204 The Wilderness Hunter. 



in the country, but they were usually found in different 

 kinds of ground, though often close alongside one another. 

 The former went in herds, the cows, calves, and yearlings 

 by themselves, and they roamed through the higher and 

 more open forests, well up towards timber line. The 

 moose, on the contrary, were found singly or in small parties 

 composed at the outside of a bull, a cow, and her young of 

 two years ; for the moose is practically monogamous, in 

 strong contrast to the highly polygamous wapiti and 

 caribou. 



The moose did not seem to care much whether they 

 lived among the summits of the mountains or not, so long 

 as they got the right kind of country ; for they were much 

 more local in their distribution, and at this season less 

 given to wandering than their kin with round horns. 

 What they wished was a cool, swampy region of very 

 dense growth ; in the main chains of the northern Rock- 

 ies even the valleys are high enough to be cold. Of 

 course many of the moose lived on the wooded summits 

 of the lower ranges ; and most of them came down lower 

 in winter than in summer, following about a fortnight 

 after the elk ; but if in a large tract of woods the cover 

 was dense and the ground marshy, though it was in a val- 

 ley no higher than the herds of the ranchmen grazed, or 

 perchance even in the immediate neighborhood of a small 

 frontier hamlet, then it might be chosen by some old bull 

 who wished to lie in seclusion till his horns were grown, 

 or by some cow with a calf to raise. Before settlers came 

 to this high mountain region of Western Montana, a 

 moose would often thus live in an isolated marshy tract 



