4 i2 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



you heard a bough break several hundred yards below you, 

 and a few minutes later you saw the warm lair from which an 

 elk had stolen away ; but you never saw him, never even heard 

 him, until he was well out of range. 



' Hang the luck ! ' you mutter ; in another hour the wind that 

 rises about noon will get up and then the odds will be doubled 

 against you. Will the luck never change ? Well, yes. Just as 

 you are deciding for the twentieth time that you never will 

 hunt elk again, there is a long hollow whistle among the pines 

 below you. The whistle is faint and far off, and if you had not 

 been sitting down and at rest you would never have heard it. 

 You have, as a matter of fact, failed to hear two or three similar 

 whistles during the morning whistles which a better woods- 

 man would have heard, and which even you would never have 

 missed had you taken Sam's advice and gone slow, ' settin' 

 down once in a while to listen.' 



You are not likely to see a motionless stag when you are 

 scrambling through the brush, or to hear a bull's stealthy tread 

 upon the trail, or his distant call, whilst you are forcing your 

 way through a barricade of burnt timber. 



Well, luck, which after all counts for more in hunting than 

 all the skill and experience of the best hunter luck has favoured 

 you at last, and there the whistle comes again, and directly after 

 it another, followed this time by deep, hoarse grunts, so deep 

 and hoarse and so close to you that, as Sam puts it, ' your hair 

 almost lifts your cap off your head.' That last bull was within 

 five hundred yards of you, and there can be no doubt about his 

 size. Creeping forward, you look cautiously over the brow of 

 a little ridge on to a flat, where amongst the black, burnt stems 

 of the dead .pines the tall jungle of fireweed is vivid with every 

 shade from fresh green to royal purple, scarlet, and orange, and 

 even as you look, without a sound, a great head is pushed out 

 from a bunch of quaking asp. For what seems to you an age 

 the cow stares straight at you, and then, when you are almost 

 in despair, moves quietly into the open followed by her calf. 

 In another moment the bull appears on the cow's trail, without 



