22 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Jan. 10, 1903. 
— ^ — 
An Elk Hunt in the Tumbled Lands 
BY THE PARSON. 
Anyone looking on the map for the Tumbled Lands 
would fail to find where they are located, as the name 
died with the breaking up of the first hunter's camp 
ever pitched there. They are in Custer County, Ne- 
braska, and the picture here drawn is as they were 
seen many years after the events described took place, 
on a cold gloomy evening, requiring a fire to bring 
anything like a pleasant memory out of the past, But 
as the blaze freshens and roars merrily up the chimney 
and its genial warmth spreads we begin to see things 
that are colored by the comfortable feeling we enjoy. 
The shadows of the grate bars turn to the shadows of 
tall cedars, and the walls of the room turn to the cut 
bank walls of a deep canyon. The fire is of red cedar 
logs piled high and keep up a merry popping and 
snapping._ It is built in a little pocket made by a 
washout in one of the walls of the can>ion. and is sur- 
rounded and overhung by green cedar boughs and 
trees. 
Game had become scarce in the vicinity of the main 
camp with so many coming and going. A week be- 
fore a settler had come from below after a load of 
meat and we had advised him to go far back into the 
Tumbled Lands whither most of the game had retreated. 
The Tumbled Lands were the high hills where all the 
creeks and canyons running into the middle Loup 
River headed. We called it Tumbled Lands because 
all the hills looked as if they had tumbled into their 
present position and would tumble some more on the 
slightest provocation. There was no water in the 
Tumbled Lands, and so we helped the settler cut ice 
from the river and load his wagon with the cakes that 
his temporary camp might be supplied with water. 
When he got discouraged and went home he had told 
us there was one cake of ice left. On the strength of 
this Will and I had decided on a camp trip to the 
Tumbled Lands. We had carried the cake of ice a 
mile or two further into rougher hills and deeper can- 
yons ^and pitched our camp in the most secluded and 
sheltered spot we could find. Our quest was elk and 
the hills were full of them, and as we sat in the warm 
glow of the fire with our backs against a log we felt 
deeply complacent within ourselves, for we had read 
and talked of hunting adventures long years before we 
had ever dreamed of anything like this. 
By daybreak we were climbing the walls, thrilled by. 
the vigor of health and bright anticipations. From the 
top of the wall we looked on a tumbled and jumbled 
mass indeed. Cut bank canyons showed all about zig- 
zagging this way and that, and intersecting each other. 
Here and there the evergreen top of a cedar showed a 
few feet or a few inches aboA'e the tops of the walls. 
Here and there cedars clung up and down the face of 
the walls wherever they could gain a foothold. Some 
of these trees grew to be two or three feet in diame- 
ter before the wash of time loosened them and sent 
them down. Along these walls where no grass grew 
they were safe from destruction by prairie fire. Most 
of the canyons had abrupt endings, or beginnings 
rather, dropping away fifty to a hundred feet from the 
first break in the rod above. Around these abrupt be- 
ginnings usually grew a cluster of cedars clinging to 
any inequality in the walls, while at the bottow would 
be a great mass of dead and fallen timber that had 
been dislodged from the walls from lime to time. The 
bottoms of the canyons were usually wide and smooth, 
and here and there plum thickets would start and get 
quite a growth before deadened by the fire. Solitary 
elms, too, were a feature, having escaped until they 
gained such strength as to defy the heat made by the 
burning of thin and scattered bunch grass. Some of 
these elms were giants in girth and spread of branch. 
Over such a country we were to hunt for the next two 
days, that being the time we calculated our ice and pro- 
visions would last. We were at high tension when we 
started out, for everywhere were signs of elk and deer. 
When we reached the top of the main divide we sep- 
arated, Will following it in one direction and I going 
in the opposite. From the top of this main divide we 
could look down on to a lower country on either hand 
and get a far better idea of the tumbled condition of 
things. Rows of canyons and gullies headed on either 
side of it, and we could look down into all sorts of 
pockets and chasms. Slowly I worked on, carefully 
scanning each hillside ravine, stopping often to more 
closely examine suspicious looking objects. 
Twice I saw moving objects in the distance which I 
knew to be elk or deer, but too far away for my pur- 
pose. Once a black-tail buck broke cover only a few 
hundred yards away and crossed the divide in front of 
me, but I did not want to take chances of alarming 
possible other game on an uncertain shot. At last I 
smelled elk. The wind came from the direction of a 
canyon which headed just below and I climbed down 
into it to examine. There were fresh elk signs all 
about, but I saw nothing of the elk and went back to 
the crest of the main divide. There I selected a good 
point for observation and sat down and kept a close 
watch all about for something to move. Soon my eye 
fell upon what at first seemed a cluster of dead scrub 
laushes with the bark ofT the smaller branches, leaving 
them white-tipped. Under closer inspection some of 
them took on the shape of elk horns. The body of an 
elk gets quite white in winter and very closely re- 
sembles dead buflfalo grass in color. My attention 
once fixed, however, they all came out plain, and there 
lay six bull elk on a little knoll in open view. 
They were closely bunched and each carried a splen- 
did pair of antlers, making a very fair imitation of a 
thicket of dead scrub. I laid out my course from 
where T sat, marking each ravine or divide I should 
follow by tree or cut bank, and finally the mouth of a 
ravine up which I should go to a certain peculiarly 
marked knoll that was just opposite the elk. From the 
top of this knoU I would be in easy range. I could 
walk up behind it and creeping to the crest be in per- 
fect position. Just below me was the head of a small 
canyon into .which I must drop without being seen. I 
was in plain sight, but trusting to distance for a screen 
I worked my way down feet first and was soon con- 
cealed in the shadow of the canyon. 
In the bottom I again smelled elk and was alarmed 
lest a bunch be started and they in turn start the ob- 
jective bulls. Elk smeH like sheep, and the bed ground 
of a bunch of them smells like an old sheep yard for 
hours after they are gone. I have smelled elk several 
time in a day's hunt without seeing a single animal, 
and that, too, in a country where 1 should be sure to 
see them at some point in their flight if any had been 
started. 
Once in the canyon the stalk was easy, as all I had 
to do was to carefully note the land marks and turn in 
at the right side draw. Climbing the knoll I had 
marked and creeping to the top, I looked over, keep- 
ing as much of a screen of grass between my face and 
the game as possible. And, indeed, there was some- 
thing to see. The six patriarchs lay in close bunch 
200 feet away. They were all old and each head held 
aloft a splendid set of horns. They did not seem 
heavy bodied animals, for the immense horns they car- 
ried made the animals seem small in the shadow be- 
neath. 
Few people realize, I think, how small an animal an 
elk is compared to the size of his head gear. When 
an elk is running, standing or lying down, with the 
head held naturally, the main beam of the horn cants 
back at an angle of about 45 degrees. Take a six-year- 
old bull with an ordinary growth of horns and drop a 
line from the point of the main beam and it will very 
nearly reach the middle of the spine. Bend the head 
back until the beams of the horn lie parallel with the 
spine and the point of the main beam will touch 
the point of the hip. Imagine a rather wiz- 
ened old bull with an abnormal growth of horns and 
you have an idea of the nearest of the six. Back this 
up with five other heads about equally well crowned; 
six points to the beam (the natural number) or 72 
points in all, and all polished and gleaming white, and 
you see what I saw as I lay there shivering with ex- 
citement. Beneath this tangle of horns lay the elk. 
First was the smaller bull with the larger horns lying 
broadside to, and partly obstructing the view to the 
others. Head, neck and withers dark with dark line 
running down the spine and partly down the sides; 
lower side and flank, dusty white. Such was the target 
I had to aim at. The rest of the bunch of same con- 
tour, but of much darker shade. The . old fellow 
semed to be looking straight at me as I shoved the 
needle gun cautiously forward to take aim, yet he made 
not the slightest move. My nerves were in consider- 
able of a tremor, yet as I lay with my arms on the 
ground I could hold the gun as in a vise. Locating 
the position of the heart I drew as fine a bead as was 
possible with a gun so coarsely sighted and pulled the 
heavy trigger steadily. At the report the elk bounded 
to their feet and stood facing me. I had aimed too 
low and only broken the bull's leg at the bottom of the 
brisket. The heart lies but little above the brisket and 
the shot was not so very wild. I grabbed for a cart- 
ridge, and in trying to force it into the gun fumbled 
it. I had ample time to load and shoot again, but be- 
fore I discovered that I was trying to force my jack 
knife into the gun the elk wheeled and were off, the one 
with the broken leg leading the band on three legs. 
There was a deep canyon lying in such shape as to 
force the elk to curve to the left, as the game trails 
seldom cross the deeper canyons, but usually parallel 
them, sometimes on the divides and sometimes along 
the walls or in the bottom. I could see about where 
the elk would come out in rounding the head of the 
canyon and took a straight course for the place at a 
lively run. 
Elk, if not too closely pursued, will stop to look 
back from the top of every rise for the first mile or two 
after being alarmed. These short halts allowed me to 
gain, and when they rounded the head of the canyon and 
stopped to look back, I was ready, and put in another 
shot. The gray bull flinched, but still kept with the band 
on up the divide at a full canter. I now commenced 
shooting as fast as I could load, and finally a bullet 
that went over struck in the game trail ahead and 
threw up a great puff of dry dirt. This turned them, 
and again I thought I might cut them off by running 
down a side divide and waiting for them to cross a 
certain hill. I was now a trifle short of wind, though, 
after my long run, and the elk stopped on the top of 
the hill, when I was still some five or six hundred yards 
away. Desperate at the prospect of seeing that head 
fade out in the distance, I stretched on the grass for 
a last random shot. I aimed upward at what seemed 
to be the proper slant for the distance (it might have 
been twenty or it might have been forty feet) as near 
as I could hold in line over the wounded elk's shoulder, 
and launched my guess. When a rifle begins to get foul 
the hard cakes that collect in the barrel scratches the 
bullet and makes it rough, which in turn increases the 
hiss of it into its flight. My gun was foul enough, so 
that I could hear the bullet hiss during its entire flight. 
A bullet fired from a clean rifle makes very little noise as 
it passes through space. There was a long but not over 
anxious wait; I did not expect anything from the shot, 
as the bullet hissed across the intervening space, and 
then a sudden commotion among the elk. 
The gray bull's feet flew into the air, and he seemed 
to land square on his back and then roll over on one 
side, after which he never made a move. The rest 
started down the ridge, and soon settled into a long 
sweeping trot, and as long as I could see them they 
were still going. When elk settle into a trot, it is use- 
less to follow them. As long as the Pawnee Indian 
could keep a bunch of elk in a canter they had hopes, 
but let them get settled into a trot, and hope faded, as 
the average pony could do nothing with them. 
At first I could find only one bullet hole in the elk, 
but on taking out the heart, I found it shot square 
through the center. Falling to work to dress the game, 
I was surprised by Will before I had finished. He had 
heard the shooting, ?i,od turned that way. We dressed 
out the elk, and there beloff no tree handy, we piled it 
up where it fell. It was still early in the afternoon, and 
as our fflis.sion was accomplished, we decided on re- 
turning to the main camp. We took only such of the 
meat as we could conveniently carry, burning powder 
round the balance and hanging a jacket on it as a pri7' 
tection against wolves. Before we got to camp we met 
a party of cowboys with a wagon. They belonged to a 
ranch a hundred miles to the southwest of us. They were 
out hunting and looking up new ranges for cattle. It 
was a hard matter to get a wagon over that country, 
and we directed them to a rib divide they could follow 
and have a smooth trail to the main spine beyond 
which they could follow another rib down to the valley 
of the next stream. Going up, once on a rib divide, 
one is .sure of a smooth road to the main spine. Going 
down, it is different, as one is likely to follow a short 
rib into a split canyon and have to turn back. There 
v^as no water they could possibly reach in that direc- 
tion that night, and we gave them directions for finding 
the balance of our cake of ice. 
Well! They found and used it, camping there for the 
night, as we learned later. They also found our elk, 
which they took, meat, hide and head, not even refusing 
the jacket. This we learned after it was altogether too 
late to do any good. 
Among the few acquaintances I had in that country 
I became quite famous as a hunter, and my feat of 
shooting an elk through the heart at a quarter of a 
mile was often told. Not that I ever tried to make it 
appear other than what it was, but because man needs 
only a slender thread on which to hang the most won- 
derful tales. I suppose, though, that my reputation was 
as well founded as that of a great many more celebrated 
hunters. The desire to tell of wonderful things, and 
impossibility of disproving them, accounts for nine- 
tentlis of the wonderful deeds of history. 
On the Old National Pike. 
Editor Forest and StrMm: 
My hunting grounds, when a boy, had extended over 
parts of Allegheny, Butler, and Armstrong counties, 
with once in a while a side trip up to Brownsville on 
the Monongahela River, whenever I could get the cap- 
tain of a coal towboat to carry me. 
On one of my trips up here I met a party of men 
and boys who were going out to the mountains of 
Summerset County to hunt turkey; and two of the 
boat captain's boys going with them, their father 
got me taken also to keep his boys from being hurt, 
he said, though I was only a boy myself. We had put 
in two weeks here then and I was anxious to see that 
country again. I left this part of the country, though, 
m 1861, going out with the Volunteers, and from them 
I went to the Regulars, and for the next twenty-five 
years I did all my hunting in the West, with a side 
trip of fourteen months to the South Pacific. Here 
we hunted whales; I would have said fished for them, 
only I don't want any professor to rise to a point of 
order and tell me that a whale is not a fish; I have 
been told that they are not fish many moons ago, and 
since then have found out that I had been correctly 
informed. 
Most of my trips when a boy were made on foot; I 
could make them on a wheel now, and do at times, but 
we had no wheels then that were not on wagons, and 
I would use the wagon when I could persuade some 
farmer to let me ride with him after I had carefully 
deposited "that thar gun" in a safe place on the bot- 
tom of the wagon, or I might tell him that the gun 
was not loaded, then spring my ramrod to show him 
that I was not lying about it. 
I had an old farmer tell me once that "he would 
about as soon meet the devil as meet a boy with a 
shotgun; he was always either shooting himself or 
someone else." 
In the summer of 1885 I was turned out of the army, 
not exactly branded with an I. C, "inspected, con- 
demned," as the horses and mules are, but was let go 
for the same reason that they are got rid of; we were 
both too old. Had I been able to hang on aoout three 
years longer I might have been retired on half pay; 
they do that with us now if we can get the thirty years 
in, but at that time only an offlcer could get retired. 
They only condemned "the men." 
After getting home I made several trips out through 
the country with a borrowed gun, as soon as it had 
got late enough in the season to use one and not get 
landed in jail for using it. I knew' by this time, of 
course, that I could not shoot rabbits, quail, or pigeons, 
there were none of them here to shoot now, though 
when a boy I had shot lots of wild pigeons here, but 
now I could not shoot anything but crows or snakes 
all the year round and keep out of the game warden's 
clutches, if he caught me. 
After making a trip up through Butler County, I next 
planned one out through Summerset County, meaning 
to extend it across the next county, Bedford, if the 
snow did not stop me. 
I would need a gun of my own now; these men I 
had been borrowing from ' might want theirs them- 
selves; I had sold my guns when leaving the army; I 
had a .45-90 Marlin and a 12-gauge Parker, but the 
state of my finances now would not allow me to get 
many Parkers, not new ones, at least, so I had to look 
around for a second-hand one. There was a Hebrew 
gentleman, not a Jew — there is a distinction and a dif- 
ference between the two — who had a store in Pittsburg, 
a kind of an auction establishment. He dealt in jew- 
elry, musical instruments and guns; all second-hand 
ones. He had about one specimen of every gun made. 
Going into his place I took down a Fox gun, I had 
carried one of them for years and knew them; then, 
after I had seen that the gun was all right, both in- 
side and out, I asked "How much?" "Let us say $5 
for it," he told me. 
I got the $5 out before he had time to say anything 
else; then getting my shells from him I left, taking a 
train now for Connellsville, Fayette County, and from 
there took the railroad cross ties south to Union- 
town, it is only a. few miles away. 
