430 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



accepted as its southern boundary, whilst the musk ox seems 

 capable of existing very far north, as some are recorded to have 

 been killed on Grinnell Land, latitude 82 27', within a mile of 

 the winter quarters of H.M.S. 'Alert,' in July 1876, but I can 

 find no record of any having been seen in Greenland. 



Now, all these places are necessarily hard of access, and to 

 make a successful musk-ox hunt means spending many months 

 in northern latitudes, and undergoing the hardships and risks 

 which Arctic explorers have found only too plentiful in cross- 

 ing the Barren Ground A mistaken theory exists among the 

 officers of the Hudson Bay Company, that the musk ox come 

 into the woods in the winter ; but as a matter of fact the Indians 

 have to push out far beyond the timber, hauling wood for fuel 

 on their dog-sleighs, and as the robes are not prime till the snow 

 has fallen and the cold is intense, it will be easily understood 

 that the difficulty of getting out to the musk-ox country, find- 

 ing a band, and hauling in the robes, is a thing to be well 

 considered before starting. In addition to this, it must be 

 remembered that if a party of men and dogs fail to find their 

 game when they are far from timber, the chances are ten to 

 one that nobody will reach the woods alive, as the caribou 

 which roam the Barren Ground in vast herds during the summer 

 seek the better shelter of the thick forest directly the winter 

 sets in, and it is perfectly impossible to haul sufficient provi- 

 sions for men and dogs in addition to fuel. 



My personal experience of the musk ox is derived from two 

 expeditions, one in the autumn and early winter and the other 

 in summer, which I made with some half-breeds from Fort 

 Resolution, a Hudson Bay trading post on the south shore 

 of the Great Slave Lake. We left with canoes in the middle 

 of August, and after travelling 150 miles towards the north-east 

 end of the lake, portaged over a range of mountains on the 

 north shore, and passing through a chain of small lakes reached 

 the end of the dwarf timber by the middle of September. At 

 this point, roughly three hundred miles from Resolution, we 

 established a permanent camp, and, reduced to four in number, 



