HOW I LEARNED TO HUNT CARIBOU 257 



bound to lift sooner or later and whenever it did I would 

 commence the hunt over again. 



The fog did lift in about two hours and I did have to 

 commence the hunt all over again, for the caribou were 

 gone. I was to the north of them and I felt sure that they 

 had not gone by near me; so they must have gone east, 

 west or south. I was probably so near them that I could 

 not with safety go on top of any of the adjoining hills, so I 

 went back north half a mile and climbed a high hill there. 

 From that hill I saw nothing and went half a mile to one 

 side to another hill. Then I saw the caribou. They 

 were now feeding half a mile south of where they had been 

 when the fog covered them up. In the meantime the 

 breeze had stiffened enough so that now there was no 

 longer danger of my being heard. I did not, therefore, 

 have to circle them and lie in wait in front but could 

 follow up directly behind. 



Eventually I got within about three hundred yards. 

 But I wanted to get within two hundred, so I lay still and 

 waited for them to move into a more favorable locality. 

 During my wait an exceedingly thick fog bank rolled up, 

 but with it the wind did not slacken. Under cover of 

 this fog I felt safe in crawling ahead a hundred yards, 

 for I knew that I could see through the fog quite as well 

 as the animals and that they could not hear me because of 

 the wind. The reason I had not approached them in the 

 previous fog was that the weather then had been nearly 

 calm and they would have heard me. 



At two hundred yards I was just able to make out the 

 outline of the nearest caribou. I did not dare to go closer 

 and, of course, I could not begin shooting with only one 

 or two animals in sight where I wanted to get them all. 

 I had before now counted them carefully. There were 



