PRAIRIE SPORTS. 



353 



BISON AND ELK HUNTING. 



NCE ranging over every part of 

 the United States, from the Hud- 

 |\ son River and Lake Champlain, 

 westward, to the Pacific Ocean — 

 unless it were in a few forest dis- 

 tricts on the Atlantic seaboard — 

 j,,^ both of these noble quadrupeds are 

 now confined to narrow limits, 

 gradually narrowing more, in the 

 Far "West ; — neither of them being found in any numbers east- 

 ward of the Mississippi, unless it be true, which I doubt, that a 

 few Elk still exist among the forests of North-western Penn- 

 sylvania. 



The northern limits of both these animals appear to be nearly 

 identical ; neither of them, it would seem, having ever existed 

 to the eastward, north of the Great Lakes, though west ot 

 Lake Winnipeg they have both been killed, so far north as the 

 50th degree. Southward, they extend over all the prairie lands, 

 so far as Texas, — but into the wooded country and canebrakes 

 of the South-western States they do not often intrude them- 

 selves. 



An Elk of great magnitude was, however, killed a few years 

 since in Louisiana, between Roundway Bayou and the river, by 

 a party of gentlemen, one of whom is a particular friend of my 

 own, the dimensions of which are so enormous as to deserve 

 particular mention. 



