f04 Rod, Gun, and Palette in the High Rockies 



the heart of an elk every time" was his statement of the aiming 

 point for the elk hunter. He was proud to say that hunter 

 though he was, he had never killed merely for the sports* sake. 

 He had never wasted a pound of meat — fish, flesh, or fowl. 



"Why, one time I killed as many as sixteen elk in one day up 

 in the hills here; but I used every one of them. I sold four hundred 

 and eighty dollars worth that season at from seventeen to twenty- 

 five cents a pound, and the rest I shipped to friends in want of meat. 



"No, you can't tell anything about an elk's age from the 

 spikes on his horns after the fourth or fifth year. I've known an 

 elk in captivity over twenty-five years that had not more than six 

 spikes on his horns. 



"Prairie antelope? I've seen as many as from fifteen hundred 

 to two thousand in a bunch, but I doubt now if you would see more 

 than five in a bunch. They are getting scarce. Yes, some of them 

 may have been killed wastefully, but I reckon the settlement of the 

 country drove them up into the hills, and as the antelope is a 

 prairie animal, in the deep snow of the timber, they can't get food 

 freely, and of course a great many must have been starved out. 

 They shed the outer covering of the horns, but the bony core is 

 permanent." 



Handing out a couple of small soft-nosed shells, he com- 

 mented: "Thirty-five — thirty-five. The old large caliber rifles 

 are mostly on the scrapheap. I shot that cow to-day withthissmall 

 gun. The bullet where it entered made a hole you couldn't see, 

 but it struck a bone, and mushroomed, and where it came out you 

 could put your three fingers in. She didn't go further than from 

 here to the door before she laid down. And now they tell me 

 there's a twenty-two that shoots a mile. Good at a thousand 

 yards, they say. I hear a lot of sportsmen talking about these long 

 range high power rifles. But back here in Idaho, in the last 

 twenty-five years, I've seen more deer killed at a hundred yards 

 and under than over — three times as many more. My own gun 

 is safe up to four hundred yards — I'm certain of it up to that range. 

 And I don't ever have occasion to use it that far. That cow I 

 killed to-day was got at thirty-five paces. I counted 'em when I 

 went over — just a hundred and five feet I made it, or a little under. 

 No, you don't usually get a sight in timber much over a hundred 

 yards, though you may of course get a long shot at one clear on 



