OUR WOOD -BISON HUNT 117 



Indians is not to be apprehended, while the remoteness 

 .of their country, the difficulties of access to say nothing 

 of the dangers of starvation and freezing once you get 

 there protect them from the white hunter. 



How many wood-bison there are is not easily estimated. 

 I made diligent inquiry from all sources of information, 

 and their numbers as told off to me ranged from 150 to 

 300. Joseph Beaulieu, at Smith Landing, popularly called 

 " Susie " by the natives that cannot master the English 

 pronunciation, and another of the famous Beaulieu family, 

 said he believed there must be a thousand ; but then 

 " Susie " has the common failing of the country, and, more- 

 over, he delivered himself of this statement when he was 

 persuading us to take a hunter of his recommendation, 

 and whom we afterwards cursed with all the depth and 

 breadth and warmth of English expletive. 



The bison range in the country bounded by Peace, 

 Slave, and Buffalo rivers, which has an area of a good 

 many hundred miles. As they roam this territory from 

 end to end, and are usually found in small herds, the one 

 of fifty that was killed a few years ago being an excep- 

 tional congregation, and as the Indians never hunt more 

 than a very small piece of this section in one winter, the 

 difficulty of arriving at a close estimate of their total num- 

 ber may be understood. 



Personally I am convinced that 150 comes very near 

 representing their total. Munn and I in our hunt very 

 thoroughly covered the larger portion of their more south- 

 erly range, and discovered the tracks of thirteen ; Munn 

 in a subsequent hunt in a more northerly part of their 

 range saw the tracks of forty ; neither of us heard of any 

 signs between these two sections, or Peace River way; and 

 I, while at Slave Lake preparing for my musk-ox hunt, 

 set inquiry afoot for signs of them in the most northerly 



