MOOSE-HUNTING 



carbine started up another bull which had evidently been lying 

 down in the thicket several hundred yards to the right. We 

 had the disappointment of seeing this pair of wide-spreading 

 antlers disappear in the timber below us. While Mac was 

 cursing himself, unkind Fate, the moose, and myself impartially 

 in no uncertain tones, a third bull moose appeared leisurely 

 crossing a gravel-flat in the valley about a mile down-stream. 



An hour later we were listening and watching in the thicket 

 where we had last seen this animal. As we turned camp ward 

 I suddenly became conscious of the tops of the antlers of the 

 moose showing above the willows about sixty yards distant. 

 Moose and hunters waited and listened to the pattering rain- 

 drops for fully fifteen minutes. Then the bull could stand the 

 strain no longer and moved several yards to the right, exposing 

 its head and the ridge of its back, and promptly receiving a 

 bullet in its shoulders. At this it whirled aroup.d, facing diago- 

 nally away from me, and was raked from this direction by two 

 shots in quick succession, at which it collapsed. When we 

 reached it, it was already dead. It had a rather small but 

 very regular, cup-shaped set of antlers carrying eighteen 

 points and measuring forty-three inches from tip to tip at 

 the widest spread. In shape the antlers resembled those of 

 mounted heads I had seen from the north of Europe. We fol- 

 lowed the banks of the stream up to camp, seeing a cow and 

 calf moose on the way. 



The next morning we began to move the camp down the 

 valley, but while we were following the bed of the stream a 

 bull moose was discovered in the willows in the vicinity of 

 where I had killed the last one. Howe and Mac immediately 

 started up the mountain after this head, while we commenced 

 to pitch camp in the shelter of a bluff near the river. By the 

 time we had unpacked the horses four distant rifle -reports 

 were heard, and an hour later the hunters returned with the 

 news that another bull had been shot. In the thick bush they 



359 



