A FALL HUNTING TRIP. 93 



he told me he thought he saw a gleam of white behind 

 some spruces that might be the neck of a stag. Seeing 

 that the stag, if one it were, must be lying down and would 

 probably not rise till later, I left Jack to watch and went 

 back to the camp for some tea. I had scarcely reached it 

 when Jack came running after me with the news that the 

 white patch had moved, and that he was almost sure it 

 was a good stag caribou, and he asked me if I would like 

 to follow with my rifle at once, or wait for my tea ! I 

 relinquished my tea, and, going back with Jack, climbed 

 the look-out tree, but it was still impossible to see more 

 than that gleam of the white neck behind a small group of 

 spruces. To get within shot we were obliged to make a 

 long detour, but two or three low thickets of bush gave us 

 pretty good cover. We were thus able to creep to within 

 about two hundred yards of where the stag lay, when I 

 stopped to use the telescope again, in order to see as much 

 as I could of him. But this was no more than the tops of 

 his antlers, which, however, appeared to be fairly well 

 developed. We judged that he might be a thirty-pointer, 

 and as the drogue behind which he was lying afforded ex- 

 cellent protection from view I managed to get extraordi- 

 narily close. We were within certainly fifty yards of him 

 before he began to grow at all suspicious, and perhaps not 

 more than forty before he got up. His tops were still the 

 only part of him visible, but it was quite clear that if he 

 happened to make off up-wind there would be no chance of 

 a shot. On the other hand, if I fired at once, I should 

 merely have to choose the thinnest part of the twigs and 

 branches that concealed him and fire through them. Accord- 

 ingly I fixed on the clearest spot I could see, and fired. 

 At the shot he bolted out on the north side of the thicket 

 just like a gigantic rabbit, and tumbled head over heels to 

 a second bullet in the neck. 



He turned out to be a heavy and large-bodied stag. 



