256 
FRANK FORESTER’S FIELD SPORTS. 
scribed, both in singling individual Red Deer out of herds, and 
in sticking to the slot of wounded Harts, through the midst of 
whole companies of Hinds, and bringing them to bay uner¬ 
ringly, even when they have taken flight down the shallow beds 
of mountain torrents, can doubt their utility both in separating 
marked animals from the droves or gangs, and in preventing 
that very frequent, and, to the humane hunter, painful catas¬ 
trophe, of wounded brutes going off to die alone in untended 
and protracted agony. 
As it is at present, the Bison and the Elk are attacked in two 
modes only—either by stalking them on foot with the rifle, which 
must be an exceedingly animating and exciting, as well as a 
very difficult and laborious task, the objects of pursuit being in 
full view of the hunter all the time, and his approaches being 
necessarily made over the bare and nearly level surface of the 
prairie, with nothing to conceal his stealthy advance, but the 
scanty shelter of the coarse grasses, unless he be so fortunate as 
to find the channel of some water-course or ravine, down which 
he may wind upon his watchful quarry. 
His advances must, of course, be made up wind, as the scent 
of both these creatures is inexpressibly acute, as is also their 
sense of hearing; and, at the least alarm, they are off like the 
winds of heaven, no man knoweth whither. 
This is the only species of stalking practised on this continent, 
which bears any sort of analogy to Red Deer stalking in the 
Highlands of Scotland, and this closely resembles it in all 
essentials,—though, in one respect, it is easier, and, in another, 
more difficult and arduous than the still sport of the Gael. 
In the first place, horses can be used by the stalker of the 
American Elk or Bison, until the animal is discovered on the far 
horizon, by aid of the optic glass, or the nearly as telescopic eye 
of the Western hunter. Secondly, the ground being generally 
level, or broken only by long, wave-like swells and ridges, the 
toil is not comparable to that of climbing the crags and breast¬ 
ing the heathery mountains of the Caledonian deer-forests, 
Thirdly, the stalker is not baffled by those singular swirls, eddies, 
