402 BIG GAME SHOOTING 2 
when trying to escape through his native forest, even when 
the snow is at its worst for the bull, will never be very great, 
and the excitement of the sport must be intense. I have never 
yet had a chance of trying it. 
Even when a man is in the best of luck, what he generally 
has to shoot at, and that in a hurry, is not a beast 8 ft. high, 
weighing 1,400 lbs., standing broadside on in the open, but — 
a small piece of brown passing between the boles of the pine- — 
trees in deep shadow, one or two hundred yards off. The- 
Indian may tell him that what he sees is a moose. Nine men — 
out of ten would not have discovered the fact for themselves. 
‘ 
ee 
Ne a ee See ee ee Ce 
(2) THe Wapiti (C. canadensis) 
The creatures of the nineteenth century are the children of — 
the earth’s old age. The days of the giants are over, and the — 
days of the pigmies are upon us. When our naked forefathers 
were armed only with bows and arrows, there were elk in 
Ireland whose antlers spanned 11 ft. from tip to tip, and even ~ 
in the more recent days of the Hudson Bay musket, there were — 
(so men say) wapiti in Wyoming whose antlers when inverted 
formed arches under which a six-foot man might pass 1 without _ 7 
stooping. 
Alas ! there are no such wapiti nowadays, and indeed, ~ 
although there are scores of men in the States who will assure 
you that they have themselves walked under such arches, it — 
is very hard to believe that they are not mistaken, in the face” 
of the fact that a four-foot man could not walk under the 
largest head known to be in existence at the present moment, — 
though the longest wapiti head in the American Exhibition 
of 1887 (belonging to Mr. Frank Cooper, and numbered 89 in 
the catalogue) is described as s measuring 625 ins. along the back k 
panse between the antlers of 484 ins. 
It is not easy, either in America or elsewhere, to finda 
