HOIV THE ELK IS HUNTED 



331 



guns are placed, ready to destroy the passing 

 animal when he comes in contact with a cord/' 

 These expedients are especially destructive of 

 elk in regions like Siberia where the animals make 

 semi-annual migrations, the seasons and the 

 direction of their journeying being well known to 

 the natives. Saltlicks, with blinds from which 

 the professional hunter can kill the visiting game, 

 are also employed. 



Crust hunting, as in America in the time of the 

 Indians, and with the assistance of dogs, is still 

 common east and west of the Ural Mountains. 

 To save gunpowder the slaughter is accomplished 

 in some cases by the use of a knife attached to the 

 end of a ski, the ski thus serving as a spear. In 

 such cases females, heavy with young, are shown 

 no special consideration. Hundreds of elk have 

 been thus slaughtered in a single winter in certain 

 districts of Russia — thousands in the various elk 

 regions of the broad empire. Martenson tells of a 

 landowner in eastern Russia who by crust hunting 

 shot sixty-four elk in three winters, questions of 

 age and sex being alike ignored.'^ 



A writer in Tobolsk, western Siberia, quoted by 

 Kapherr, says that poachers in that section hunt 



^'f Ibid., pp. 130-131; Blasius, ubi supra, p. 276. 

 Ubi supra, p. 133. 



