32 WILD LIFE AND THE CAMERA 



comes a head through the fringe of alders which 

 line the river bank, another, and yet another. This 

 is surely my lucky day. Among that small herd 

 was a stag, a real stag of the kind one reads about, 

 but seldom sees. How many points ? you ask. Well ! 

 I don't know. I didn't have time to count them, 

 but it looked like forty-five or fifty, and the photo- 

 graph shows a full forty-five. He followed close 

 behind the small band of does and came within 

 fifty feet of me before I made the exposure. 

 Startled by the sound of the shutter, the big 

 fellow jumped directly towards me, stopping about 

 twenty-five feet away. Excited to a painful 

 degree, I tried to put in another plate and reset 

 the shutter so that I might make a picture of the 

 stag alone. But just as I was drawing the slide, he 

 galloped off. I had secured one picture of the 

 magnificent specimen, so I had no right to com- 

 plain. Yet I did regret not having succeeded in 

 getting the picture of him alone, when he would 

 have shown to much better advantage. 



It is afternoon and the sky is dull. So far nothing 

 has happened since the big stag came. Several 

 Caribou are feeding on the marsh a few hundred 

 yards away. One small herd is working in this 

 direction. They are feeding slowly along. Now 

 they are not more than one hundred and fifty yards 

 away. They have stopped feeding, and one after 

 the other they are lying down. The stag, a fine big 

 one, stands sentry for some time, but he too wants 

 to rest, so he too lies down. For over an hour they 

 sleep quietly. One old doe looks up occasionally, 

 but they are unaware of the fact that their arch- 



