Theodore Roosevelt

“ If he wishes to try to ride a horse, he will have every chance, if for no other reason than that he will continually meet men whose ideas of fun are met by the spectacle of a tenderfoot on a bucking bronco.
By degrees he will learn a good deal of the ways of the life and of the country. Then he must snatch the first chance that offers itself to take a position in connection with the regular work of a ranch. He may be employed as a regular hand to help cook on the ranch wagon, or taken by a shepherd to do the hard and dirty work which the shepherd would like to put off on somebody else. ”

“ If possible, as with all such packs, the hunter himself would get up in time to end the worry by a stab of his hunting-knife; but unless he was quick he would have nothing to do, for the pack was thoroughly competent to do its own killing. Grim fighter though a great wolf-dog is, he stands no show before the onslaught, who rush on their antagonist in a body. ”

“ The wilder phases of the life, however, are steadily passing away. Almost everywhere great wire fences are being put up, and no small part of the cow-boy’s duty nowadays is to ride along the line of a fence and repair it wherever broken. Moreover, at present [1896] the business of cattle or horse raising on the plains does not pay well, and, except in peculiar cases, can hardly be recommended to a boy ambitious for his future.
So much for the unattractive reality of ranch life. ”

“ Sometimes, however, a bear will take to killing fresh meat for itself. Indeed, I think it is only its clumsiness that prevents it from becoming an habitual flesh-eater. Deer are so agile that bears can rarely get them; yet on occasions not only deer, but moose, buffalo, and elk fall victims to them. Wild game, 32however, are so shy, so agile, and so alert that it is only rarely they afford meals to old Ephraim—as the mountain hunters call the grizzly. ”

“ In time of storm he must work like a demon and know exactly what to do, or his whole flock will die before his eyes, sheep being as tender as horses and cattle are tough.
With the work of a cow ranch or horse ranch there comes more excitement. Every man on such a ranch has a string of eight or ten horses for his own riding, and there is a great deal of exciting galloping and hot riding across the plains; and the work in a stampede at night, or in line-riding during the winter, or in breaking the fierce little horses to the 104saddle, is as exciting as it is hard and dangerous. ”

“ For a year or two perhaps he can try to run a little outfit of his own in connection with his work on a big ranch. Then he will abandon the latter and start out entirely 106on his own account. Disaster may overtake him, as it may overtake any business man; but if he wins success, even though of a moderate kind, he has a pleasant life before him, riding about over the prairie among his own horses or cattle or sheep, occasionally taking a day off to go after game, and, while working hard, not having to face the mere drudgery which he had to encounter as a tyro. ”

“ If the boy is fond of open-air exercise, and willing to risk tumbles that may break an occasional bone, and to endure at need heat and cold, hunger and thirst, he will find much that is pleasant in the early mornings on the great plains, 105particularly on the rare days when he is able to take a few hours’ holiday to go with his shot-gun after prairie-chickens or ducks, or, perchance, to ride out with a Winchester rifle to a locality where on one of his working days he has seen a small band of antelope standing in the open, or caught a glimpse of a deer bounding through the brush. ”

“ In particular, the elk, or wapiti, is the stateliest of all deer, and the most beautiful of American game beasts.
It is a pity we cannot always call the wapiti by its right name, but the hunters and settlers never know him as anything but the elk, and I fear it would be pedantry to try to establish his rightful title. In former days the elk ranged to tide-water on the Atlantic coast. A few lingered in Pennsylvania until 1869, and throughout the middle of the century they were abundant on the great plains. In 1888 I shot one on the Little Missouri, however. ”

“ The most successful wolf-hunter on the Little Missouri in 1896 was a man who did not rely on poison at all, but on dogs. He was a hunter named Massingale, and he always had a pack of at least twenty hounds. The number varied, for a wolf at bay is a terrible fighter, with jaws like those of a steel trap and teeth that cut like knives, so that the dogs were continually disabled and sometimes killed, and the hunter had always to be on the watch to add animals to his pack. ”

“ Ranching is a rather indefinite term. In a good many parts of the West a ranch simply means a farm; but I shall not use it in this sense, since the advantages and disadvantages of a farmer’s life, whether it be led in New Jersey or Iowa, have often been dwelt upon by men infinitely more competent than I am to pass judgment. ”

“ One is the little coyote or prairie-wolf, or barking-wolf, which never was found in the Eastern States, being an animal of the open country; the other is the big wolf, and sometimes the timber-wolf or gray wolf, which was formerly found everywhere from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In some districts it runs to color varieties of different kinds—red, black, or white.
54 The coyote is not at all a formidable beast, and holds its own quite persistently until civilization is well advanced in a country. Coyotes are not dangerous to either man or the larger domestic animals. ”

“ The white-tail is the same as the deer of the East; it is a beautiful creature, a marvel of lightness and grace in all its movements, and it loves to dwell in thick timber, so that in the plains country it is almost confined to the heavily wooded river bottoms. ”

“ If a goat is on its guard, and can get its back to a rock, both wolf and panther will fight shy of facing the thrust of the dagger-like horns; but the beasts of prey are so much more agile and stealthy that if they can get a goat in the open or take it by surprise, they can readily pull it down.
I have several times shot white goats for the sake of the trophies afforded by 85the horns and skins, but I have never gone after them much, as the work is very severe, and the flesh usually affords poor eating, being musky, as there is a big musk-pod situated between the ear and the horn. ”

“ When white men take up a new country, the game, and 56especially the big game, being entirely unused to contend with the new foe, succumbs easily, and it is almost completely killed out. If any individuals survive at all, however, the succeeding generations are far more difficult to exterminate than were their ancestors, and they cling much more tenaciously to their old homes.
The game to be found in old and long-settled countries is much more wary and able to take care of itself than the game of an untrodden wilderness. It is a very difficult matter to kill a Swiss chamois ”

“ Indeed, a bear in a berry-patch frequently grows so absorbed in his work as to lose his wariness, and as he makes a good deal of noise himself in breaking branches and gobbling down the fruit, he is exposed to much danger from the hunter. ”

“ Lambs, young pigs, hens, and cats often become their prey, and if very hungry several of them will combine to attack a young calf. In consequence, farmers and ranchers kill them whenever the chance offers; but they do not do damage which is even appreciable when compared with the ravages of their grim big brother, the gray wolf, which in many sections of the West is a veritable scourge of the stockmen. ”

“ With all this before him, the beginner will speedily find out that life on a Western ranch is very far from being a mere holiday. A young man who desires to start in the life ought, if possible, to have with him a little money—just enough to keep body and soul together—until he can gain a foothold somewhere. ”

“ The black bear is much more easily killed, yet the black bear holds its own in many parts of the land from which the wolf has vanished. No animal is quite so difficult to kill as is the wolf, whether by poison or rifle or hound. ”

“ A good deal of skill must be shown by the shepherd in managing his flock and in handling the sheep dogs; but ordinarily it is appallingly dreary to sit all day long in the sun, or loll about in the saddle, watching the flocks of fleecy idiots. ”

“ There are in every community young men to whom life at the desk or behind the counter is unutterably dreary and unattractive, and who long for some out-of-door occupation which shall, if possible, contain a spice of excitement. ”

“ He will not have much society of any kind, and the society he does have is not apt to be over-refined. If he is a lad of a delicate, shrinking nature and fastidious habits, he will find much that is uncomfortable, and will need to show no small amount of pluck and fortitude if he is to 100hold his own. The work, too, is often hard and often wearisome from mere sameness. It is generally done on horseback even on a sheep ranch, and always on a cow ranch. The beginner must learn to ride with indifference all kinds of rough and dangerous horses before he will be worth his keep. ”

“ The chances are very small that he will ever gain great wealth; and when he marries and has children of his own there are many uncomfortable problems to face, the chief being that of schools; but for a young man in good health and of adventurous temper the life is certainly pleasanter than that of one cooped up in the counting-room, and while it is not one to be sought save by the very few who have natural liking for it, and a natural 107capacity to enjoy it and profit by it, still for these few people it remains one of the most attractive forms of existence in America. ”

“ One was told to me by an old fellow who had a cabin on one of the tributaries that ran into Flathead Lake. He had been off prospecting for gold in the mountains early one spring. The life of a prospector is very hard. He goes alone, and in these northern mountains he cannot take with him the donkey which 86towards the south is his almost invariable companion and beast of burden; the tangled forests of the northern ranges make it necessary for him to trust only to his own power as a pack-bearer, and he carries merely what he takes on his own shoulders. ”

“ Every now and then bears take to killing cattle regularly. Sometimes the criminal is a female with cubs; sometimes an old male in spring, when he is lean, and has the flesh hunger upon him. But on one occasion a very large and cunning bear, some twenty-five miles below my ranch, took to cattle-killing early in the summer, and continued it through the fall. He made his home in a very densely wooded bottom ”

“ Domestic animals are slower, more timid, more clumsy, and with far duller sense. It is on these that the bear by preference preys when he needs fresh meat. I have never, myself, known one to kill horses; but I have been informed that the feat is sometimes performed, usually in spring; and the ranchman who told me insisted that when a bear made his rush he went with such astonishing speed that the horse was usually overtaken before it got well under way.
THE GRIZZLY AND A VICTIM
33 The favorite food of a bear, however, if he really wants fresh meat, is a hog or sheep—by preference the former. ”

“ Antelope are the only game that can be hunted as well at noonday as in the morning or evening, for their times for sleeping and feeding are irregular. They never seek shelter from the sun, and when they lie down for a noonday nap they are apt to choose a hollow, so as to be out of the wind ”

“ But with all wild animals it is a noticeable fact that a course of conduct with man continuing over many generations of animal life causes a species so to adapt itself to its new surroundings that it ceases to diminish in numbers. ”

“ The elk is the lordliest of his kind throughout the world. The Scotch stag is a pygmy but a fourth his size. The stags of eastern Europe are larger than those of Scotland, and in Asia larger still, approaching in size a small wapiti. They are all substantially alike except in size.
The wapiti is rather easier to kill than the deer, because his size makes it easier to see him; and he is slower in his movements, so that he is easier to hit. When pressed he can gallop very hard for a few hundred yards, but soon becomes tired. ”

“ They are self-confident, rather stupid beasts, and as they are accustomed to look for danger only from below, it is an easy matter to approach them if once the hunter is able to get above them; but they live in such inaccessible places that their pursuit entails great labor and hardship. ”

“ Occasionally an old one will succumb, but there are always some who cannot be persuaded to touch a bait. The old she-wolves teach their cubs, as soon as they are able to walk, to avoid man’s trace in every way, and to look out for traps and poison.
In consequence, though most cow-punchers 60carry poison with them, and are continually laying out baits, and though some men devote most of their time to poisoning for the sake of the bounty and the fur, the results are not very remunerative. ”