Beschreibung:

ROOSEVELT, THEODORE, President . Autograph manuscript signed ("Theodore Roosevelt") of Western hunting narrative, "A Shot at a Bull Elk," written for the Liber Scriptorum of the Authors Club, n.d. [published 1893]. 10 pages, 4to, in ink on rectos and versos, each leaf neatly inlaid to a larger sheet, titled at head. A SHOOTING TRIP WITH THE FUTURE ROUGH RIDER When his career in New York politics seemed to be at an end, in 1884, Roosevelt rather improbably took up cattle ranching in the Bad Lands of the Dakota Territory, serving for a time as sheriff of Billings County, He returned periodically to the West, especially on hunting trips, like the one recounted here in simple but extremely vivid language, very much resembling the stories in The Wilderness Hunters published the same year. "A year or two ago I was camped near Buffalo Fork of the Snake [River], while on a hunting trip in the Shoshones," with "an old hunter, Tazewell Woody." One night, "A bull Elk came striding down the mountain close to our camp, uttering at short intervals his peculiar singing challenge: one of the wildest and most musical sounds to be heard by the hunter who roams over the timbered slopes of the Rockies. He did not pause, but crossed the valley, and plunged into the mountainous forests." At daybreak the hunting party set off in pursuit: "the air was clear and cold. Ice fringed the edges of the little brook whose loud, humming murmur had lulled us to sleep throughout the night, as we lay in our blankets on beds of odorous pine boughs..." Birds, deer and bear tracks are sighted along the rugged trail, "but it is never wise, when after big game, to run the risk of alarming it by firing at anything smaller." The party follow the elk's tracks across the valley, when "suddenly Woody, who was ahead, pulled up short, and pointing downward to the dust of a game-trails, remarked with a disgusted expression, 'Indians.' Sure enough, there in the dust was the round footprint of an unshod horse, evidently not an hour old. We had known that a band of Shoshones was hunting to the southeast of our camp, and had come to this basin with the hopes of forestalling them. It was very irritating, for the Indians hunt in parties... they scour the whole country and shoot at anything they see... they not only work much havoc among the game, but drive all that they do not kill out of the area." The Indian party was hunting directly across the basin, so Roosevelt heads to one side into "a tangle of wooded ravines" and dismounting, proceed on foot, listening and watching intently. "We discovered our quarry though, neither by sight nor sound, but through the exercise of another sense. Just as we were crossing a little steep gully, we both halted short, whispering simultaneously 'I smell him,' A band of elk have a strong, sweet smell,... in old bulls during the rutting season it becomes very rank and pungent. If a man has a good nose, and is to leeward, he may smell a band of elk a mile off." Teddy moved forward cautiously, "rifle at the ready," and "finally... came to an old burn, the dead trees standing erect and gray. Immediately afterward I caught sight of the elk's antlers behind a mass of fallen logs, as he stood with head tossed aloft, suspecting danger. In a moment he ran across me, some eighty yards off. I covered an opening between two trunks, waited until he appeared, and fired well forward... a hundred yards on, he failed in trying to leap a large dead log... In a moment we were both standing over him, admiring the head, with its massive, shapely antlers... Then we made back to camp, and next day returned with a pack-pony to carry in the meat and trophies..." Published in the Liber Scriptorum , pp.484-487.