Re a eee Oe ee oe eee 
hy 9 
PET aR ee ee Meee ey ae 
BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA 405 
: Sg ert tei days Inter these antlers are dry and hard and 
fit for fighting. The rubbing, or ‘fraying,’ is generally done 
‘against the stem of a quaking asp or young green pine, the 
wapiti never using a dry stick for his rubbing-post. As soon 
as his horns are dry, the bull begins whistling or bugling, this 
whistling being kept up until about the middle of October. I 
am inclined to think that the whistling (i.e. the rutting) season 
varies a good deal in different districts according to the seasons 
and the altitude at which the bulls find themselves. In Colo- 
tado in 1892 we heard the first whistle on September 16th, 
and the last about three weeks later; and although our old 
guide considered 1892 an exceptionally early season, I fancy 
that from the middle of September to the middle of October 
may be looked upon as the ordinary rutting season of Cervus 
canadensis. 
- There is nothing about the wapiti more characteristic or 
more striking than his whistle, a call wild enough and weird 
enough to harmonise with the savagery of the beast’s sur- 
roundings. I have never yet met a man who could imitate the 
whistle or even adequately describe it ; but if-I must attempt 
to give some idea of it, I should say that it was a long flute- 
like sound, sometimes rising and falling, and ending more 
often than not in two or three hoarse, angry grunts. Like the 
Scotch red deer, the wapiti carries his horns until March, my 
_ friend Mr. Arnold Pike having seen two old bulls with good 
heads on the 29th of March of this year. In Colorado, as 
in Vancouver Island, each band of wapiti seems to confine 
_ itself pretty closely to a particular district, never moving more 
than twenty or thirty miles from one place, but travelling on 
occasion from one side to another of its domains with a rapidity 
' which is exasperating to the hunter who has to follow with a 
pack train. Early in September the principal food of the 
wapiti appears to be the pink-flowered fire-weed (f/ox), which 
| grows in rank luxuriance amongst the burnt timber ; and later 
' on, when the frost has nipped the tops of the young elder 
bushes, these seem to attract a good deal of the great deer’s 
