The Moose. 227 



hunter may have to follow it three days if the snow is of 

 only ordinary depth, with a moderate crust. He shuffles 

 across the snow without halt while daylight lasts, and lies 

 down wherever he happens to be when night strikes him, 

 probably with a little frozen bread as his only food. The 

 hunter thus goes through inordinate labor, and suffers from 

 exposure ; not infrequently his feet are terribly cut by the 

 thongs of the snow-shoes, and become sore and swollen, 

 causing great pain. When overtaken after such a severe 

 chase, the moose is usually so exhausted as to be unable 

 to make any resistance ; in all likelihood it has run itself 

 to a standstill. Accordingly, the quality of the fire-arms 

 makes but little difference in this kind of hunting. Many 

 of the most famous old moose-hunters of Maine, in the 

 long past days, before the Civil War, when moose were 

 plenty there, used what were known as " three dollar " 

 guns ; light, single-barrelled smooth-bores. One whom I 

 knew used a flint-lock musket, a relic of the War of 1812. 

 Another in the course of an exhausting three days' chase 

 lost the lock off his cheap, percussion-cap gun ; and when 

 he overtook the moose he had to explode the cap by 

 hammering it with a stone. 



It is in " crusting," when the chase has lasted but a 

 comparatively short time, that moose most frequently show 

 fight ; for they are not cast into a state of wild panic by a 

 sudden and unlooked-for attack by a man who is a long 

 distance from them, but on the contrary, after being wor- 

 ried and irritated, are approached very near by foes from 

 whom they have been fleeing for hours. Nevertheless, in 

 the majority of cases even crusted moose make not the 



