88 REPORT ON INTRODUCTION OF 



nearly white at all seasons, and tlie legs are always ranch darker than the hody 

 color. The young are mottled on the sides for the first months after birth, and some 

 adults have been seen so marked, which presumably points to a spotted ancestor, 

 and with unequivocal certainty to close kinship Avith his boreal relation. 



Dismissing this cousin german altogether, and bespeaking exclusive attention to 

 the reindeer proper, we discover that in eastern British America he, too, is brown in 

 summer, brown aud white in fall, and white in winter. The coat is extremely thick, 

 with a soft felt pile at base, which bristles with long hairs, and is calculated in every 

 way to resist cold. He is not as tall as the red deer, but heavier. Stags in their 

 prime, from 6 to 10 years old, weigh 400 pounds. Hinds are about the size of a red 

 deer stag; legs shorter, feet broader, ears shorter and more rounded, nostrils larger, 

 with sense of smell very acute. They can detect the presence of moss simply by 

 putting their noses to the snow, even wheu it is 6 feet deep. The sexes are variously 

 distinguished as bulls and cows, bucks and does, and stags and hinds. At seasons 

 when the horns are short and the animals are engaged in grazing, they resemble 

 cows more than deer. When fully grown the antlers are immense, palmated, and 

 sweeping backward; are cast in November and get full growth again by the first of 

 September following. During that month, which is the raking or rutting season, 

 they get much battered and broken by fights, especially the brow antlers, which are 

 provided chiefly for offense, though sometimes, but not often, used to shovel off 

 snow from buried food. In feeding they draw away the snow with the nose, which 

 is covered with a hard skin for that purpose. Crown antlers, spreading widely, 

 when thrown back protect the body while passing through dense brush. Brow 

 antlers meet over the nose like two hands placed palms together, with fingers straight 

 out. Females generally carry horns, but not always. Their horns are much more 

 symmetrical than their consorts', and not one-third the size — palmated, too, except 

 that in yearlings they are slender and straight. Antlers sometimes measure 5 feet 

 around the curve. Females at the age of 2 years drop their young in May. When 

 the young are born they shed their horns. The flesh of the reindeer in August and 

 September is most delicious, and has often 3 or 4 inches of fat on it. East of Hudson 

 Bay to Ungava, Labrador, on the divide between Fort George River and Ungava 

 River, is a treeless, rocky ridge, with moss and furze, which harbors numberless 

 reindeer. This ridge separates the Montaignais Indians from the Eskimos, and was 

 once disputed ground between the latter and the Red Indians, a tribe now extinct. 

 When approached up wind the deer are readily stalked. Eskimos often call or toll 

 them within 10 to 50 yards. 



The Canadian tundra plains west of Hudson Bay and east of the Mackenzie River, 

 especially that portion which lies between the Arctic Ocean and Great Slave and 

 Athabasca lakes, is the reindeer country par excellence. Great numbers of musk 

 oxen also roam there, and their skins find their way to the Hudson Bay Company's 

 posts by hundreds. This region comprises an area of 60,000 square miles. On their 

 migrations the deer move in vast herds, passing north to the arctic waste in the 

 spring, and returning south to the wooded country in the fall. The Indians hunt 

 them in the summer. Their wiuter coat of long hair is shed early in July, aud by 

 the end of August the hide is in excellent condition, the hair soft and not too long. 

 Later in the year it becomes harder and more brittle, and the hide is apt to be rid- 

 dled with holes made by the larvae of a bot-fly. Horns are very large and irregular, 

 very few being alike. Indians resort to lakes and streams where the animals cross, 

 and spear them while in the water, often killing several hundred at a battue. They 

 cure the meat and utilize every part of the carcass for tent covers, clothing, sled 

 frames, utensils, etc. On the Peace River and its tributaries, between the Mackenzie 

 and the Rockies, Dominion Surveyor Ogilvie, in his official report, says that for days 

 together his party was never out of sight of caribou. He puts the average weight 

 of the female (dressed) at 60 to 80 pounds; bucks 150 to 200 pounds, occasionally. 

 Their range comprises alternations of bare rock with mossy intervals, interspersed 

 with lakes of one-half mile to 15 miles loua. 



