THE CHASE. 349 



hard during the night, a crust would be formed sufficient to bear 

 a man or a dog, but incapable of sustaining the Moose. When 

 a Moose was found under such conditions, he was quite at the 

 mercy of his pursuers. For a short distance he could force his 

 way through the treacherous snow, into which he would sink at 

 every step, but in rising from it the sharp edges of the icy crust 

 would cut and bruise his legs in a cruel way, and he would soon 

 be overtaken and dispatched. 



This cruel mode of pursuing the deer has not been confined to 

 the northern regions, where alone the Moose are met with, nor 

 yet to the aborigines, who hunted for the necessaries of life, and 

 whose greatest resource was the deer, but whenever the condi- 

 tions permitted, great numbers of the Virginia deer were thus 

 pursued and slaughtered, not only by the aborigines, but by 

 our frontier settlers as well. Fortunately, in the lower latitudes, 

 where the Virginia deer are most abundant, deep snows covered 

 with this strong crust have been of rare occurrence. 



In these conditions the deer are more helpless than any other 

 quadruped, by reason of the small, sharp foot, Avhich cuts through 

 the crust, while most other animals would be supported upon it. 

 The reindeer or caribou, whose foot presents a much broader 

 surface for support, has been less persecuted in this way than the 

 other members of the familJ^ 



Both the Moose and the caribou, during the winter, when 

 deep snows are frequent in the forests which they inhabit, collect 

 together in small bands and form what are called yards., gen- 

 erally the females and young by themselves. Some of these 

 are more complete than others, and it is only the most perfect 

 which have been usually described by authors and hunters. In 

 these the deer tramp the snow down to a hard floor throughout 

 the yard, leaving it surrounded by a vertical wall of the untrodden 

 snow. The places selected for these yards are dense thickets, 

 affording the greatest abundance of shrubbery, yielding their 

 favorite food, which is arboreous. This they utterly destroy 

 within their yard, by consuming the twigs and stripping off the 

 bark. Even the large trees which they cannot bend down to 

 reach the tops, they denude of the bark so far as they can reach. 

 If they do not relish this coarse, dry bark of the large trees, 

 they consume it all to satisfy their hunger. When all the food 

 within the yard, — which sometimes becomes considerably ex- 

 tended to reach the shrubbery, — is consumed, they break their 

 way to another location where a fresh supply may be found, and 

 form a new yard. 



