SPORT AND TRAVEL 181 



ing a rival. The noise they make, I am told, can be 

 heard at a great distance, especially at night or early in 

 the morning, but the quality of the sound is altogether 

 different from the roaring or bellowing of the 

 European red deer during the love season, and is 

 always spoken of as whistling or bugling. When very 

 much the victim of the tender passion, the wapiti 

 often seems to lose all sense of fear, and becomes, in 

 the expressive language of the Western frontiersmen, 

 "clean crazy." In this condition an amorous bull will 

 sometimes not only not run away from a suspicious 

 object or sound, but come towards it, challenging as 

 he advances. 



My companion, W. M., when out with Graham 

 one day towards the end of September, heard a bull 

 whistling late in the afternoon, and had approached 

 within a short distance of it though he could 

 not see it, as it was hidden behind a piece of rising 

 ground when he made a slight noise by displac- 

 ing a stone. The wapiti evidently heard the sound 

 and at once advanced towards it, the tops of his 

 horns soon appearing above the crest of the rise. My 

 friend then sat down, holding his rifle at his shoulder 

 in readiness for a shot. Gradually the great stag's 

 horns came more and more fully into view, then its 

 finely modelled head appeared, and lastly the great 

 swollen neck, looking larger than it actually was from 

 the length of its bristling coat of dark-brown hair. 

 As he came forwards the angry animal constantly 



