38 Sport and Life. 



Columbia, and this at a time when they were not yet over-run by 

 miners. I have also visited the east and west coast and some 

 of the practically unexplored interior of Vancouver Island. During 

 these ten or eleven years peregrinations in British Columbia I have 

 never seen, much less killed, a single wapiti ; and, what is more, I 

 know of only two visitors who succeeded in shooting any at all.* 

 I have never heard of a visitor ever killing a moose in British 

 Columbia, and in the ten years I have only seen one small bull. 

 In the extreme north of the province a fair number are said to exist, 

 and this by such an entirely reliable sportsman as Mr. Warburton 

 Pike, who, in his excellent "Through Sub- Arctic Forests," gives a 

 most interesting account of the sport obtainable in those far-off 

 regions. To exploit these great solitudes for sporting purposes, 

 entails wintering, at least once, if not twice, in a very inhospitable 

 country, where starvation is an uncomfortable possibility. And let 

 it be said here that none but the extremely hardy and thoroughly 

 experienced in woodcraft should ever venture to follow that sports- 

 man's example, for he is one in ten thousand when it comes to 

 roughing it. Hardships of which the stay-at-home sportsman can 

 form no conception are as nothing to this born explorer. 



Black-tail deer are still plentiful on the islands off Vancouver 

 Island and on that island, facts to which I have alluded. They are 

 principally hunted in winter, and the sport they give is but poor. 

 In some parts of the mainland the finer mule deer (C. macro tis] 

 takes its place with advantage to the pot and to the gunner, for on 

 account of the less dense timber frequented by this deer, there 

 is more chance of getting a shot at it. 



In contrast to the opinion of those upholding the splendid 

 sporting facilities obtainable in British Columbia, unprejudiced 

 observers have from early days onward declaimed upon the 



* I remember only one instance of wapiti (four inferior ones) being killed by 

 two non-professional hunters residing in British Columbia (Messrs. Hayes 

 and Walker), and Sir Matthew Begbie, Chief Justice of British Columbia, 

 a keen sportsman, himself told me at the time that no such thing had been 

 done in the last twenty years. 



