188 HUNTING CAMPS. 



a picture not easily forgotten at least, that is the 

 testimony of all such as have seen the spectacle. 



But to return to our camp of regrets. After wasting 

 some hours in useless heart-burnings, Ed and I 

 went to our beds of balsam boughs, and the episode of 

 my first meeting with a moose was closed. 



There is a certain period of variable length some- 

 times it lasts but two weeks, sometimes three or even 

 four when, if the weather be fine, the moose becomes 

 master of the situation. This period begins when calling 

 ends about the 6th to 12th of October and continues 

 until the first snow falls. It is a time of hoar-frosts and 

 sunshine, when every stick in the woods is brittle and 

 every leaf crackles under even the most practised 

 moccasin. Tracking is difficult, noiseless approach 

 almost impossible. Moose are killed at this time, but 

 generally it is the hunter's luck rather than his skill 

 which stands his friend on these occasions. 



But once the first snow falls and lies the chances of 

 the game veer round. After that nothing can move in 

 the woods without leaving an open advertisement of all 

 its doings and wanderings, and it is consequently easy 

 to tell the number of moose upon any given piece of 

 country, and even the approximate spread of their horns, 

 by measuring the spaces between close-growing trees 

 through which they have passed. 



In this connection it may be noted that the range of 

 a moose is very limited more limited, I think, than 

 that of the European elk. A moose lives, and in due 

 season dies, within a comparatively small ring of 

 country a lake, a hardwood ridge, a thicket of alders, 

 a little marsh, such is his environment ; and even if 

 disturbed he rarely travels more than four miles, in 



