170 Life-histories of Northern Animals 



His summer life may have been spent on less than one 

 hundred acres of swamp, but now he sets forth on his travels. 

 Every few miles there is a sort of meeting-place of the sexes — 

 a stretch of open woods — often a hardwood ridge between 

 swamps. To these in turn he goes, nosing the earth and the 

 wind for helpful suggestions. Standing with ears acock at 

 every sound that might have been made by a Moose, and at 

 length believing it to be from one of his own race, he chal- 

 lenges it with a deep, long grunt or a short bellow, and ap- 

 proaches it rapidly, slashing the brush with his horns to im- 

 press the other with the fact that he is a well-armed and fearless 

 knight, circling about to try the wind from the stranger, or 

 (if there be no wind) repeating his various calls and beatings of 

 the brushwood. 



There are two usual answers to all this — the long ringing 

 reply of the responsive female or another deep grunt like his 

 own, but varied with some guttural sounds that tell of a savage 

 rival, who also is searching the woods with hke object. In the 

 latter case, there may be much grunting and manoeuvring 

 before they actually come together. As they approach they 

 often express their defiance by slashing the brush with their 

 new-grown spears and, when at last they meet and close with a 

 crash, the spread and pointed antlers are at once their bucklers 

 and their spears. It is rare to find a Moose horn without the 

 dent of battle. I suppose that, without exception, every pair 

 of full-grown Moose antlers has been in actual service "at the 

 front," for every bull Moose hide has scars. In these combats 

 the weaker generally saves himself by flight. It is but seldom 

 that one of the knights is killed; yet this happens occasionally; 

 and, as already noted, the battle has sometimes had a doubly 

 fatal termination through the locking of the horns. 



CALLING The moose-calling hunter is one who, with a birch-bark 



trumpet, imitates the bellow of the cow Moose and tempts the 

 bull forth into plain view for an easy shot. 



Though the least sportsmanlike, it is popular because it is 

 the most effectual way of getting a bull Moose. Fortunately, 



