Starting from his camp in the early dawn, he mounts the hill-side, carefully examining each likely spot of brush as he passes it, taking special note of each sheltered patch of fern. Very carefully he climbs the logs, avoiding every dead branch that may crackle under his weight, and parting the brush before he pushes through. When he reaches the crest, he follows it along, scrutinizing every cañon closely, for his prey lies very wisely hidden. At last, he sees a gentle movement in the brush, and the deer rises from his lair, stretches his neck, arches his back, and snuffs round at each point of the compass to try if there be danger in the air. The hunter sees his chance, judges his distance as cleverly as he can, remembering that in this clear mountain air he is almost sure to underestimate the range; the shot rings out, and the deer springs high into the air, to fall crashing down the steep cañon-side. The common deer of Western Oregon is the black-tailed _Cervus Columbianus_. In the early spring many of them leave the mountains and traverse the valley-land to the closely timbered sloughs and brush bordering the Willamette River. But, as the valley has been more closely cultivated and the farms spread in a nearly unbroken line, the deer have but a poor chance. Some settler is almost sure to get a glimpse of the visitor as he tops the snake-fence into the oat-field for his morning feed, and the rifle, or worse, the long muzzle-loading shot-gun which carries five buckshot at a charge, hangs by or over the wide fireplace. If not killed outright, the poor beast carries with him a lingering and dangerous wound. But, away in the hills, I do not hear that the number is appreciably diminished; many of the hunters get a deer almost every time they go out. So wasteful are they that they carry off only the hind quarters, which they call the hams, and the hide, leaving the fore quarters and head to taint the air. The white-tailed deer (_Cervus leucurus_) is now very rare. He frequents the more open spots; he chooses the bare slopes at the top of Mary's Peak and the Bald Mountain; he is not so shy as his black-tailed brother, and so falls an easier victim to the rifle. He abounds in the Cascade Range on the eastern side of the Willamette Valley, where he is found in the same haunts as the larger mule-deer. The noblest deer we have in Oregon is the wapiti (_Cervus Canadensis_), invariably known in this country as elk. A day or two ago I saw a pair of fresh horns standing in front of one of the stores in the town, which were quite four feet six inches long, spread three feet six inches at the tips, and weighed forty pounds by scale. [Sidenote: _ELK._]