PRESENT RANGE OF THE WAPITI. 173 



time to hunt them, either for flesh or hides or sport. Before the heavy- 

 snows come they will be found high up, even above timber line, escap- 

 ing the flies, whence they descend in the night to the plains by regu- 

 lar trails, easy to follow upon horseback. The elk's favorite gait is a 

 rapid trot, but when he runs it is with a freedom of step more like that 

 of a horse than the bumping jump of the mule-deer or the long leaps 

 of the antelope. The bull elks, stooping their necks and laying their 

 long horns back on their withers, will gallop through thick woods with- 

 out impediment ; but sometimes, when their horns are in the velvet, 

 accidents happen by which they are permanently distorted, occasionally 

 to such an extent as to prevent the animal getting his nose to the ground, 

 and so causing his partial or utter starvation. 



Later in the autumn they wander out upon the plains more gener- 

 ally or browse in the gulches, where they are shielded from sight. Very 

 restless animals, they are constantly moving from one feeding-ground to 

 another. 



If they have not been hunted, it is not difficult to get within rifle- 

 range, for after starting to run away they will very likely stop at the 

 first ridge aud gaze back. 



The surest place to shoot them is behind the shoulder or through the 

 neck ; but their hold on life is strong, and remarkable stories are told of 

 the distance they have travelled after being shot through the vitals, and 

 of the amount of fighting they are able to keep up until the last breath 

 has left their lungs. 



Nobler game does not exist, and their clarion call is still to be heard 

 through all the northern Eocky Mountains and the neighboring parts of. 

 British America. I saw hundreds on the plains along the Sweetwater 

 River, Wyoming, in 1877, and have heard since of bands containing 

 several hundreds being met with near the Wind River Range. But in 

 Colorado, Utah, and California they have been driven back by civiliza- 

 tion until they are wholly absent or very scarce where, twenty years ago, 

 immense herds were to be found. 



Indeed, their present range, say from Colorado to Great Slave Lake, 

 and from Nebraska to the Sierra Nevada, is very small compared with 

 the wide area over which they were to be found when Europeans first 

 began to explore this continent ; for it is well known that, within the 

 historic period, elks roamed over the whole northern United States, 

 even to the St. Lawrence River, and southward through the Allegha- 

 nies to North Carolina, wandering down all the valleys on the Atlantic 

 slope and penetrating the mountainous regions south of the Ohio River. 



