282 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



proached, so I went to the ridge about half a mile from them and 

 lay down to wait. They grazed in my direction very slowly for 

 half an hour or so, and then lay down and rested an hour and a 

 half or more. Meantime I had nothing to do but wait. If, when 

 they got through resting, they had decided either to descend from 

 the ridge or reverse their course and graze back to where they 

 came from, 1 should have had to make another detour and start the 

 hunt over again. But they grazed toward me, and in another 

 hour every one of the twenty-three was within two hundred yards 

 and some of them within fifty yards. Caribou and other wild 

 animals commonly fail to recognize danger in anything that is 

 motionless, so long as they are not able to smell it. They saw me 

 plainly, of course, just as they saw all the rest of the scenery, but 

 their intelligence was not equal to realizing that I was something 

 quite different. 



About this season, when the lakes are freezing all around, the 

 lake ice and even the ground itself keeps cracking with a loud, 

 explosive noise, so caribou frequently seem to take rifle-shots for 

 the cracking of ice and are not disturbed. I took pains to see 

 that my first shots especially should be of the right kind. What 

 you must guard against especially is a wound through or near the 

 heart, for an animal shot that way will startle the herd by making 

 a sprint of fifty to two hundred yards at top speed and then drop- 

 ping, turning a somersault in falling. But he will always run in 

 the direction he is facing when shot, so that you can control his 

 movements by waiting to shoot until he is facing in a suitable direc- 

 tion. When an animal is frightened he will run toward the middle 

 of the band, and if he is already there he will probably not run at 

 all, at least for the moment. But caribou shot through the body 

 back of the diaphragm will usually stand still where they are, or, 

 after running half a dozen yards, lie down as if naturally. I there- 

 fore now did the thing that may seem cruel, but which is necessary 

 in our work; I shot two or three animals through the body, and 

 they lay down quietly. The shots had attracted the attention of 

 the herd but, sounding like ice cracking, had not frightened them. 

 Furthermore, the sight of an animal lying down is conclusive with 

 caribou and allays their fear from almost any source. I then 

 moved my rifle so slowly that the movement was unnoticed, and 

 brought it to bear on the next one, holding it so near the ground 

 that the working of the bolt in reloading was equally not noticed. 

 After the first animals had lain down I shot two or three that were 

 near instantly dead with neck shots, and then began to aim for 



