ELK HUNTING 
and more noise. In these great silent aisles there is no help for it, creep 
along as cautiously as you may. When no wind is passing, the smallest 
sound is magnified a hundred times, and the meaning of a cracking twig 
is never misunderstood by that stupid -looking old head that is generally 
watching for you. In this instance the elk (a big cow and calf) waited till 
we were within two hundred yards and then trotted swiftly away. 
“ Skroemt,” said my hunter mournfully as we came on the deeply im- 
printed spoor; but I did not share his dejection, for though I should like 
to have seen the old lady, I should not have fired at her. 
During the next few days I became only too painfully familiar with 
this word “ Skroemt ” and all it meant. Every day we toiled up and down 
rugged slopes, bestrewn with fallen timber, clambered over heart-break- 
ing windfalls, searched the high fjelds, or slept on the hard floor of saeters 
when working the distant corries, but to no purpose. There was not a 
breath of wind, and that means as a rule failure. The game is “ Skroemt ” 
and off before you can raise your rifle. Three times did we succeed in 
getting within forty yards of bull elk, and yet not once was there a chance 
of seeing the retreating form; we heard the elk make his first spring, and 
then all was silence again. 
One day we almost achieved a shot. Working in the far ground — a splen- 
didly open country covered with belts of timber, with here and there big 
and small lakes — we had seen nothing but one small cow elk. In the after- 
noon, as we crossed the high ridge that separates the Namsen from one 
of its collateral branches, we suddenly came on some perfectly fresh spoor 
and sign of what on close examination proved to be that of a warrantable 
bull, though not a very big one. Bis mark was thoroughly interested, 
and after burying his nose in one of the fresh wet footprints he started 
off with ears sharply pricked, eyes burning, and tail at a businesslike cock. 
The trail led along the upper edge of the timber line, now just within the 
borders of the wood and now for half a mile right out in the open; and as 
the scent became stronger, we hoped every moment that we were in for 
a piece of good fortune and should find the bull wandering across some 
open stretch. After hunting about for fully an hour Bismark showed plainly 
that we were getting exceedingly near the game, and as we approached 
a clump of birch about seven feet high — the only spot within many hundreds 
of yards that could have held an elk — I saw the bushes shake. “Now,” 
thought I, “he must give me a shot,” but again this was denied me. The 
elk had chosen his lying -ground with extraordinary precaution — right on 
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