86 BIG GAME 'OF NORTH AMERICA. 



Caribou is so closely allied— then it may be naturally 

 imagined that the hunting of this powerful animal must 

 be a laborious undertakmg. 



Journeys of one hundred and fifty miles are said to be a 

 common performance of the domesticated Reindeer, and in 

 the year 1690, one animal is affirmed to have drawn an offi- 

 cer, carrying important dispatches, the astonishing dis- 

 tance of eight hundred miles in forty-eight hours. 



By hunters, either white or red, the Caribou is followed 

 only on those rare occasions when snow of unusual depth 

 is crusted over to the point at which it is* not sufficiently 

 strong to support the game. Then the toil is too great 

 even for his mighty powers of endurance, and he can be 

 run down by men, on snow-shoes, inured to the sport 

 and to the hardships and privations of the wilderness, but 

 by such men only. Indians in the Canadian Provinces, and 

 many hunters in the Eastern States, can take and keep his 

 trail, in suitable weather, under the conditions referred to. 

 Tha best time for this mode of hunting is the latter end of 

 February or the beginning of March. The best weather is 

 when a light, fresh snow of three or four inches has fallen 

 on top of deep drifts, with a crust underneath sufficiently 

 strong to bear the weight of the hunter on his broad snow- 

 shoes, enabling him to follow the trail with swiftness and 

 silence. Then the hunters crawl around, silent and vigilant, 

 always up-wind, following noiselessly the well-defined foot- 

 prints of the wandering, pasturing, wantoning herd; judg- 

 ing, by signs, unmistakable to the veteran hunter, un dis- 

 tinguishable to the novice, of the distance or proximity of 

 the game, until at length, as the reward of patience and 

 perseverance, they steal upon the herd unsuspected, and 

 either finish the hunt with a sure shot and a triumphant 

 whoop, or, as is frequently the case, discover that the 

 game, from some unimagined cause, ' has taken alarm and 

 started on the jump, and so give it up in despair. An 

 undoubted authority has said: " Of all wood-craft, none is 

 so difficult, none requires so rare a combination as this, of 

 quickness of sight, wariness of tread, very instinct of the 



