Identifier: wildbeaststheirw00bake (find matches)
Title: Wild beasts and their ways : reminiscences of Europe, Asia, Africa and America
Year: 1890 (1890s)
Authors: Baker, Samuel White, Sir, 1821-1893
Subjects: Baker, Samuel White, Sir, 1821-1893 Animal behavior Hunting
Publisher: London New York : Macmillan
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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is quite alone.The female carries her young for between five and six months, andhas seldom more than one or two at a birth. The flesh is esteemedin Central Europe, where it is well larded with bacon, and preparedin a different manner from that in England; but I have alwaysregarded it as dry, and most inferior game. It can hardly beclassed as a sporting animal, as the shooting of a roe-deer is upona par with shooting a hare. It is common throughout Europe andWestern Asia. There are great varieties of small deer throughout the world,some of which are too insignificant for description, as I endeavourin this work to exhibit the characters and peculiarities of suchanimals as are generally accepted by the sportsman as attractivegame. It is therefore a relief to take leave of the insignificantroe, and to cross the Atlantic, where we shall find the red-deer ofEurope transformed by the favourable conditions of the countryand its fattening pasturage into the gigantic wapiti (CervusCanadensis).
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CHAPTER XXIV THE WAPITI (CERVUS CANADENSIS) I have already advanced the opinion that this superb species ofdeer is nothing more than the Cervus elaphus, or red-deer ofEurope and Northern Asia, upon a larger scale; it exceeds themin a wonderful degree, not only in stature, but in the immense sizeof the antlers. A fine stag, when about ten or twelve years old,is a magnificent sight to any person who takes a pleasure in thestudy of wild animals. The colour is similar to that of the red-deer, but the rump is rather a lighter brown. I have neveractually weighed or measured a wapiti, but from my experience inthe exact weight of other deer of various species, I should say thatthe live weight would be from 900 to 1000 lbs.; the same animalwould be 14J hands in shoulder height. It is found throughoutNorth America, but, like other game, it has been so hunted thatit has almost disappeared from localities where formerly it wasplentiful, as neither sex has been spared in the warfare ofexterminatio

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