A HUNTER'S CAMP-FIRES 



paratively small head of antlers we continued on down into 

 the valley. 



Following the sounds made by another band of elk in travel- 

 ling through the timber, we suddenly came upon these latter 

 in a small meadow at a distance of forty yards. Evidently 

 the large bull of this band had been recently killed, as the leader 

 of these fifteen or twenty cow elk was merely a two-year-old 

 bull. The sun was now quite high, and we struck out for the 

 opposite slopes of the valley, where we had heard several bulls 

 challenging during the morning. We forded the cold, swift 

 waters of the creek and travelled along a dusty game-trail 

 which led diagonally up the opposite slope. We soon dis- 

 covered six cows, which had evidently scented us, climbing 

 the mountain-side ahead, and we sat down on a log to watch 

 them with the tield-glasses. We were so intent on gazing at 

 these that it was not until they had got three hundred yards 

 distant that we discovered a large, light-colored bull with heavy, 

 wide-spreading antlers slowly climbing in their wake. The first 

 three shots I fired were misses, owing to the fact that I had only 

 indistinct glimpses of the elk as it passed through the timber, 

 but at the fourth report it stumbled to its knees. Then it 

 staggered to its feet and exposed the other side, whereupon 

 I fired again, causing it to plunge out of sight in a dry gully. 

 Laboriously climbing up the bed of the ravine, we were almost 

 knocked down by the wounded animal as it struggled down 

 the mountain with one shoulder smashed and the other fore-leg 

 cut off about the knee. I followed it several hundred yards 

 down into the valley, until I had a chance to finish it with a 

 shot through the neck. This bull had a larger body and better 

 set of antlers than the first one secured. The peculiar white 

 appearance of this elk was due to a thick coating of white 

 alkali mud, plastered on while the animal was rolling in a lick 

 which we discovered near the scene of its death, and in which 

 it had evidently been disturbed by our approach. The re- 



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