A HUNTER'S CAMP-FIRES 



steep slope, trying all the while to struggle to its feet. With 

 one bullet in the neck and another through the lungs, and rapidly 

 dying, this beast made several lunges in my direction before 

 I finished it with a shot in the chest. It proved to be an old 

 dark-colored bull with antlers measuring thirty-four inches and 

 thirty-nine inches along the beams, with a spread of twenty-four 

 inches between the tips, and carrying twenty-nine points. In 

 spite of a careful search of the hillside, we failed to find the 

 wounded cow, which evidently had been stunned by the bullet 

 grazing its head and, recovering its feet, had made off through 

 the forest w^hile our attention was centred upon the bull. 



About four. o'clock that afternoon w^e staggered into camp 

 ■with the loads of head and meat, and, after a meal, started out 

 again through a long string of barrens which commenced near 

 i^amp, and, broken only by narrow fringes of spruce, extended 

 for several miles. A solitary porcupine was the sole occupant 

 of the first meadow, and a doe blacktail and her two fawns, 

 which were drinking at a pond in the next open space, vanished 

 into the timber with a couple of bounds the moment we came 

 into sight. As we were picking our way through a narrow piece 

 of thick timber toward the next barren, a violent crashing in 

 the brush on both sides warned us that we had stumbled into 

 another band of caribou. On reaching the edge of the open 

 I saw two small bulls disappear into the woods a couple of 

 hundred yards ahead, and I travelled along the edge of the 

 barren for half a mile, in hopes of sighting the remainder of the 

 band. I had stopped near the edge of the trees at the lower end 

 of the open, and was tr>^ing to pierce the gloom of the spruces 

 at the farther side, when I was startled by a sudden cough at 

 my elbow. Through the twilight I could indistinctly see the 

 body and antlers of a bull caribou not fifteen feet away, partially 

 hidden in the stunted growth which fringed the edge of the 

 barren. The first bullet struck the animal in the chest, the 

 second in the shoulder as it whirled, and the third broke its 



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