25o FKANK forester's FIELD SPORTS. 



scribed, both in singling individual Red Deer out of herds, and 

 in sticking to the slot (jf wounded Harts, through the midst o!" 

 \vhi)k' companies of Hinds, and bringing them to bay uner- 

 ringly, even vi'hen they have taken flight down the shallow beds 

 of mountain torrents, can doubt their utility both in separating 

 marked animals from the droves or gangs, and in preventing 

 that very frequent, and, to the humane hunter, painful catas- 

 trophe, of wounded brutes going off to die alone in unt ended 

 and protracted agony. 



As it is at present, the Bison and the Elk are attacked in two 

 modes only — either liy stalking tliem on foot with the rifle, which 

 must be an exceedingly animating and exciting, as well as a 

 very cliflicult and laborious task, the objects of pui'suit being in 

 full view of the hunter all the time, and his approaches being 

 necessarily made over the bare and nearly level surface of tlu> 

 prairie, with nothing to conceal his stealthy advance, but the 

 scanty shelter of the coarse grasses, unless he be so fortuna'e as 

 to find the channel of some water-course or ravine, down which 

 he may wind upon his watchful cjuany. 



His advances must, of course, be made tip u-'ind, as the scent 

 of both these creatures is inexpressibly acute, as is also theii' 

 sense of heaiing ; and, at the least alarm, they are off like the 

 v^^inds of heaven, no man knoweth whither. 



This is the only species of stalking jjractised on this continent, 

 which bears any sort of analogy to Red Deer stalking in the 

 Highlands of Scotland, and this closely resembles it in all 

 essentials, — though, in one respect, it is easier, and, in another, 

 more difficult and arduous than the still sport of the Gael. 



In tlie first place, horses can be used by the stalker of the 

 American Elk or Bison, until the animal is discovered on the far 

 horizon, by aid of the optic glass, or the nearly as telescopic eye 

 of the Western hunter. Secondly, the gi'ound being generally 

 level, or broken only by long, wave-like swells and ridges, the 

 toil is not comparable to that of climbing the crags and breast- 

 ing the heathery mountains of the Caledonian deer-forests. 

 Thirdly, the stalker is not baffled by those singular swirls, eddies, 



