BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA 401 



shoulder, and try not to merit my Indian's reproof to me when 

 a bullet went six inches too high ' All same again, you allus 

 look at the horns instead of the bull, cap.' 



Moose calling has almost every attribute of true sport. To 

 succeed, a man must know the habits of his quarry and have 

 admirable opportunities for studying them ; if he ' calls ' him- 

 self, he must have an excellent ear and be a perfect mimic, 

 and for him the morning and the evening, moonlight and the 

 grey of dawn, lend their beauty to the beauty of the silent 

 woods. But for some men, ' calling ' hardly gives the man 

 enough to do. To these men I recommend still hunting over 

 the hardwood hills about the time of the first snowfall, when 

 there is enough snow to track in, with a good French Canadian 

 half-breed as a guide. To my mind there is hardly any better 

 sport on earth than to follow the great tracks through the new- 

 fallen snow, through woods beautiful beyond all description 

 with the beauty of a Canadian winter, over hardwood hills, and 

 through patches of brule, and then down into a bed of frozen 

 willows, silvered by the frost, and jewelled by the sun, through 

 swamps of tea-bush off which the frost falls in showers of crisp 

 scales, until late in the afternoon you run up to your beast in 

 a heavy grove of balsam, looking intensely black against the 

 blinding purity of the snow. But for this sport you want young 

 limbs and strong ones, and the wind and endurance of a tem- 

 perate and clean liver. You want these for any sport worth 

 the name. 



There is yet another way of hunting moose, when the snows 

 are down and the crust upon them is strong enough to bear a 

 man on snow-shoes, but not strong enough to carry the moose. 

 Of course, all the odds are against the animal, but still this is 

 exciting sport, making tremendous demands upon the man's 

 endurance ; and it is moreover when pursued in this way that 

 the moose is said to turn ' ugly ' and sometimes hunt the hunter. 

 Provided that a man only kills old bulls, and not too many of 

 them, I see no objection to this form of pursuit. The percentage 

 of men who can run to within shooting distance of a bull moose 



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