but little dread of its neighborhood, and, though careful not to let
it come too near, go on grazing when a bear is in full sight. Whitetail
deer are frequently found at home in the same thicket in which a bear
has its den, while they immediately desert the temporary abiding place
of a wolf or cougar. Nevertheless, they sometimes presume too much on
this confidence. A couple of years before the occurrence of the feats
of cattle-killing mentioned above as happening near my ranch, either the
same bear that figured in them, or another of similar tastes, took to
game-hunting. The beast lived in the same succession of huge thickets
which cover for two or three miles the river bottoms and the mouths of
the inflowing creeks; and he suddenly made a raid on the whitetail deer
which were plentiful in the dense cover. The shaggy, clumsy monster was
cunning enough to kill several of these knowing creatures. The exact
course of procedure I never could find out; but apparently the bear laid
in wait beside the game trails, along which the deer wandered.

In the old days when the innumerable bison grazed free on the prairie,
the grisly sometimes harassed their bands as it now does the herds of
the ranchman. The bison was the most easily approached of all game,
and the great bear could often get near some outlying straggler, in its
quest after stray cows, yearlings, or calves. In default of a favorable
chance to make a prey of one of these weaker members of the herds, it
did not hesitate to attack the mighty bulls themselves; and perhaps the
grandest sights which it was ever the good fortune of the early hunters
to witness was one of these rare battles between a hungry grisly and a
powerful buffalo bull. Nowadays, however, the few last survivors of the
bison are vanishing even from the inaccessible mountain fastnesses in
which they sought a final refuge from their destroyers.

At present the wapiti is of all wild game that which is most likely to