256 
WILD NORWAY. 
Small matters now replaced great. I had brought 
six shot-cartridges to provide dinner in case of failure 
with the bigger game, and with these I had the satis¬ 
faction of securing six of the intrusive grouse in three 
double shots. This was an abundant grouse-season, 
and so numerous were the birds that year, that I 
imagine a single gun, without a dog, might have bagged 
twenty to thirty brace in a full day. There were 
also a few hares, with snipe on the marshy bits, and 
a fair lot of capers, blackgame and hazel-grouse in the 
woods below. 
This fjeld being of level contour, mostly open birch 
wood and good going, was the easiest elk-ground I have 
yet hunted. Bertie, whom I sent for at once, secured 
a four-year-old bull his first day; and a third beast of 
fourteen spears fell within the week. 
On returning to Muru, I found that W. had also 
come up with an elk in the birch-thickets of Koeberg- 
Skov. Bengt and he had approached within sixty 
yards, the bull lying protected by a fallen pine, and as 
the beast slowly hoisted his ponderous body aloft, facing 
the hunters, W. placed a *450 bullet fair in the chest, 
and the stricken beast took the hill, climbing out for 
miles through steep forest and out on to the open fjeld 
above. The elk having swum a considerable tarn, much 
time was lost recovering the spoor beyond, and from 
this point onwards there was no longer any blood. 
After six hours’ tracking, the elk was overtaken, lying 
in a broken cleugh on the fjeld and scarce able to rise. 
He was not forty yards off, but unluckily W. had lagged 
behind, and ere he came up the chance was lost. “ Don’t 
fire—run ! ” said Bengt, but the wounded beast, stiff 
