306 Deer and Antelope of North America 



in proportion to its size, and they can never run 

 on top of the snow. The wolves thoroughly 

 understand this, and a band will systematically 

 plan an attack and execute their plans with de- 

 liberation. Surrounding the moose, some will 

 attract its attention by jumping at its head, while 

 others cut its hamstrings. To escape this dan- 

 ger northern moose leave the hills in March and 

 April and go down into the timber of the lowland 

 where the snow is yet soft. The wolf does not 

 destroy a very large number of moose, but when 

 driven to extreme hunger will devise many kinds 

 of methods for their capture, and, strange to say, 

 will attack the largest bull as readily as the 

 smaller cow. I account for this by the fact that 

 as cows, calves, and young animals, with some- 

 times an adult bull, all run together, their com- 

 bined resistance is too much for the wolf, whereas 

 some of the old bulls are frequently found alone. 

 On the Liard River, in the winter of 1 897-1 898, 

 the wolves killed and ate a very large bull within 

 one mile of the little fur trading post at which I 

 lived. The snow at that time was soft in the 

 hills, but crusted on the river where the winds 

 swept up and down. Realizing they could not 

 capture the bull in the hills, they drove him 

 on to the river. The river was wide, and as he 

 went plunging through the crust into the deep 

 snow beneath, they overtook and slaughtered him 



