186 HUNTING CAMPS. 



stance, he received no fewer than four separate answers to 

 a call ; and on another occasion, when calling at one of the 

 home camps of his uncle the well-known Will Atkins, of 

 Maine a bull was coming in satisfactorily when the large 

 dinner-bell tolled in the hotel some miles away, a sound 

 which effectually turned the moose back. 



Calling is no longer much carried on in Maine, where 

 the season for moose does not open till the I5th of October, 

 so that the pick of the Maine guides go to practise their 

 art in New Brunswick, where moose are plentiful and where 

 the season opens on the i5th of September. About this 

 date moose usually begin to answer, and for about a month 

 a bull can be called in by any one who is skilful enough to 

 produce an adequate imitation of the cow's voice. In some 

 seasons the bulls answer much earlier, as was the case in 

 1908, when Ed called in a good bull on Lake Edward on 

 the evening of the 2nd of September. The horns of this 

 animal were still in velvet. Generally if the calling season 

 begins early it ends early, lasting in all about a month to 

 five weeks. In 1906, when we were calling on the south 

 side of the St. Lawrence, our last bull came in on the 2ist 

 of October, but there is much more difficulty in bringing 

 them in so late in the season. 



The call of the cow moose is said to consist of three 

 distinct notes, long dwelt on, with a pause of about a minute 

 between each. It is a curious fact that, although I have 

 been fortunate enough to hear cows call on many occasions, 

 I can remember only one on which the three accepted calls 

 were given. This was at Lac Pino after dark. On the 

 other hand, one evening in 1908 a cow moose suddenly 

 called about a mile away. I immediately travelled in the 

 direction of the sound, and when I was quite near, certainly 

 within a quarter of a mile, the cow called seventeen times 

 almost without a pause. I gradually approached within 

 a hundred yards of the cow, who by this time had 



