I attribute this great success partly to the nature of the ground, which was often open enough to enable you to see elk at a distance and stalk them without the use of the dog, secondly, to Elias’s skill and intimate knowledge of the ground and habits of the elk, and lastly to the principle which he always acted on of going very slowly when near elk, of never following tracks without making constant easts on both sides to give the dog the wind of any likely places where the elk might have turned back. Elias always said that it was better to spend three or four hours in ap¬ proaching an elk in such a way and at such a time as to enable you to sec him before he saw or heard you, than to spend the time in running after disturbed beasts, or looking for fresh ones; and sometimes when wc had got near what he believed to be a good bull on very still days, or in very thick forest, he would suggest leaving it and coining back the next day.
I must not omit to mention Pasop, the dog with Elias. This was Sir Henry Pottinger’s and my favourite dog among many that we had tried, and I believe he had been at the death of about forty elk in the course of six or seven seasons. Elias had the greatest possible regard for him and never when in or near the forest, or where elk might be, allowed him to be loose, as he considered it to be ruinous to a dog used for elk hunting to be slipped, or to have the chance of running an elk. Pasop was, like his master, very deliberate in his actions, and though he could wind an elk as far as and as certainly as any dog, did not want to rush and strain when the scent was hot, as most elk dogs do. lie was keen enough but not too keen, and when an elk was killed used to take very little notice of the body and never seemed to care about the blood and offal with which the hunters usually reward their dogs after a kill. Whilst the butchering was going on—-and Elias was far cleaner and more methodical in this work than any hunter I have had—Pasop would, after a titbit or two, lie quietly down and go to sleep as though it was an everyday occurrence. Until I knew the dog well I often thought he was slack, but Elias knew very well when he was near elk; and though Pasop would on rare occasions take notice of and perhaps go a little way on the scent of a fox, he did not, as many good dogs do, draw up to capercaillie or ryper. I never had him on the fresh track of a bear, but I do not think he had ever been entered to or seen one.
As Sir Henry Pottinger in his most interesting book, Flood, Fell and Forest (Arnold, 1905), has given so good an idea of the method he followed, I will only describe two days which are specially interesting.
The first was on September 22nd, when we had spent the night after a blank day in a hut built near the south end of Storvand, a lake seven or eight miles long, surrounded by steep hills clothed with birch and pines up to about 600 feet above the water. The night was so wet and stormy, and the roof leaked $0 much, that after a rather broken sleep I was ready to start before daybreak, and as the wind was blowing up the lakes we took the boat intending to row to the far end, and hunt our way back up-wind. Rowing quietly along the shore in the dull misty morning, I spied a bull lying close to the shore about 150 yards off, and slipped my rifle out of the cover, signing to the men to row gently on without speaking. The bull rose and gazed at the boat, and as I saw he would not stand long,
