towns is poor stuff in comparison, usually killed too early or too late in the season and more or less smoked to make it keep.
On my next visit to Norway, in 1895, I was fortunate enough to obtain, from the late Sir Henry Pottinger, the right of hunting in the district of Mo, a hundred miles north of Namsos in North Trondhjem amt, which I believe was then perhaps the best ground for elk in Norway. It was the private property of the late Mr. Collett, whose timber-felling operations had now been closed. As his farm tenants were not hunters, and there were no Lapps on the ground, the elk which Sir Henry had carefully nursed for some years were less disturbed than in any place I have shot over. I had the immense advantage during the season of the company and advice of Elias Eliassen, a Lapp who had been used to going with Sir Henry Pottinger, and for whom I soon acquired a respect, liking and esteem which I have never had for any man of his class in any other country. Elias was a poor man, owning no reindeer, who made his living by working in the woods, trapping and fishing. Though he spoke very little English when I first knew him, he picked it up very quickly, and whenever he did not quite understand, he asked me to repeat my words slowly. He was the most perfect master of what I may truly call the science of finding and approaching elk with a leash dog. No Norwegian that I ever went with could compare with him for knowledge of the animals’ habits or for patience and freedom from excitement in critical moments. He was absolutely honest, sober and truthful, clean in his habits and a perfect gentleman in character. I think that he also acquired a liking for me, and when he accompanied my son to Tydal fifteen years later, Elias, though an elderly man and a stranger in the district, was successful in taking my son’s wife up to the two best bull elk which were killed that year in the district, after the ground had been unsuccessfully worked by the local hunters. I learnt so much from Elias about the elk and my month’s hunting at Mo was so successful, that I was afterwards induced to write a paper on the "Present Conditions and Habits of the Elk in Norway,” in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society for 1903, pp. 133-157. In this paper I brought together many interesting observations from various sources, which were then unknown to zoologists, and figured several heads of special interest.
Most Norwegian hunters get so excited when in sight of elk that they are always hurrying you to shoot. They do not seem to realise that you can see and hear as well as, or often better than, they can, and that as you have no dog to distract your attention you are more likely to see the elk first, Elias, however, after the first day left me entirely to myself, and if he saw anything first said nothing but only motioned me to go first. The result of this was that in the course of twenty days’ hunting together during the month of September we found thirty cows, fifteen calves and seventeen bulls, of which some were not good enough to shoot. Two I left to my friend Byng, and ten I seriously hunted, the result being that I shot at and got seven of them, and one dry cow on the first day, which I shot to try a new rifle and please the farmer on whose land she was. I could certainly have killed at least eight or ten more cows if I had wanted them.
