SNARING CARIBOU 135 



tinned to pass all day over the same route which 

 herds had been tramping over all night a route 

 which was in full view of the Post when day 

 broke. During the hunt that followed two 

 Indians killed sixty Caribou, and three others, 

 forty-four Caribou : a total of one hundred and 

 four Caribou to five rifles. This was a good kill, 

 for the conditions were perfect, since the Caribou 

 had been found in the full flood of their migra- 

 tion, and no distance from camp. And is it not 

 a better bag than five men would obtain by 

 snare, and spear, and muzzle-loading gun, in 

 primitive hunting ? for, as I describe below, 

 it apparently took a much greater number of 

 men to effect any like large capture in the past. 



The method of killing Caribou in numbers in 

 the past, in the territory immediately south of 

 the Barren Lands, I here recount as more than 

 one veteran Indian has described it to me : In 

 olden days Caribou were largely caught in snares. 

 The Chipewyan tribe in the whole neighbourhood 

 combined in one grand hunt at the season of the 

 Caribou migration. It was their custom to select 

 a locality in the forest which they knew to be 

 much favoured by Caribou, and there set snares, 

 made of stout " babiche " (leather thong), by 

 hanging them, at a height to form a head noose, 

 between stout trees wherever old Caribou paths 

 passed. They would set a hundred or more 

 snares in this manner before The Trap was 

 complete ; whereupon the hunters who were 

 armed with spears and muzzle-loaders took up 

 their positions so as to watch the trap and encircle 

 it when the Caribou approached. Thereafter 



