STALKING THE GREAT ELK.

Lake County Press, Issue 1066, 28 May 1903, Page 3

STALKING THE GREAT ELK.

(By Henry Scton-Karr, M. P.) By a combination of lucky circumstances, 1 once found myself in a Norwegian pine-clad valley that shall be nameless, intent on my first elk-hunt. We were a syndicate of three, a quadruped and two bipeds. j First, and most important, there I was Rover, the dog, whose keen nose and quiet sagacity found the game | with unerring instinct. He was held in leash by Ivor, the hunter, who i knew the ground, and had eyes like a hawk ; while I, the third of the 1 trio, did the shooting with a 500bore Express rifle, when opportunity at intervals came. Nineteen hands or so at the J shoulder, some 70 stone in weight, and dark grey to black in colour, an j old bull-elk or moose ought not to be difficult to find and kill one I would think. But the Norwegian elk-hunter occasionally spends time and toil for weeks in vain. In spite of his size and weight, the elk can move noiselessly in his woodland home, and vanish like a dream. He often changes his locality and ranges wide. Nature, however, has not provided him for naught with those great ears and that monstrous nostril, those long powerful limbs, and the cloven, springy hoof. His body harmonises so exactly with the dark, spruce woods, mingled with the t birch and mountain-ash trees on I which he feeds, his senses of hearing I and smell are so acute, and his ' powers of locomotion so easy, noiseless and swift that first to find and ■ see him, and then to get a fair shot at him are no easy tasks. The opening day, September 10th, found us in the forest at an early hour. If I can only see an elk, thought I, surely I can kill him : a great brute six feet high, and with four times the hittable area of a woodland stag. But pride goes before a fall. Inside of four hours from the start we found a bull lying ! down, pointed, so to speak, at short notice, by Rover, in the shade of birch and pine and—l did not kill him. I can see him now. As he rose 100 yards away, my bead was on lus shoulder, but some demon of over-caution prompted me to dwell on the pull till he stood upright. It was but a question of seconds. Without a pause he swung round the birch trees, and gave me but a snapshot at his great haunches, and was gone. Three days later Rover, in the heart of the forest, informed us, in unmistakable canine language, that we had then and there disturbed an elk in his mid-day couch. There was the bed, and there the fresh, gigantic track, which had been with me in imagination, since the first day, showing that a good bull had heard us, or winded us, and departed, noiselessly and swiftly, unheard and unseen. For five mortal hours, led jby Rover, vvc followed that track. IJs he never going to rest ? An eight-foot stride at least, and for six miles in a straight line, back to the hill where 1 saw my first bull. Can it be the same animal ? I thought. Wc gave him and ourselves I an hour's rest for lunch, and so en- j j doavoured to dispel in his mind all | suspicion of pursuit. At hast he j ! takes a pull. Yes, here he has walk- | ! ed, has bathed, has stood, has fed. I We crawl gently on through dense j j birch cover. Now the wood opens ; I I it is possible to see a hundred yards :or more here and there. Now Rover i ■ quickens into unmistakable- anima- ' tion. Every fibre of his handsome ! dark-grey coated body, his pricked I : ears, and sniffing nostrils tells us in : language as plain as a printed book j that he has winded, not spoor, but elk. Our advance is more cautious j still. " Suddenly, " See here," says Ivor j in a hoarse whisper, standing a yard in front of me. and pointing past a i spreading fir tree with his linger. I spring a yard in front of him, and , see through the trees, IH<) yards or j more down the hill, the great dark ; body we have been looking for. A single stride will take the elk out ! of sight. Fortunately his head is . I behind a tree, and he has not seen j I us though he may have heard some- j tiling. I control with difficulty the impulse to shoot standing, on sight, j I sit down, elbow on knee, and draw a full sight on the black side, j The distance is too great to take a free shot from the shoulder, I will run for three seconds the chance of i his moving. It seems ages before I can get the bead steady on his side, before 1 can or will press the trigger. The smoke clears. Surely he moved very slowly away. We Ivor, Rover, and I—run down the hill a neck-and-neck race to where he stood ,vhen I shot, and on through thick cover for a hundred yards or '■ so. " Der ban er ! " says Ivor, eagerly as a great bull staggers out i from under a thick pine, straight to- I wards us, with the will, though not | all the power to charge. The halfinch expanding bullet, driven by five I drams of black powder through a Henry rifled barrel, has done its deadly work. A second bullet in the i chest, a stagger and fall, and my ' first bull-elk, a 40in. 13-pointer lies dead. He was my old friend of the first day, as the fresh thigh-wound, plainly made by a 500-bore bullet, that had just missed the ham bone, showed. He measured 6ft. Gin. in height at the shoulder and took two horses and six men eight hours to bring him home four miles next day " Dundee Telegraph." ' i