192 HUNTING CAMPS. 



fiasco. It is enough to say that we found all three 

 bullets in a pine tree. 



So much for misfortune. I have described these two 

 incidents with the idea of showing that moose calling 

 has its difficulties, the chief being the semi or more 

 than semi darkness in which the shot is taken. Fre- 

 quently the animal must be fired at when two or three 

 hundred yards away, as he so rarely answers the call 

 until after the gloaming, when every instant makes the 

 light less favourable, and to shoot the moment the bull 

 appears is very important and necessary. 



Perhaps it was disappointments of this kind that 

 originally suggested jacking, by which trick a moose 

 can be shot on the darkest night. Yet I am not sure 

 that success in big-game shooting, in retrospect, is so 

 interesting as occasional failure. Finality kills imagina- 

 tion, and it is ever the finest head whose horns we 

 never measure. 



Imagine now a beautiful afternoon in another late 

 October. On the right runs an historic river, on the 

 left scattered patches of pine and juniper dot a tawny 

 ridge, the leaves are turning, for Kabibonokka had 



" Painted all the leaves with scarlet, 

 Stained the leaves with red and yellow." 



Accompanied by Ed, I was walking down a faint trail 

 which led, for about a mile, beside the high banks of 

 the river. We had walked some fifteen miles, and far 

 behind us followed a buck-board waggon with our effects 

 and canoe loaded upon it. The buck-board was in 

 charge of a small Frenchman ; now and then his voice, 

 as he argued with or urged forward his horse, faintly 

 reached us. It was our intention to push on as deep 



