The Moose 319 



smell and hearing help out of many a scrape. So 

 keen are its perceptions of danger, and so silently 

 and rapidly can it leave all danger behind, that the 

 best trained hunter is repeatedly made to recog- 

 nize his own stupidity when the wits of the two 

 are brought into competition. Some of the many 

 other circumstances favoring the moose are the 

 splendid cover of their range, their failure to 

 herd in large numbers like the caribou, their 

 great strength and hardihood, the immensity of 

 their territory, so far removed from contact with 

 civilization, and the fact that while Indians are 

 now much better equipped than in former years 

 for moose destruction, their numbers are rapidly 

 decreasing rather than increasing. Around the 

 head waters of the Stickine, Pelly, Liard, and 

 Nelson rivers in northwest British Columbia, is 

 a country of vast extent shut in from all the rest 

 of the world, a great untrodden wilderness. It 

 is a favorite range of the moose. The Indians, 

 one of its enemies, are dying; and no better 

 proof of the inability of the wolf to cope with the 

 moose under ordinary circumstances is necessary 

 than that right in the very heart of this great 

 moose range I have known wolves in awful hun- 

 ger to prey upon their own numbers through 

 inability to capture the moose. 



Hunting. — To become a successful moose 

 hunter is to reduce hunting to a science, and to 



