64 Sport and Life. 



shovels of unusual size, can be seen in the picture of the corridor 

 where I have a number of my trophies hanging. Both heads I 

 picked up years ago, not very far from the spot where I got my 

 biggest heads, viz., on the western slopes of the Big Windriver 

 Mountains, of which favourite region I am glad to be able to 

 reproduce a good photograph. In this locality I saw more and finer 

 wapiti than I have anywhere else. 



Not all that one reads about largest wapiti heads on 

 record can be believed. Thus last year the Field contained 

 a detailed notice, copied, I believe, from an American paper, 

 of such a gigantic Colorado trophy, "the largest pair of 

 elk-horns in the world," which the Emperor of Germany 

 was about to receive as a present. Measuring " I2ft. from 

 tip of beam to tip of beam across the skull," it gave other 

 astonishing dimensions. Being interested in the matter 1 wrote, 

 some five months afterwards, to the person named as the donor, 

 and also to the Emperor of Germany's chief private secretary, with 

 the view of finding out what truth there was in the notice. The 

 former left my letter unanswered, the latter replied that nothing 

 was known to the Emperor of such antlers. 



Sometimes, strange to say, men who consider themselves 

 good judges are taken in by made-up antlers. A case in point 

 occurred, as it is perhaps hardly necessary to remind the reader, 

 some thirty-six years ago, when the late Mr. Frank Buckland 

 was deceived by a " record " red deer head from Transylvania, 

 which Lord Powerscourt had a short time previously bought 

 through a friend in Vienna, without having himself seen the 

 head. These antlers continued to figure in the " Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica " and in Rowland Ward's " Horn Measurements " as 

 the largest red deer antlers in the world. Their recorded weight 

 of 74-lb. was so manifestly impossible that I was led to examine 

 into the matter, with the result that soon afterwards I was enabled 

 to publish a letter from the owner in which he freely acknowledged 

 the spuriousness of his trophy (Field, Jan. 26, 1895). 



I little thought at the time that I should have to lift the curtain 



