CHAPTER V. 



THE MOOSE, CARIBOU, AND SMALL DEER OF THE 



PACIFIC SLOPE. 



As a rule sportsmen are the first to penetrate into unexplored 

 regions, leading the way for miners and others engaged in occupa- 

 tions that bring them into contact with the wilderness. In 

 Africa, Australia and Asia, the amateur or professional hunters 

 were invariably the forerunners. The only exception to this rule 

 known to me is to be found in the case of Alaska, where the miner 

 preceded the hunter. Up to three years ago it was, I believe, 

 absolutely unknown that by far larger moose than anywhere else 

 were to be found in the dense scrub forests and marshy valley 

 bottoms of that inhospitable land. It was as unknown as the fact 

 that white bighorn could be found there, and that a species of bear 

 very akin to the practically extinct Californian grizzly roams 

 through the Alaskan woods. 



The largest unquestioned moose head exhibited at the American 

 Trophy Show was Mr. Otho Shaw's trophy with a spread of 65in. 

 About Mr. Bierstadt's moose antlers, which measured lin. more, 

 I have heard some doubts expressed whether the spread was a 

 perfectly natural one, and riot attributable to an artificial widening 

 of the antlers on the part of the taxidermist .who mounted 

 them, so as to increase the spread. For this reason I think it 

 fairest to consider Mr. Otho Shaw's as the largest at the exhibition. 

 Nothing much better turned up for ten years, when suddenly 

 certain giant antlers came down from Alaska as a result of 

 the first rush of prospectors to the Yukon ; and Sheard, whose 



