254 HUNTERS OF THE GREAT NORTH 



miles when I came upon the tracks of a band of caribou. 

 You can seldom be sure of the minimum number in a 

 band from the tracks if there are more than ten animals, 

 for caribou have a way of stepping in each other's foot- 

 prints. There are always likely to be more animals in a 

 band than you have been able to make out from the 

 tracks. 



The trail showed that these caribou were traveling into 

 the wind as they usually do. There were only light airs 

 and the snow had on it a crust that broke underfoot with 

 a crunching noise. Under such conditions the band were 

 likely to hear me four or five hundred yards away. The 

 country now was a rolling prairie — not barren gravel as 

 yesterday. It was impossible to tell which ridge might 

 hide the caribou from me, so instead of following the trail 

 ahead I went back along it for about half a mile studying 

 the tracks to see just how fast they had been moving. 

 They had been traveling in a leisurely way and feeding 

 here and there. I estimated their average rate of pro- 

 gress would not be more than three or four miles per day. 

 I could not rely on this, however, for a wolf may turn up 

 any time and begin a pursuit which takes a band twenty- 

 five or fifty miles away. Should a wolf pass to windward 

 of them so that they got his smell without his knowing 

 about them, they would be likely to run from five to ten 

 miles. 



When I had made up my mind that these caribou were 

 moving slowly, I went to the top of a nearby hill and 

 through my glasses studied the landscape carefully. 

 With good luck I might have seen some of them on top 

 of some hill and the problem would have become definite. 

 But I watched for half an hour and saw nothing. Clearly 

 they were either feeding in some low place or else they 



