148 HUNTING CAMPS. 



We cached the canoes on the following day and were 

 able to travel very light, and consequently made the 

 longest journey I have ever done at a stretch in New- 

 foundland. Starting before dawn with our packs we 

 reached our base camp at Butt's Brook the same 

 evening and, pushing on at once in the flats, arrived at 

 Terra Nova station by eleven o'clock at night. On the 

 way out, just before we reached Sir William Whiteway's 

 Drogue, we came upon the fairly fresh tracks of a bear. 



On the whole the 1904 trip was disappointing both 

 as regards the number of deer seen and as regards the 

 size of the antlers, for whereas in 1903 I alone saw a 

 hundred and twenty-one absolutely shootable stags, in 

 1904 Wynyard and I only saw seventy between us, and 

 of these a large proportion carried very poorly-grown 

 horns. As to the number of the deer, it is certain that 

 we failed to strike the main migration, which did not 

 pass through the Terra Nova country in 1904. The 

 caribou are admittedly arbitrary in their movements 

 and change their course every year ; the diminished horn 

 growth might be attributable, as I have said before, to 

 the severity of the spring of that year, the prolongation 

 of the cold seeming to hold back the normal production 

 of the antlers of the caribou in Newfoundland. I 

 believe that in that year, 1904, no head of over thirty- 

 five points was brought in to St. John's. 



Apart from this universal poverty of horn growth, 

 the wetness of the season added no small item to our 

 disappointment, for we missed the usual lovely October 

 weather, to which I had not only looked forward myself, 

 but had led Wynyard to look forward also. For all 

 that 1 believe we both enjoyed our four weeks on the 

 barrens. 



