THE GIANT MOOSE 245 



It was now just a week since I had brought down the 

 first moose. The snowfall made it likely that we might 

 have difficulty in getting up the Kenai River, and we 

 had but little time in which to explore any other country 

 than this. While we had seen a good many moose in the 

 burned-off district we had been traveUng through, doubt- 

 less we had counted the same animals many times on 

 different days. As for an exceptionally wide and heavy 

 head, we had marked none better than the first lot of 

 four since moving to King County Creek. It was clear 

 and a cold, nipping wind sent the moose to the shelter of 

 the green woods. Fewer were visible than on our pre- 

 vious days' tramp, but we came upon about forty. One 

 of these had a remarkable growth of brow prongs, but 

 the rest of the antlers were not very well developed. 



At last, however, we saw the light-colored moose 

 which we had imsuccessfuUy stalked the day before. He 

 was in a herd of several bulls and cows. We looked at 

 him carefully through our glasses. We could not delude 

 ourselves with the fancy that the horns were very wide- 

 spreading. Contrariwise they were narrow, for the 

 shovels rose somewhat straight from the beam and were 

 folded almost parallel instead of being laid out flat as 

 the wide-spreading horns are, and furthermore the points 

 rather curled in toward the front than lay out toward 

 the sides. The shovels were apparently broad and heavy 

 and the brow prongs, instead of being long spikes sepa- 

 rated from the blades, were outgrowths of the lower ends 

 of the shovels themselves, so that the whole appearance 

 of the horns was massive. The moose was moving about 

 slowly among the trees and only small patches of him 

 showed at any time. I sat down behind a snag on which 

 I rested the rifle, and after carefully choosing an open- 



