Miller has brought more crispness to his depiction of the elk herd in this watercolor painted for Alexander Brown than in the one painted for Walters (CR# 373A). We can better discern the animals’ forms as one in the foreground falls, hit by an arrow. Likewise the distant buttes are more fully articulated here than in the Walters version.
Miller’s notes to the Brown sketches usually follow the Walters texts quite closely, but this is not the case here. While in the Walters’s text, Miller notes that elk horns can be upwards of five feet, in the Brown he says his party brought down some whose horns measured more than four. He also describes how difficult it was to hunt them: “The wariness and speed of these animals, together with their pluck and savageness when brought to bay demand skilful[sic] and experienced hunters, endowed with courage, activity and endurance.” In the Walters text, however, he describes them as “easily killed, here and there an Elk is seen to drop on his haunches raising a cloud of dust.” Such dust clouds, plentiful in the Walters version, are not present in the Brown.
