OCR Text |
Show 562 LORD WALSINGHAM ON NORTH-AMERICAN DEER. [June 1 7, bianus, and am led to think that they are somewhat less hardy than the other species, and that they retire for the winter down the western slope of the range towards the warmer region of the Willamette valley; while the others, for the most part, go east towards Crooked River. Indeed the evidence of this, consisting of the tracks of large numbers of Deer which had just gone down on both sides of the summit, was tolerably conclusive. On Diamond Peak I first saw a track of Cervus canadensis (the Elk or Wapiti). Both in Oregon and California, as far as I have observed, as well as from information derived from hunters, it appears that all Deer are accustomed to different winter- and summer-quarters, their migrations varying in different localities according to the severity of the season. In many places they are known to travel sixty or eighty miles in making these changes ; and very few specimens are to be found during the summer in the districts which afterwards become their winter-quarters ; and scarcely any remain during the winter in the higher elevations to which they betake themselves for the summer months. After reaching the junction of the Deschuttes with Crooked River, I followed as nearly as possible the course of the latter to its main source, in the neighbourhood of a range which forms, as it were, a spur or offshoot of the Blue Mountains, and overlooks on the one side the alkaline plains, probably represented on some maps as Spring Valley, and on the opposite side, in the direction of Harney Lake, the site of a deserted military post, formerly called Camp Curry, and the head of Silver Creek ; but all the maps to which I have had access are very incorrect as regards this unsurveyed country. Along the course of Crooked River, C. leucurus in the valleys, and C. macrotis on the hills, with Antilocapra americana on the more open plains, were the species met with. C. macrotis was very abundant on the ridge last mentioned, where, for the first time, I noticed that it left the timber, and was to be found in rocky corries on the more open hills, where the only tree was a species of Cupressus. On the road between Fort Harney (north of Harney Lake) and Canon City, on the spurs of the Blue Mountains, at the beginning of November, C. leucurus and C. macrotis were both abundant, travelling west in search of winter-quarters ; the former much smaller than those before met with. At Camp Watson, in the valley of the middle fork of John Day's River (a deserted military post where I passed the winter), large numbers of C. macrotis were seen during November passing along the timbered mountains in a N.W. direction ; but later in the winter not one was to be found; and, probably owing to the unusual quantity of snow, C. leucurus (again the small variety), which was very abundant early in the winter on the heads of the creeks which run into John Day's River, appeared also to be driven down lower. Between Camp Watson and Canon City, on the high open ridges which stand out from the timbered range, Ovis montana frequented |