Part 16

I suppose all hunters are continually asked what rifles they use. Any good modern rifle is good enough, and, after a certain degree of excellence in the weapon is attained, the difference between it and a somewhat better rifle counts for comparatively little compared to the difference in the skill, nerve and judgment of the men using them. Moreover, there is room for a great deal of individual variation of opinion among experts as to rifles. I personally prefer the Winchester. I used a .45-75 until I broke it in a fall while goat-hunting, and since then I have used a .45-90. For my own use I consider either gun much preferable to the .500 and .577 caliber double-barreled Express for use with bears, buffalo, moose and elk; yet my brother, for instance, always preferred the double-barreled Express; Mr. Theodore Van Dyke prefers the large bore, and Mr. H. L. Stimson has had built a special .577 Winchester, which he tells me he finds excellent for grizzly bears. There is the same difference of opinion among men who hunt game on other continents than ours. Thus, Mr. Royal Carroll, in shooting rhinoceros, buffalo and the like in South Africa, preferred big, heavy English double-barrels; while Mr. William Chanler, after trying these same double-barrels, finally threw them aside in favor of the .45-90 Winchester for use even against such large and thick-hided beasts as rhinoceros. There was an amusing incident connected with Mr. Chanler's experiences. In a letter to the London _Field_ he happened to mention that he preferred, for rhinoceros and other large game, the .45-90 Winchester to the double-barrel .577, so frequently produced by the English gun makers. His letter was followed by a perfect chorus of protests in the shape of other letters by men who preferred the double-barrel. These men had a perfect right to their opinions, but the comic feature of their letters was that, as a rule, they almost seemed to think that Mr. Chanler's preference of the .45-90 repeater showed some kind of moral delinquency on his part; while the gun maker, whose double-barrel Mr. Chanler had discarded in favor of the Winchester, solemnly produced tests to show that the bullets from his gun had more penetration than those from the Winchester--which had no more to do with the question than the production by the Winchester people of targets to show that this weapon possessed superior accuracy would have had. Of course, the element of penetration is only one of twenty entering into the question; accuracy, handiness, rapidity of fire, penetration, shock--all have to be considered. Penetration is useless after a certain point has been reached. Shock is useless if it is gained at too great expense of penetration or accuracy. Flatness of trajectory, though admirable, is not as important as accuracy, and when gained at a great expense of accuracy is simply a disadvantage. All of these points are admirably discussed in Mr. A. C. Gould's "Modern American Rifles." In the right place, a fair-sized bullet is as good as a very big one; in the wrong place, the big one is best; but the medium one will do more good in the right place than the big one away from its right place; and if it is more accurate it is therefore preferable.

Entirely apart from the merit of guns, there is a considerable element of mere fashion in them. For the last twenty years there has been much controversy between the advocates of two styles of rifles--that is, the weapon with a comparatively small bore and long, solid bullet and a moderate charge of powder, and the weapon of comparatively large bore with a very heavy charge of powder and a short bullet, often with a hollow end. The first is the type of rifle that has always been used by ninety-nine out of a hundred American hunters, and indeed it is the only kind of rifle that has ever been used to any extent in North America; the second is the favorite weapon of English sportsmen in those grandest of the world's hunting grounds, India and South Africa. When a single-shot rifle is not used, the American usually takes a repeater, the Englishman a double-barrel. Each type has some good qualities that the other lacks, and each has some defects. The personal equation must always be taken into account in dealing with either; excellent sportsmen of equal experience give conflicting accounts of the performances of the two types. Personally, I think that the American type is nearer right. In reading the last book of the great South African hunter, Mr. Selous, I noticed with much interest that in hunting elephants he and many of the Dutch elephant hunters had abandoned the huge four and eight bores championed by that doughty hunter, Sir Samuel Baker, and had adopted precisely the type of rifle which was in almost universal use among the American buffalo hunters from 1870 to 1883--that is, a rifle of .45 caliber, shooting 75 grains of powder and a bullet of 550 grains. The favorite weapon of the American buffalo hunter was a Sharps rifle of .45 caliber, shooting about 550 grains of lead and using ordinarily 90 to 110 grains of powder--which, however, was probably not as strong as the powder used by Mr. Selous; in other words, the types of gun were identically the same. I have elsewhere stated that by actual experience the big double-barreled English eight and ten bores were found inferior to Sharps rifle for bison-hunting on the Western plains. I know nothing about elephant or rhinoceros shooting; but my own experience with bison, bear, moose and elk has long convinced me that for them and for all similar animals (including, I have no doubt, the lion and tiger) the .45-90 type of repeater is, on the whole, the best of the existing sporting rifles for my own use. I have of late years loaded my cartridges not with the ordinary rifle powder, but with 85 grains of Orange lightning, and have used a bullet with 350 grains of lead, and then have bored a small hole, taking out 15 or 20 grains, in the point; but for heavy game I think the solid bullet better. Judging from what I have been told by some of my friends, however, it seems not unlikely that the best sporting rifle will ultimately prove to be the very small caliber repeating rifle now found in various forms in the military service of all countries--a caliber of say .256 or .310, with 40 grains of powder and a 200-grain bullet. These rifles possess marvelous accuracy and a very flat trajectory. The speed of the bullet causes it to mushroom if made of lead, and gives it great penetration if hardened. Certain of my friends have used rifles of this type on bears, caribou and deer; they were said to be far superior to the ordinary sporting rifle. A repeating rifle of this type is really merely a much more perfect form of the repeating rifles that have for so long been favorites with American hunters.

But these are merely my personal opinions; and, as I said before, among the many kinds of excellent sporting rifles turned out by the best modern makers each has its special good points and its special defects; and equally good sportsmen, of equally wide experience, will be found to vary widely in their judgment of the relative worth of the different weapons. Some people can do better with one rifle and some with another, and in the long run it is "the man behind the gun" that counts most.

_Theodore Roosevelt._

Wolf-Coursing

While wolf-coursing is one of the most thrilling and exciting sports to be enjoyed in this country, it is less indulged in than any other sport; this, too, in the face of the fact that no country offers such excellent opportunities for its practice. This is, no doubt, due to the fact that it is a sport requiring special preparation, a thorough knowledge of both the game and country, and is very trying on horse, rider and hound. Russia seems to be the only country in which it has a foothold and a permanent place in the hearts of its sportsmen. In fact, with the Russians it might be called a national pastime. However, did it require in this country the same outlay of money, time and preparation that it does in Russia, I doubt very much its advancement as a sport.

There are really but two species of wolf in this country--the timber wolf, generally called the gray, and the prairie wolf or coyote. In different sections one hears of other varieties; but these, I believe, are merely variations in color and size, and are not specific differences. While the habits of the coyote or prairie wolf are well known to a majority of sportsmen, it is not so with the timber or gray wolf, and a few words in regard to the latter will not be amiss.

My experience is that the wolves of Montana and Wyoming are larger, stronger and fiercer than those further south, though it is a fact that the largest single wolf that I ever saw killed was in Arizona. However, he was an exception to the general run of them there. If we may judge of the Russian or European wolf from specimens to be seen in menageries and zoological gardens, the American wolf, while not so tall or leggy, is more compact, with heavier head, coarser muzzle, smaller ears, and perhaps a little heavier in weight--the American wolf standing from 29 to 36 inches at shoulder, and weighing from 85 to 125 pounds. I am also inclined to think that the American wolf is, when run down to a death-finish, a much more formidable foe for dogs than his European relative. I reached this conclusion only after hunting them with high-priced hounds, that had won medals in Russia for wolf-killing, but which demonstrated their utter inability even to hold American wolves.

Alive, the wolf is the enemy of man and beast, and when dead he is almost useless. His skin has but little commercial value, and even dogs refuse to eat his flesh. I have never known dogs to tear and mutilate a wolf's carcass, and verily believe they would starve to death before eating its flesh. And yet I have read accounts of hunters feeding their dogs upon wolf meat. I recall an effort I made to cultivate in my dogs a taste for wolf meat. I cut up a quantity of bear meat into small strips and tossed them to the dogs, which would gulp them down before they could fall upon the ground. Substituting a piece of wolf meat was of no avail; they detected it instantly, and those which were fooled into swallowing it immediately lost interest in the proceedings and walked away.

The wolf is by nature cowardly, being deficient in courage comparative to his strength and great size, but he often becomes courageous from necessity. When reduced to extremity by hunger, he braves danger, and has been known in numbers to attack man, though no such incident ever came under my personal observation. I have had them dog my footsteps throughout a long day's hunt, always managing to remain just beyond gunshot distance; and upon one occasion, when I had shot a pheasant, one actually carried it off in full view before I could reach it, and, notwithstanding I fired several shots that must have come uncomfortably close, he made off with his dangerously earned meal.

As a general thing, however, the wolf manifests a desire to run, rather than fight, for life, and when alone will frequently tuck his tail between his legs, and run like a stricken cur from a dog that he could easily crush out of existence. They are great believers in the maxim, "In union there is strength." The female, while apparently more timid than the male, seems to lose all sense of danger when hemmed in and forced to a fight, and attacks with intrepidity. I once shot a female at long range, the bullet from my Winchester passing through her hind quarters and breaking both legs. When I got up to her, she was surrounded by the ranch dogs--an odd assortment of "mongrel puppy, whelp and hound, and cur of low degree"--furiously attacking first one, then another of them as they circled around her; and, though she was partially paralyzed, dragging her hind quarters, she successfully stood off the entire pack until another bullet ended the struggle. When in whelp they fight with great obstinacy, and defend themselves with intrepidity, being seemingly insensible to punishment. When captured young they are susceptible of taming and domestication, though they are never free from treachery. Though I have heard it denied, I know it to be a fact that the dog has been successfully crossed upon the wolf. I saw any number of the produce around the old Spotted Tail agency. They closely resembled wolves, and were hardly distinguishable from them in appearance, though generally lacking the good qualities of faithfulness and attachment possessed by the dog.

The amount of damage a wolf can do in a horse or cattle country is almost beyond belief. He slaughters indiscriminately, carrying waste and destruction to any section he honors with his presence. When a pack of these nocturnal marauders come across an unprotected flock of sheep, a sanguinary massacre occurs, and not until they have killed, torn or mangled the entire flock will they return to the mountains. Thus the wolves become a scourge, and their depredations upon herds of sheep and cattle cause no inconsiderable loss to the rancher. They frequently plunder for days and nights together. I am not prepared to state whether it is owing to daintiness of appetite or pure love of killing, but as it is a fact that a single wolf has been known to kill a hundred sheep in a night, it would seem that this indiscriminate slaughter was more to satisfy his malignity than his hunger. It is a prevalent idea that the wolf will eat putrid meat. This I have not found to be true. He seldom if ever devours carcasses after they begin to putrify, choosing to hunt for fresh spoils rather than to return to that which he had half devoured, before leaving it to the tender mercies of the coyotes, who have an appetite less nice.

The coyote is a good scavenger, following in the footsteps of the wolf, and will pick bones until they glisten like ivory. His fondness for domestic fowl and his thieving propensity often embolden him to enter farmyards and even residences during the daytime; yet he often seems contented to dine upon corrupt flesh, bones, hair, old boots and saddles, and many remarkable gastronomic performances are credited to him. I had occasion to "sleep out" one night in the Powder River country, and, after picketing my horse, I threw my saddle upon the ground near the picket pin, and, placing my cartridge belt beneath the saddle--which I used as a pillow--I was soon sound asleep. Imagine my surprise at daybreak--knowing there was not a human being within fifty miles of me--to find that my cartridge belt was missing. After a short search I found the cartridges some few hundred yards away, and a few remnants of the belt. The coyotes had actually stolen this from under my head without disturbing me, devoured it and licked all the grease from the cartridges. I felt thankful that they had not devoured my rawhide riata.

Of all animals that I have hunted, I consider the wolf the hardest to capture or kill. There is only one way in which he can be successfully coped with, and that is with a pack of dogs trained to the purpose and thoroughly understanding their business. Dogs, as a rule, have sufficient combativeness to assail any animal, and, as a general thing, two or three of them can easily kill another animal of same size and weight; but the wolf, with his wonderful vitality and tenacity of life, combined with his thickness of skin, matted hair and resistant muscles, is anything but an easy victim for even six or eight times his number.

I spent the winter of 1874-75 in a portion of the Rocky Mountains uninhabited except by our own party. Wolves were very plentiful, and we determined to secure as many pelts as possible. Owing to the rough nature of the country and our inability to keep up with the dogs on horseback, we tried poisoning, but with only moderate success. While others claim it is an easy matter to poison wolves, we did not find it so. In a country where game is plentiful, it is almost impossible to poison them. We tried trapping them, with like results. Always mistrustful and intensely suspicious, they imagine everything unusual they see is a trap laid to betray or capture them, and with extreme sagacity avoid everything strange and new. When caught, they frequently gnaw off a foot or leg rather than be taken. Our cabin was surrounded by a stockade wall, over which we could throw such portions of deer carcasses as we did not use, and at nightfall the wolves, attracted by the smell of the meat, would assemble on the outside, and we shot them from the portholes. It required a death shot; for, if only wounded, no matter how badly, they would manage to get far enough away from the stockade to be torn into shreds by the survivors before we could drive them off. I have always found the wolf a most difficult animal to shoot. Endowed with wonderful powers of scent and extremely cunning, it is almost impossible to stalk them. Frequently, after a long stalk after one, have I raised my head to find him gone, his nose having warned him of my approach.

The successful chase of the wolf requires a species of knowledge that can be acquired only by experience. It also requires men, horses and dogs trained and disciplined for the purpose; and woe to the man, horse or dog that undertakes it without such preparation. The true sportsman is not a blood-thirsty animal. The actual killing of an animal, its mere death, is not sport. Therefore, upon several occasions, I have declined to join a general wolf round-up, where men form a cordon, and, by beating the country, drive them to a common center and kill them indiscriminately. I have always preferred hunting them with hounds to any other method of extermination. The enjoyment of sport increases in proportion to the amount of danger to man and beast engaged in it, and for this reason coursing wolves has always held a peculiar fascination for me. A number of years spent in the far West afforded me ample opportunity to indulge my tastes in this line of sport, so my knowledge of wolf-hunting and the habits of the wolf has been derived from personal experience and from association with famous hunters.

The principal drawback to the pleasure of wolf-coursing is the danger to a good horse from bad footing, and the possible mutilation and death of a favorite dog--death and destruction of hounds being often attendant upon the capture and death of a full-grown wolf. I do not know that I can give a better idea of the sport than by describing a day's wolf-hunting I enjoyed in the early seventies near Raw Hide Butte, in Wyoming.

We had notified the cook, an odd character who went by the name of Steamboat, to call us by daybreak. As we sat up late talking about the anticipated pleasures of the morrow, it seemed to me that I had hardly closed my eyes when Steamboat's heavy cavalry boots were heard beating a tattoo on the shack door. I rolled out of my bunk, to find Maje and Zach, my companions in the hunt, dressed and pulling on their shaps. Hastily dressing, I followed them out to the corral just as the gray tints of earliest morning were gathering in the sky. The horses had been corralled the night before, and, with Steamboat standing in the door, using anything but choice language at our delay in coming to breakfast, we saddled up. Having ridden my own horse, a sturdy half-breed from Salt Lake, very hard the day before in running down a wounded antelope, I decided on a fresh mount; and, as luck would have it, I selected one of the best lookers in the band, only to find out later, to my sorrow, that I had fallen upon the only bucking horse in the lot. While we breakfasted upon antelope steak, flapjacks and strong coffee, Steamboat was harnessing a couple of wiry cayuses to a buckboard, and, as we came out, we found him with the strike dogs chained to the seat behind him, impatient to be off. The party consisted of Maje, a long-legged, slab-sided, six-foot Kentuckian, mounted on a "States" horse; Zach, an out-and-out typical cowboy, who had come up from Texas on the trail, mounted on a pinto that did not look as though he had been fed since his arrival in the territory, but, as Zach knowingly remarked, "No route was too long or pace too hot for him"; Steamboat in the buckboard, holding with a pair of slips Dan, an English greyhound, and Scotty, a Scotch deerhound; while the other dogs, consisting of a pair of young greyhounds, a pair of cross-bred grey and deerhounds, and Lead, an old-time Southern foxhound, were making the horses miserable by jumping first at their heads, then at their heels, in their eagerness to facilitate the start; and myself on the bucking broncho.

While crossing the creek a few hundred yards above the ranch, I heard old Lead give mouth, a short distance ahead, in a chaparral rendered impenetrable by tangled undergrowth, and which formed secure covert for countless varmints. Knowing that he never threw his tongue without cause, I dug my spurs into my horse, with the intention of joining him. But I reckoned without my host, and for the next few minutes all my energies were devoted to sticking to my horse, who then and there in the creek bed proceeded to give an illustration of bucking that would have put the wild West buckers to shame. Lead had jumped a coyote that put off with all the speed that deadly terror could impart--all the dogs after him full tilt. It required quite a display of energy upon the part of Zach and his pinto to whip the dogs off; and, had it not been for the fact that Dan and Scotty--who had jerked Steamboat literally out of the buckboard and raced off together with the slips dangling about their heels--ran into a bush, and the slips catching held them fast, we would have been called upon to participate in a coyote and not a wolf-hunt--as, when once slipped, no human power could have stopped these dogs until they had tested the metal of Brer Coyote. By the time Zach and the dogs returned, I had convinced my broncho that I was not a tenderfoot, having "been there before," and he was contented to keep at least two feet upon the ground at the same time.

We rode probably five or six miles, carefully scanning the trackless plains, without sighting a wolf, when Maje, who had ridden off a mile to our right, was seen upon a butte wildly waving his hat. We instinctively knew that game was afoot, and, as he disappeared, we commenced a wild stampede for the butte. Steamboat, with slips and reins in one hand and blacksnake whip in the other, came thundering after us, lashing his team into a wild, mad run--and how he managed to hold himself and dogs on the bounding buckboard was a mystery to me. Reaching the butte, we espied Maje a mile away, riding for dear life. It did not take long to decide, from the general direction taken, that the wolf would shortly return to us. Keeping well back out of sight, we impatiently awaited his return, and, had it not been for the pure malignity of my broncho, the wolf would have doubled back within a few hundred yards of us, and a close race have resulted.

I had taken the dogs from Steamboat, and, with the release cord of the slips around my wrist, sat in the saddle ready to sight and slip the dogs. Becoming impatient under the restraint, the dogs ran behind my horse, and, as the strap of the slips got under his tail, he again commenced bucking, and before I could control him we were in full view of the wolf, which, upon sighting us, veered off to the left. Although not over a half mile away, the dogs failed to sight him. With a cheer to the loose dogs, we pushed forward at top speed, the cracking of the quirts upon our horses' flanks being echoed in the rear by the incessant popping of Steamboat's whip as he lashed the panting cayuses to the top of their speed in a vain effort to keep up with us.