In THE VELVET. 135 

our looks, turn off to one side, trotting a few steps away, 
stop and look again curiously toward us, often presenting a 
good chance for a shot. So there are times when the large 
game make directly toward you in the woods when least ex- 
pected. Not often to attack, however; yet we cannot deny 
(that we have often been told) that one must be wide awake 
and quick to act at times. Out of a great curiosity, as we 
have said, or seeing a movement from us in the bushes, when 
the wind is breezy from them toward us, they suppose it to 
be one or more of their own kind, and straight toward us, 
come trotting up for an interview. For even if strangers, the 
caribou, when they sight each other in their wanderings, we 
think they most always step up and say good morning, even 
without any previous introduction. 
At one time, two of us cruising the ridges for a caribou, 
came suddenly upon a doe and a two year old buck. The 
doe ran to leeward of us, the buck to the windward. So we 
tried a little strategy with the buck; instead of following him 
directly, we walked briskly along for a number of rods on his 
line of travel, but keeping a little higher up on the ridge, and 
thinking we had given him a chance to again sight us, we 
stepped still farther away and sat down in a small thicket of 
evergreens. The ground thickly covered with the dried 
leaves and the wind blowing favorably, we soon heard the 
buck’s steady trotting toward us as he rustled through the 
leaves, and knew that he had caught sight of, or heard us as 
we passed to the thicket. We could see nothing of him 
whilst coming, but distinctly heard his steady trot, louder and 
nearer, until he quickly stopped within five rods of us, with~ 
out taking a walking step. We were sitting side by side 
upon the same log, while he was now standing as motionless 
