THE GAME ANIMALS OF CANADA 93 
considerable size, Seton having killed a very large old bull 
in August, 1907, on the north shore of Aylmer Lake, where 
it had undoubtedly wandered from the more northern terri- 
tory inhabited by this animal. The bull was estimated to 
weigh 900 pounds. Its total length was 96 inches, and its 
height at shoulder 59 inches. 
Economic Value as Furbearer—The possession of a large 
and valuable pelt by the musk-ox led to the destruction by 
the Eskimos, Indians, and white traders of every musk-ox 
that could be reached, and the gregarious habits of the 
animal brought about a speedy reduction in its numbers. 
Roderick MacFarlane, a former chief factor of the Hud- 
son’s Bay Company, who has contributed so much to our 
knowledge of the animals of the north, gives an account of 
the trade in musk-ox skins. He states: 
The Company’s posts at which musk-ox skins are usually traded are 
Fort MacPherson (from the Eastern Coast Eskimos); Forts Good Hope 
and Norman (from the Anderson Eskimos and from post Indians who 
hunt them); Rae and Resolution on Great Slave Lake (from Indian hunt- 
ers); Lac du Brochet, Reindeer Lake (from inland Eskimos); and Fort 
Churchill (from the Hudson Bay Eskimos). It is only in recent years, 
however, that the Company has strongly encouraged the hunting of 
musk-oxen, and although there is no record of the sale of any in the 
London Statement, 1853-1877, yet we know that a number of pelts were 
occasionally, if not annually, traded at Forts Churchill and Anderson, 
at least subsequent to 1860, and that they must have been sold there or 
in Montreal (the British Company’s market for buffalo robes) as the 
statement of the northern department fur returns for outfit 1865, .. . 
shows that the districts of Mackenzie River and York, Hudson Bay, 
collected 26 and 66 musk-ox skins, respectively, in that year. During 
the last thirty years, the Indians and Eskimos have devoted more 
attention than before to the hunting of this valuable animal. In 1902, 
271 skins and in 1903, 246 skins were exposed for sale, and the average 
for the past twenty years probably ranged between 200 and 250 pelts. 
The greater portion of those secured by the Company are purchased in 
London and re-shipped to and used in Canada and the United States, 
chiefly as sleigh and cutter winter robes. 
