222 HUNTING CAMPS. 



When hunting in the Canadian woods one often falls in 

 with a covey of these birds. The best weapon is a little .22 

 taking the short cartridge, with which it is generally possible 

 to secure all the birds one wants without in any way alarm- 

 ing the country. Both kinds of " partridge" are ordinarily 

 tame, so much so that at times it is easy to capture them 

 with a long pole and a wire noose, yet at other times they 

 become curiously wide-awake ; indeed, I have frequently 

 known them on one day to take no notice of approaching 

 footsteps, while on the day directly following they will hardly 

 allow you within shot. The reason for this has probably 

 something to do with the weather, but what conditions 

 affect them I have not sufficient experience to say. 



Climbing over the hill-top, we changed our watershed, 

 and so the day passed almost without incident until late in 

 the evening, when within a mile of camp we picked up the 

 trail of a little band of caribou, which must certainly have 

 passed us unseen earlier in the day. The trail headed 

 towards the lake and disappeared into a large thicket of 

 spruce and alder close to the water. Our chance seemed 

 to have come at last, and, advancing cautiously, we had 

 already, without knowing it, come within eighty yards of 

 the deer, while we had still a quarter of an hour of shooting 

 light left. We paused several times to ensure ourselves 

 against error, and in fact heard the animals feeding and 

 moving, when, to my disgust, our two Frenchmen suddenly 

 appeared in the canoe and began breaking the ice close to 

 the farther shore. They were more than a mile away, but 

 their voices carried with appalling distinctness through the 

 quiet evening, and in another instant there was the sound 

 of a stampede, and, running forward, we found ourselves 

 staring at the slots of the little band of caribou which a 

 minute before had been almost at our mercy. 



One of them, as far as we could judge, was a stag ; 

 whether his horns would have satisfied either of us it was 



