THE MOOSE. 251 



snow-skates are preferred, as upon them men 

 can travel much faster, though they are less 

 handy in thick timber. Having donned his 

 snow-shoes and struck the trail of a moose, 

 the 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 ex- 

 posure ; not infrequently his feet are terribly 

 cut by the thongs of the snow-shoes, and be- 

 come 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 likeli- 

 hood it has run itself to a standstill. Accord- 

 ingly, 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 



