Perhaps one of the boys in his meanderings up or down the creek would bag a deer. If he wandered out upon the plain he was sure of an antelope, if he was a good shot. The deer kept to the trees along the rivers and the hills, while the antelopes' territory was the open plain, hard to get at unless the plain were rolling, and the hunter could be in the right place as regards the wind. Sometimes there were poker games, usually freeze-out, which the men played with plug tobacco cut up into small cubes. Others would spend their time braiding whips or mending clothing. The bullwhacker's whip not only made a tenderfoot open his eyes with wonder, but it usually shocked him. It was something he had never seen before, and if he had been told that a man of ordinary strength would be able to wield it he would have been decidedly incredulous. Differing from a cowboy's or herder's whip, the bullwhip lash was attached to a stalk of hickory or white ash three feet long upon which the whacker could firmly plant both hands. The lash at the butt, which was attached to the stick by a soft strip of buckskin, formed in a loop or swivel, frequently was more than an inch thick. These lashes were from eighteen to more than twenty feet long and were graduated in thickness from this great bulk to the tip, which was the thickness of a lead pencil. The number of strands in a bullwhip were also graduated. At the butt there were as many strands as the maker--usually the bullwhacker--could weave, often fourteen. At the tip, this number was reduced to six. The top, and down to six or eight feet from the end, the whip was made of leather, often old boot tops. The rest was of tough buckskin or elkskin. But on the very tip of the whip--the business end--was a "popper" of buckskin cut in the shape of a long V, the bottom end of the V running into a strand which was braided into the tip. The bullwhacker, when using this instrument, first threw it out before him upon the ground; then by the use of all his strength he swung it in over his head, to the right, often whirling it several times before he let it go upon the back of the bull he wanted to reach. To the man who never saw this operation before, there was a shock, for as the whip landed on the bull the popper made a roar like the report of a cannon. As a matter of fact the bull was uninjured, unless the bullwhacker was careless and allowed his popper to strike a tender spot, the nose, an eye or the belly. It was almost a crime for a bullwhacker to cut a bull and draw the blood, and he seldom did it unless his popper had been wet and then dried. The spot usually aimed for was the hip, and bulls that had been in service any length of time had a spot on the rump that was hairless, resembling the head of a drum. But the spot was tough. The noise of the popper, however, was what startled the team and caused it to "dig in."