4o6 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



attention. But Cervus canadensis is a somewhat promiscuous 

 feeder, all grasses and most weeds and bushes seeming to be 

 included in his list of things to be eaten. The young tops of 

 the quaking asp, of the willow, and of a low creeping shrub 

 locally known as elk weed, all seem favourites in their season. 



On such food as this the wapiti grows to prodigious propor- 

 tions, of which the following measurements, supplied by Mr. 

 Andrew Williamson, give the best idea. Mr. Williamson killed 

 sixteen bulls in one season in Colorado in 1878, of which the 

 largest measured 9 ft. from the tip of the nose to the tail, stood 

 1 7 hands at the shoulder, and girthed 6 ft. 8 ins. round the heart. 

 The average measurements of eight out of the sixteen bulls 

 were as follows : Length from nose to tail, 8 ft. 5 ins. ; 

 height at shoulders, 16 hands and in. ; girth round the 

 heart, 6 ft. i in. Compare these measurements with those 

 of the largest racehorse on record, and you get some idea 

 of the size of the wapiti, though even then the figure which 

 you will conjure up will be small compared with the apparition 

 which sometimes confronts a Western hunter upon the skyline, 

 or to a ' bull elk ' at bay with his head down, his bristles up, 

 and his eyes glaring angrily at the insignificant collie yapping 

 round him. The average length of the antlers of Mr. William- 

 son's bulls is given as 53 ins., and the span of these antlers, 

 measured inside the beam, as 44 ins. As to the weight of a 

 wapiti, it is unfortunate that the man who kills one has very 

 rarely any apparatus at hand for weighing his prize ; and even 

 Mr. Caton, the great American authority upon the Cervidce of 

 North America, gives neither measurements nor weights of full- 

 grown bulls. 



In his work upon the deer of America, this writer mentions 

 a bull once in his possession which when killed, as a five-year- 

 old weighed 900 Ibs. live weight ; and adds that ' as the elk 

 grows till he is eight or nine years old, he (this bull) would, 

 had he lived to his full age, have attained to the weight of 

 1,000 or i, 100 Ibs.' Colonel Dodge, in his ' Plains of the Great 

 West,' puts the weight of an average ' elk ' at only 500 Ibs., 



