BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA 399 



Like other deer, the moose seems slow to identify objects 

 with his eyes, but there is no doubt about the keenness of his 

 other senses. If it pleases him to answer your call, though his 

 answer may be all but inaudible to you, you need not call again 

 unless you like. Through a mile of brush which to you appears 

 a pathless tangle he will steer straight to the square yard from 

 which your call came, unless a bough should scrape against 

 your overalls or a tiny puff of wind carry the faintest suggestion 

 of your presence to him. If either of these things happen, the 

 moose will make up his mind without stopping to think. In 

 addition to the keenness of his senses the bull moose is 

 credited with considerable pugnacity when pursued and 

 ' cornered,' and he undoubtedly is a bit of a strategist, choosing 

 his couch, for instance, invariably in such a position as to 

 command the country all round. The Indians, when following 

 a moose's track, will, oftener than not, keep describing a 

 succession of semicircles, so that, instead of walking in the bull's 

 tracks, they cut them from time to time. This is done to out- 

 wit the bull, who, they say, when he means to lie down will 

 turn aside and walk back parallel to his trail, and lie down with 

 his head towards his back tracks, so that either his eyes or his 

 nose must give him warning of anyone who attempts to follow 

 him. 



There are three principal methods of hunting the moose 

 besides the foul practice of snaring him with a loop in his run 

 ways or of butchering him in his yards (i.e. in those camps and 

 feeding grounds which moose stamp out for themselves in the 

 deepest snows of winter). The favourite method (in Canada, at 

 any rate) is 'calling,' a birch-bark horn being used night and 

 morning to imitate either the cry of the bull or of the cow, and 

 so lure a would-be mate or rival (as the case may be) to his 

 ruin. September is the season of the rut in Lower Canada, 

 and during the earlier part of this season the bull seems nearly 

 beside himself with rage and unrequited passion, wandering 

 constantly in search of a mate or a rival, and filling the woods 

 with hoarse calls or hoarser challenges. About one man in a 



