406 BIG GAME SHOOTING 
attention. But Cervus canadensis is a somewhat promiscuous 
feeder, all grasses and most weeds and bushes seeming to be 
included in his list of things to be eaten. The young tops of 
the quaking asp, of the willow, and of a low creeping shrub 
locally known as elk weed, all seem favourites in their season. 
On such food as this the wapiti grows to prodigious propor- 
tions, of which the following measurements, supplied by Mr. 
Andrew Williamson, give the best idea. Mr. Williamson killed 
sixteen bulls in one season in Colorado in 1878, of which the 
largest measured g ft. from the tip of the nose to the tail, stood 
17 hands at the shoulder, and girthed 6 ft. 8 ins. round the heart. 
The average measurements of eight out of the sixteen bulls 
were as follows: Length from nose to tail, 8 ft. 5 ins. ; 
height at shoulders, 16 hands and 2 in.; girth round the 
heart, 6 ft. 1 in. Compare these measurements with those 
of the largest racehorse on record, and you get some idea 
of the size of the wapiti, though even then the figure which 
you will conjure up will be small compared with the apparition 
which sometimes confronts a Western hunter upon the skyline, 
or to a ‘bull elk’ at bay with his head down, his bristles up, 
and his eyes glaring angrily at the insignificant collie yapping 
round him. The average length of the antlers of Mr. William- 
son’s bulls is given as 53 ins., and the span of these antlers, — 
measured cuside the beam, as 44 ins. As to the weight of a — 
wapiti, it is unfortunate that the man who kills one has very 
rarely any apparatus at hand for weighing his prize; and even — 
Mr. Caton, the great American authority upon the Cerzide of — 
North America, gives neither measurements nor weights of full- 
grown bulls. 
In his work upon the deer of America, this writer mentions — 
a bull once in his possession which when killed, as a five-year- — 
old weighed goo Ibs. live weight ; and adds that ‘as the elk — 
grows till he is eight or nine years old, he (this bull) would, — 
had he lived to his full age, have attained to the weight of — 
1,000 or 1,100 lbs.’ Colonel Dodge, in his ‘ Plains of the Great 
West,’ puts the weight of an average ‘elk’ at only 500 Ibs., 
