A FALL HUNTING TRIP. 93 



marshes. Two or three times we came on tracks of 

 good stags, and quite a score of smaller animals must 

 have passed along one of the deer-trails at no very 

 distant date. Some three miles of packing brought us 

 to our destination. 



While the midday meal was preparing Jack Wells went 

 off with the telescope to the edge of the wood, where he 

 climbed a tree in order to overlook a large yellow marsh 

 which stretched ahead of us. This marsh was dotted 

 with drogues of various sizes, some being in thick 

 clumps, some scanty and half- transparent. By the time 

 I followed Jack 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, climbea'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 



