bighorn and the deer to be familiar. During the two hours
following my entry into the Park we rode around the plains and lower
slopes of the foothills in the neighborhood of the mouth of the Gardiner
and we saw several hundred--probably a thousand all told--of these
antelope. Major Pitcher informed me that all the prong-horns in the
Park wintered in this neighborhood. Toward the end of April or the
first of May they migrate back to their summering homes in the open
valleys along the Yellowstone and in the plains south of the Golden
Gate. While migrating they go over the mountains and through forests if
occasion demands. Although there are plenty of coyotes in the Park there
are no big wolves, and save for very infrequent poachers the only enemy
of the antelope, as indeed the only enemy of all the game, is the
cougar.

Cougars, known in the Park as elsewhere through the West as "mountain
lions," are plentiful, having increased in numbers of recent years.
Except in the neighborhood of the Gardiner River, that is within a few
miles of Mammoth Hot Springs, I found them feeding on elk, which in the
Park far outnumber all other game put together, being so numerous that
the ravages of the cougars are of no real damage to the herds. But in
the neighborhood of the Mammoth Hot Springs the cougars are noxious
because of the antelope, mountain sheep and deer which they kill; and
the Superintendent has imported some hounds with which to hunt
them. These hounds are managed by Buffalo Jones, a famous old plainsman,
who is now in the Park taking care of the buffalo. On this first day of
my visit to the Park I came across the carcasses of a deer and of an
antelope which the cougars had killed. On the great plains cougars
rarely get antelope, but here the country is broken so that the big cats
can make their stalks under favorable circumstances. To deer and
mountain sheep the cougar is a most dangerous enemy--much more so than
the wolf.

[Illustration: Prongbucks]

The antelope we saw were usually in bands of from twenty to one hundred
and fifty, and they traveled strung out almost in single file, though
those in the rear would sometimes bunch up. I did not try to stalk them,
but got as near them as I could on horseback. The closest approach I was
able to make was to within about eighty yards on two which were by
themselves--I think a doe and a last year's fawn. As I was riding up to
them, although they looked suspiciously at me, one