196 MULE DEER

used to watch and listen for the falling of the trees, as
often deer would arrive within a few minutes of the first
tree falling. They became so tame, too, that they paid
but little attention to us. It was not uncommon for
fifteen or twenty mule deer to be at this particular grove
at one time. The white-tailed deer did not come so
frequently or so close to our cabin, though hardly a day
passed without our seeing a few of them. They did not
suffer to nearly the same extent as the mule deer, as they
had kept trails open in the bottom lands, where there was
a better supply of brush for them to browse on. Nor did
the white-tail ever become anything like so tame as the
mule deer, being of a far more shy and retiring nature.

During the early part of that winter, before the heavy
snow came and the deer became weak, we had grand
sport with both mule and white deer. It was seldom we
killed a deer, as though we ate an enormous amount of
venison, having little else to eat, still a good big stag
lasted us a long time. Nevertheless, we used to go out
and make stalks just for the fun of the thing. Unfortu-
nately neither of us had a camera or we should have
had great pleasure in taking photographs, but as we had
not, we used to vie with one another as to how close we
could get to a deer. Before long our stalking developed
into a regular series of matches for which we had rules
and points. To approach the closest to a white-tail buck
counted far more than the same distance from a mule
deer stag, the latter being the equal of a white-tail doe,
while mule deer does only counted the same as a white-tail
fawn, and so on. After a time the rivalry between us
over this game became so keen that we took infinitely
more trouble in making our stalks than we should have
if we had been after some stag with a record set of horns
which we desired to kill. Who won the contest never was
decided, as by degrees the winter became severe and the
deer tamer, so that eventually we lost all interest in the
game.

It was during the winter I have just been speaking
about, but before the hard weather commenced, that what