200 The Wilderness Hunter. 



abroad ; and a few Clarke's crows, whisky-jacks, and chick- 

 adees were the only living things we saw. At nightfall, 

 chilled through, we reached the Upper Geyser Basin. 

 Here I met a party of railroad surveyors and engineers, 

 coming in from their summer's field-work. One of them 

 lent me a saddle-horse and a pack-pony, and we went on 

 together, breaking our way through the snow-choked 

 roads to the Mammoth Hot Springs, while Hofer took 

 my own horses back to Ferguson. 



I have described this hunt at length because, though 

 I enjoyed it particularly on account of the comfort in 

 which we travelled and the beauty of the land, yet, in 

 point of success in finding and killing game, in value of 

 trophies procured, and in its alternations of good and bad 

 luck, it may fairly stand as the type of a dozen such hunts 

 I have made. Twice I have been much more successful ; 

 the difference being due to sheer luck, as I hunted equally 

 hard in all three instances. Thus on this trip I killed 

 and saw nothing but elk ; yet the other members of the 

 party either saw, or saw fresh signs of, not only blacktail 

 deer, but sheep, bear, bison, moose, cougar, and wolf. 

 Now in 1889 I hunted over almost precisely similar 

 country, only farther to the northwest, on the boundary 

 between Idaho and Montana, and, with the exception of 

 sheep, I stumbled on all the animals mentioned, and 

 white goat in addition, so that my bag of twelve head 

 actually included eight species much the best bag I ever 

 made, and the only one that could really be called out of 

 the common. In 1884, on a trip to the Bighorn Moun- 

 tains, I killed three bear, six elk and six deer. In laying 



