364 THE DEER OF AMERICA. 



different. I may here repeat, what I have intimated in another 

 place, that the Indian, even since he has acquired the use of fire- 

 arms, does not ordinarily drive game from a country, as the white 

 settler or even the white hunter is quite likely to do. His quiet, 

 stealthy mode of proceeding does not create that permanent im- 

 pression of alarm, which results from the boisterous and careless 

 proceedings too often indulged in or practiced by the white man. 

 If he kills his game, it is done so quietly and everything is so 

 quiet afterwards, that those escaping are hardly able to appre- 

 ciate what enemy has thinned their ranks. 



In what may be termed the alarmed districts, nothing short of 

 the skill of the Indian can successfully pursue the Caribou, and 

 so it is indispensable to the sportsman who would hunt him, to 

 secure the services of a native hunter, whose life-long training 

 alone could qualify him for the difficult task. The sport is de- 

 feiTed till earl}'^ winter sets in, when the ground is covered with 

 snow, which reveals the tracks of the deer, and finds more or less 

 lodgment in the boughs and on the bark of the trees, making 

 everything so nearly correspond with the color of the Caribou, 

 that nothing short of the quick eye of the Indian can detect him, 

 till he bounds away forever. 



Many expert Indians have for many years almost made it a 

 profession to assist the sportsman in the pursuit of the moose and 

 the Caribou, in those few districts where these deer are found 

 and are still accessible to the sportsman. These Indians are not 

 only skillful hunters, but are often amusing companions and use- 

 ful camp servants : making camp, supplying the fires, cleaning 

 the guns and cooking the meals, and bringing in the game. 



It is in the damp and fresh fallen snow that the Caribou is 

 most successfully stalked. Then it is that the foot, clad in the 

 moccasin, made from the skin of the hock of the moose, returns 

 no sound to the hunter's step, and he is enabled to glide through 

 the dark forest or the bleak barren as noiselessly as a cat upon a 

 carpet. 



The Caribou, like the moose, frequently crops the parasitic 

 mosses or the twigs of bushes while he is traveling, and by this 

 means the experienced hunter is assisted in following his trail 

 when his tracks are indistinct ; and from the freshness of these 

 signs he judges how recently the animal has passed. 



In districts where the Caribou is not hunted except by the 

 Indians, as in the interior of Newfoundland and Labrador, they 

 are less suspicious, and less difficult to approach. There they 



