MOOSE-HUNTING 



through sheets of rain, they must have lain down in sonie 

 thick brush which we circled several times without disturbing 

 them. Later in the afternoon this theory was verified by the 

 sudden reappearance of both moose in the same spot. Aban- 

 doning the search for these animals about noon, we continued 

 along the slope above timber-line for half an hour, when Mac's 

 keen eyes discovered a bull moose feeding in the willows about 

 five hundred yards down the mountain-side. 



When about two hundred yards above the moose, w^hich only 

 revealed itself by an occasional gleam of glistening wet blades 

 through the willows, Howe and the Indian crawled toward it 

 in the underbrush, leaving me to watch its movements with 

 the glasses. A few moments later a thick fog settled over the 

 mountain, and I peered into this and shivered for twenty min- 

 utes until the silence was punctuated by four reports from my 

 friend's rifle. Descending, I found the hunters bending over 

 a fine specimen of Cassiar moose, with antlers fifty-six inches 

 in spread and carrying twenty-six points. Howe had been 

 able to approach within fifty yards of the feeding moose, and 

 had rolled it over at the first shot, firing three more shots to 

 end its struggles. 



These Cassiar moose have the enormous bodies of the moose 

 of the Kenai Peninsula, but the antlers do not grow any larger 

 than those of the moose of eastern Canada. However, there is 

 a larger proportion of good heads in this country, for the reason 

 that the older bulls have not been thinned out, as in the East. 

 The color of the coats of the moose we saw in this region was 

 much lighter than of those I have seen in eastern Canada, being 

 more of a brownish-gray, while the Quebec and New Bruns- 

 wick moose show a glossy black. 



We left the bull where it had fallen, to be called for later 

 with a pack-horse, and reached camp in time for a late luncheon. 

 We had not time to change our wet clothing before Mac dis- 

 covered the two bulls of the morning in the same spot where 

 '* 355 



