292 Still-Hunting Elk. 



whom they knew they might not dare to contend. The 

 true still-hunter should be a lover of nature as well as of 

 sport, or he will miss half the pleasure of being in the 

 woods. 



The finest bull, with the best head that I got, was 

 killed in the midst of very beautiful and grand surround- 

 ings. We had been hunting through a great pine wood 

 which ran up to the edge of a broad canyon-like valley, 

 bounded by sheer walls of rock. There were fresh tracks 

 of elk about, and we had been advancing up wind with 

 even more than our usual caution when, on stepping out 

 into a patch of open ground, near the edge of the cliff, we 

 came upon a great bull, beating and thrashing his antlers 

 against a young tree, about eighty yards off. He stopped 

 and faced us for a second, his mighty antlers thrown in 

 the air, as he held his head aloft. Behind him towered 

 the tall and sombre pines, while at his feet the jutting 

 crags overhung the deep chasm below, that stretched off 

 between high walls of barren and snow-streaked rocks, the 

 evergreens clinging to their sides, while along the bottom 

 the rapid torrent gathered in places into black and sullen 

 mountain lakes. As the bull turned to run I struck him 

 just behind the shoulder ; he reeled to the death-blow, 

 but staggered gamely on a few rods into the forest before 

 sinking to the ground, with my second bullet through his 

 lungs. 



Two or three days later than this I killed another 

 bull, nearly as large, in the same patch of woods in which 

 I had slain the first. A bear had been feeding on the 

 carcass of the latter, and, after a vain effort to find his 



