256 The Wilderness Hunter 



is sometimes a spice of excitement even in these 

 unworthy methods of the chase; for a truculent 

 moose will do its best, with hoofs and horns, to up- 

 set the boat. 



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

 by fair still-hunting. There is no grander sport 

 than still-hunting 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 hunt- 

 ers assert that it is the wariest of all game, and the 

 most difficult to kill. I have never been quite satis- 

 fied 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 scarcely move a step without noise, 

 and could never see thirty yards ahead. If moose 

 were found in open park-like forests like those 

 where 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 black- 

 tail deer, I doubt whether they would prove espe- 

 cially 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 



