MULE DEER HUNTING

The mountain man most often hunted the mule deer, which is the subspecies most prevalent in the western mountains of America, and is distinguished by its mule-like ears.

Deer Hunting Tips

One of the great tricks of deer hunting is knowing how to approach the game without being spotted. This is not easily managed unless the hunter sees the deer before he is himself discovered. There are many things in the woods that so resemble the deer in color that none but a practiced eye can often detect the difference.

When the deer is at rest, it generally turns its head from the wind, from which position it can see any predator approaching from that direction. It counts on its nose to inform it of the presence of danger from the opposite side. Therefore, the best method of hunting deer is across the wind.

The best time to stalk deer is when they are feeding, either early in the morning or just before dark.

Advance cautiously, keeping your eyes on the deer, and if possible screening yourself behind intervening rocks, trees, or other features of the landscape. In the absence of this cover, crawl along on your hands and knees in the grass. If the deer hears you, stay motionless and absolutely still. Its vision is its keenest sense, but if the hunter does not move, the deer will, after a short time, recover from its alarm and resume grazing, when it may be approached again. The deer always exhibits alarm by a sudden jerking of the tail just before it raises its head.

Many men, upon suddenly encountering a deer are seized with a nervous excitement commonly called “buck fever,” which causes them to fire off a shot quickly. Most often this results in a miss, a shot too high. Force yourself to take your shot deliberately, sighting your rifle low, or don’t take the shot at all.

BIG HORN SHEEP

The big-horn or mountain sheep has a body like the deer, with the head of a sheep, surmounted by an enormous pair of short, heavy horns. It is found throughout the Rocky Mountains, and hides out on the most inaccessible peaks and in the wildest and least-frequented glens. It clambers over almost perpendicular cliffs with the greatest of ease and celerity, skipping from rock to rock, and cropping the tender herbage that grows on them.

Folks used to explain that this animal leaped from crag to crag, landing on his horns—and that this is why the front of the horns are much battered. But it is very common to see horns that have no bruises on them, and old mountaineers tell of seeing the bucks engaged in desperate encounters with their huge horns, which, in striking together, made loud reports. This no doubt accounts for the marks sometimes seen on them.

The animal is gregarious, but it’s rare that more than eight or ten are found in a flock. When not grazing they seek the sheltered sides of the mountains and rest among the rocks.

The flesh of the big-horn, when fat, is said to be more tender, juicy, and delicious than that of any other game animal—darn good eating!

HUNTING THE BIG-HORN.

HUNTING THE BIG HORN

In its habits the big horned mountain sheep very much resembles the chamois of the Swiss Alps, and is hunted in much the same manner.

The hunter must maneuver across the most inaccessible and broken ground and approach with great caution, because the big horn tends to be uncommonly skittish. The least unusual noise causes it to flit away like a phantom and, once spooked, it will be seen no more. When you can manage it, always approach from above. The big horn’s ability to get itself to the highest ground is its chief defense, and so it is less wary of danger from above. As usual, watch your wind and in taking your shot, aim low.

GRIZZLY BEAR

It is one thing to do the deed, to hunt and get your bear. It is quite another thing to tell everybody all about it round the campfire at the rendezvous.

Old Pinto by Allan Kelly

This is an incredible bear story, but it is true. George Gleason told it to a man who knew the bear so well that he thought the old Pinto Grizzly belonged to him and wore his brand, and as George is no bear hunter himself, but is a plain, ordinary, truthful person, there is not the slightest doubt that he related only the facts. George said some of the facts were incredible before he started in. He had never heard or read of such tenacity of life in any animal. But there are precedents, even if George never heard of them.

The vitality of the California Grizzly is astonishing, as many a man has sorrowful reason to know, and the tenacity of the Old Pinto’s hold on life was remarkable, even among Grizzlies. This Pinto was a famous bear. His home was among the rocks and manzanita thickets of La Liebra Mountain, a limestone ridge southwest of Tehachepi that divides Gen. Beale’s two ranches, Los Alamos y Agua Caliente and La Liebra, and his range was from Tejon Pass to San Emigdio. His regular occupation was killing Gen. Beale’s cattle, and the slopes of the hills and the cienegas around Castac Lake were strewn with the bleached bones of his prey. For twenty years that solitary old bear had been monarch of all that Gen. Beale surveyed—to paraphrase President Lincoln’s remark to Surveyor-General Beale himself—and wrought such devastation on the ranch that for years there had been a standing reward for his hide.

Men who had lived in the mountains and knew the old Pinto’s infirmity of temper were wary about invading his domains, and not a vaquero could be induced to go afoot among the manzanita thickets of the limestone ridge. The man who thought he owned the Pinto followed his trail for two months many years ago and learned many things about him; among others that the track of his hind foot measured fourteen inches in length and nine inches in width; that the hair on his head and shoulders was nearly white; that he could break a steer’s neck with a blow of his paw; that he feared neither man nor his works; that while he would invade a camp with leisurely indifference, he would not enter the stout oak-log traps constructed for his capture; and finally, that it would be suicide to meet him on the trail with anything less efficient than a Gatling gun.

Old Juan, the vaquero, who lived in a cabin on the flat below the alkaline pool called Castac Lake, was filled with a fear of Pinto that was akin to superstition. He told how the bear had followed him home and besieged him all night in the cabin, and he would walk five miles to catch a horse to ride two miles in the hills. To him old Pinto was “mucho diablo,” and a shivering terror made his eyes roll and his voice break in trembling whispers when he talked of the bear while riding along the cattle trails. Once upon a time an ambitious sportsman of San Francisco, who wanted to kill something bigger than a duck and more ferocious than a jackrabbit, read about Pinto and persuaded himself that he was bear-hunter enough to tackle the old fellow. He went to Fort Tejon, hired a guide and made an expedition to the Castac. The guide took the hunter to Spike-buck Spring, which is at the head of a ravine under the limestone ridge, and showed to him the footprints of a big bear in the mud and along the bear trail that crosses the spring. One glance at the track of Pinto’s foot was sufficient to dispel all the dime-novel day dreams of the sportsman and start a readjustment of his plan of campaign. After gazing at that foot-print, the slaying of a Grizzly by “one well-directed shot” from the “unerring rifle” was a feat that lost its beautiful simplicity and assumed heroic proportions. The man from San Francisco had intended to find the bear’s trail, follow it on foot, overtake or meet the Grizzly and kill him in his tracks, after the manner of the intrepid hunters that he had read about, but he sat down on a log and debated the matter with the guide. That old-timer would not volunteer advice, but when it was asked he gave it, and he told the man from San Francisco that if he wanted to tackle a Grizzly all by his lonely self, his best plan would be to stake out a calf, climb a tree and wait for the bear to come along in the night.