could get a shot. When nearly up to the crest I crawled into view of the patch of brush, rested my elbows on the ground, and gently tapped two stones together. The buck rose nimbly to his feet, and at seventy yards afforded me a standing shot, which I could not fail to turn to good account.

A winter day is short, and twilight had come before we had packed both bucks on the horses; but with our game behind our saddles we did not feel either fatigue, or hunger or cold, while the horses trotted steadily homeward. The moon was a few days old, and it gave us light until we reached the top of the bluffs by the river and saw across the frozen stream the gleam from the fire-lit windows of the ranch-house.

The Timber-wolf

IV THE TIMBER-WOLF

There are two kinds of wolves found in the United States. One is the little coyote or prairie-wolf, or barking-wolf, which never was found in the Eastern States, being an animal of the open country; the other is the big wolf, and sometimes the timber-wolf or gray wolf, which was formerly found everywhere from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In some districts it runs to color varieties of different kinds—red, black, or white.

The coyote is not at all a formidable beast, and holds its own quite persistently until civilization is well advanced in a country. Coyotes are not dangerous to either man or the larger domestic animals. Lambs, young pigs, hens, and cats often become their prey, and if very hungry several of them will combine to attack a young calf. In consequence, farmers and ranchers kill them whenever the chance offers; but they do not do damage which is even appreciable when compared with the ravages of their grim big brother, the gray wolf, which in many sections of the West is a veritable scourge of the stockmen.

The big wolves shrink back before the growth of the thickly settled districts, and in the Eastern States they often tend to disappear even from districts that are uninhabited, save by a few wilderness hunters. They have thus disappeared almost entirely from Maine, the Adirondacks, and the Alleghanies, although here and there they are said to be returning to their old haunts.

Their disappearance is rather mysterious in some instances, for they are certainly not all killed off. The black bear is much more easily killed, yet the black bear holds its own in many parts of the land from which the wolf has vanished. No animal is quite so difficult to kill as is the wolf, whether by poison or rifle or hound. Yet, after a comparatively few have been slain, the entire species will perhaps vanish from certain localities.

But with all wild animals it is a noticeable fact that a course of conduct with man continuing over many generations of animal life causes a species so to adapt itself to its new surroundings that it ceases to diminish in numbers. When white men take up a new country, the game, and especially the big game, being entirely unused to contend with the new foe, succumbs easily, and it is almost completely killed out. If any individuals survive at all, however, the succeeding generations are far more difficult to exterminate than were their ancestors, and they cling much more tenaciously to their old homes.

The game to be found in old and long-settled countries is much more wary and able to take care of itself than the game of an untrodden wilderness. It is a very difficult matter to kill a Swiss chamois; but it is a very easy matter to kill a white goat after a hunter has once penetrated among the almost unknown peaks of the mountains of British Columbia. When the ranchmen first drove their cattle to the Little Missouri they found the deer tame and easy to kill, but the deer of Maine and the Adirondacks test to the full the highest skill of the hunter.

In consequence, after a time, game may even increase in certain districts where settlements are thin. This has been true of the wolves throughout the northern cattle country in Montana, Wyoming, and the western ends of the Dakotas. In the old days wolves were very plentiful throughout this region, closely following the huge herds of buffaloes. The white men who followed these herds as professional buffalo-hunters were often accompanied by other men, known as “wolfers,” who poisoned these wolves for the sake of their furs. With the disappearance of the buffalo the wolves seemed so to diminish in numbers that they also seemed to disappear. During the last ten years their numbers have steadily increased, and now they seem to be as numerous as they ever were in the region in question, and they are infinitely more wary and more difficult to kill.

Along the Little Missouri their ravages were so serious from 1893 to 1897 as to cause heavy damage to the stockmen. Not only colts and calves, but young trail stock, and in midwinter even full-grown horses and steers, are continually slain; and in some seasons their losses have been so serious as to more than eat up all the profits of the ranchman. The county authorities put a bounty on wolf scalps of three dollars each, and in my own neighborhood the ranchmen of their own accord put on a further bounty of five dollars. This made eight dollars for every wolf, and as the skin is also worth something, the business of killing wolves was quite profitable.

Wolves are very shy, and show extraordinary cunning both in hiding themselves and in slinking out of the way of the hunter. They are rarely killed with the rifle. I have never shot but one myself. They are occasionally trapped, but after a very few have been procured in this way the survivors become so wary that it is almost impossible even for a master of the art to do much with them, while an ordinary man can never get one into a trap except by accident.

More can be done with poison, but even in this case the animal speedily learns caution by experience. When poison is first used in a district wolves are very easily killed, and perhaps almost all of them will be slain, but nowadays it is difficult to catch any but young ones in this way. Occasionally an old one will succumb, but there are always some who cannot be persuaded to touch a bait. The old she-wolves teach their cubs, as soon as they are able to walk, to avoid man’s trace in every way, and to look out for traps and poison.

In consequence, though most cow-punchers carry poison with them, and are continually laying out baits, and though some men devote most of their time to poisoning for the sake of the bounty and the fur, the results are not very remunerative.

The most successful wolf-hunter on the Little Missouri in 1896 was a man who did not rely on poison at all, but on dogs. He was a hunter named Massingale, and he always had a pack of at least twenty hounds. The number varied, for a wolf at bay is a terrible fighter, with jaws like those of a steel trap and teeth that cut like knives, so that the dogs were continually disabled and sometimes killed, and the hunter had always to be on the watch to add animals to his pack.

It was not a pack that would appeal, as far as looks go, to an old huntsman, but it was thoroughly fitted for its own work. Most of the dogs were greyhounds, either rough or smooth haired, but many of them were big mongrels, and part some other breed, such as bull-dog, mastiff, Newfoundland, blood-hound, or collie.

The only two necessary requisites were that the dogs should run fast and fight gamely; and in consequence they formed as wicked, hard-biting a crew as ever ran down and throttled a wolf. They were usually taken out ten at a time, and by their aid Massingale killed two hundred wolves in the course of the year.

Of course there were no pretence of giving the game fair play. The wolves were killed as vermin, not for sport. The greatest havoc was in the spring-time, when the she-wolves were followed to their dens, which were sometimes holes in the earth and sometimes natural caves. There were from three to nine whelps in each litter. Some of the hounds were very fast, and they could usually overtake a young or weak wolf; but an old wolf-dog, with a good start, unless run into at once, would surely get away if he were in a running trim. Frequently, however, he was caught when he was not in running trim, for the hunter was apt to find him when he had killed a calf or taken part in dragging down a horse or steer. Under these circumstances he could not run long before the pack.

If possible, as with all such packs, the hunter himself would get up in time to end the worry by a stab of his hunting-knife; but unless he was quick he would have nothing to do, for the pack was thoroughly competent to do its own killing. Grim fighter though a great wolf-dog is, he stands no show before the onslaught, who rush on their antagonist in a body. They possessed great power in their jaws, and unless Massingale was up within two or three minutes after the wolf was taken, the dogs literally tore him to pieces, though one or more of their number might be killed or crippled in the fight.

Other hunters were striving to get together packs thoroughly organized, and the wolves may be thinned out; they were certainly altogether too plentiful. During the fall of 1896 I saw a number myself, although I was not looking for them. I frequently came upon the remains of sheep and young stock which they had killed, and once, on the top of a small plateau, I found the body of a large steer, while the torn and trodden ground showed that he had fought hard for his life before succumbing. There were apparently two wolves engaged in the work, and the cunning beasts had evidently acted in concert. While one attracted the steer’s attention, the other, according to the invariable wolf habit, attacked him from behind, hamstringing him and tearing out his flanks. His body was still warm when I came up, but his murderers had slunk off, either seeing or smelling me. Their handiwork was unmistakable, however, for, unlike bears and cougars, wolves invariably attack their victim at the hind-quarters, and begin their feast on the hams or flanks if the animal is of any size.

Shooting the Prong-buck

V SHOOTING THE PRONG-BUCK

For a few years before 1897, when I visited my cattle range I spent most of my time out on the great plains, where almost the only game that can be found is the prong-horned antelope; and as on such trips the party depends for fresh meat upon the rifle, I have on each occasion done a certain amount of antelope-shooting.

In the old days, when antelope were far more plentiful than they are now, they could often be procured by luring them with a red flag—for they are very inquisitive beasts—but now they have grown wary, and must usually be either stalked, which is very difficult, owing to their extreme keenness of vision and the absence of cover on the prairies, or else must be ridden into.

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.