Still-Hunting Elk. 275 



The elk has other foes besides man. The grizzly will 

 always make a meal of one if he gets a chance ; and 

 against his ponderous weight and savage prowess hoofs 

 and antlers avail but little. Still he is too clumsy and 

 easily avoided ever to do very much damage in the 

 herds. Cougars, where they exist, work more havoc. A 

 bull elk in rutting season, if on his guard, would with ease 

 beat off a cougar ; but the sly, cunning cat takes its 

 quarry unawares, and once the cruel fangs are fastened in 

 the game's throat or neck, no plunging or struggling can 

 shake it off. The gray timber wolves also join in twos 

 and threes to hunt down and hamstring the elk, if other 

 game is scarce. But these great deer can hold their own 

 and make head against all their brute foes ; it is only 

 when pitted against Man the Destroyer, that they suc- 

 cumb in the struggle for life. 



I have never shot any elk in the immediate neighbor- 

 hood of where my cattle range ; but I have had very 

 good sport with them in a still wilder and more western 

 region ; and this I will now describe. 



During last summer we found it necessary to leave my 

 ranch on the Little Missouri and take quite a long trip 

 through the cattle country of Southeastern Montana and 

 Northern Wyoming ; and, having come to the foot of the 

 Bighorn Mountains, we took a fortnight's hunt through 

 them after elk and bear. 



We went into the mountains with a pack train, leaving 

 the ranch wagon at the place where we began to go up the 

 first steep rise. There were two others, besides myself, in 

 the party ; one of them, the teamster, a weather-beaten 



