402 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



when trying to escape through his native forest, even when 

 the snow is at its worst for the bull, will never be very great, 

 and the excitement of the sport must be intense. I have never 

 yet had a chance of trying it. 



Even when a man is in the best of luck, what he generally 

 has to shoot at, and that in a hurry, is not a beast 8 ft. high, 

 weighing 1,400 Ibs., standing broadside on in the open, but 

 a small piece of brown passing between the boles of the pine- 

 trees in deep shadow, one or two hundred yards off. The 

 Indian may tell him that what he sees is a moose. Nine men 

 out of ten would not have discovered the fact for themselves. 



(2) THE WAPITI (C. canadensis) 



The creatures of the nineteenth century are the children of 

 the earth's old age. The days of the giants are over, and the 

 days of the pigmies are upon us. When our naked forefathers 

 were armed only with bows and arrows, there were elk in 

 Ireland whose antlers spanned n ft. from tip to tip, and even 

 in the more recent days of the Hudson Bay musket, there were 

 (so men say) wapiti in Wyoming whose antlers when inverted 

 formed arches under which a six-foot man might pass without 

 stooping. 



Alas ! there are no such wapiti nowadays, and indeed, 

 although there are scores of men in the States who will assure 

 you that they have themselves walked under such arches, it 

 is very hard to believe that they are not mistaken, in the face 

 of the fact that a four-foot man could not walk under the 

 largest head known to be in existence at the present moment, 

 though the longest wapiti head in the American Exhibition 

 of 1887 (belonging to Mr. Frank Cooper, and numbered 89 in 

 the catalogue) is described as measuring 62^ ins. along the back 

 of the beam from base to tip of the longest tine, with an ex- 

 panse between the antlers of 48^ ins. 



It is not easy, either in America or elsewhere, to find a head 

 (dead or alive) which will beat this by an inch in any direction ; 



