408 _ : BIG GAME SHOOTING 
sheep ground, pottering about the beds of mountain streams, 
poking his head noiselessly through the thickets of willow 
round the parks, picking his way gingerly over chaotic wind- 
falls of burnt timber, and dozing by day on the top of some 
woodland ridge which a shadow in moccasins could hardly 
reach unheard. 
But ‘ what’s the good of gassing ?’ as old Sam Wells would 
say. Come away to my camp in Colorado and see the bull 
elk for yourself. And first let me warn you that here in his 
own land, Cervus canadensis is ‘ elk,’ or ‘ bull elick’ on occasion, 
but never wapiti. The ‘boys’ don’t know what a wapiti is ; 
never ‘heerd tell on him’ as like as not. Cervus canadensis is, 
of course, the wapiti of the naturalists and a few thousand 
Englishmen and scientific gentlemen, just as the buffalo is the 
bison of the same well-informed circle ; but to sixty or seventy 
millions of white men these beasts are elk and buffalo, now, 
henceforth, and for ever. The ‘boys’ round camp are rude 
enough to say that ‘ ¢zey know what a bull elk is, and if they 
don’t, who the —— does?’ and as I hate arguing (where 
arguments are sometimes six-chambered), it may be as well 
to call Cervus canadensis by his local name for the next few 
pages. 
Our camp, then, is pitched at an altitude of nearly 10,000 ft. 
above sea level, on the edge of a great park or ‘open’ of 4 
rank yellow grass, through which a mountain stream twists and ~~ 
turns. Years ago, before Sam Wells cleared them out, beavers 
had dammed this stream, and the park still owes a good deal 
of its richness to their operations. Above the park in a great 
circle the dark ranks of the pine-trees close in; whilst above 4 
them again rise the bare ridges and strangely castellated tops 
of the ‘ divide.’ 
In the early summer the elk may have wandered upon those 
bare ridges (their tracks prove it, and a natural desire to avoid 
their insect tormentors accounts for it), but they are not upon — 
those ridges now. As the rutting season approaches the elk — 
come down from the high places, and in September every ~ 
ee A ee eee 
— = a ee 
