Los Angeles herald., 1892-11-06

and etalwart fellows degenerated into
feeble old squaw. men, mated with
soualid savage" and, forgetting all that
had been bright and manly in their
early lives, huddled themselves into
filthy cabins along the Klamath and
the Trinity, to exc out a precarious ex-
istence in shooting deer for their hides
and horns. The stag bounding in his
peerless grace; the doe, with her tiny
fawn by her side; and the pretty, 'timid
yearling with his first pair of prongs, all
fell victims to the rifles of these
wretched old wrecks of humanity, vino
lacked the industry to plant vineyard
or the courage to commit suicide.
x*x
The mule deer begins just where the
red deer begins to grow scarce. He be-
longs to the Cascade and Selkirk ranges
rather than to the Sierras. The farthest
south that / have ever heard of one
being shot was near Delta station, where
you turn off to go to Castle Crags tavern.
But this deer attains his greatest size in
the broad basin drained by the Klamath
river and ted by the lakes of that name.
Take "blacktail' and "mule" deer
of the same height, and the latter will
be the heavier by 60 pounds at the least.
His antlers are wider and not 30 high as
those of his congener, and his ears are
longer and more fan-like, while his tail
is flaxy and almost as long as the banged
tail of g racehnrse. His flesh is superb,
and when salted down and smoked
makes the most delicious ham in the
world.
The caribou or American reindeer diff
fers bat little from his congener OF the
North Sea continent. In British Colum-
bia they are.quite common but increase
steadily in numbers as you 60 north. In
some portions of Alaska they are very
abundant, owing to the fact that the
Esquimaux will not allow a doe to be
killed, except in cases of the most strin-
gent hunger. In 1874, while running as
pilot OF small steamer on the Sticken
river, / shot several in August, that
were in good flesh. Down at the coast,
however, in the winter months, is where
the caribou attains his greatest size, for
there grows on the rocks species OF
lichen or sea moss which is very fatten-
ing, and there is where the caribou gets
fat and lazy and falls an easy prey to
the hunter. Not always, however. l
had friend named Angus Graham
gored to death by one in 1874. He
wounded the beast with a bullet through
the liver and went to give him the coup
de grace. We found his body and the
big buck less than 80 yards apart.
x*x
The elk or wapiti is nearly extinct
anywhere to the southwark of Puget
sound, thanks to the filthy, nomadic
class of "skin hunters" who have gone
afar outside the trackless forest and
sought to improve the ancient order of
red men. | can recollect when a man
could hardly ride from General Bidwell's
place to the Sacramento river, four miles
away, without starting up a dozen OF
them. But they are gone, and so are
the white breeched antelopes that could
pe seen in droves anywhere to the north
ward of Knights landing, or to the
southwark of Modesto. But north of
Puget sound there are rayless forests
where the sun only strikes the ground
once a month, and there few of these
grand beasts are still to be found, but
very wild and wary. An elk has scent
so powerful that if he is to the leeward
of you, he will easily detect your COM
ing, and make off before you can get a
shot at him. A few more years will end
them, and the buffalo, too.
x**
The moose still is to be found in Maine
and southern Canada, but not so plenty
as in former years. Yet to the credit of
the hunters of that region it must be
said that they never stripped off the
hides, cut away the horns and left half
the carcass to rot upon the ground, as
our northern skin hunters have done.
Poor Fred Schwatka, who fell a victim
to the opium habit in Portland the other
day, says he found the moose upon the
Yukon and its tributaries but that they
were never as abundant as on the north
Atlantic shores of this continent. Poor
fellow, he knows all about it now. The
humble Oregon cooper's son made his
tory for himself and might have been
alive today had he chosen wife from
anywhere near his own station in life.
But he married one who lived for fashion
as he lived for renown, and it ended
badly for both. He was not man of
much genius, but for courage the world
has seldom seen his superior.
plead guilty to love for summer
camp amid the tangled brake and re-
pose near the "conie roys," as the
Scotch call them, where the deer come
out to sun their fanks when the mist
dies away from the mountain and the
sunshine lights up the dell. l bake a
stag's head in the ashes, as the MeXi-
cans do the "cabeza de toro," and there
is no dish more toothsome to me. The
trotters and the neck 1 make into a
soup strong enough to train prize
fighter. The shoulder l roast and the
hams salt away for the winter nights,
when I can sit down to my midnight
lunch, washed down with glass of
beer, and dream of the sunlit days of
August, when the quail piped his chan
son from the stubble and the grouse
drummed his reveille on some fallen
forest giant. Somehow or other the
death of my old camp companion has
abridged my wanderings by field and
flood, although l love the sport as well
as ever.
Half the joys of our lives are in the
anticipation thereof. "Distance lends
enchantment to the view" in our twi-
light years, as it did in the vernal days
of oui youth. We sit here amid the
embers of the dying year and think of
the August glow OF our next summers
camp, without stopping to ask whether
we shall be alive when the snow melts
off the glittering dome of Shasta and
leaves it gray and lustreless cone of
sand. But my heart is still young, God
be praised. May you and l, dear reader,
both live to bask in the glow of another
runonoer,s sun in the mOss-prOWn haunts