268 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



wapiti will fight as, under like circumstances, a blacktail 

 or whitetail will fight, and equally, of course, he is then 

 far more dangerous than his smaller kinsfolk; but he is 

 not nearly so apt to charge as a bull moose. I have never 

 known but two authentic instances of their thus charg- 

 ing. One happened to a hunter named Bennett, on the 

 Little Missouri ; the other to a gentleman I met, a doctor, 

 in Meeker, Colorado. The doctor had wounded his 

 wapiti, and as it was in the late fall, followed him easily 

 in the snow. Finally he came upon the wapiti standing 

 where the snow was very deep at the bottom of a small 

 valley, and on his approach the wapiti deliberately 

 started to break his way through the snow toward him, 

 and had almost reached him when he was killed. But 

 for every one such instance of a wapiti's charging there 

 are a hundred in which a bull moose has charged. Sena- 

 tor Redfield Proctor was charged most resolutely by a 

 mortally hurt bull moose which fell in the death throes 

 just before reaching him; and I could cite case after 

 case of the kind. 



The wapiti's natural gaits are a walk and a trot. It 

 walks very fast indeed, especially if travelling to reach 

 some given point. More than once I have sought to over- 

 take a travelling bull, and have found myself absolutely 

 unable to do so, although it never broke its walk. Of 

 course, if I had not been obliged to pay any heed to cover 

 or wind, I could have run up on it; but the necessity 

 for paying heed to both handicapped me so that I was 

 actually unable to come up to the quarry as it swung 

 steadily on through woodland and open, over rough 



