274 Still-Hunting Elk. 



tainous and densely wooded places east of the Mississippi -, 

 in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennes- 

 see, and all of what were then the Northwestern States 

 and Territories. The last individual of the race was 

 killed in the Adirondacks in 1834 ; in Pennsylvania not 

 till nearly thirty years later ; while a very few are still to 

 be found in Northern Michigan. Elsewhere they must 

 now be sought far to the west of the Mississippi ; and 

 even there they are almost gone from the great plains, 

 and are only numerous in the deep mountain forests. 

 Wherever it exists the skin hunters and meat butchers 

 wage the most relentless and unceasing war upon it for 

 the sake of its hide and flesh, and their unremitting perse- 

 cution is thinning out the herds with terrible rapidity. 



The gradual extermination of this, the most stately 

 and beautiful animal of the chase to be found in America, 

 can be looked upon only with unmixed regret by every 

 sportsman and lover of nature. Excepting the moose, it 

 is the largest and, without exception, it is the noblest of 

 the deer tribe. No other species of true deer, in either 

 the Old or the New World, comes up to it in size and in 

 the shape, length, and weight of its mighty antlers ; while 

 the grand, proud carriage and lordly bearing of an old 

 bull make it perhaps the most majestic-looking of all the 

 animal creation. The open plains have already lost one 

 of their great attractions, now that we no more see the 

 long lines of elk trotting across them ; and it will be a 

 sad day when the lordly, antlered beasts are no longer 

 found in the wild rocky glens and among the lonely 

 woods of towering pines that cover the great western 

 mountain chains. 



