WAPITTI ANTLERS. 105 
tween the claimants for the favor of the fair ones ; and these 
battles royal are fought with such vim and determination 
that they not unfrequently result in the death of one or 
both of the belligerents. Again, the antlers of the contest- 
ants occasionally get locked together, so that the owners 
find it impossible to disengage themselves, when death 
overtakes them in the appalling form of starvation. I was 
once shown two grand heads of Wapitti horns at Pembena, 
which had been picked up on a tributary of the Upper 
Missouri, that had become so interlaced that no effort could 
disengage them in their entirety. 
The fawns are produced late in spring, and at two years 
of age the young bucks exhibit knobs, which in six years 
become full heads; however, with further years the horns 
continue to spread aud increase in weight, the very old 
males exhibiting at the top fork a very obvious palmation. 
Mr. Hays, a New York animal artist of great repute, 
showed me a pair of Wapitti antlers which he had picked 
up in a valley of the Rocky Mountains; they were larger 
than any I had previously seen, although I have killed a 
very great number of specimens. If memory serves me 
correctly, they possessed fifteen points, and weighed fifty- 
two pounds. What a splendid stag their owner must have 
been! And the trouble and expense of a voyage across the 
Atlantic, with the additional fatigue of the land journey to 
the hunting-grounds of the red men, would not be thrown 
away if the sportsman was certain to be rewarded by the 
capture of such a quarry. 
