In a couple of hours we came to the spot where we had left the track the previous evening.
Smith was a fine tracker, I have seldom seen a better.
The bull was going strong and well. We soon came to where he had rested for the night, but there was no pool of blood, so the wound was evidently not serious. In the early morning he had fed down the valley. After about three hours' tracking we came on to the shore of another lake (Lake No. 2), and thought the bull had taken to the water—to the edge of which he had gone down through heavy swampy ground covered with coarse grass. Taking a cast round, we found, however, that he had turned right back and gone up the valley we had just come down, but on the other side of the river connecting the two lakes.
Following up the track we suddenly heard a crash right ahead, but I could see nothing. Smith dashed on and I heard a shout at the top of his voice, "Come on, Sir John. Quick!" It was all very well "come on quick," but with a bad knee, getting through a mass of fallen timber up a fairly steep though fortunately short hill was no easy matter. How I did it I cannot even now understand, but the pain in the knee was forgotten, my stick thrown away, the rifle, which was of course loaded, snatched out of Thomson's hand, and I found myself on the crest of the hill looking down into a valley overgrown with dense salmon-berry through which some great beast was crashing his way.
I am quite blind without a telescope sight and there was no time to fix it. I could just make out the tips of the bull's horns moving quickly through the undergrowth. I could only guess where the body was, but fortunately the body of a wapiti is a pretty big mark. Taking a snapshot as I would at a snipe I heard the welcome thud of the bullet. The bull stood for a moment, which gave me time for a second shot, on which I saw the great antlers sink out of sight in the undergrowth and I knew that the trophy I had come so far to obtain was mine.
I confess to an anxious moment as to what the head would turn out to be. The tracks were those of a big bull, but I had only seen the tips of the horn; the spread looked good, but whether he was a six or a sixteen points I could not say.
Going down to where he lay we found him stone dead, a good thirteen-pointer, which the men naturally declared to be above the average. Somehow, I was disappointed, as I expected a bigger head, but after all getting him at all was a pure chance, and having now experienced what hunting the wapiti in these dense forests meant, I was, I think, on the whole very lucky. He looked an enormous beast as he lay. What his weight was I could not guess, but he must have stood about sixteen hands at the shoulder. It took the three of us all we could do to turn him over to examine the wounds.
Both of my shots were fatal. We found that Smith's bullet had inflicted a flesh wound high up in the rump, and would have done no harm.
Wet to the skin, but happy, I got under a giant cedar which gave shelter from the heavy rain, and lighting a big fire, stripped to the skin to dry my soaking clothes, while the men were removing the head and getting some meat. We soon had wapiti steaks frizzling on the fire, and a brew of hot tea made us all comfortable and happy.
The worst of the whole business was the waste of meat and the impossibility of taking away the splendid skin. The head alone was one man's load and to carry out a green skin was quite impossible.