THE NEWFOUNDLAND CARIBOU 327 



passion. Hardly an adult stag is free from traces of combat 

 at the end of October. It is common to see them scarcely 

 able to crawl from the blows they have received, and with 

 horns knocked to pieces. In 1904 Joe Jeddore walked up 

 to two large stags that were fighting and put a charge of 

 buckshot into one of them at a distance of fifteen paces. The 

 stag thinking his opponent had inflicted the blow, made one 

 mighty rush at him and fell dead. The other deer then ran 

 forward and pounded the carcase of the fallen one, when the 

 Indian fired his other barrel and killed the second stag on 

 the top of the first. Even young stags fight most savagely. 

 I watched two on the hills one day in 1906 going at each 

 other for over an hour, until in fact they were both so 

 exhausted that their blows had no power and they could 

 only reel about. 



At this season the smell of the stag is very pungent. 

 The mucus of the nostrils is so impregnated with a musky 

 odour that if any of it gets on your fingers it is most 

 difficult to remove. The flesh is so charged with the taint 

 that adult stags are uneatable from 3rd October to 20th 

 November. 



Caribou do not make "wallows" like other species of 

 deer. In late September the stags often stand on little 

 mounds and scrape away shallow pits with their feet, gene- 

 rally in spots where some doe has been and left traces of 

 her presence. This habit is very similar to that of the 

 bull moose, but I have never seen the pits so deep as those 

 made by the larger deer. 



On the 25th of October the rutting season may be said 

 to be at an end, and the main migration begins. The first 

 sign of the general movement is the joining of parties and 

 the presence of one or two old stags moving together. They 



