200 The Wilderness Hunter 



quite as shy and difficult to approach as the deer; 

 but its bulk renders it much more eagerly hunted, 

 more readily seen, and more easily hit. Occasional- 

 ly elk suffer from fits of stupid tameness or equally 

 stupid panic; but the same is true of blacktail. In 

 two or three instances, I have seen elk show silly 

 ignorance of danger; but half a dozen times I have 

 known blacktail behave with an even greater degree 

 of stupid familiarity. 



There is another point in which the wapiti and 

 blacktail agree in contrast to the moose and white- 

 tail. Both the latter delight in water-lilies, entering 

 the ponds to find them, and feeding on them greedily. 

 The wapiti is very fond of wallowing in the mud, 

 and of bathing in pools and lakes; but as a rule 

 it shows as little fondness as the blacktail for feed- 

 ing on water-lilies or other aquatic plants. 



In reading of the European red deer, which is 

 nothing but a diminutive wapiti, we often see "a 

 stag of ten" alluded to as if a full-grown monarch. 

 A full-grown wapiti bull, however, always has 

 twelve, and may have fourteen, regular normal 

 points on his antlers, besides irregular additional 

 prongs; and he occasionally has ten points when a 

 two-year-old, as I have myself seen with calves cap- 

 tured young and tamed. The calf has no horns. 

 The yearling carries two foot-long spikes, some- 

 times bifurcated, so as to make four points. The 

 two-year-old often has six or eight points on his 



