294 Still-Hunting Elk. 



No sportsman can ever feel much keener pleasure and 

 self-satisfaction than when, after a successful stalk and 

 good shot, he walks up to a grand elk lying dead in the 

 cool shade of the great evergreens, and looks at the 

 massive and yet finely moulded form, and at the mighty 

 antlers which are to serve in the future as the trophy 

 and proof of his successful skill. Still-hunting the elk on 

 the mountains is as noble a kind of sport as can well be 

 imagined ; there is nothing more pleasant and enjoyable, 

 and at the same time it demands that the hunter shall 

 bring into play many manly qualities. There have been 

 few days of my hunting life that were so full of unalloyed 

 happiness as were those spent on the Bighorn range. 

 From morning till night I was on foot, in cool, bracing 

 air, now moving silently through the vast, melancholy pine 

 forests, now treading the brink of high, rocky precipices, 

 always amid the most grand and beautiful scenery ; and 

 always after as noble and lordly game as is to be found in 

 the Western world. 



Since writing the above I killed an elk near my 

 ranch ; probably the last of his race that will ever be 

 found in our neighborhood. It was just before the fall 

 round-up. An old hunter, who was under some obliga- 

 tion to me, told me that he had shot a cow elk and 

 had seen the tracks of one or two others not more 

 than twenty-five miles off, in a place where the cattle 

 rarely wandered. Such a chance was not to be neglected ; 

 and, on the first free day, one of my Elk-horn foremen, 

 Will Dow by name, and myself, took our hunting horses 

 and started off, accompanied by the ranch wagon, in the 



