248 THE WILDERNESS HUNTER. 



snow steadily deepens, these lines of travel 

 become beaten paths. There results finally 

 a space half a mile square — sometimes more, 

 sometimes very much less, according to the 

 lay of the land, and the number of moose 

 yarding together — where the deep snow is 

 seamed in every direction by a network of 

 narrow paths along which a moose can travel 

 at speed, its back level with the snow round 

 about. Sometimes, when moose are very 

 plenty, many of these yards lie so close 

 together that the beasts can readily make 

 their way from one to another. When such 

 is the case, the most expert snow-shoer, under 

 the most favorable conditions, cannot over- 

 take them, for they can then travel very fast 

 through the paths, keeping their gait all day. 

 In the early decades of the present century, 

 the first settlers in Aroostook County, Maine, 

 while moose-hunting in winter, were frequently 

 baffled in this manner. 



When hunters approach an isolated yard 

 the moose immediately leave it and run off 

 through the snow. If there is no crust, and 

 if their long legs can reach the ground, the 

 snow itself impedes them but little, because 

 of their vast strength and endurance. Snow- 

 drifts which render an ordinary deer abso- 

 lutely helpless, and bring even an elk to a 

 standstill, offer no impediment whatever to a 

 moose. If, as happens very rarely, the loose 

 snow is of such depth that even the stilt-like 

 legs of the moose cannot touch solid earth, it 

 flounders and struggles forward for a little 

 time, and then sinks exhausted ; for a caribou 

 is the only large animal which can travel 



