24 The Wilderness Hunter 



ing settlers. Now they are on the point of extinc- 

 tion. Two or three hundred are left in that great 

 national game preserve, the Yellowstone Park; and 

 it is said that others still remain in the wintry deso- 

 lation of Athabasca. Elsewhere only a few in- 

 dividuals exist probably considerably less than half 

 a hundred all told scattered in small parties in 

 the wildest and most remote and inaccessible por- 

 tions of the Rocky Mountains. A bison bull is the 

 largest American animal. His huge bulk, his short, 

 curved black horns, the shaggy mane clothing his 

 great neck and shoulders, give him a look of ferocity 

 which his conduct belies. Yet he is truly a grand 

 arid noble beast, and his loss from our prairies and 

 forest is as keenly regretted by the lover of nature 

 and of wild life as by the hunter. 



Next to the bison in size, and much superior in 

 height to it and to all other American game for it 

 is taller than the tallest horse comes the moose, 

 or broad-horned elk. It is a strange, uncouth-look- 

 ing beast, with very long legs, short thick neck, a 

 big, ungainly head, a swollen nose, and huge shovel 

 horns. Its home is in the cold, wet pine and spruce 

 forests, which stretch from the sub-arctic region of 

 Canada southward in certain places across our fron- 

 tier. Two centuries ago it was found as far south 

 as Massachusetts. It has^ now been exterminated 

 from its former haunts in northern New York and 

 Vermont, and is on the point of vanishing from 



