The Moose. 223 



mortally wounded a bull which promptly ran towards him. 

 Between them was a gully in which it disappeared. Imme- 

 diately afterwards, as he thought, it reappeared on his side 

 of the gully, and with a second shot he dropped it. Walk- 

 ing forward he found to his astonishment that with his 

 second bullet he had killed a cow moose ; the bull lay 

 dying in the gully, out of which he had scared the cow 

 by his last rush. 



However, speaking broadly, the danger to the still- 

 hunter engaged in one of the legitimate methods of the 

 chase is so small that it may be disregarded; for he 

 usually kills his game at some little distance, while the 

 moose, as a rule, only attacks if it has been greatly worried 

 and angered, and if its pursuer is close at hand. When a 

 moose is surprised and shot at by a hunter some way off, 

 its one thought is of flight. Hence, the hunters who are 

 charged by moose are generally those who follow them 

 during the late winter and early spring, when the animals 

 have yarded and can be killed on snow-shoes by " crust- 

 ing," as it is termed, a very destructive, and often a very 

 unsportsman-like species of chase. 



If the snow-fall is very light, moose do not yard at all ; 

 but in a hard winter they begin to make their yards in 

 December. A " yard " is not, as some people seem to 

 suppose, a trampled-down space, with definite boundaries ; 

 the term merely denotes the spot which a moose has chosen 

 for its winter home, choosing it because it contains plenty 

 of browse in the shape of young trees and saplings, and 

 perhaps also because it is sheltered to some extent from 

 the fiercest winds and heaviest snowdrifts. The animal 



