86 PRAIRIE AND FOREST. 



peaceful, sequestered valley, was something awful, and 

 that often to the tune of the Old Hundred. 



During the rutting season terrific combats take 

 place between the claimants for the favour of the 

 fair ones ; and these battles royal are fought with 

 such vim and determination that they not unfre- 

 quently result in the death of one or both of the 

 belligerents. Again, the antlers of the contestants 

 occasionally get locked together, so that the owners 

 find it impossible to disengage themselves, when death 

 overtakes them in the appalling form of starvation. I 

 was once shown two grand heads of Wapitti horns at 

 Pembena which had been picked up on a tributary of 

 the Upper Missouri, that had become so interlaced 

 that no effort could disengage them in their entirety. 



The fawns are produced late in spring, and at two 

 years of age the young bucks exhibit knobs, which in 

 six years become full heads; however, with further 

 years the horns continue to spread and increase in 

 weight, the very old males exhibiting at the top fork a 

 very obvious palmation. Mr. Hays, a New York 

 animal artist of great repute, showed me a pair of 

 Wapitti antlers which he had picked up in a valley of 

 the Eocky Mountains ; they were larger than any I 

 had previously seen, although I have killed a very 

 great number of specimens. If memory serves me 

 correctly, they possessed fifteen points, and weighed 

 fifty- two pounds. What a splendid stag their owner 

 must have been ! And the trouble and expense of a 

 voyage across the Atlantic, with the additional fatigue 

 of the land journey to the hunting-grounds of the red- 

 men, would not be thrown away if the sportsman was 

 certain to be rewarded by the capture of such a quarry. 



