Mountain Game. 125 



ran among the rocks, cackling noisily, with their tails 

 cocked aloft ; and we had no difficulty in killing four, 

 which gave us a good breakfast and supper. Old white 

 goats are intolerably musky in flavor, there being a very 

 large musk-pod between the horn and ear. The kids are 

 eatable, but of course are rarely killed ; the shot being 

 usually taken at the animal with best horns and the shes 

 and young of any game should only be killed when there 

 is a real necessity. 



These two hunts may be taken as samples of most 

 expeditions after white goat. There are places where the 

 goats live in mountains close to bodies of water, either 

 ocean fiords or large lakes ; and in such places canoes can 

 be used, to the greatly increased comfort and lessened 

 labor of the hunters. In other places, where the moun- 

 tains are low and the goats spend all the year in the 

 timber, a pack-train can be taken right up to the hunting 

 grounds. But generally one must go on foot, carrying 

 everything on one's back, and at night lying out in the 

 open or under a brush lean-to ; meanwhile living on spruce 

 grouse and ptarmigan, with an occasional meal of trout, 

 and in times of scarcity squirrels, or anything else. Such 

 a trip entails severe fatigue and not a little hardship. The 

 actual hunting, also, implies difficult and laborious climb- 

 ing, for the goats live by choice among the highest and 

 most inaccessible mountains ; though where they are found, 

 as they sometimes are, in comparatively low forest-clad 

 ranges, I have occasionally killed them with little trouble 

 by lying in wait beside the well-trodden game trails they 

 make in the timber. 



