134 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



in the forest, was charged by a bull, who rushed out of the 

 covert and was only checked at thirty yards distance by a 

 bullet between the eyes. 



Both sexes of elk are often seen together by the peasants 

 during the haymaking season, in the forest and near the 

 mountain dairies, and small families, consisting of a cow with 

 one or two calves and a single bull (or possibly a couple), 

 still hold together at the beginning of the hunting season ; 

 but as, at the same time, we constantly find a certain number 

 of bulls and cows leading solitary lives, or one or two of the 

 same sex together, the secret of these domestic arrangements 

 is shrouded in some obscurity, and one can only conclude 

 that, as in the case of men, there are some male elk who prefer 

 a roving bachelor life, whilst others have more uxorious and 

 paternal tendencies. I have never been able to discover 

 that the Scandinavian elk has any prominently gregarious 

 instincts under ordinary conditions of existence, although I 

 have heard it stated in Norway that they sometimes unite 

 during the winter into bands of a dozen or more. In some 

 very highly preserved districts, such as the royal forests of 

 Sweden, mentioned later, they are now and then artificially 

 congregated in considerable numbers, and a Swedish gentle- 

 man once told me that on a part of his property, at the head of 

 the Gulf of Bothnia, there existed on a stretch of land bounded 

 by two rivers a ' herd,' as he termed it, of nearly a hundred 

 elk. But it appeared that in this district, owing to peculiar 

 circumstances and local laws, the deer had not been shot for, 

 I think, over twenty years, and were carefully watched by 

 foresters, so that we have here also signs of compulsory gre- 

 gariousness ; but it is not safe to be dogmatic in this direction. 

 What is more to our present purpose is the certain fact, on 

 which the sportsman may rely, that during the hunting season 

 he will not be troubled or perplexed by any gregarious ten- 

 dencies on the part of the elk, whether because there are not 

 enough of them or because such is not their habit is of little 

 consequence ; he will, I think, discover that a more unsociable 



