“BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA 4ul 
another without staying to look for trails and easy places. 
. From camp the belt of timber looks as if it lay upon a smooth, 
_ gently rising hill-side. Once within it, you learn that the belt 
_ is composed of densely timbered ridges rising one behind 
another like waves in a choppy sea, and as you toil through 
and over these ridges, you wish, if you are an ordinary man, 
that you had never heard of elk. 
_ Everywhere the trees crowd one another for light and 
breathing room, but so long as they are standing (unless they 
are young green pines) a man may walk at ease among them. 
It is when fire and wind have swept through them and left 
them in chaotic tangles upon the ground that the trouble 
begins. Then it is that the elk hunter has to rival the squirrel 
or Blondin, tacking from point to point along the pine logs, 
now straining every muscle to get a grip on the slippery trunk 
of a pine which offers a bridge uphill across the prone carcases 
of its fellows, now manfully suppressing an oath as his feet slip 
and he sits down inadvertently upon the ‘business end’ of a 
~ rampike. 
For an hour, perhaps, or two, there is little or no change in 
your work. Your road may lie through dense green timber 
at one moment, through half-lit mossy glades at another, and 
the next through hollows full of burnt timber, amongst which 
the elk tracks are thick, and the pink fire-flower blooms ; but it 
is always uphill work, and almost always in places where still 
hunting is impossible. Now and again there is something to 
cheer you up and encourage you to make fresh exertions. 
Now it is a great track like a deer’s, but larger and blunter ; 
how it is the stem of a young quaking asp with its bark hanging 
©  imribbons, which makes your heart beat quicker ; or perhaps 
"it is only the freshly nibbled buds of a young elder bush. 
_ There is no doubt that there are elk about, and a good 
’ many of them, and as you stretch in vain to reach the scars 
_ upon the quaking asp, you realise that there are big bulls 
. ' among them ; but what is the use of the biggest bull if you 
| | are never to see him within two hundred yards? Once to-day 
