The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

Several authors have remarked upon the habits of the elephant, llama and guanaco in returning to the same spot; and this reminds me of a coincidence in my experience that few persons will believe when I relate it. In the wild and weird bad-lands of Hell Creek, Montana, I once went out deer hunting in company with the original old hermit wolf-hunter of that region, named Max Sieber. With deep feeling Max told me of a remarkable miss that he had made the previous year in firing at a fine mule deer buck from the top of a small butte; for which I gave him my sympathy. In the course of our morning's tramp through the very bad-lands that were once the ancestral home of the giant carnivorous dinosaur, yclept Tyrannosaurus rex, we won our way to the foot of a long naked butte. Then Sieber said, very kindly: "If you will climb with me up to the top of this butte I will show you where I missed that big buck." It was not an alluring proposition, and I thought things that I did not speak. However, being an Easy Mark, I said cheerfully, "All right, Max. Go ahead and show me." We toiled up to a much-too-distant point on the rounded summit, and as Max slowed up and peered down the farther side, he pointed and began to speak. "He was standing right down there on that little patch of bare-- why!" he exclaimed. "There's a dee-er there now! But it's a doe! Get down! Get down!" and he crouched. Then I woke up and became interested.