XVIII 

 A BRUSH WITH A CARIBOU 



THE caribou or North American reindeer is ordinarily a timid 

 and inoffensive quarry. Every hunter who has surprised 

 a herd is familiar with the characteristic pause caused by the alarm 

 or shock from his sudden appearance ere the whole band, with 

 heads erect and scuts up, get away from danger at a rattling pace. 



Yet there are times during the ruttingeason, especially towards 

 its close, when the stag, under the spur of intense excitement, be- 

 comes very quarrelsome and pugnacious, and sometimes he has been 

 known to charge the hunter in a reckless and defiant manner. His 

 prodigious strength and the dagger-like points of his peculiar ' dog 

 killers ' or ' war tines ' render him a formidable foe if incautiously 

 allowed to get within striking distance. 



A well-known New Brunswick guide whom I have often employed, 

 a Micmac Indian noted as a very successful trapper, was once knocked 

 down and received a severe mauling from the sharp hoofs and massive 

 antlers of an infuriated stag. This man was curiously nick-named 

 ' Lucivee Dick'. While hunting in his company I myself had an 

 exciting and dangerous encounter with a large caribou stag near the 

 head-waters of the North-west Miramichi. 



My first meeting with ' Lucivee Dick ' was in this wise. The sun- 

 down shadows were lengthening across the main thoroughfare of a 

 tiny backwoods village, when I heard a group of ragged young 

 urchins volleying whoops and yells, and vociferating again and 

 again 



' Here comes Lucivee Dick ! Good old Lucivee Dick ! ' 



Then there strode along, followed by all the village idlers, a 

 stern Indian trapper, from whose back hung down a bunch of pelts 

 of lucivee, beaver, bear, otter, sable and marten, the result of his 

 long winter exile in the grim northern forest. The man was one of a 

 fast vanishing tribe, a lithe sinewy copper-coloured fellow with 

 impassive weather-roughened features and fierce defiant dark eyes, 

 which curiously enough seemed to take no note of his immediate 

 surroundings. He wore a greasy caribou skin tunic which exhaled 

 the peculiar pungent odour of the smoke of resinous forest fires, and 

 a queer cap made of mink skin out of season, from beneath which 



