404 BIG GAME SHOOTING 
themselves are said to have been exterminated by the Indians 
or starved to death during an exceptionally severe winter sixty 
or seventy years ago. Be that as it may, there are no wapiti 
on the mainland of British Columbia to-day, nor are there 
anywhere (unless it be in the fastnesses of the Olympian range) 
any vast herds of this splendid beast such as we read of in the 
books of the pioneer sportsmen of the North-West. For this 
change for the worse we have to thank the meat-hunter, the 
skin-hunter, and the ranchman about equally, although perhaps 
the advent of cattle does more to drive deer out of a country 
than anything else. As an example of what was as compared — 
to what zs, I may cite the case of my old camp man, Sam Wells, 
who, when the Union Pacific: Railway was being built to the ~ 
west of Cheyenne, killed, in his capacity of meat-hunter to the — 
construction party, 84 antelope, 24 elk, and 18 deer during one 
autumn ; whereas this year, in the best bit of country known to 
him in Colorado, our camp was many days without meat, and my- — 
self and my friend were looked upon as exceptionally fortunate — 
in having secured three good heads (wapiti) in three weeks’ — 
hunting. It is fair to add that the country hunted, although ~ 
comparatively little disturbed, was very near to a good-sized 
town. j 
It is said that before the advent of the white man the wapiti 
frequented the plains, where the rich bunch grass helped to” 
build up the enormous antlers of which we hear so much | 
and see so little. Nowadays men and cattle have driven the 
wapiti from the bunch-grass plains, and he has become almo t. 
entirely a denizen of the dense timber districts. Et 
‘In Colorado, where I hunted wapiti in 1892, we found our 
game in the timber at an elevation of 10,000 ft. above sea 
level, but I have shot them in equally dense timber on Van- 
couver Island at little above sea level. Speaking broadly, the 
habits of the wapiti and of the Scotch red deer are identical, 
‘iti 
