404 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



themselves are said to have been exterminated by the Indians 

 or starved to death during an exceptionally severe winter sixty 

 or seventy years ago. Be that as it may, there are no wapiti 

 on the mainland of British Columbia to-day, nor are there 

 anywhere (unless it be in the fastnesses of the Olympian range) 

 any vast herds of this splendid beast such as we read of in the 

 books of the pioneer sportsmen of the North- West. For this 

 change for the worse we have to thank the meat-hunter, the 

 skin-hunter, and the ranchman about equally, although perhaps 

 the advent of cattle does more to drive deer out of a country 

 than anything else. As an example of what was as compared 

 to what is, I may cite the case of my old camp man, Sam Welis, 

 who, when the Union Pacific Railway was being built to the 

 west of Cheyenne, killed, in his capacity of meat-hunter to the 

 construction party, 84 antelope, 24 elk, and 18 deer during one 

 autumn ; whereas this year, in the best bit of country known to 

 him in Colorado, our camp was many days without meat, and my- 

 self and my friend were looked upon as exceptionally fortunate 

 in having secured three good heads (wapiti) in three weeks' 

 hunting. It is fair to add that the country hunted, although 

 comparatively little disturbed, was very near to a good-sized 

 town. 



It is said that before the advent of the white man the wapiti 

 frequented the plains, where the rich bunch grass helped to 

 build up the enormous antlers of which we hear so much 

 and see so little. Nowadays men and cattle have driven the 

 wapiti from the bunch-grass plains, and he has become almost 

 entirely a denizen of the dense timber districts. 



In Colorado, where I hunted wapiti in 1892, we found our 

 game in the timber at an elevation of 10,000 ft. above sea 

 level, but I have shot them in equally dense timber on Van- 

 couver Island at little above sea level. Speaking broadly, the 

 habits of the wapiti and of the Scotch red deer are identical, 

 except for the former's detestable predilection for timber. 

 About the beginning of September the ' bull elk,' as all 

 Americans insist on calling him, has rubbed the velvet off his 



