ELK HUNTING 
without any regard to the ground immediately in front, and on looking 
over his shoulder an interesting object right ahead caught my eye. I could 
not make out exactly what it was; but, on a sign from me, we slowly sank 
to the earth together, and in another moment a fine bull elk, the first I had 
seen, was disclosed to our view. The great beast was about 400 yards away, 
standing below a patch of snow, right in the open, where he was feeding 
quietly on ferns. As I put the glass on him for a minute, I saw him draw 
in great mouthfuls with his prehensile upper lip, and so absorbed was he 
in this business that, to my surprise, he never raised his head and looked 
about as he chewed, as other deer would have done, but just kept his nose 
on the ground, grubbing away as if there was nothing else in the world 
worth thinking about. This foreboded an easy victory, so, telling Kristian to 
lie perfectly still, I scrambled forward about twenty yards down hill, keeping 
my eye on the elk meanwhile. Here I got cover and lost no time in shorten- 
ing the distance between myself and the quarry, a good wind favouring 
my advance. On looking up again over a slight rise which I had previously 
marked, I saw the elk standing in exactly the same position as before. 
Though still about 200 yards away, he looked such a huge beast that I 
thought he was quite near enough; so I at once lay down, and fired. He 
winced perceptibly to the shot, but only raised his head, and I immediately 
fired again — this time with good effect, for he staggered down the hill 
for a few yards, bleeding from the mouth. For a moment he seemed to 
recover: after trotting slowly down the hill towards me into a little cup 
of the ground he began to ascend a gentle rise; and then, turning off at 
some twenty yards distant offered a broadside which enabled me to give him 
a shot through the heart. Then all was soon over; a few convulsive plunges, 
and he subsided slowly to the ground, breathing his last as I rushed up. 
What a prize! I had never before slain so large a beast. With a little Mann- 
licher bullet, too! A grand climax to the excitement of this, my first, chase 
after elk. 
That I had nearly made a mess of the first shot was clear enough, for 
instead of his shoulder I had hit him in the spine without smashing it, 
but the second shot was a fatal one, for the beast must have soon given 
in even if the third had not been fired. 
On closer inspection the bull proved to be a veritable patriarch — a very 
rare thing to secure in Norway or any other country where deer are con- 
stantly pursued by men and beasts bent on their destruction. He was 
evidently “ going back,” for his head was an extremely poor one; he had, 
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