The Wapiti or Round-homed Elk 155 



ally when thus merely following the trail I failed 

 to come up with them. On two different 

 occasions I followed and came up to bands, 

 attracted by their scent. Wapiti have a strong, 

 and, on the whole, pleasing scent, like that of 

 Alderney cattle ; although in old bulls it becomes 

 offensively strong. This scent is very penetrat- 

 ing. I once smelt a herd which was lying quite 

 still taking its noonday siesta, certainly half a 

 mile to the windward of me ; and creeping up 

 I shot a good bull as he lay. On another occa- 

 sion, while working through the tangled trees and 

 underbrush at the bottom of a little winding val- 

 ley, I suddenly smelt wapiti ahead, and without 

 paying any further attention to the search for 

 tracks, I hunted cautiously up the valley, and 

 when it forked was able to decide by the smell 

 alone which way the wapiti had gone. He was 

 going up wind ahead of me, and his ground-cover- 

 ing walk kept me at a trot in order to overtake 

 him. Finally I saw him, before he saw me, 

 and then, by making a run to one side, got a 

 shot at him when he broke cover, and dropped 

 him. 



It is exciting to creep up to a calling wapiti. 

 If it is a solitary bull he is apt to be travelling, 

 seeking the cows, or on the lookout for some 

 rival of weaker thews. Under such circumstances, 

 only hard running will enable the hunter to over- 



