258 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



viduals, in bits of rough country such as the Black Hills, 

 the sand-hills of Nebraska, and certain patches of Bad 

 Lands along the Little Missouri. Doubtless stragglers 

 exist even yet in one or two of these localities. But by 

 the time the great buffalo herds of the plains were com- 

 pletely exterminated, in 1883, the wapiti had likewise 

 ceased to be a plains animal; the peculiar Californian 

 form had also been well-nigh exterminated. 



The nature of its favorite haunts was the chief factor 

 in causing it to suffer more than any other game in 

 America, save the bison, from the persecution of hunters 

 and settlers. The boundaries of its range have shrunk 

 in far greater proportion than in the case of any of our 

 other game animals, save only the great wild ox, with 

 which it was once so commonly associated. The moose, 

 a beast of the forest, and the caribou, which, save in the 

 far North, is also a beast of the forest, have in most places 

 greatly diminished in numbers, and have here and there 

 been exterminated altogether from outlying portions of 

 their range; but the wapiti, which, when free to choose, 

 preferred to frequent the plains and open woods, has 

 completely vanished from nine-tenths of the territory 

 over which it roamed a century and a quarter ago. Al- 

 though it was never found in any one place in such enor- 

 mous numbers as the bison and the caribou, it nevertheless 

 went in herds far larger than the herds of any other 

 American game save the two mentioned, and was for- 

 merly very much more abundant within the area of its 

 distribution than was the moose within the area of its 

 distribution. 



