204 SPORT AND TRAVEL 



relate, only a few inches were broken off the end of 

 one of his antlers. Otherwise they were uninjured. 

 His body, however, had been terribly bruised, his 

 hind-quarters having scarcely any hair left on them. 

 He had evidently gone down the gully hind end first, 

 and in this way that part of his carcass had received 

 all the heavy bumps, and his horns had only dragged 

 behind. If he had gone down head first, nothing 

 could have saved his horns from being smashed to 

 pieces. Though we searched carefully, we could not 

 find the piece of horn that had been broken off. But 

 for this accident he would have been a very pretty 

 fourteen-pointer of moderate size. I took the skin off 

 his head and neck there and then, and carried it back 

 to camp, with my rifle it made a load of thirty 

 pounds, Graham shouldering the skull and horns, 

 from which we had cut as much meat as possible. 



On the following day I again hunted high up on 

 the mountains just on timber line, where the snow 

 still lay about a foot deep, but did not come across 

 any fresh tracks of wapiti or deer. In the after- 

 noon, however, whilst returning to camp, we just 

 caught a glimpse of a mule deer buck as he disap- 

 peared round a boulder of rock on the slope of a 

 wild ravine, along the top of which we were walk- 

 ing. Although the sides of this ravine were for the 

 most part covered with dense pine forest, there were 

 here and there open grass slopes and rocky places 

 devoid of both grass and trees. It was on one of 



