THE WAPITI, OR ROUND-HORNED ELK
The wapiti is the largest and stateliest deer in the world. A full-grown
bull is as big as a steer. The antlers are the most magnificent trophies
yielded by any game animal of America, save the giant Alaskan moose.
When full-grown they are normally of twelve tines; frequently the tines
are more numerous, but the increase in their number has no necessary
accompaniment in increase in the size of the antlers. The length,
massiveness, roughness, spread, and symmetry of the antlers must all be
taken into account in rating the value of a head. Antlers over fifty
inches in length are large; if over sixty, they are gigantic. Good heads
are getting steadily rarer under the persecution which has thinned out
the herds.
Next to the bison the wapiti is of all the big game animals of North
America the one whose range has most decreased. Originally it was found
from the Pacific coast east across the Alleghanies, through New York to
the Adirondacks, through Pennsylvania into western New Jersey, and far
down into the mid-country of Virginia and the Carolinas. It extended
northward into Canada, from the Great Lakes to Vancouver; and southward
into Mexico, along the Rockies. Its range thus corresponded roughly with
that of the bison, except that it went farther west and not so far
north. In the early colonial days so little heed was paid by writers to
the teeming myriads of game that it is difficult to trace the wapiti’s
distribution in the Atlantic coast region. It was certainly killed out
of the Adirondacks long before the period when the backwoodsmen were
settling the valleys of the Alleghany Mountains; there they found the
elk abundant, and the stately creatures roamed in great bands over
Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana when the first settlers made
their way into what are now these States, at the outbreak of the
Revolution. These first settlers were all hunters, and they followed the
wapiti (or, as they always called it, the elk) with peculiar eagerness.
In consequence its numbers were soon greatly thinned, and about the
beginning of the present century it disappeared from that portion of its
former range lying south of the Great Lakes and between the Alleghanies
and the Mississippi. In the northern Alleghanies it held its own much
longer, the last individual of which I have been able to get record
having been killed in Pennsylvania in 1869. In the forests of northern
Wisconsin, northern Michigan, and Minnesota wapiti existed still longer,
and a very few individuals may still be found. A few are left in
Manitoba. When Lewis and Clark and Pike became the pioneers among the
explorers, army officers, hunters, and trappers who won for our people
the great West, they found countless herds of wapiti throughout the high
plains country from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains.
Throughout this region it was exterminated almost as rapidly as the
bison, and by the early eighties there only remained a few scattered
individuals, in bits of rough country such as the Black Hills, the
sand-hills of Nebraska, and certain patches of Bad Lands along the
Little Missouri. Doubtless stragglers exist even yet in one or two of
these localities. But by the time the great buffalo herds of the plains
were completely exterminated, in 1883, the wapiti had likewise ceased to
be a plains animal; the peculiar Californian form had also been
well-nigh exterminated.
The nature of its favorite haunts was the chief factor in causing it to
suffer more than any other game in America, save the bison, from the
persecution of hunters and settlers. The boundaries of its range have
shrunk in far greater proportion than in the case of any of our other
game animals, save only the great wild ox, with which it was once so
commonly associated. The moose, a beast of the forest, and the caribou,
which, save in the far North, is also a beast of the forest, have in
most places greatly diminished in numbers, and have here and there been
exterminated altogether from outlying portions of their range; but the
wapiti, which, when free to choose, preferred to frequent the plains and
open woods, has completely vanished from nine-tenths of the territory
over which it roamed a century and a quarter ago. Although it was never
found in any one place in such enormous numbers as the bison and the
caribou, it nevertheless went in herds far larger than the herds of any
other American game save the two mentioned, and was formerly very much
more abundant within the area of its distribution than was the moose
within the area of its distribution.
This splendid deer affords a good instance of the difficulty of deciding
what name to use in treating of our American game. On the one hand, it
is entirely undesirable to be pedantic; and on the other hand, it seems
a pity, at a time when speech is written almost as much as spoken, to
use terms which perpetually require explanation in order to avoid
confusion. The wapiti is not properly an elk at all; the term wapiti is
unexceptionable, and it is greatly to be desired that it should be
generally adopted. But unfortunately it has not been generally adopted.
From the time when our backwoodsmen first began to hunt the animal among
the foothills of the Appalachian chains to the present day, it has been
universally known as elk wherever it has been found. In ordinary speech
it is never known as anything else, and only an occasional settler or
hunter would understand what the word wapiti referred to. The book name
is a great deal better than the common name; but after all, it is only a
book name. The case is almost exactly parallel to that of the buffalo,
which was really a bison, but which lived as the buffalo, died as the
buffalo, and left its name imprinted on our landscape as the buffalo.
There is little use in trying to upset a name which is imprinted in our
geography in hundreds of such titles as Elk Ridge, Elk Mountain, Elkhorn
River. Yet in the books it is often necessary to call it the wapiti in
order to distinguish it both from its differently named close kinsfolk
of the Old World, and from its more distant relatives with which it
shares the name of elk.
Disregarding the Pacific coast form of Vancouver and the Olympian
Mountains, the wapiti is now a beast of the Rocky Mountain region
proper, especially in western Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado. Throughout
these mountains its extermination, though less rapid than on the plains,
has nevertheless gone on with melancholy steadiness. In the early
nineties it was still as abundant as ever in large regions in western
Wyoming and Montana and northwestern Colorado. In northwestern Colorado
the herds are now represented by only a few hundred individuals. In
western Montana they are scattered over a wider region and are protected
by the denser timber, but are nowhere plentiful. They have nearly
vanished from the Big Horn Mountains. They are still abundant in and
around their great nursery and breeding-ground, the Yellowstone National
Park. If this park could be extended so as to take in part of the winter
range to the south, it would help to preserve them, to the delight of
all lovers of nature, and to the great pecuniary benefit of the people
of Wyoming and Montana. But at present the winter range south of the
park is filling up with settlers, and unless the conditions change,
those among the Yellowstone wapiti which would normally go south will
more and more be compelled to winter among the mountains, which will
mean such immense losses from starvation and deep snow that the southern
herds will be woefully thinned.[5] Surely all men who care for nature,
no less than all men who care for big game hunting, should combine to
try to see that not merely the States but the Federal authorities make
every effort, and are given every power, to prevent the extermination of
this stately and beautiful animal, the lordliest of the deer kind in the
entire world.
Footnote 5:
Steps in the direction indicated are now being taken by the Federal
authorities.
The wapiti, like the bison, and even more than the whitetail deer, can
thrive in widely varying surroundings. It is at home among the high
mountains, in the deep forests, and on the treeless, level plains. It is
rather omnivorous in its tastes, browsing and grazing on all kinds of
trees, shrubs and grasses. These traits, and its hardihood, make it
comparatively easy to perpetuate in big parks and forest preserves in a
semi-wild condition; and it has thriven in such preserves and parks in
many of the Eastern States. As it does not, by preference, dwell in such
tangled forests as are the delight of the moose and the whitetail deer,
it vanishes much quicker than either when settlers appear in the land.
In the mountains and foothills its habitat is much the same as that of
the mule-deer, the two animals being often found in the immediate
neighborhood of each other. In such places the superior size and value
of the wapiti put it at a disadvantage in the keen struggle for life,
and when the rifle-bearing hunter appears upon the scene, it is killed
out long before its smaller kinsman.
Moreover, the wapiti is undoubtedly subject to queer freaks of panic
stupidity, or what seems like a mixture of tameness and of puzzled
terror. At these times a herd will remain almost motionless, the
individuals walking undecidedly to and fro, and neither flinching nor
giving any other sign even when hit with a bullet. In the old days it
was not uncommon for a professional hunter to destroy an entire herd of
wapiti when one of these fits of confusion was on them. Even nowadays
they sometimes behave in this way. In 1897, Mr. Ansley Wilcox, of
Buffalo, was hunting in the Teton basin. He came across a small herd of
wapiti, the first he had ever seen, and opened fire when a hundred and
fifty yards distant. They paid no heed to the shots, and after taking
three or four at one bull, with seemingly no effect, he ran in closer
and emptied his magazine at another, also seemingly without effect,
before the herd slowly disappeared. After a few rods, both bulls fell;
and on examination it was found that all nine bullets had hit them.
To my mind, the venison of the wapiti is, on the whole, better than that
of any other wild game, though its fat, when cooled, at once hardens,
like mutton tallow.
In its life habits the wapiti differs somewhat from its smaller
relatives. It is far more gregarious, and is highly polygamous. During
the spring, while the bulls are growing their great antlers, and while
the cows have very young calves, both bulls and cows live alone, each
individual for itself. At such time each seeks the most secluded
situation, often going very high up on the mountains. Occasionally a
couple of bulls lie together, moving around as little as possible. The
cow at this time realizes that her calf’s chance of life depends upon
her absolute seclusion, and avoids all observation.
As the horns begin to harden the bulls thrash the velvet off against
quaking asp, or ash, or even young spruce, splintering and battering the
bushes and small trees. The cows and calves begin to assemble; the bulls
seek them. But the bulls do not run the cows as among the smaller deer
the bucks run the does. The time of the beginning of the rut varies in
different places, but it usually takes place in September, about a month
earlier than that of the deer in the same locality. The necks of the
bulls swell and they challenge incessantly, for, unlike the smaller
deer, they are very noisy. Their love and war calls, when heard at a
little distance amid the mountains, have a most musical sound.
Frontiersmen usually speak of their call as “whistling,” which is not an
appropriate term. The call may be given in a treble or in a bass, but
usually consists of two or three bars, first rising and then falling,
followed by a succession of grunts. The grunts can only be heard when
close up. There can be no grander or more attractive chorus than the
challenging of a number of wapiti bulls when two great herds happen to
approach one another under the moonlight or in the early dawn. The
pealing notes echo through the dark valleys as if from silver bugles,
and the air is filled with the wild music. Where little molested the
wapiti challenge all day long.
They can be easiest hunted during the rut, the hunter placing them, and
working up to them, by the sound alone. The bulls are excessively
truculent and pugnacious. Each big one gathers a herd of cows about him
and drives all possible rivals away from his immediate neighborhood,
although sometimes spike bulls are allowed to remain with the herd.
Where wapiti are very abundant, however, many of these herds may join
together and become partially welded into a mass that may contain
thousands of animals. In the old days such huge herds were far from
uncommon, especially during the migrations; but nowadays there only
remain one or two localities in which wapiti are sufficiently plentiful
ever to come together in bands of any size. The bulls are incessantly
challenging and fighting one another, and driving around the cows and
calves. Each keeps the most jealous watch over his own harem, treating
its members with great brutality, and is selfishly indifferent to their
fate the instant he thinks his own life in jeopardy. During the rut the
erotic manifestations of the bull are extraordinary.
[Illustration:
THE PACK-TRAIN
]
One or two fawns are born about May. In the mountains the cow usually
goes high up to bring forth her fawn. Personally I have only had a
chance to observe the wapiti in spring in the neighborhood of my ranch
in the Bad Lands of the Little Missouri. Here the cow invariably
selected some wild, lonely bit of very broken country in which there
were dense thickets and some water. There was one such patch some
fifteen miles from my ranch, in which for many years wapiti regularly
bred. The breeding cow lay by herself, although sometimes the young of
the preceding year would lurk in the neighborhood. For the first few
days the calf hardly left the bed, and would not move even when handled.
Then it began to follow the mother. In this particular region the grass
was coarse and rank, save for a few patches in the immediate
neighborhood of little alkali springs. Accordingly, it was not much
visited by the cattle or by the cowboys. Doubtless in the happier days
of the past, when man was merely an infrequent interloper, the wapiti
cows had made their nurseries in pleasanter and more fruitful valleys.
But in my time the hunted creatures had learned that their only chance
was to escape observation. I have known not only cows with young calves,
but cows when the calves were out of the spotted coat, and even
yearlings, to try to escape by hiding—the great beasts lying like
rabbits in some patch of thick brush, while I rode close by. The best
hunting horse I ever had, old Manitou, in addition to his other useful
qualities, would serve as a guard on such occasions. I would leave him
on a little hillock to one side of such a patch of brush, and as he
walked slowly about, grazing and rattling his bridle chains, he would
prevent the wapiti breaking cover on that side, and give me an
additional chance of slipping around toward them—although if the animal
was a cow, I never molested it unless in dire need of meat.
Most of my elk-hunting was done among the stupendous mountain masses of
the Rockies, which I usually reached after a long journey, with wagon or
pack-train, over the desolate plains. Ordinarily I planned to get to the
hunting-ground by the end of August, so as to have ample time. By that
date the calves were out of the spotted coat, the cows and the young of
the preceding year had banded, and the big bulls had come down to join
them from the remote recesses in which they had been lying, solitary or
in couples, while their antlers were growing. Many bulls were found
alone, or, if young, in small parties; but the normal arrangement was
for each big bull to have his own harem, around the outskirts of which
there were to be found lurking occasional spike bulls or two-year-olds
who were always venturing too near and being chased off by the master
bull. Frequently several such herds joined together into a great band.
Before the season was fairly on, when the bulls had not been worked into
actual frenzy, there was not much fighting in these bands. Later they
were the scenes of desperate combats. Each master bull strove to keep
his harem under his own eyes, and was always threatening and fighting
the other master bulls, as well as those bulls whose prowess had proved
insufficient hitherto to gain them a band, or who, after having gained
one, had been so exhausted and weakened as to succumb to some new
aspirant for the leadership. The bulls were calling and challenging all
the time, and there was ceaseless turmoil, owing to their fights and
their driving the cows around. The cows were more wary than the bulls,
and there were so many keen noses and fairly good eyes that it was
difficult to approach a herd; whereas the single bulls were so noisy,
careless, and excited that it was comparatively easy to stalk them. A
rutting wapiti bull is as wicked-looking a creature as can be imagined,
swaggering among the cows and threatening the young bulls, his jaws
mouthing and working in a kind of ugly leer.
The bulls fight desperately with one another. The two combatants come
together with a resounding clash of antlers, and then push and strain
with their mouths open. The skin on their necks and shoulders is so
thick and tough that the great prongs cannot get through or do more than
inflict bruises. The only danger comes when the beaten party turns to
flee. The victor pursues at full speed. Usually the beaten one gets off;
but if by accident he is caught where he cannot escape, he is very apt
to be gored in the flank and killed. Mr. Baillie-Grohman has given a
very interesting description of one such fatal duel of which he was an
eye-witness on a moonlight night in the mountains. I have never known of
the bull trying to protect the cow from any enemy. He battles for her
against rivals with intense ferocity; but his attitude toward her, once
she is gained, is either that of brutality or of indifference. She will
fight for her calf against any enemy which she thinks she has a chance
of conquering, although of course not against man. But the bull leaves
his family to their fate the minute he thinks there is any real danger.
During the rut he is greatly excited, and does not fear a dog or a
single wolf, and may join with the rest of the herd of both sexes in
trying to chase off one or the other, should he become aware of its
approach. But if there is serious danger, his only thought is for
himself, and he has no compunctions about sacrificing any of his family.
When on the move a cow almost always goes first, while the bull brings
up the rear.
In domestication the bulls are very dangerous to human beings, and will
kill a man at once if they can get him at a disadvantage; but in a state
of nature they rarely indeed overcome their abject terror of humanity,
even when wounded and cornered. Of course, if the man comes straight up
to him where he cannot get away, a wapiti will fight as, under like
circumstances, a blacktail or whitetail will fight, and equally, of
course, he is then far more dangerous than his smaller kinsfolk; but he
is not nearly so apt to charge as a bull moose. I have never known but
two authentic instances of their thus charging. One happened to a hunter
named Bennett, on the Little Missouri; the other to a gentleman I met, a
doctor, in Meeker, Colorado. The doctor had wounded his wapiti, and as
it was in the late fall, followed him easily in the snow. Finally he
came upon the wapiti standing where the snow was very deep at the bottom
of a small valley, and on his approach the wapiti deliberately started
to break his way through the snow toward him, and had almost reached him
when he was killed. But for every one such instance of a wapiti’s
charging there are a hundred in which a bull moose has charged. Senator
Redfield Proctor was charged most resolutely by a mortally hurt bull
moose which fell in the death throes just before reaching him; and I
could cite case after case of the kind.
The wapiti’s natural gaits are a walk and a trot. It walks very fast
indeed, especially if travelling to reach some given point. More than
once I have sought to overtake a travelling bull, and have found myself
absolutely unable to do so, although it never broke its walk. Of course,
if I had not been obliged to pay any heed to cover or wind, I could have
run up on it; but the necessity for paying heed to both handicapped me
so that I was actually unable to come up to the quarry as it swung
steadily on through woodland and open, over rough ground and smooth.
Wapiti have a slashing trot, which they can keep up for an indefinite
time and over any kind of country. Only a good pony can overtake them
when they have had any start and have settled into this trot. If much
startled they break into a gallop—the young being always much more
willing to gallop than the old. Their gallop is very fast, especially
downhill. But they speedily tire under it. A yearling or a two-year-old
can keep it up for a couple of miles. A heavy old bull will be done out
after a few hundred yards. I once saw a band of wapiti frightened into a
gallop down a steep incline where there were also a couple of mule-deer.
I had not supposed that wapiti ran as fast as mule-deer, but this
particular band actually passed the deer, though the latter were
evidently doing their best; the wapiti were well ahead, when, after
thundering down the steep, broken incline, they all disappeared into a
belt of woodland. In spite of their size, wapiti climb well and go
sure-footedly over difficult and dangerous ground. They have a habit of
coming out to the edges of cliffs, or on mountain spurs, and looking
over the landscape beneath, almost as though they enjoyed the scenery.
What their real object is on such occasions I do not know.
The nose of the wapiti is very keen. Its sight is much inferior to that
of the antelope, but about as good as a deer’s. Its hearing is also much
like that of a deer. When in country where it is little molested, it
feeds and moves about freely by day, lying down to rest at intervals,
like cattle. Wapiti offer especial attractions to the hunter, and next
to the bison are more quickly exterminated than any other kind of game.
Only the fact that they possessed a far wider range of habitat than
either the mule-deer, the prongbuck, or the moose, has enabled them
still to exist. Their gregariousness is also against them. Even after
the rut the herds continue together until in midspring the bulls shed
their antlers—for they keep their antlers at least two months longer
than deer. During the fall, winter, and early spring wapiti are roving,
restless creatures. Their habit of migration varies with locality, as
among mule-deer. Along the little Missouri, as in the plains country
generally, there was no well-defined migration. Up to the early
eighties, when wapiti were still plentiful, the bands wandered far and
wide, but fitfully and irregularly, wholly without regard to the season,
save that they were stationary from May to August. After 1883 there were
but a few individuals left, although as late as 1886 I once came across
a herd of nine. These surviving individuals had learned caution. The
bulls only called by night, and not very frequently then, and they spent
the entire year in the roughest and most out-of-the-way places, having
the same range both winter and summer. They selected tracts where the
ground was very broken and there was much shrubbery and patches of small
trees. This tree and bush growth gave them both shelter and food; for
they are particularly fond of browsing on the leaves and tender twig
ends, though they also eat weeds and grass.
Wherever wapiti dwell among the mountains they make regular seasonal
migrations. In northwestern Wyoming they spend the summer in the
Yellowstone National Park, but in winter some go south to Jackson’s
Hole, while others winter in the park to the northeast. In northwestern
Colorado their migrations followed much the same line as those of the
mule-deer. In different localities the length of the migration, and even
the time, differed. There were some places where the shift was simply
from the high mountains down to their foothills. In other places great
herds travelled a couple of hundred miles, so that localities absolutely
barren one month would be swarming with wapiti the next. In some places
the shift took place as early as the month of August; in others not
until after the rut, in October or even November; and in some places the
rut took place during the migration.
No chase is more fascinating than that of the wapiti. In the old days,
when the mighty antlered beasts were found upon the open plains, they
could be followed upon horseback, with or without hounds. Nowadays, when
they dwell in the mountains, they are to be killed only by the
rifle-bearing still-hunter. Needless butchery of any kind of animal is
repulsive, but in the case of the wapiti it is little short of criminal.
He is the grandest of the deer kind throughout the world, and he has
already vanished from most of the places where he once dwelt in his
pride. Every true sportsman should feel it incumbent upon him to do all
in his power to preserve so noble a beast of the chase from extinction.
No harm whatever comes to the species from killing a certain number of
bulls; but an excessive number should never be killed, and no cow or
calf should under any circumstances be touched. Formerly, when wapiti
were plentiful, it would have been folly for hunters and settlers in the
unexplored wilderness not to kill wild game for their meat, and
occasionally a cow or a calf had to be thus slain; but there is no
excuse nowadays for a hunting party killing anything but a full-grown
bull.
In a civilized and cultivated country wild animals only continue to
exist at all when preserved by sportsmen. The excellent people who
protest against all hunting, and consider sportsmen as enemies of wild
life, are ignorant of the fact that in reality the genuine sportsman is
by all odds the most important factor in keeping the larger and more
valuable wild creatures from total extermination. Of course, if wild
animals were allowed to breed unchecked, they would, in an incredibly
short space of time, render any country uninhabitable by man—a fact
which ought to be a matter of elementary knowledge in any community
where the average intelligence is above that of certain portions of
Hindoostan. Equally, of course, in a purely utilitarian community all
wild animals are exterminated out of hand. In order to preserve the wild
life of the wilderness at all, some middle ground must be found between
brutal and senseless slaughter and the unhealthy sentimentalism which
would just as surely defeat its own end by bringing about the eventual
total extinction of the game. It is impossible to preserve the larger
wild animals in regions thoroughly fit for agriculture; and it is
perhaps too much to hope that the larger carnivores can be preserved for
merely æsthetic reasons. But throughout our country there are large
regions entirely unsuited for agriculture, where, if the people only
have foresight, they can, through the power of the State, keep the game
in perpetuity. There is no hope of preserving the bison permanently,
save in large private parks; but all other game, including not merely
deer, but the pronghorn, the splendid bighorn, and the stately and
beautiful wapiti, can be kept on the public lands, if only the proper
laws are passed, and if only these laws are properly enforced.
Most of us, as we grow older, grow to care relatively less for sport
than for the splendid freedom and abounding health of outdoor life in
the woods, on the plains, and among the great mountains; and to the true
nature lover it is melancholy to see the wilderness stripped of the wild
creatures which gave it no small part of its peculiar charm. It is
inevitable, and probably necessary, that the wolf and the cougar should
go; but the bighorn and white goat among the rocks, the blacktail and
wapiti grouped on the mountain-side, the whitetail and moose feeding in
the sedgy ponds—these add beyond measure to the wilderness landscape,
and if they are taken away they leave a lack which nothing else can
quite make good. So it is of those true birds of the wilderness, the
eagle and the raven, and, indeed, of all the wild things, furred,
feathered, and finned.
A peculiar charm in the chase of the wapiti comes from the wild beauty
of the country in which it dwells. The moose lives in marshy forests; if
one would seek the white goat or caribou of the northern Rockies, he
must travel on foot, pack on back; while the successful chase of the
bighorn, perhaps on the whole the manliest of all our sports, means
heart-breaking fatigue for any but the strongest and hardiest. The
prongbuck, again, must be followed on the desolate, sun-scorched plains.
But the wapiti now dwells amid lofty, pine-clad mountains, in a region
of lakes and streams. A man can travel in comfort while hunting it,
because he can almost always take a pack-train with him, and the country
is usually sufficiently open to enable the hunter to enjoy all the charm
of distant landscapes. Where the wapiti lives the spotted trout swarm in
the brooks, and the woodgrouse fly upward to perch among the tree-tops
as the hunter passes them. When hunting him there is always sweet cold
water to be drunk at night, and beds of aromatic fir boughs on which to
sleep, with the blankets drawn over one to keep out the touch of the
frost. He must be followed on foot, and the man who follows him must be
sound in limb and wind. But his pursuit does not normally mean such
wearing exhaustion as is entailed by climbing cliffs all day long after
the white goat. Whoever has hunted the wapiti, as he looks at his
trophies will always think of the great mountains with the snow lying in
the rifts in their sides; of the splashing murmur of rock-choked
torrents; of the odorous breath of the pine branches; of tents pitched
in open glades; of long walks through cool, open forests; and of great
camp-fires, where the pitchy stumps flame like giant torches in the
darkness.
In the old days, of course, much of the hunting was done on the open
plains or among low, rugged hills. The wapiti that I shot when living at
my Little Missouri ranch were killed under exactly the same conditions
as mule-deer. When I built my ranch-house, wapiti were still not
uncommon, and their shed antlers were very numerous both on the bottoms
and in places among the hills. There was one such place a couple of
miles from my ranch in a stretch of comparatively barren but very broken
hill-country in which there were many score of these shed antlers.
Evidently a few years before this had been a great gathering-place for
wapiti toward the end of winter. My ranch itself derived its name, “The
Elkhorn,” from the fact that on the ground where we built it were found
the skulls and interlocked antlers of two wapiti bulls who had perished
from getting their antlers fastened in a battle. I never, however,
killed a wapiti while on a day’s hunt from the ranch itself. Those that
I killed were obtained on regular expeditions, when I took the wagon and
drove off to spend a night or two on ground too far for me to hunt it
through in a single day from the ranch. Moreover, the wapiti on the
Little Missouri had been so hunted that they had entirely abandoned the
diurnal habits of their kind, and it was a great advantage to get on the
ground early. This hunting was not carried on amid the glorious mountain
scenery which marks the home of the wapiti in the Rockies; but the
surroundings had a charm of their own. All really wild scenery is
attractive. The true hunter, the true lover of the wilderness, loves all
parts of the wilderness, just as the true lover of nature loves all
seasons. There is no season of the year when the country is not more
attractive than the city; and there is no portion of the wilderness,
where game is found, in which it is not a keen pleasure to hunt. Perhaps
no other kind of country quite equals that where snow lies on the lofty
mountain peaks, where there are many open glades in the pine forests,
and clear mountain lakes and rushing trout-filled torrents. But the
fantastic desolation of the Bad Lands, and the endless sweep of the
brown prairies, alike have their fascination for the true lover of
nature and lover of the wilderness who goes through them on foot or on
horseback. As for the broken hill-country in which I followed the wapiti
and the mule-deer along the Little Missouri, it would be strange indeed
if any one found it otherwise than attractive in the bright, sharp fall
weather. Long, grassy valleys wound among the boldly shaped hills. The
basins were filled with wind-beaten trees and brush, which generally
also ran alongside of the dry watercourses down the middle of each
valley. Cedars clustered in the sheer ravines, and here and there groups
of elm and ash grew to a considerable height in the more sheltered
places. At the first touch of the frost the foliage turned russet or
yellow—the Virginia creepers crimson. Under the cloudless blue sky the
air was fresh and cool, and as we lay by the camp-fire at night the
stars shone with extraordinary brilliancy. Under such conditions the
actual chase of the wapiti was much like that of the mule-deer. They had
been so hunted that they showed none of the foolish traits which they
are prone to exhibit when bands are found in regions where they have
been little persecuted; and they were easier to kill than mule-deer
simply because they were more readily tracked and more readily seen, and
offered a larger, and on the whole a steadier, mark at which to shoot.
When a small band had visited a pool their tracks could be identified at
once, because in the soft ground the flexible feet spread and yielded so
as to leave the marks of the false hoofs. On ordinary ground it was
difficult to tell their footprints from those of the yearling and
two-year-old ranch cattle.
[Illustration:
TROPHIES OF A SUCCESSFUL HUNT
]
But the mountains are the true ground for the wapiti. Here he must be
hunted on foot, and nowadays, since he has grown wiser, skill and
patience, and the capacity to endure fatigue and exposure, must be shown
by the successful hunter. My own wapiti-hunting has been done in
September and early October during the height of the rut, and therefore
at a time when the conditions were most favorable for the hunter. I have
hunted them in many places throughout the Rockies, from the Big Horn in
western Wyoming to the Big Hole Basin in western Montana, close to the
Idaho line. Where I hunted, the wapiti were always very noisy both by
day and by night, and at least half of the bulls that I killed attracted
my attention by their calling before I saw either them or their tracks.
At night they frequently passed close to camp, or came nearly up to the
picketed horses, challenging all the time. More than once I slipped out,
hoping to kill one by moonlight, but I never succeeded. Occasionally,
when they were plentiful, and were restless and always roving about, I
simply sat still on a log, until one gave me a chance. Sometimes I came
across them while hunting through likely localities, going up or across
wind, keeping the sharpest lookout, and moving with great care and
caution, until I happened to strike the animals I was after. More than
once I took the trail of a band, when out with some first-class
woodsman, and after much running, dodging, and slipping through the
timber, overtook the animals—though usually when thus merely following
the trail I failed to come up with them. On two different occasions I
followed and came up to bands, attracted by their scent. Wapiti have a
strong, and, on the whole, pleasing scent, like that of Alderney cattle,
although in old bulls it becomes offensively strong. This scent is very
penetrating. I once smelt a herd which was lying quite still taking its
noonday siesta, certainly half a mile to the windward of me; and
creeping up I shot a good bull as he lay. On another occasion, while
working through the tangled trees and underbrush at the bottom of a
little winding valley, I suddenly smelt wapiti ahead, and without paying
any further attention to the search for tracks, I hunted cautiously up
the valley, and when it forked was able to decide by the smell alone
which way the wapiti had gone. He was going up wind ahead of me, and his
ground-covering walk kept me at a trot in order to overtake him. Finally
I saw him, before he saw me, and then, by making a run to one side, got
a shot at him when he broke cover, and dropped him.
It is exciting to creep up to a calling wapiti. If it is a solitary
bull, he is apt to be travelling, seeking the cows, or on the lookout
for some rival of weaker thews. Under such circumstances only hard
running will enable the hunter to overtake him, unless there is a chance
to cut him off. If, however, he hears another bull, or has a herd under
him, the chances are that he is nearly stationary, or at least is moving
slowly, and the hunter has every opportunity to approach. In a herd the
bull himself is usually so absorbed both with his cows and with his
rivals that he is not at all apt to discover the approaching hunter. The
cows, however, are thoroughly awake, and it is their eyes and keen noses
for which the hunter must look out. A solitary bull which is answering
the challenge of another is the easiest of all to approach. Of course,
if there has been much hunting, even such a bull is wary and is on the
lookout for harm. But in remote localities he becomes so absorbed in
finding out the whereabouts of his rival, and is so busy answering the
latter’s challenges and going through motions of defiance, that with
proper care it is comparatively easy to approach him. Once, when within
seventy yards of such a bull, he partly made me out and started toward
me. Evidently he could not tell exactly what I was—my buckskin shirt
probably helping to puzzle him—and in his anger and eagerness he did not
think of danger until it was too late. On another occasion I got up to
two bulls that were fighting, and killed both. In the fights, weight of
body seems to count for more than size of antlers.
Once I spent the better part of a day in following a wapiti bull before
I finally got him. Generally when hunting wapiti I have been with either
one of my men from the ranch or a hunter like Tazewell Woody, or John
Willis. On this particular occasion, however, I happened to be alone;
and though I have rarely been as successful alone as when in the company
of some thoroughly trained and experienced plainsman or mountainman, yet
when success does come under such circumstances it is always a matter of
peculiar pride.
At the time, I was camped in a beautiful valley high among the mountains
which divide southwestern Montana from Idaho. The weather was cold, and
there were a couple of inches of snow on the ground, so that the
conditions were favorable for tracking and stalking. The country was
well wooded, but the forest was not dense, and there were many open
glades. Early one morning, just about dawn, the cook, who had been up
for a few minutes, waked me, to say that a bull wapiti was calling not
far off. I rolled out of my bed and was dressed in short order. The bull
had by this time passed the camp, and was travelling toward a range of
mountains on the other side of the stream which ran down the valley
bottom. He was evidently not alarmed, for he was still challenging. I
gulped down a cup of hot coffee, munched a piece of hardtack, and thrust
four or five other pieces and a cold elk tongue into my hunting-shirt,
and then, as it had grown light enough to travel, started after the
wapiti. I supposed that in a few minutes I should either have overtaken
him or abandoned the pursuit, and I took the food with me simply because
in the wilderness it never pays to be unprepared for emergencies. The
wisdom of such a course was shown in this instance by the fact that I
did not see camp again until long after dark.
I at first tried to cut off the wapiti by trotting through the woods
toward the pass for which I supposed he was headed. The morning was
cold, and, as always happens at the outset when one starts to take
violent exercise under such circumstances, the running caused me to
break into a perspiration; so that the first time I stopped to listen
for the wapiti a regular fog rose over my glasses and then froze on
them. I could not see a thing, and after wiping them found I had to keep
gently moving in order to prevent them from clouding over again. It is
on such cold mornings, or else in very rainy weather, that the man who
has not been gifted with good eyes is most sensible of his limitations.
I once lost a caribou which I had been following at speed over the snow
because when I came into sight and halted the moisture instantly formed
and froze on my glasses so that I could not see anything, and before I
got them clear the game had vanished. Whatever happened, I was bound
that I should not lose this wapiti from a similar accident.
However, when I next heard him he had evidently changed his course and
was going straight away from me. The sun had now risen, and following
after him I soon found his tracks. He was walking forward with the
regular wapiti stride, and I made up my mind I had a long chase ahead of
me. We were going up hill, and though I walked hard, I did not trot
until we topped the crest. Then I jogged along at a good gait, and as I
had on moccasins, and the woods were open, I did not have to exercise
much caution. Accordingly I gained, and felt I was about to come up with
him, when the wind brought down from very far off another challenge. My
bull heard it before I did, and instantly started toward the spot at a
trot. There was not the slightest use of my attempting to keep up with
this, and I settled down into a walk. Half an hour afterward I came over
a slight crest, and immediately saw a herd of wapiti ahead of me, across
the valley and on an open hillside. The herd was in commotion, the
master bull whistling vigorously and rounding up his cows, evidently
much excited at the new bull’s approach. There were two or three
yearlings and two-year-old bulls on the outskirts of the herd, and the
master bull, whose temper had evidently not been improved by the coming
of the stranger, occasionally charged these and sent them rattling off
through the bushes. The ground was so open between me and them that I
dared not venture across it, and I was forced to lie still and await
developments. The bull I had been following and the herd bull kept
challenging vigorously, but the former probably recognized in the latter
a heavier animal, and could not rouse his courage to the point of
actually approaching and doing battle. It by no means follows that the
animal with the heaviest body has the best antlers, but the hesitation
thus shown by the bull I was following made me feel that the other would
probably yield the more valuable trophies, and after a couple of hours I
made up my mind to try to get near the herd, abandoning the animal I had
been after.
The herd showed but little symptoms of moving, the cows when let alone
scattering out to graze, and some of them even lying down. Accordingly I
did not hurry myself, and spent considerably over an hour in slipping
off to the right and approaching through a belt of small firs.
Unfortunately, however, the wind had slightly shifted, and while I was
out of sight of the herd they had also come down toward the spot from
whence I had been watching them. Accordingly, just as I was beginning to
creep forward with the utmost caution, expecting to see them at any
moment, I heard a thumping and cracking of branches that showed they
were on the run. With wapiti there is always a chance of overtaking them
after they have first started, because they tack and veer and halt to
look around. Therefore I ran forward as fast as I could through the
woods; but when I came to the edge of the fir belt I saw that the herd
were several hundred yards off. They were clustered together and looking
back, and saw me at once.
Off they started again. The old bull, however, had neither seen me nor
smelt me, and when I heard his whistle of rage I knew he had
misinterpreted the reason for the departure of his cows, and in another
moment he came in sight, evidently bent on rounding them up. On his way
he attacked and drove off one of the yearlings, and then took after the
cows, while the yearling ran toward the outlying bull. The latter
evidently failed to understand what had happened; at least he showed no
signs of alarm. Neither, however, did he attempt to follow the fleeing
herd, but started off again on his own line.
I was sure the herd would not stop for some miles, and accordingly I
resumed my chase of the single bull. He walked for certainly three miles
before he again halted, and I was then half a mile behind him. On this
occasion he struck a small belt of woodland and began to travel to and
fro through it, probably with an idea of lying down. I was able to get
up fairly close by crawling on all-fours through the snow for part of
the distance; but just as I was about to fire he moved slightly, and
though my shot hit him, it went a little too far back. He plunged over
the hill-crest and was off at a gallop, and after running forward and
failing to overtake him in the first rush, I sat down to consider
matters. The snow had begun to melt under the sun, and my knees and the
lower parts of my sleeves were wet from my crawl, and I was tired and
hungry and very angry at having failed to kill the wapiti. It was,
however, early in the afternoon, and I thought that if I let the wapiti
alone for an hour, he would lie down, and then grow stiff and reluctant
to get up; while in the snow I was sure I could easily follow his
tracks. Therefore I ate my lunch, and then swallowed some mouthfuls of
snow in lieu of drinking.
[Illustration:
TROPHIES IN THE WHITE HOUSE DINING-ROOM
]
An hour afterward I took the trail. It was evident the bull was hard
hit, but even after he had changed his plunging gallop for a trot he
showed no signs of stopping; fortunately his trail did not cross any
other. The blood signs grew infrequent, and two or three times he went
up places which made it difficult for me to believe he was much hurt. At
last, however, I came to where he had lain down; but he had risen again
and gone forward. For a moment I feared that my approach had alarmed
him, but this was evidently not the case, for he was now walking. I left
the trail, and turning to one side below the wind I took a long circle
and again struck back to the bottom of the valley down which the wapiti
had been travelling. The timber here was quite thick, and I moved very
cautiously, continually halting and listening for five or ten minutes.
Not a sound did I hear, and I crossed the valley bottom and began to
ascend the other side without finding the trail. Unless he had turned
off up the mountains I knew that this meant he must have lain down; so I
retraced my steps and with extreme caution began to make my way up the
valley. Finally I came to a little opening, and after peering about for
five minutes I stepped forward, and instantly heard a struggling and
crashing in a clump of young spruce on the other side. It was the wapiti
trying to get on his feet. I ran forward at my best pace, and as he was
stiff and slow in his movements I was within seventy yards before he got
fairly under way. Dropping on one knee, I fired and hit him in the
flank. At the moment I could not tell whether or not I had missed him,
for he gave no sign; but, running forward very fast, I speedily saw him
standing with his head down. He heard me and again started, but at the
third bullet down he went in his tracks, the antlers clattering loudly
on the branches of a dead tree.
The snow was melting fast, and for fear it might go off entirely, so
that I could not follow my back track, I went up the hillside upon which
the wapiti lay, and taking a dead tree dragged it down to the bottom,
leaving a long furrow. I then repeated the operation on the opposite
hillside, thus making a trace which it was impossible for any one coming
up or down the valley to overlook; and having conned certain landmarks
by which the valley itself could be identified, I struck toward camp at
a round trot; for I knew that if I did not get into the valley where the
tent lay before dark, I should have to pass the night out. However, the
last uncertain light of dusk just enabled me to get over a spur from
which I could catch a glimpse of the camp-fire, and as I stumbled toward
it through the forest I heard a couple of shots, which showed that the
cook and packer were getting anxious as to my whereabouts.