American Big Game in its Haunts 



cows and a score of yearlings, had been killed by 

 cougars. In the Park the cougar is at present their 

 only animal foe. The cougars were preying on 

 nothing but elk in the Yellowstone Valley, and 

 kept hanging about the neighborhood of the big 

 bands. Evidently they usually selected some out- 

 lying yearling, stalked it as it lay or as it fed, and 

 seized it by the head and throat. The bull which 

 they killed was in a little open valley by himself, 

 many miles from any other elk. The cougar which 

 killed it, judging from its tracks, was a very large 

 male. As the elk were evidently rather too numer- 

 ous for the feed, I do not think the cougars were 

 doing any damage. 



Coyotes are plentiful, but the elk evidently have 

 no dread of them. One day I crawled up to within 

 fifty yards of a band of elk lying down. A coyote 

 was walking about among them, and beyond an 

 occasional look they paid no heed to him. He did 

 not venture to go within fifteen or twenty paces of 

 any one of them. In fact, except the cougar, I saw 

 but one living thing attempt to molest the elk. 

 This was a golden eagle. We saw several of these 

 great birds. On one occasion we had ridden out to 

 the foot of a great sloping mountain side, dotted 

 over with bands and strings of elk amounting in 

 the aggregate probably to a thousand head. Most 



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