32 Sport and Life. 



vocation as skin hunters, can safely be considered gross 

 exaggeration ; one-tenth in such cases is nearer the truth. 



Let me mention an incident that bears upon what I say, and 

 which happened to me in the early 'eighties not far from the 

 Yellowstone Park. One of four skin hunters, who had spent the 

 preceding winter in a remote mountain basin with which I was 

 acquainted, told me that he and his partners had got 2500 wapiti 

 skins. Convinced that this was not true, the following cross- 

 examination ensued. I must premise that the spot to which they 

 alluded was 130 miles from a railway station, and could only be 

 reached by crossing two rather difficult passes ; also that the dried 

 skin (green) of a wapiti stag weighs from thirty to fifty pounds. 

 To take the average at fifteen pounds is therefore certainly below 

 rather than above the real weight. 



" How many horses did you have ? " I asked. 



" Eleven pack animals and four saddle horses, but we used the 

 latter, too, for packing," came the answer. " Well, how many trips 

 did you make to get the 2500 skins to the railway?" 



" Oh, we just loaded down the cayuses, and did it in two trips." 

 Taking a charred stick from the camp fire around which we 

 were sit'.ing, I made on the canvas of the tent behind me the 

 following calculation, "11+4=15 horses multiplied by two (trips) 

 = 30 horseloads." Taking a heavy load for crossing the passes 

 to be 12 skins = iSolb., the number of skins that could have been 

 transported in the two trips would have been at most between 

 300 and 400 ! 



This is one instance of many that I have sifted down to similar 

 proportions. At other times, when the difficulties of transportation 

 were considerably less, it' was easy to trip up the breezy lie by 

 a calculation anent the ammunition that was used for the feat of 

 killing 2500 wapiti. To bring down that number it would take at 

 the very least from 5000 to 6000 cartridges, which would weigh 

 300 or 4-00 pounds, or several pony-loads, and cost very much 

 more than men of that stamp could afford to spend after purchasing 

 their winter stores and outfit. In some cases, it is true, and these 



