for a picnic on the shore of a lake called Slindvand, in the forest, and started with the boys very early to an island in another much larger lake, Sorungen, where elk were said to be often lying. About ten o’clock we got to where a boat was kept, and rowed up-wind to the island, where we posted ourselves at various spots where the elk might take the water when disturbed. The Norwegians then started with their dogs to drive the forest which covered the island. Sure enough, the elk were there, and in a very short time an elk came down to the shore near where two of the boys were watching. A regular fusillade ensued, and, though the slayer of the elk remained in dispute, a fine cow was slain in the water. We had, in chaff, assured the ladies that we would bring them meat for the picnic, and as they reached the landing-place our boat came in with the dead elk in tow.
As a proof of the wonderful nose which some of the elk-dogs possess, I may say that one which was lying half asleep in the boat winded the elk when we got the right wind about two miles away; and I have known another dog lead me up to fresh tracks on a good scenting day which he had winded at least 400 yards away.
We now began to think that elk hunting was mere sport for boys, and that if they could be got as easily as this the number of rights we had acquired would not suffice for the whole month. But before another week had passed, many often wet and weary hours had been spent in tracking through the deep woods and marshes which surrounded these lakes. With no result but tumbles over the fallen and slippery logs, and firing two or three fruitless shots at the stern of disturbed elk vanishing in the forest, we began to think that it was not so easy as it seemed.
And looking backward with the knowledge afterwards gained in these and other hunting grounds, I am confident that the system followed by the hunters of Selbo was utterly wrong, and that even if the big bulls, which we fondly hoped to find, had been at that season in the forest, and not as they actually were on the fjeld miles away above timber line, we should, by following tracks however fresh, have disturbed many more than we ever saw; and we had little chance of getting the cunning old bulls even if we had seen them. Every now and then, of course, if you work carefully up wind, especially in rough and windy weather with a keen-nosed dog in a leash, in forest where elk exist, you may come on one feeding in the early morning or evening before he sees or hears you, and you may get a shot at fairly close range, such as Norwegian hunters love, and kill him or her as the case may be. But this is not scientific elk hunting, which I afterwards learnt from a Lapp of whom I shall have much to say later.
As we were three in number, each of whom had engaged a hunter with his dogs, and did not want to separate at first, we imagined that by care¬ fully selecting positions on ridges between two lakes or posting ourselves at favourite fords, and sending the hunters miles round to beat the forest down-wind, we might succeed in driving elk as the Swedes and Russians do. But though on one occasion Cripps did have a good bull come close past him which he wounded and lost, and I got a cow which on a
