408 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



sheep ground, pottering about the beds of mountain streams, 

 poking his head noiselessly through the thickets of willow 

 round the parks, picking his way gingerly over chaotic wind- 

 falls of burnt timber, and dozing by day on the top of some 

 woodland ridge which a shadow in moccasins could hardly 

 reach unheard. 



But ' what's the good of gassing ? ' as old Sam Wells would 

 say. Come away to my camp in Colorado and see the bull 

 elk for yourself. And first let me warn you that here in his 

 own land, Cervus canadensis is ' elk,' or ' bull elick ' on occasion, 

 but never wapiti. The ' boys ' don't know what a wapiti is ; 

 never ' heerd tell on him ' as like as not. Cervus canadensis is, 

 of course, the wapiti of the naturalists and a few thousand 

 Englishmen and scientific gentlemen, just as the buffalo is the 

 bison of the same well-informed circle ; but to sixty or seventy 

 millions of white men these beasts are elk and buffalo, now, 

 henceforth, and for ever. The ' boys ' round camp are rude 

 enough to say that ' they know what a bull elk is, and if they 

 don't, who the - - does ? ' and as I hate arguing (where 

 arguments are sometimes six-chambered), it may be as well 

 to call Cervus canadensis by his local name for the next few 

 pages. 



Our camp, then, is pitched at an altitude of nearly 10,000 ft. 

 above sea level, on the edge of a great park or ' open ' of 

 rank yellow grass, through which a mountain stream twists and 

 turns. Years ago, before Sam Wells cleared them out, beavers 

 had dammed this stream, and the park stills owes a good deal 

 of its richness to their operations. Above the park in a great 

 circle the dark ranks, of the pine-trees close in ; whilst above 

 them again rise the bare ridges and strangely castellated tops 

 of the ' divide.' 



In the early summer the elk may have wandered upon those 

 bare ridges (their tracks prove it, and a natural desire to avoid 

 their insect tormentors accounts for it), but they are not upon 

 those ridges now. As the rutting season approaches the elk 

 come down from the high places, and in September every 



