416 BIG GAME SHOOTING 
that the British Columbian caribou is darker in colour than his 
eastern cousin: a bull killed here in September is nearly as - 
black as a bull moose, and a cow set up in the British Colum- 
bian Museum is even blacker than the bull. This seems worth 
noting, as Caton says of C. farandus, ‘the colour lighter 
than any of the other deer.’ The head figured is from 
a photograph of one killed in British Columbia, and may be 
considered fairly typical, except perhaps that it is too sym- 
metrical, and that the ploughs are too even. As a rule, one 
plough is large and much palmated, whilst the other is a mere 
spike. A large British Columbian caribou head measured 
3 ft. 6 ins. in length, 3 ft. in span, and 6 ins. in circum- 
ference above the big tine, but I have no record of any ex- 
ceptional head. As most men know, both male and female 
caribou have antlers, but the antlers of the cow are light and 
insignificant compared with those of the bull. The antlers are 
clear of velvet some little time before the rut, which begins in 
British Columbia when the first snow begins to fly (in September) 
in those high upland districts which the caribou inhabit. 
The two or three haunts of this deer known to me in 
British Columbia are all similar in character, lying very high at — 
the top of the timber-line, where dark groves of balsam and 
other conifers, hung with immense quantities of beard moss, — 
alternate with open glades of yellow swamp grass. The snow — 
in these districts remains unthawed in the timber till late in 
May, and begins to fall again about the middle or end of — 
September, but the exposed tops of the rolling highland above ~ 
the timber are said to be free from snow a little earlier than — 
the timber. In early summer the caribou frequent these high 
grassy downs, lying close to the large patches of snow left in © 
the hollows, seeking as far as may be to avoid that pest created — 
for their special annoyance, the caribou fly. Later on, in — 
August, the caribou are hard to find, having left the hills and 
sought (so the Indians say) the seclusion of the densest brush — 
to rub off their old coats, clean and burnish their antlers, and 3 
generally make ready for the rut. The best time to hunt the — 
