They
have been sometimes spoken of as forming a separate species; but,
judging from my own limited experience, and from a comparison of the
many hides I have seen, I think they are really the same animal,
many individuals of the two so-called varieties being quite
indistinguishable. In fact, the only moderate-sized herd of wild bison
in existence to-day, the protected herd in the Yellowstone Park, is
composed of animals intermediate in habits and coat between the mountain
and plains varieties--as were all the herds of the Bighorn, Big Hole,
Upper Madison, and Upper Yellowstone valleys.
However, the habitat of these wood and mountain bison yielded them
shelter from hunters in a way that the plains never could, and hence
they have always been harder to kill in the one place than in the other;
for precisely the same reasons that have held good with the elk, which
have been completely exterminated from the plains, while still abundant
in many of the forest fastnesses of the Rockies. Moreover, the bison's
dull eyesight is no special harm in the woods, while it is peculiarly
hurtful to the safety of any beast on the plains, where eyesight
avails more than any other sense, the true game of the plains being the
prong-buck, the most keen-sighted of American animals.
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