The Wapiti and his Antlers. 51 



among the former trophies. Not the least so is the deformed head 

 exhibited by Mr. Otho Shaw at the Trophy Show (see illustration), 

 which those who saw it there, will probably remember. The blow 

 which had fractured the skull, a year or more previous to his death, 

 had failed to kill him, and, as Mr. E. N. Buxton very correctly 

 says, " Nature asserted herself in an attempt to throw a bridge 

 over the cavity. "* 



Curious as this malformed head is, one of my own shooting has 

 also features of interest. It is one of the only two i8-point wapitis 

 I have ever shot, and though of very moderate dimensions so far as 

 beam and length are concerned, it was no doubt a very old stag. 

 The abnormal character of the head lies more in the whole type than 

 in any one particular. The whole growth (see illustration) has about 

 it features reminding one rather of the woodland caribou. It was 

 shot, however, so far from the nearest caribou country (I killed it in 

 1879 in Central Wyoming), and a crossing of wapiti with either of 

 the two Rangifer species is so extremely unlikely and unknown, that 

 one cannot regard the resemblance as more than a chance one. 

 Singularly enough, the coat of this stag was of an unusual grey, 

 and the hair seemed to be more brittle and coarse than ordinarily. 

 With these details I became acquainted in a sufficiently unpleasant 

 manner, for this stag very nearly proved to be the last one I was 

 to grass. It was about the middle of the rutting season, and the 

 country I was in (the Fort Casper Hills) was simply alive with 

 wapiti, whose weird whistling and clash of antlers in angry combat 

 seemed to be going on all day and all night. The country being 

 very broken, it was difficult to spot big heads, and still more 

 difficult to follow one's selection across the timbered ravines and 

 gullies that criss-crossed the country in every direction. However, 



* An even more curious instance was brought to my notice by Sir Douglas 

 Brooke, when showing me his father's most interesting collection. A fallow 

 buck, in a fight with another buck, had lost one antler as well as a piece of the 

 skull, which came off with the horn. The wound, very serious as it was, 

 nevertheless healed, and the following year the buck not only shed his antlers, 

 but the newly-formed bone came off too. 



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