30 STALKS ABROAD 



long as possible, would have come down towards 

 the Hole, and one's chance of getting a good head 

 would be certainly doubled. I should hunt the sheep 

 first, whilst the weather was fine ; take my chance 

 of the deer after ; then go for the antelope ; and, as 

 I said just now, take the wapiti last. 



Half of the pleasure in hunting is to spot your 

 beast ; keep him under observation all the time 

 you are stalking him ; watch how he will act under 

 certain conditions ; and, if you are lucky, get in 

 on him. Now all this is absent in wapiti hunting 

 as I found it. 



It was simply a series of flukes, lucky or unlucky. 

 If the former I got my bull, patted myself on the 

 back, and thought what a devil of a fine stalker 

 I was : if the latter, I returned to camp dead tired, 

 and wrote to my pals to say that wapiti hunting 

 was a fraud. 



Joking apart, however, when your bull is in a 

 thick wood, surrounded by a large and alert harem, 

 it is an extremely difficult matter to get a glimpse 

 of him at all. We will suppose that having located 

 him by his bugling, which is a most ventriloquial 

 sound and as elusive as the call of a corn-crake, you 

 have got within two hundred yards. It is a hundred 

 to one that a cow spots you before you get anywhere 

 within sight of the bull, and even if you do see him 

 it will probably be only a glimpse of his stern. By 

 the time you have got your glass out to have a 

 look at his head he is making ,tracks over the fallen 



