184 HUNTING IN THE ARCTIC 



"Nearly all the streams that we saw in this vicinity 

 still had a few hve salmon in them, the last stragglers 

 of the run, but there was plenty of evidence to show that 

 a little earUer in the season great quantities of these 

 fish had come up the creeks to spawn and die, or be eaten 

 by the great brown bear. At this season the bear were 

 not feeding upon the salmon and had entirely disappeared 

 from the low country in which we were hunting, although, 

 if we read aright the signs that they left, they had not 

 long since moved up to the higher ground. 



"There were numerous caribou, however, running 

 in small bunches of from two to six head, and very easy 

 to approach with ordinary caution. The caribou were 

 just in the stage of shedding the velvet from their horns, 

 and I should say about half the heads we saw were still 

 in the velvet, while the other half had entirely or only 

 partially rubbed it off. 



"One of the most interesting things we saw while 

 in this country we stumbled on by accident. We were 

 on the top of a small hill one day and spied a fox some 

 distance below us in such a position that it looked possible 

 to get up for a closer shot. We wound our way through 

 the alders in the direction of the fox, and were about 

 approaching the opening from which we hoped to see 

 him when we were arrested by a great slashing of antlers 

 against the alders, which at this point were probably 

 ten feet high. Forgetting the fox we approached the 

 noise, and finally got up to within about twenty yards 

 of a fine caribou scraping the velvet off his horns with 

 the aid of the alders. We stood concealed and watched 

 him for some minutes. At first we saw nothing peculiar 

 in the action, but in a little while we noticed that he 

 would rub his head against the bushes for a moment, 



