400 BIG GAME SHOOTING ~ 
million is clever enough to mimic these calls, and if you 
are lucky enough either to be that man or his employer, 
you may take advantage of the moonlight and lie out be- 
hind some log or bush watching the skyline and listening 
while the half-breed (it will probably be a French _half- 
breed) grunts and roars upon the: horn, imitates the thrashing 
of the bull’s antlers amongst the alder-bushes. Experts 
disagree as to the amount of skill required to call a moose. 
Some say that any noise is good enough when he is really on 
the war-path, that the chopping of an axe or the bray of a ~ 
donkey will ‘fetch’ him ; others again affirm that the nicest — 
accuracy is necessary in imitating every call, and I am bound 
to admit that, though I have never met a man who had seen a 
moose drawn to his ruin by the sound of chopping, I have more 
than once known that a moose owed his life to the fact that 
my overalls were made of a peculiarly harsh material from which 
the brush in passing managed to elicit a very penetrating sound. 
If all goes well with the caller, it may be that at last he will 
hear, faint and far off, a hoarse response from the depths of the 
swamp below him, a response repeated from time to time, and 
growing each time nearer, until at last, if he can hear anything 
but the beating of his own heart, he will hear the scrub crunched 
under the foot of the advancing monster. As long as all goes 
well, the quiet night betrays the bull’s every movement to the — 
hidden man, almost as clearly as if the hunter could watch the — 
whole play with his naked eyes. Now the bull comes crashing — 
up from the swamp through the alder-bushes, now he is stand- — 
ing listening half in doubt as to whether to come on or go ~ 
back, but the half-breed is prepared for the emergency. Good — 
as he is, he dare not try a call at such close quarters, but ~ 
he strikes the horn against the scrub and the bull comes on ~ 
again, thinking that he has heard the rattle of his enemy’s — 
weapons. 2 
When at last, with strangely little warning it seems to you, — 
and much closer to you than you had expected, that monstrous 4 
form looms up against the half-light, remember to ook at its — 
