4i 6 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



that the British Columbian caribou is darker in colour than his 

 eastern cousin : a bull killed here in September is nearly as 

 black as a bull moose, and a cow set up in the British Colum- 

 bian Museum is even blacker than the bull. This seems worth 

 noting, as Caton says of C. tarandus, ' the colour lighter 

 than any of the other deer.' The head figured is from 

 a photograph of one killed in British Columbia, and may be 

 considered fairly typical, except perhaps that it is too sym- 

 metrical, and that the ploughs are too even. As a rule, one 

 plough is large and much palmated, whilst the other is a mere 

 spike. A large British Columbian caribou head measured 

 3 ft. 6 ins. in length, 3 ft. in span, and 6 ins. in circum- 

 ference above the big tine, but I have no record of any ex- 

 ceptional head. As most men know, both male and female 

 caribou have antlers, but the antlers of the cow are light and 

 insignificant compared with those of the bull. The antlers are 

 clear of velvet some little time before the rut, which begins in 

 British Columbia when the first snow begins to fly (in September) 

 in those high upland districts which the caribou inhabit. 



The two or three haunts of this deer known to me in 

 British Columbia are all similar in character, lying very high at 

 the top of the timber-line, where dark groves of balsam and 

 other conifers, hung with immense quantities of beard moss, 

 alternate with open glades of yellow swamp grass. The snow 

 in these districts remains unthawed in the timber till late in 

 May, and begins to fall again about the middle or end of 

 September, but the exposed tops of the rolling highland above 

 the timber are said to be free from snow a little earlier than 

 the timber. In early summer the caribou frequent these high 

 grassy downs, lying close to the large patches of snow left in 

 the hollows, seeking as far as may be to avoid that pest created 

 for their special annoyance, the caribou fly. Later on, in 

 August, the caribou are hard to find, having left the hills and 

 sought (so the Indians say) the seclusion of the densest brush 

 to rub off their old coats, clean and burnish their antlers, and 

 generally make ready for the rut. The best time to hunt the 



