SHOOTING CARIBOU 183 



shooting, I had six carcasses lying one be- 

 yond the other in wake of the confused sheep- 

 silly band, before the Caribou got into the forest 

 at the north end of the lake ; and if cartridges 

 had not given out I believe very few would have 

 got away. This illustrates what I have said, 

 and what I have often experienced, for each 

 time I fired the band started away, and I after 

 them, until they made that fatal halt to look back, 

 when I would halt also, and pause to fire again- 

 and so on, with the above result. 



The best range at which to shoot Caribou is, in 

 my experience, inside one hundred yards, and to 

 shoot to kill the animal with a clean shot, for a 

 wounded animal, badly hit, that gets away, is not 

 pleasant to think of, especially as one may know 

 that the poor animal will freeze to death once it 

 ceases travelling. Again, a wounded animal that 

 you might follow may take you miles off the 

 course you happen to be travelling, and through 

 overgrown country that you cannot afterwards 

 take a dog-sled into, to gather the meat, in the 

 event of your killing the wounded animal. 



I have killed animals outright with -303 Ross 

 rifle at 312 paces, and 447 paces, when I had no 

 alternative, but, irrespective of marksmanship, 

 those distances are too great to make certain of 

 clean kills. Shooting in intense cold, unless 

 you have a special-fingered glove and can shoot 

 with it on, you will almost certainly get the 

 fingers of your right hand frozen, if you fire 

 more than one or two shots in succession with the 

 bared hand which you have taken from the heavily 

 lined deerskin mitten. I've had all the fingers of 



