Memories of a Bear Hunter 



southern foothills were covered with snow and 

 with deep drifts, some of which were frozen hard 

 enough to bear a horse. This was on the north 

 fork of Shield's River. Across the river from our 

 camp was a beautiful park, watered by clear 

 streams, with many willow and quaking aspen 

 thickets along their course, which once must have 

 been alive with white-tailed deer. Now not one 

 was to be seen, nor were there any elk in sight. All 

 of them seemed to have followed the large bands 

 further south. 51 



On April 27, while going out to look after the 

 horses, I saw a band of fifteen or twenty elk feed- 

 ing on the hillside of Elk Creek. After watching 

 them for an hour through the glasses for they 

 were two and a half or three miles away they 

 lay down. To reach them I made a circuit of per- 

 haps four miles to get to windward of them, and 

 then climbing the hill, got close to them. How- 

 ever, I did not find them where I had expected, and 

 working along down the hill, disturbed a band of 

 black-tail deer, which ran off in the direction of the 

 elk and started them. They went off slowly, and 

 running to the top of a hill, I got a shot at them, 

 just before they plunged down the side of the 

 mountain. One of them reared, and acted as if 

 fatally wounded, but managed to go off with the 



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