Big-Game Shooting in Patagonia and Newfoundland ¹

Abstract

“IN Patagonia no one uses the word ‘mile,’ the distances are so great that all reckoning is counted in leagues,” writes Mr. Prichard in his remarkably interesting studies of these desolate, extra-tropical pampas of South America. He contrasts this measurement with what prevails in vast Canada, where the land is so good and so usable that the distances are computed by the acre. “In sterile Patagonia, no farmer can make a living on less than fifteen square miles.” In this region he pursued the wild guanaco, belonging, as he does still, to the old school, which thinks it better sport to kill than to photograph. He also shot the guemal, or Patagonian deer—Cariacus or Mazama bisulca. (The reviewer wishes that some zoologist of commanding physique and authority would settle, as with a hammer or an axe, what is to be the universally accepted generic name or names of this group of American deer.) We are probably still without adequate and correct information regarding the species and varieties of South American deer, and even the size to which some of them attain and the fullest developed type of antler. Mr. Prichard estimates that the Chilian (Patagonian) guemal stands from 36 to 38 inches at the shoulder and weighs about 160 lbs. He states that the specimens of horns in the British Museum are poor. The antlers given in the painted illustrations seem slightly more developed than those in the photographs of the specimens obtained by Mr. Prichard himself, though these are of distinct interest, and perhaps, as he says, much better than anything in the national collection.