BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA 405 



antlers, and ten days later these antlers are dry and hard and 

 fit for fighting. The rubbing, or 'fraying,' is generally done 

 against the stem of a quaking asp or young green pine, the 

 wapiti never using a dry stick for his rubbing-post. As soon 

 as his horns are dry, the bull begins whistling or bugling, this 

 whistling being kept up until about the middle of October. I 

 am inclined to think that the whistling (i.e. the rutting) season 

 varies a good deal in different districts according to the seasons 

 and the altitude at which the bulls find themselves. In Colo- 

 rado in 1892 we heard the first whistle on September i6th, 

 and the last about three weeks later; and although our old 

 guide considered 1892 an exceptionally early season, I fancy 

 that from the middle of September to the middle of October 

 may be looked upon as the ordinary rutting season of Cervus 

 canadensis. 



There is nothing about the wapiti more characteristic or 

 more striking than his whistle, a call wild enough and weird 

 enough to harmonise with the savagery of the beast's sur- 

 roundings. I have never yet met a man who could imitate the 

 whistle or even adequately describe it ; but if I must attempt 

 to give some idea of it, I should say that it was a long flute- 

 like sound, sometimes rising and falling, and ending more 

 often than not in two or three hoarse, angry grunts. Like the 

 Scotch red deer, the wapiti carries his horns until March, my 

 friend Mr. Arnold Pike having seen two old bulls with good 

 heads on the 29th of March of this year. In Colorado, as 

 in Vancouver Island, each band of wapiti seems to confine 

 itself pretty closely to a particular district, never moving more 

 than twenty or thirty miles from one place, but travelling on 

 occasion from one side to another of its domains with a rapidity 

 which is exasperating to the hunter who has to follow with a 

 pack train. Early in September the principal food of the 

 wapiti appears to be the pink-flowered fire-weed (phlooc), which 

 grows in rank luxuriance amongst the burnt timber ; and later 

 on, when the frost has nipped the tops of the young elder 

 bushes, these seem to attract a good deal of the great deer's 



