EARLY DAY STORIES. 99 



pect them to go if he lies in wait. He must be quick of eye, 

 must love the sport, must have patience and perseverance, 

 and must hunt just as carefully the last hour of the day as 

 he does the first, and lastily he must be a fairly good shot. 

 However, he will kill lots of game even if he is a poor shot 

 if he has all the other qualifications mentioned. 



One fall in the early days I was hunting in Valley 

 county, when the settlements in that county were very new 

 and were confined almost entirely to the valleys of the 

 North and Middle Loup rivers. The rough hill country was 

 well supplied with black-tail deer; there were also a good 

 many white-tail deer, and now and then a band of elk. I 

 have never seen a better game country anywhere than was 

 found in Greeley, Valley, Sherman and Custer counties in 

 the early seventies. There were abundant signs of elk, but 

 as yet none had been seen. I was hunting some very 

 rough breaks on the south side of the North Loup, ten or 

 twelve miles above the present site of Ord. I had seen 

 many fresh signs of elk, and two or three times had heard 

 them calling to one another with their long-drawn musical 

 cry, which I cannot describe. There was no wind, and 1 

 moved toward the elk cries very slowly and cautiously. 

 Finally, just at the head of a deep bluffy draw, perhaps fifty 

 rods away, I saw two or three elk lying down where they 

 could watch in my direction, and just beyond there, but out 

 of sight, I again heard calls of other members of the herd. 

 The ravine at the head of which these elk were lying was 

 pretty well covered in the bottom with big blue-stem grass. 

 By going down to the left a short distance I could keep out of 

 sight, and reaching the bottom of the ravine could crawl 

 up under cover of the tall blue-stem grass to a position near 

 the place where the elk were lying. But the first thing to 

 do was to trim my hat with blue-stem ; this done, I crawled 

 on my hands and knees toward the elk. I must have gotten 

 within a hundred yards before they seemed to be looking 



