112 GILPIN — ON THE MAMMALIA OF NOVA SCOTIA. 



saw the infuriated beast betwixt two spruce pines, rearing on his' 

 hind legs to ten or twelve feet, and shredding every branch from 

 either tree with his horns, as he descended. Again and again did 

 he rear till his huge form was shrouded in a mist of pine leaves, 

 recent branches, bark shreds and dust of the withered dead arms, 

 always hanging on the boles of pines. Many years had passed, 

 when he told me the tale, yet his description of the horrid bristling 

 crest, glaring eyes, and steaming breath from hideous swollen 

 nostrils, was too graphic for me to doubt the truth, or its effect 

 upon him at the time. 



Towards November the cold winds and early snows, teach them 

 it is time to yard. So collecting in families of four to seven or 

 eight, usually two or three cows with attendant calves and several 

 bulls, they retreat to some valley betwixt hardwood knolls, for the 

 winter. If the browse is plenty, and the cover good, they wander 

 very little. The various maples, the poplar, ashes, dogwoods, 

 moose-wood, and alders, are their principal food. Seeing one day 

 in the forest some saplings shred away some twenty feet from the 

 ground, I asked Sam Copeland, an expert in all kinds of wood- 

 craft, if porcupines had done it? No, was the answer, "moose 

 browsing." They ride down between their fore legs a young tree, 

 and browse on the top, then allow it to spring up again. If, as I 

 said before, the browse is plenty and they are undisturbed these 

 yards become beaten down almost like a farm yard, and the early 

 spring and melting snows finds them still in the same spot. But 

 now-a-days this rarely happens. Few yards remain undisturbed 

 by the hunters. 



But this brings me to the description of their capture. They 

 were formerly taken by snares set in the forest, but this mode is 

 now prohibited by law. Another mode is by calling, that is, during 

 the rut the hunter imitating the voice of the female, and calling the 

 bull within shot. On a frosty evening or at dawn of a September 

 day, with a half filled moon hanging just above the tops of the tall 

 spruces, and giving light enough barely to a narrow horizon, with 

 the cool down wind blowing in your face, is the most favorite time. 

 On such an eve, or day dawn, a party will lie wrapped in their 

 blankets, over their rifles, concealed by a rock or shrub, while an 



