400 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



million is clever enough to mimic these calls, and if you 

 are lucky enough either to be that man or his employer, 

 you may take advantage of the moonlight and lie out be- 

 hind some log or bush watching the skyline and listening 

 while the half-breed (it will probably be a French half- 

 breed) grunts and roars upon the horn, imitates the thrashing 

 of the bull's antlers amongst the alder-bushes. Experts 

 disagree as to the amount of skill required to call a moose. 

 Some say that any noise is good enough when he is really on 

 the war-path, that the chopping of an axe or the bray of a 

 donkey will ' fetch ' him ; others again affirm that the nicest 

 accuracy is necessary in imitating every call, and I am bound 

 to admit that, though I have never met a man who had seen a 

 moose drawn to his ruin by the sound of chopping, I have more 

 than once known that a moose owed his life to the fact that 

 my overalls were majde of a peculiarly harsh material from which 

 the brush in passing managed to elicit a very penetrating sound. 



If all goes well with the caller, it may be that at last he will 

 hear, faint and far off, a hoarse response from the depths of the 

 swamp below him, a response repeated from time to time, and 

 growing each time nearer, until at last, if he can hear anything 

 but the beating of his own heart, he will hear the scrub crunched 

 under the foot of the advancing monster. As long as all goes 

 well, the quiet night betrays the bull's every movement to the 

 hidden man, almost as clearly as if the hunter could watch the 

 whole play with his naked eyes. Now the bull comes crashing 

 up from the swamp through the alder-bushes, now he is stand- 

 ing listening half in doubt as to whether to come on or go 

 back, but the half-breed is prepared for the emergency. Good 

 as he is, he dare not try a call at such close quarters, but 

 he strikes the horn against the scrub and the bull comes on 

 again, thinking that he has heard the rattle of his enemy's 

 weapons. 



When at last, with strangely little warning it seems to you, 

 and much closer to you than you had expected, that monstrous 

 form looms up against the half-light, remember to look at its 



