204 



FRANK FORESTER S FIELD SPORTS. 



MOOSE AND CARIBOO HUNTING. 



OR the pursuit of neither of these noble 

 animals, the largest, fleetest, and most 

 wary game on earth, is the assistance of 

 either hound or horse available. The 

 nature of the ground which they inha- 

 bit, and over w^hich they must be pur- 

 sued, render the use of the horse out of 

 the question, consisting of the densest 

 and most impervious brakes of the pine, larch, and w^hite cedar 

 forests, which cover so large a portion of the districts which they 

 most aflect, and being very often interspersed with deep bogs, 

 and insecure morasses, affording foothold to no tread, save that 

 of the cleft hoof of the ruminating animals. 



How animals of the bulk and weight of these huge Deer, can 

 force themselves between the stems of the thickset evergi'een 

 saplings, among which a man can with difficulty work his way 

 only by slow degrees, is in itself no easy matter to comprehend ; 

 but when to size and weight is superadded the vast burthen of 

 ponderous and spreading antlers, which they bear on their 

 heads — in a full grown bull Moose exceeding 50 lbs. weight — 

 and which, one would imagine, must hopelessly entangle them 

 in the brake, it is impossible to account for the ease and celerity 

 with which they will pass through the heaviest growth of forest. 

 The hunter is compelled, therefore, to pursue — when he does 

 pursue — both these giants of the cervine race on foot; and for 

 this reason hounds are rendered as unavailable as hoi'ses ; since 

 the speed of the animal, when once alarmed, is so great, that it 

 is very questionable whether even in open country, and with 

 mounted hunters, it could be run down, or even run from scent 

 into view, by the fleetest Fox-hounds. When we consider, how- 



