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396 



AUDUBON 



than twice as large, and when the animal is irritated or 

 frightened, it projects that part much farther than usual. 

 It is stated in some descriptions of the Moose that he is 

 short-winded and tender-footed, but he certainly is ca- 

 pable of long continued and very great exertion, and his 

 feet, for anything that I have seen to the contrary, are as 

 hard as those of any other quadruped. The young Moose 

 was so exhausted and fretted that it offered no opposi- 

 tion to us as we led it to the camp; but in the middle of 

 the night we were awakened by a great noise in the hovel, 

 and found that as it had in some measure recovered from 

 its terror and state of exhaustion, it began to think of get- 

 ting home, and was now much enraged at finding itself so 

 securely imprisoned. We were unable to do anything 

 with it, for if we merely approached our hands to the 

 openings of the hut, it would spring at us with the great- 

 est fury, roaring and erecting its mane, in a manner that 

 convinced us of the futility of all attempts to save it 

 alive. We threw to it the skin of a Deer, which it tore 

 to pieces in a moment. This individual was a yearling, 

 and about six feet high. When we went to look for the 

 other, which we had left in the woods, we found that he 

 had "taken his back-track" or retraced his steps, and 

 gone to the "beat," about a mile and a half distant, and 

 which it may be interesting to describe. 



At the approach of winter, parties of Moose deer, from 

 two to fifty in number, begin to lessen their range, and 

 proceed slowly to the south side of some hill, where they 

 feed within still narrower limits, as the snow begins to 

 fall. When it accumulates on the ground, the snow, for 

 a considerable space, is divided into well trodden, irreg- 

 ular paths, in which they keep, and browse upon the 

 bushes at the sides, occasionally striking out a new path, 

 so that, by the spring, many of those made at the begin- 

 ning of winter are obliterated. A "yard" for half a 

 dozen Moose, would probably contain about twenty acres. 



