THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
range of the Rockies in Alberta, both to the north and south of the Banff. 
I have seen fine heads of these and they seem to be identical with the typical 
form. In all the above local races there are slightly cranial differences 
which can be seen when a series of skulls are examined. 
Jacques Cartier, ascending the St Lawrence in 1535, was probably the 
first white man to see the wapiti in the new world. He reports quantities 
of “ stags, deere, beares,” and as the wapiti has always been the “ stag ” 
of Canada it is likely that these animals were common at this date over 
the whole of the eastern forests of Canada. 
Nina de Guzman, who explored the west coast of Mexico in 1532 , mentions 
“ many deer of very large size ” on the banks of the Yaquimi and may 
also have seen them and antedated Cartier. In 1605 Captain George 
Way mouth reports “ Olkes or Loshes ” on his voyage to Virginia and this 
is the first mention of the word “ Oik ” or “ Elk,” the name by which the 
wapiti is generally known throughout North America. Champlain (in his 
map, 1632) and Father Lemoine (1653-4) seem to have found these deer 
in Ontario and around Montreal. Subsequent travellers both in Eastern 
Canada and Eastern America bear testimony to the abundance of these 
animals and the roads they made in their habitats. 
Mark Catesby thus writes in 1731 on the subject of “The Stag in America” : 
“ They usually accompany the Buffaloes, with whom they range in 
droves in the upper and remote parts of Carolina, where, as well as 
in our other colonies, they are improperly called Elks. The French 
in America call this beast the Canada Stag. In New England it is known 
as the Grey Moose, to distinguish it from the preceding beast, which 
they call the Black Moose.” 
In 1777 Erxleben described it as a species and in 1806 Dr Burton adopted 
the name of wapiti, which is the title given to it by the Shawnee Indians. 
The range of the wapiti to-day is but a very limited one, and that only 
maintained by preservation, which is far from being strict, compared with 
what it was in former times, when it was found in nearly all the temperate 
regions of North America, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, except in the 
great prairie basin. There is reason to believe that it existed in Nova 
Scotia, whilst the St Lawrence basin was a favourite resort. In this district 
it was said to have lingered until 1814. Western Pennsylvania seems to 
have been a great resort of wapiti at the end of the eighteenth century, for 
Dr Burton (1806) says, “ Within the memory of many persons now living 
the droves of elks which used to frequent the salines east of the River 
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