Outdoor pastimes of an American hunter

by Theodore Roosevelt

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.

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.