ELK AND ANTELOPE HUNTING IN WYOMING 



state whether Charlie or I was the more surprised to see the 

 buck collapse at the second shot and roll forty yards down 

 the slope, where it lodged in a clump of sage-brush. It 

 proved to have quite a fine head, and had been killed in- 

 stantly by the bullet severing the spine in the region of the 

 withers. 



On awakening the next morning we discovered that a change 

 in the wind had banked the dense smoke from surrounding 

 forest fires to such extent in the valley that it was difficult to 

 breathe and impossible to see fifty yards. To an accompani- 

 ment of coughing and sneezing from man and beast we hurriedly 

 packed the horses, and three hours later topped the next range 

 of hills, leaving all traces of the fire behind. All that morning 

 we travelled along dusty game-trails through a beautiful rolling 

 country, sighting bands of antelope in the distance several 

 times and jumping three mule-deer out of a small gulch. One 

 of these was a large buck with a fine head of antlers which 

 passed out of sight before I got to my rifle. During the after- 

 noon we climbed steadily upward through forests of spruce, and 

 camped at dark in a picturesque yellow meadow filling the crater 

 of a long extinct volcano. That night coyotes serenaded our 

 camp, and it seemed that the strains of their weird chorus had 

 just died away when I was aw^akened by the ambitious Charlie 

 and persuaded to pull on my boots and crawl out into the ap- 

 proaching daylight. Between mouthfuls of cold coffee he. ex- 

 plained that elk were moving around us in all directions, but 

 even an occasional bugle of a distant bull failed to lend interest 

 to the occasion for me, as with empty stomachs we struck out 

 through the frosty grass to the rim of the crater. It was now 

 daylight, and w^e discovered a large band in the timber that 

 covered the slopes of the crater; but so rapidly were these 

 animals feeding along the mountain-side that it was an hour 

 before we overtook them. We were in the midst of the elk 

 before we realized it, but finding that the bull carried a com- 



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