A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH 117 



, " as I knew he would, " said the guide ; yet the 



marksman was not ready. "By hemp! I could 

 have shot three ' bears, " exclaimed Uncle Nathan, 

 "while he was getting that rifle to his face! " 



Poor Mr. Bull's Eye was deeply humiliated. 

 "Just the chance I had been looking for," he said, 

 "and my wits suddenly left me." 



As a hunter, Uncle Nathan always took the game 

 on its own terms, that of still- hunting. He even 

 shot foxes in this way, going into the fields in the 

 fall just at break of day, and watching for them 

 about their mousing haunts. One morning, by these 

 tactics, he shot a black fox; a fine specimen, he 

 said, and a wild one, for he stopped and looked and 

 listened every few yards. 



He had killed over two hundred moose, a large 

 number of them at night on the lakes. His method 

 was to go out in his canoe and conceal himself by 

 some point or island, and wait till he heard the 

 game. In the fall the moose comes into the water 

 to eat the large fibrous roots of the pond-lilies. He 

 splashes along till he finds a suitable spot, when he 

 begins feeding, sometimes thrusting his head and 

 neck several feet under water. The hunter listens, 

 and when the moose lifts his head and the rills of 

 water run from it, and he hears him " swash " the 

 lily roots about to get off the mud, it is his time to 

 start. Silently as a shadow he creeps up on the 

 moose, who, by the way, it seems, never expects 

 the approach of danger from the water side. If 

 the hunter accidentally makes a noise, the moose 



