Hunting Trips of a Ranchman: Sketches of Sport on the Northern Cattle PlainsG. P. Putnam's Sons, 1885 - 318 pages |
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A. B. Frost animal antelope antlers Bad Lands band bear beast big-horn Bighorn Mountains birds black-tail black-tail deer blue grouse bottom broken brush buck buffalo bull bushes buttes camp CANADA GOOSE canyon cattle cliffs cougar course cowboys creek crest deer distance DRAWN BY J. C. ducks edge feed feet fire foes followed foot gallop grass grizzly grizzly bear ground grouse head Henry Sandham herds hills horse horseback hundred yards hunter hunting J. C. Beard keep killed lariat latter look Manitou miles Missouri morning mountains night patch pine plains plains game plenty ponies prairie fowl prong-horn ranch ranchman ravines ridge riding rifle river saddle sage-brush scoria seen sharp-tails shooting shot side snow soon sport steep still-hunter thicket tracks trail trees trip valley wagon walked weather white-tail white-tail deer wild wind woods wounded
Popular passages
Page 12 - Marvel, Burroughs's breezy pages, and the quaint, pathetic character sketches of the Southern writers — Cable, Craddock, Macon, Joel Chandler Harris, and sweet Sherwood Bonner. And when one is in the Bad Lands he feels as if they somehow look just exactly as Poe's tales and poems sound. By the way, my books have some rather unexpected foes, in the shape of the pack rats. These are larger than our house rats, with soft gray fur, big eyes and bushy tails, like a squirrel's; they are rather pretty...
Page 247 - The country over which the huge herds grazed during the last year or two of their existence was cropped bare, and the grass did not grow to its normal height and become able to support cattle for, in some cases two, in others three, seasons. Every buffalo needed as much food as an ox or cow; and if the former abounded, the latter perforce would have to be scarce. Above all, the extermination of the buffalo was the only way of solving the Indian question. As long as this large animal of the chase...
Page 14 - In the still fall nights, if we lie awake, we can listen to the clanging cries of the water-fowl, as their flocks speed southward ; and in cold weather the coyotes occasionally come near enough for us to hear their uncanny wailing. The larger wolves, too, now and then join in, with a kind of deep, dismal howling; but this melancholy sound is more often heard when out camping than from the ranch-house. The charm of ranch life comes in its freedom, and the vigorous open-air existence it forces a man...
Page 284 - ... on the ground, halting and firing whenever we got a chance. At last one bull fell ; we passed him by after the others which were still running up-hill. The sweat streamed into my eyes and made furrows in the sooty mud that covered my face, from having fallen full length down on the...
Page 310 - No game is dangerous unless a man is close up, for nowadays hardly any wild beast will charge from a distance of a hundred yards, but will rather try to run off ; and if a man is close it is easy enough for him to shoot straight if he does not lose his head. A bear's brain is about the size of a pint bottle ; and any one can hit a pint bottle off-hand at thirty or forty feet. I have had two shots at bears at close quarters, and each time I fired into the brain, the bullet in one case striking fairly...
Page 302 - ... hunting, we were still without any head worth taking home, and had seen no sign of grizzly, which was the game we were especially anxious to kill ; for neither Merrifield nor I had ever seen a wild bear alive. Sometimes we hunted in company; sometimes each of us went out alone; the teamster, of course, remaining in to guard camp and cook. One day we had separated; I reached camp early in the afternoon, and waited a couple of hours before Merrifiel3 put in an appearance.
Page 310 - I strode past him, with my rifle at the ready, there, not ten steps off, was the great bear, slowly rising from his bed among the young spruces. He had heard us, but apparently hardly knew exactly where or what we were, for he reared up on his haunches sideways to us.
Page 32 - Sharps rifle, 45-120, shooting an ounce and a quarter of lead, and a 5o-calibre, double-barrelled English express. Both of these, especially the latter, had a vicious recoil; the former was very clumsy; and above all they were neither of them repeaters; for a repeater or magazine gun is as much superior to a single- or double-barrelled breech-loader as the latter is to a muzzle-loader.
Page 297 - Any one of the big bears we killed on the mountains would, I should think, have been able to make short work of either a lion or a tiger; for the grizzly is greatly superior in bulk and muscular power to either of the great cats, and its teeth are as large as theirs, while its claws, though blunter, are much longer; nevertheless, I believe that a lion or a tiger...
Page 12 - Birds of the Northwest" will be valued if he cares at all for natural history. A Western plainsman is reminded every day, by the names of the prominent landmarks among which he rides, that the country was known to men who spoke French long before any of his own kinsfolk came to it, and hence he reads with a double interest Parktnan's histories of the early Canadians.