CHAPTER III. 



THE WAPITI AND HIS ANTLERS. 



AMERICAN millionaires have for years past, it is well known, 

 ransacked the picture galleries of Europe, where they garnered 

 many of the masterpieces that once adorned the walls of England's 

 mansions or the marble-flagged galleries of Continental palaces. 

 Europe has revenged itself by sending to the Western hunting 

 grounds her sportsmen, who have succeeded in capturing there quite 

 as many, and probably quite as irreplaceable, chefs d'awvre, 

 not of man's, but of Nature's choicest handiwork. In both cases 

 the demand exceeds the supply, with the result that second-class 

 masterpieces are pressed into the first rank, and the sportsman of 

 to-day has to be satisfied with trophies which would have been 

 regarded as second-rate ones ten years before. 



Before proceeding further, let me clear the ground on one 

 important point. Trophies of the chase can be regarded from two 

 different points of view i.e., from that of the naturalist, as more or 

 less valuable contributions to our knowledge of natural history ; and, 

 secondly, from a purely sporting point of view. To the scientific- 

 investigator desirous of establishing the length, the widest spread, 

 or the greatest circumference of the " largest on record" of some 

 particular species, it is naturally a matter of indifference who killed 

 the bearer of the trophy deserving that distinction. To the sports- 

 man, on the other hand, who disdains to adorn his walls with spoils 

 that he has not obtained himself, it is a matter of interest what 

 other fellow sportsmen have shot, while the fact that some skin 

 hunter of Wyoming or Montana has bagged a wapiti with antlers, 



