PRAIRIE SPORTS. 
253 
BISON AND ELK HUNTING. 
NCE ranging over every part of 
the United States, from the Hud¬ 
son River and Lake Champlain, 
westward, to the Pacific Ocean— 
unless it were in a few forest dis¬ 
tricts on the Atlantic seaboard— 
both of these noble quadrupeds are 
now confined to narrow limits, 
gradually narrowing more, in the 
Far West;—neither of them being found in any numbers east¬ 
ward of the Mississippi, unless it be true, which I doubt, that a 
few Elk still exist among the forests of North-western Penn¬ 
sylvania. 
The northern limits of both these animals appear to be nearly 
identical; neither of them, it would seem, having ever existed 
to the eastward, north of the Gre^t Lakes, though west of 
Lake Winnipeg they have both been killed, so far north as the 
50th degree. Southward, they extend over all the prairie lands, 
so far as Texas,—but into the wooded country and canebrakes 
of the South-western States they do not often intrude them¬ 
selves. 
An Elk of great magnitude was, however, killed a few years 
since in Louisiana, between Roundway Bayou and the river, by 
a party of gentlemen, one of whom is a particular friend of my 
own, the dimensions of which are so enormous as to deserve 
particular mention. 
