I can personally testify to a moose's power as a swimmer and 

 tugboat. I well remember a certain morning many years ago 

 when Charlie Virgin and I were hunting ducks along the eastern 

 shore of Lake of the Woods. We had decided to move camp to a 

 bay six or eight miles down the lake where an Indian had told 

 us the ducks congregated by the hundreds to feed on wild rice. 



We struck camp, loaded the outfit into the canoe, and shoved 

 off. Half an hour later a heavy fog settled over the water, reduc- 

 ing visibility to zero. We paddled for a time by compass, and 

 when a ripple gently rocked the canoe, Virgin, who was pad- 

 dling the bow, called out that a big bull moose was swimming 

 just ahead. Making one end of a coil of light line fast to the bow 

 we paddled close enough for Virgin to toss a loop over a horn 

 of the swimming bull, and after paying out some thirty or forty 

 feet of line we settled down to enjoy the tow. 



After fifteen or twenty minutes of gliding smoothly and effort- 

 lessly through the opaque fog in the V-shaped wake, I happened 

 to think of something, and reminded Virgin that when the 

 moose hit shore he probably wouldn't stand to be unhitched. 



Charlie agreed and began to haul in on the line in order to 

 salvage as much as possible before cutting it. Just as he was about 

 to cut the line it was torn from his grasp, the canoe was jerked 

 from under us, and we were floundering about in ice-cold water 

 armpit deep, while all about us floated the tent, the packsacks, 

 and the bedroll. Guns, ammunition, and cooking utensils lay on 

 the bottom. 



We spent the better part of an hour wading about locating 

 objects with our feet. Later we found some Indians who sold us 

 a canoe, but I have never tied onto a moose in the water since. 



When it comes to gaits, a moose will never rival a thorough- 

 bred or even an antelope. His only successful gait is a stiff high 

 trot, but with this he gets over the ground with fair speed. I 

 clocked one a few years ago near Blind River, Ontario, when a 

 cow moose stepped into the road ahead of my car. She did thirty- 

 five as long as she held to a trot. But when I crowded her and she 

 broke into the moose's ludicrous version of a gallop, her speed 

 dropped below thirty. 



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