THE WILD FAUNA OF THE EMPIRE 51 



THE RENAISSANCE OF BIG-GAME HUNTING IN 



NOVA SCOTIA. 



By Edmund F. L. Jenner. 



The province of Nova Scotia is slightly larger than Wales. It 

 contains a population of about five hundred thousand. The Anna- 

 polis and Cornwallis Valleys are thickly populated ; mixed farming 

 and apple-growing are the chief industries. 



My experience with the big game of this region dates from 1886. 

 At that time the moose were just recovering from the wholesale 

 butchery which took place in the deep snow a few years previously. 

 Had it not been for the formation of the Nova Scotia Game Society, 

 and the activity of certain of the game- wardens appointed by that 

 body, moose would be as extinct in Nova Scotia to-day as the elk 

 is in Ireland, or the dodo in Mauritius. 



The late Commissioners Crooker (of Queen's County), Murphy 

 (of Mount Uniacke), and the following gentlemen, who are alive 

 at the present day, A. 0. Pritchard (of New Glasgow), Major 

 Daley (of Digby), Charles Mcintosh (of Sherbrooke), George Piers 

 (of Halifax) took upon themselves the unpopular and thankless 

 task of saving the remaining moose. The survivors of the move- 

 ment are elderly men; most of them have hung up the rifle and 

 snowshoes. Their positions have been filled by younger men, but 

 it is to their pluck and energy that Nova Scotia owes its present 

 stock of moose. 



I have alluded to the killing in the deep snow. This was, to my 

 mind, the most deadly form of poaching. In March, when the 

 snow was from three to five feet deep in the woods, gangs of men 

 would go out with ' moose-dogs. ' These animals were for the most 

 part mongrel bulldogs, weighing from sixty to one hundred pounds, 

 ferocious as wolves, and able to travel on a ' crust ' a moose would 

 break through. A ' yard ' having been located, certain of the 

 hunters would post themselves to leeward of it; the others, with 

 the dogs, would work round to windward. The combined scent 

 of men and dogs would probably start the moose, the dogs would 

 be slipped, and the moose would be driven past the guns on the 

 opposite side of the ' yard. ' If the guns failed to bring them down, 

 the pursuit continued; the dogs snapping and tearing at the 

 fugitive moose, the poor creatures floundering through the deep 

 snow, and the hunters following them on snowshoes at the rate of 

 three or four miles an hour. Now, while a moose can travel ten 

 or twelve miles an hour through deep snow, he never goes in a 



D 2 



