The Moose. 219 



methods of the chase ; for a truculent moose will do its 

 best, with hoofs and horns, to upset the boat. 



The true way to kill the noble beast, however, is by fair 

 still-hunting. There is no grander sport than still-hunt- 

 ing the moose, whether in the vast pine and birch forests 

 of the northeast, or among the stupendous mountain 

 masses of the Rockies. The moose has wonderfully keen 

 nose and ears, though its eyesight is not remarkable. 

 Most hunters assert that he is the wariest of all game, and 

 the most difficult to kill. I have never been quite satisfied 

 that this was so ; it seems to me that the nature of the 

 ground wherein it dwells helps it even more than do its 

 own sharp senses. It is true that I made many trips in 

 vain before killing my first moose; but then I had to hunt 

 through tangled timber, where I could hardly move a step 

 without noise, and could never see thirty yards ahead. If 

 moose were found in open park-like forests like those 

 w^here I first killed elk, on the Bighorn Mountains, or 

 among brushy coulies and bare hills, like the Little 

 Missouri Bad Lands, where I first killed blacktail deer, I 

 doubt whether they would prove especially difficult animals 

 to bag. My own experience is much too limited to allow 

 me to speak with any certainty on the point ; but it is 

 borne out by what more skilled hunters have told me. 

 In the Big Hole Basin, in southwest Montana, moose 

 were quite plentiful in the late 'seventies. Two or three 

 of the old settlers, whom I know as veteran hunters and 

 trustworthy men, have told me that in those times the 

 moose were often found in very accessible localities ; and 

 that when such was the case they were quite as easily 



