The Rocky Mountain Elk, or Wapiti, is the finest of all true Deer. The
cows weigh 400 to 500 pounds, the bulls 600 or 800, but occasionally
1000. At several of the hotels a small herd is kept in a corral for the
pleasure and photography of visitors.
The latest official census puts the summer population of Elk in the
Yellowstone Park at 35,000, but the species is migratory, at least to
the extent of seeking a winter feeding ground with as little snow as
possible, so that most of them move out as snow time sets in. Small
herds linger in the rich and sheltered valleys along the Yellowstone,
Snake and nearby rivers, but the total of those wintering in the Park
is probably less than 5,000.
STALKING A BAND OF ELK
[Illustration]
In the summer months the best places in which to look for these Deer are
all the higher forests, especially along the timber-line. I had an
interesting stalk after a large band of them among the woods of Tower
Falls in the June of 1897. I had found the trail of a considerable herd
and followed it up the mountain till the "sign" was fresh. Then I tied
up my horse and went forward on foot. For these animals are sufficiently
acquainted with man as a mischief-maker to be vigilant in avoiding him,
even in the Park. I was cautiously crawling from tree to tree, when out
across an open space I descried a cow Elk and her calf lying down. A
little more crawling and I sighted a herd all lying down and chewing the
cud. About twenty yards away was a stump whose shelter offered chances
to use the camera, but my present position promised nothing, so I set
out carefully to cross the intervening space in plain view of scores of
Elk; and all would have been well but for a pair of mischievous little
Chipmunks. They started a most noisy demonstration against my approach,
running back and forth across my path, twittering and flashing their
tails about. In vain I prayed for a paralytic stroke to fall on my
small tormentors. Their aggravating plan, if plan it was, they succeeded
in fully carrying out. The Elk turned all their megaphone ears, their
funnel noses and their blazing telescopic eyes my way. I lay like a log
and waited; so did they. Then the mountain breeze veered suddenly and
bore the taint of man to those watchful mothers. They sprang to their
feet, some fifty head at least, half of them with calves by their sides,
and away they dashed with a roaring sound, and a rattling and crashing
of branches that is wonderfully impressive to hear, and nothing at all
to tell about.
I had made one or two rough sketches as I lay on the ground, but the
photographs were failures.
[Illustration: XII. A young investigator among the Deer at Fort
Yellowstone
_Photo by E. T. Seton_]
[Illustration: XIII. Elk in Wyoming: (a) "Dawn" _Photo by E. T. Seton_
(b) "Nightfall" _Photo by G. G. Seton_]
This band contained only cows engaged in growing their calves. According
to Elk etiquette, the bulls are off by themselves at a much higher
elevation, engaged in the equally engrossing occupation of growing their
antlers. Most persons are surprised greatly when first they learn that
the huge antlers of the Elk, as with most deer, are grown and shed each
year. It takes only five months to grow them. They are perfect in late
September for the fighting season, and are shed in March. The bull Elk
now shapes his conduct to his weaponless condition. He becomes as meek
as he was warlike. And so far from battling with all of their own sex
that come near, these big "moollys" gather in friendly stag-parties on a
basis of equal loss, and haunt the upper woods whose pasture is rich
enough to furnish the high power nutriment needed to offset the
exhausting drain of growing such mighty horns in such minimum time.
They are more free from flies too in these high places, which is
important, for even the antlers are sensitive while growing. They are
even more sensitive than the rest of the body, besides being less
protected and more temptingly filled with blood. A mosquito would surely
think he had struck it rich if he landed on the hot, palpitating end of
a Wapiti's thin-skinned, blood-gorged antlers. It is quite probable that
some of the queer bumps we see on the finished weapons are due to
mosquito or fly stings suffered in the early period of formation.
THE BUGLING ELK
During the summer the bulls attend strictly to their self-development,
but late August sees them ready to seek once more the mixed society of
their kind. Their horns are fully grown, but are not quite hardened and
are still covered with velvet. By the end of September these weapons are
hard and cleaned and ready for use, just as a thrilling change sets in
in the body and mind of the bull. He is full of strength and vigour, his
coat is sleek, his neck is swollen, his muscles are tense, his horns are
clean, sharp, and strong, and at their heaviest. A burning ambition to
distinguish himself in war, and win favours from the shy ladies of his
kind, grows in him to a perfect insanity; goaded by desire, boiling with
animal force, and raging with war-lust, he mounts some ridge in the
valley and pours forth his very soul in a wild far-reaching battle-cry.
Beginning low and rising in pitch to a veritable scream of piercing
intensity, it falls to a rumbled growl, which broken into shorter growls
dies slowly away. This is the famed bugling of the Elk, and however
grotesque it may seem when heard in a zoo, is admitted by all who know
it in its homeland to be the most inspiring music in nature--because of
what it means. Here is this magnificent creature, big as a horse, strong
as a bull, and fierce as a lion, standing in all the pride and glory of
his primest prime, announcing to all the world: "I am out for a fight!
Do any of you want a F-I-G-H-T----!-!-!?" Nor does he usually have long
to wait. From some far mountainside the answer comes:
"Yes, yes, yes! _Yes, I Do_, Do, Do, Do!"
A few more bugle blasts and the two great giants meet; and when they do,
all the world knows it for a mile around, without it being seen. The
crashing of the antlers as they close, the roars of hate, the squeals of
combat, the cracking of breaking branches as they charge and charge, and
push and strive, and--_sometimes_ the thud of a heavy body going down.
Many a time have I heard them in the distant woods, but mostly at night.
Often have I gone forth warily hoping to see something of the fight, for
we all love to see a fight when not personally in danger; but luck has
been against me. I have been on the battlefield next morning to see
where the combatants had torn up an acre of ground, and trampled
unnumbered saplings, or tossed huge boulders about like pebbles, but the
fight I missed.
One day as I came into camp in the Shoshonees, east of the Park, an old
hunter said: "Say, you! you want to see a real old-time Elk fight? You
go up on that ridge back of the corral and you'll sure see a hull bunch
of 'em at it; not one pair of bulls, but _six_ of 'em."
I hurried away, but again I was too late; I saw nothing but the trampled
ground, the broken saplings, and the traces of the turmoil; the battling
giants were gone.
[Illustration]
Back I went and from the hunter's description made the sketch which I
give below. The old man said: "Well, you sure got it this time. That's
exactly like it was. One pair was jest foolin', one was fencing and was
still perlite; but that third pair was a playin' the game for keeps. An'
for givin' the facts, that's away ahead of any photograph I ever seen."
Once I did come on the fatal battle-ground, but it was some time after
the decision; and there I found the body of the one who did not win. The
antlers are a fair index of the size and vigour of the stag, and if the
fallen one was so big and strong, what like was he who downed him,
pierced him through and left him on the plain.
SNAPPING A CHARGING BULL
At one time in a Californian Park I heard the war-bugle of an Elk. He
bawled aloud in brazen, ringing tones: "Anybody want a F-I-G-H-T
t-t-t-t!!"
I extemporized a horn and answered him according to his mood. "_Yes, I
do; bring it ALONG!_" and he brought it at a trot, squealing and roaring
as he came. When he got within forty yards he left the cover and
approached me, a perfect incarnation of brute ferocity and hate.
[Illustration]
His ears were laid back, his muzzle raised, his nose curled up, his
lower teeth exposed, his mane was bristling and in his eyes there blazed
a marvellous fire of changing opalescent green. On he marched, gritting
his teeth and uttering a most unpleasantly wicked squeal.
Then suddenly down went his head, and he came crash at me, with all the
power of half a ton of hate. However, I was not so much exposed as may
have been inferred. I was safely up a tree. And there I sat watching
that crazy bull as he prodded the trunk with his horns, and snorted, and
raved around, telling me just what he thought of me, inviting him to a
fight and then getting up a tree. Finally he went off roaring and
gritting his teeth, but turning back to cast on me from time to time the
deadly, opaque green light of his mad, malignant eyes.
A friend of mine, John Fossum, once a soldier attached to Fort
Yellowstone, had a similar adventure on a more heroic scale. While out
on a camera hunt in early winter he descried afar a large bull Elk lying
asleep in an open valley. At once Fossum made a plan. He saw that he
could crawl up to the bull, snap him where he lay, then later secure a
second picture as the creature ran for the timber. The first part of
the programme was carried out admirably. Fossum got within fifty feet
and still the Elk lay sleeping. Then the camera was opened out. But
alas! that little _pesky_ "click," that does so much mischief, awoke the
bull, who at once sprang to his feet and ran--not for the woods--but
_for the man_. Fossum with the most amazing nerve stood there quietly
focussing his camera, till the bull was within ten feet, then pressed
the button, threw the camera into the soft snow and ran for his life
with the bull at his coat-tails. It would have been a short run but for
the fact that they reached a deep snowdrift that would carry the man,
and would not carry the Elk. Here Fossum escaped, while the bull snorted
around, telling just what he meant to do to the man when he caught him;
but he was not to be caught, and at last the bull went off grumbling and
squealing.
The hunter came back, recovered his camera, and when the plate was
developed it bore the picture No. xiv, b.
[Illustration: XIV. Elk on the Yellowstone in winter: (a) Caught in
eight feet of snow; _Photo by F. Jay Haynes_ (b) Bull Elk charging
_Photo by John Fossum_]
It shows plainly the fighting light in the bull's eye, the back laid
ears, the twisting of the nose, and the rate at which he is coming is
evidenced in the stamping feet and the wind-blown whiskers, and yet in
spite of the peril of the moment, and the fact that this was a hand
camera, there is no sign of shake on landscape or on Elk, and the
picture is actually over-exposed.
THE HOODOO COW
One of the best summer ranges for Elk is near the southeast corner of
the Yellowstone Lake, and here it was my luck to have the curious
experience that I call the "Story of a Hoodoo Elk."
[Illustration]
In the September of 1912, when out with Tom Newcomb of Gardiner, I had
this curious adventure, that I shall not try to explain. We had crossed
the Yellowstone Lake in a motor boat and were camped on the extreme
southeast Finger, at a point twenty-five miles as the crow flies, and
over fifty as the trail goes, from any human dwelling. We were in the
least travelled and most primitive part of the Park. The animals here
are absolutely in the wild condition and there was no one in the region
but ourselves.
On Friday, September 6th, we sighted some Elk on the lake shore at
sunrise, but could not get nearer than two hundred yards, at which
distance I took a poor snap. The Elk wheeled and ran out of sight. I set
off on foot with the guide about 8:30. We startled one or two Elk, but
they were very wild, and I got no chance to photograph.
About 10:30, when several miles farther in the wilderness, we sighted a
cow Elk standing in a meadow with a Coyote sneaking around about one
hundred yards away. "That's my Elk," I said, and we swung under cover.
By keeping in a little pine woods, I got within one hundred yards,
taking picture No. 1, Plate XV. As she did not move, I said to Tom: "You
stay here while I creep out to that sage brush and I'll get a picture of
her at fifty yards." By crawling on my hands I was able to do this and
got picture No. 2. Now I noticed a bank of tall grass some thirty yards
from the cow, and as she was still quiet, I crawled to that and got
picture No. 3. She did not move and I was near enough to see that she
was dozing in a sun-bath. So I stood up and beckoned to Tom to come out
of the woods at once. He came on nearly speechless with amazement. "What
is the meaning of this?" he whispered.
[Illustration: XV. The first shots at the Hoodoo Cow
_Photos by E. T. Seton_]
I replied calmly: "I told you I was a medicine man, perhaps you'll
believe me now. Don't you see I've made Elk medicine and got her
hypnotized? Now I am going to get up to about twenty yards and take her
picture. While I do so, you use the second camera and take me in the
act." So Tom took No. 4 while I was taking No. 5, and later No. 6.
"Now," I said, "let's go and talk to her." We walked up to within ten
yards. The Elk did not move, so I said: "Well, Bossie, you have callers.
Won't you please look this way?" She did so and I secured shot No. 7,
Plate XVI.
"Thank you," I said. "Now be good enough to lie down." She did, and I
took No. 9.
I went up and stroked her, so did Tom; then giving her a nudge of my
foot I said: "Now stand up again and look away."
She rose up, giving me Nos. 8, 10 and 11.
"Thank you, Bossie! now you can go!" And as she went off I fired my last
film, getting No. 12.
[Illustration: XVI. The last shots at the Hoodoo Cow
_Photos by E. T. Seton_]
By this time Tom had used up all his allowable words, and was falling
back on the contraband kind to express his surging emotions.
"What the ---- is the ---- meaning ---- of this ----?" and so on.
I replied calmly: "Maybe you'll believe I have Elk medicine. Now show me
a Moose and I'll give you some new shocks."
Our trip homeward occupied a couple of hours, during which I heard
little from Tom but a snort or two of puzzlement.
As we neared camp he turned on me suddenly and said: "Now, Mr. Seton,
what _is_ the meaning of this? That wasn't a sick Elk; she was fat and
hearty. She wasn't poisoned or doped, 'cause there's no possibility of
that. It wasn't a tame Elk, 'cause there ain't any, and, anyhow, we're
seventy miles from a house. Now what is the meaning of it?"
I replied solemnly: "Tom! I don't know any more than you do. I was as
much surprised as you were at everything but one, and that was when she
lay down. I didn't tell her to lie down till I saw she was going to do
it, or to get up either, or look the other way, and if you can explain
the incident, you've got the field to yourself."
THE MOOSE, THE BIGGEST OF ALL DEER
The Moose is one of the fine animals that have responded magnificently
to protection in Canada, Maine, Minnesota, and the Yellowstone Park.
Formerly they were very scarce in Wyoming and confined to the southwest
corner of the Reserve. But all they needed was a little help; and,
receiving it, they have flourished and multiplied. Their numbers have
grown by natural increase from about fifty in 1897 to some five hundred
and fifty to-day; and they have spread into all the southern half of the
Park wherever they find surroundings to their taste; that is, thick
level woods with a mixture of timber, as the Moose is a brush-eater,
and does not flourish on a straight diet of evergreen.
The first Deer, almost the only one I ever killed, was a Moose and that
was far back in the days of my youth. On the Yellowstone, I am sorry to
say, I never saw one, although I found tracks and signs in abundance
last September near the Lake.
MY PARTNER'S MOOSE-HUNT
Though I have never since fired at a Moose, I was implicated in the
killing of one a few years later.
It was in the fall of the year, in the Hunting Moon, I was in the
Kippewa Country with my partner and some chosen friends on a camping
trip. Our companions were keen to get a Moose; and daily all hands but
myself were out with the expert Moose callers. But each night the
company reassembled around the campfire only to exchange their stories
of failure.
[Illustration]
Moose there were in plenty, and good guides, Indian, halfbreed and
white, but luck was against them all. Without being a very expert caller
I have done enough of it to know the game and to pass for a "caller." So
one night I said in a spirit of half jest: "I'll have to go out and show
you men how to call a Moose." I cut a good piece of birch-bark and
fashioned carefully a horn. Disdaining all civilized materials as
"bad medicine," I stitched the edge with a spruce root or wattap, and
soldered it neatly with pine gum flowed and smoothed with a blazing
brand. And then I added the finishing touch, a touch which made the
Indian and the halfbreed shake their heads ominously; I drew two "hoodoo
Moose"--that is, men with Moose heads dancing around the horn.
[Illustration: XVII. Elk on the Yellowstone: (a) In Billings Park;
(b) Wild Cow Elk
_Photos by E. T. Seton_]
THE SIREN CALL
"You put that on before you catch one Moose, Moose never come," they
said.
Still I put them on, and near sundown set off in a canoe, with one guide
as paddler, and my partner in charge of the only gun. In half an hour we
reached a lonely lake surrounded by swamps, and woods of mixed timber.
The sunset red was purpling all the horizon belt of pines, and the peace
of the still hour was on lake and swamp. With some little sense of
profanity I raised the hoodoo horn to my mouth, gave one or two
high-pitched, impatient grunts, then poured forth the softly rising,
long-drawn love-call of a cow Moose, all alone, and "Oh, so lonesome."
The guide nodded in approval, "That's all right," then I took out my
watch and waited for fifteen minutes. For, strange to tell, it seems to
repel the bull Moose and alarm him if the cow seems over-eager. There is
a certain etiquette to be observed; it is easy to spoil all by trying to
go too fast. And it does not do to guess at the time; when one is
waiting so hard, the minute is like twenty.
So when fifteen minutes really had gone, I raised the magic horn again,
emitted a few hankering whines, then broke into a louder, farther
reaching call that thrilled up echoes from across the lake and seemed to
fill the woods for miles around with its mellifluous pleading.
Again I waited and gave a third call just as the sun was gone. Then we
strained our eyes and watched at every line of woods, and still were
watching when the sound of a falling tree was heard far off on a
hillside.
Then there was a sort of after-clap as though the tree had lodged the
first time, and hanging half a minute, had completed its fall with
breaking of many branches, and a muffled crash. We gazed hard that way,
and the guide, a very young one, whispered, "Bear!"
There was silence, then a stick broke nearer, and a deep, slow snort was
heard; it might have been the "woof" of a Bear, but I was in doubt. Then
without any more noises, a white array of shining antler tips appeared
above the near willows, and swiftly, silently, there glided into view a
huge bull Moose.
"How solid and beefy he looks!" was my first thought. He "woofed" again,
and the guide, with an eye always to the head, whispered to my partner:
"Take him! he's a stunner."
Striding on he came, with wonderful directness, seeing I had not called
for twenty minutes, and that when he was a mile or more away.
As he approached within forty yards, the guide whispered, "Now is your
chance. You'll never get a better one." My partner whispered, "Steady
the canoe." I drove my paddle point into the sandy bottom, the guide did
the same at the other end, and she arose standing in the canoe and
aimed. Then came the wicked "crack" of the rifle, the "pat" of the
bullet, the snort and whirl of the great, gray, looming brute, and a
second shot as he reached the willows, only to go down with a crash, and
sob his life out on the ground behind the leafy screen.
It all seemed so natural, so exactly according to the correct rules of
sporting books and tales, and yet so unlovely.
There were tears in the eyes of the fair killer, and heart wrenches were
hers, as the great sobs grew less and ceased; and a different sob was
heard at my elbow, as we stood beside the biggest Moose that had been
killed there in years. It was triumph I suppose; it is a proud thing to
act a lie so cleverly; the Florentine assassins often decoyed and
trapped a brave man, by crying like a woman. But I have never called a
Moose since, and that rifle has hung unused in its rack from that to the
present day.
[Illustration]
THE BIGGEST OF OUR GAME--THE BUFFALO
"Yes, that's a buffalo-bird," said the old Indian, pointing to some
black birds, with gray mates, that flitted or ran across the plain.
"Pretty bad luck when the Buffalo gone. Them little birds make their
nest in a Buffalo's wool, right on his head, and when the Buffalo all
gone, seem like the buffalo-bird die too; 'cause what's the use, no got
any nest."
This is a fragment that reached me long ago in Montana. It seemed like a
lusty myth, whose succulent and searching roots were in a bottomless
bog, with little chance of sound foundation. But the tale bore the
searchlight better than I thought. For it seems that the buffalo-bird
followed the Buffalo everywhere, and was fond of nesting, not in the
shaggy mane between the horns of the ruling monarch, but on any huge
head it might find after the bull had fallen, and the skull, with mane
attached, lay discarded on the plain. While always, even when nesting on
the ground, the wool of the Buffalo was probably used as lining of the
black-bird's nest. I know of one case where an attendant bird that was
too crippled to fly when autumn came, wintered in the mane of a large
Buffalo bull. It gathered seed by day, when the bull pawed up the snow,
and roosted at night between the mighty horns, snuggling in the wool,
with its toes held warm against the monster's blood-hot neck.
In most of the Northwest the birds have found a poor substitute for the
Buffalo in the range-cattle, but oh! how they must miss the wool.
[Illustration: XVIII. Moose--the Widow
_Drawing by E. T. Seton_]
[Illustration: XIX. Buffalo Groups (a) Bull and Cow at Banff; (b)
Yellowstone Bulls
_Photos by G. G. Seton_]
THE SHRUNKEN RANGE
It is not generally known that the American Buffalo ranged as far east
as Syracuse, Washington City, and Carolina, that they populated the
forests in small numbers, as well as the plains in great herds. I
estimate them at over 50,000,000 in A.D. 1500. In 1895 they were down to
800; probably this was the low-ebb year. Since then they have increased
under judicious protection, and now reach about 3,000.
In the June of 1897, as I stood on a hill near Baronett's Bridge,
overlooking the Yellowstone just beyond Yancey's, with an old timer,
Dave Roberts, he said: "Twenty years ago, when I first saw this valley,
it was black-speckled with Buffalo, and every valley in the Park was the
same." Now the only sign of the species was a couple of old skulls
crumbling in the grass.
In 1900 the remnant in the Park had fallen to thirty, and their
extinction seemed certain. But the matter was taken up energetically by
the officers in charge. Protection, formerly a legal fiction, was made
an accomplished fact. The Buffalo have increased ever since, and to-day
number 200, with the possibility of some stragglers.