A HUNTER'S CAMP-FIRES 



one of these stopped for an instant to gaze at me, seventy yards 

 distant, I brought it to its knees with a shot through the 

 shoulders. As it lurched to its feet a second bullet cut through 

 part of one of its antlers, causing the bull to swing around, 

 exposing its side again. At the third report of the carbine 

 the wounded caribou plunged ahead several times and pitched 

 forward on its nose. I followed the band down the barren at 

 a run, but although they stopped a number of times to stare 

 at me, there was always a number of cow caribou between the 

 rifle-sights and the coveted heads of the three remaining bulls. 

 The caribou were thoroughly alarmed and already at long 

 range when they were sufficiently strung out to enable me to 

 open an ineffectual fusillade at these bulls. 



At this moment two new factors in the hunt attracted our 

 attention. A bull and six cows from the band were attempt- 

 ing to circle back through the pass high up on the mountain- 

 side, but above we could see the small, dark-colored forms of 

 two hunters climbing along the cliffs above them to cut off 

 their retreat. Then a succession of faint reports was borne 

 down to us, and after stumbling along for several hundred 

 yards to the accompaniment of more reports, the bull pitched 

 forward among the rocks. The bull which I had shot had 

 the finest head of any in this band, and was the best specimen 

 of Osbom's caribou secured on the trip. The antlers measured 

 fifty-one and fifty -two and one -half inches, had a spread of 

 thirty and one - half inches, and carried thirty - seven points. 

 While Mac and I were trying to pry the body from the bog- 

 hole into which it had fallen, Mr. Alex:ander Brown, of Phila- 

 delphia, came down the mountain-side, and we exchanged con- 

 gratulations and such meagre news as the country furnished. 



In company w4th Mr. Hare, who had also come to the country 

 on the same steamer with us, Mr. Brown was camped only a 

 few miles beyond in the next valley. At the sight of Mac and 

 me in the distance several days before, their Indians had ad- 



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