Musk-ox, bison, sheep, and goat . trails, deeply worn,and showing the passage of great numbers of ani-mals, may have given rise to the popular belief inthis north and south migration. At the same time, it is true that the buffaloherds were more or less constantly in they were very numerous, it was obviouslyessential that they should move constantly, toreach fresh grazing grounds. Often, too, theywere disturbed by hunters, red or white, whostampeded the herds, which then rushed off in aclose mass, perhaps not to stop for ten or a dozenmiles. Besides that, frequently, the prairie wasbu
Musk-ox, bison, sheep, and goat . trails, deeply worn,and showing the passage of great numbers of ani-mals, may have given rise to the popular belief inthis north and south migration. At the same time, it is true that the buffaloherds were more or less constantly in they were very numerous, it was obviouslyessential that they should move constantly, toreach fresh grazing grounds. Often, too, theywere disturbed by hunters, red or white, whostampeded the herds, which then rushed off in aclose mass, perhaps not to stop for ten or a dozenmiles. Besides that, frequently, the prairie wasburned, so that they were deprived of food, andlong journeys must be made to reach fresh graz-ing grounds. Not very much is known, and very much lesshas been written concerning the tendency in ani-mals, wild and domestic, to confine themselves toparticular localities; yet all people who live muchout of doors understand, even though they maynot reason much about it, how very local in habitmany birds and animals are. The ranchman, of. PROTECTED The Bison 141 course, knows that the horses and cattle whichfeed on his range divide themselves up into littlebunches, each of which selects some special areawhere they spend all their time, rarely moving farfrom it, except to make journeys to water; or, atsome change of the seasons, to migrate from sum-mer to winter range or back again. In domesticstock this attachment to locality is stronglymarked, and it is a common thing for animalsthat have been driven to a range hundreds ofmiles distant from that on which they have beenaccustomed to feed, to travel back toward theirold haunts as soon as they are turned loose. Ihave known cases where one-third of a largebunch of horses, driven to a new range four orfive hundred miles away, were a year later gath-ered again on their old home range. It is a mat-ter of common experience for horses that escapefrom owners, travelling at a distance from thehome range, to take the back trail and returnto it. A
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjecthunting, bookyear1904
