438 WILD ANIMALS. 



he carefully retraces his footsteps, and breaking off suddenly to 

 the leeward side, lies down a gunrshot from his feeding-track. 

 He knows he must get the wind of any one following his trail. 



" In the morning, ' Twa-poos,' or the Three Thumbs, sets forth to 

 look for a moose. He hits the trail and follows it ; every now and 

 again he examines the broken willow-tops or the hoof-marks. 

 When experience tells him that the moose has been feeding here 

 during the early night, Twa-poos quits the trail, bending away in 

 a deep circle to leeward ; stealthily he returns to the trail, and as 

 stealthily bends away again from it. He makes as it were the 

 semicircles of the letter B, supposing the perpendicular line to 

 indicate the trail of the moose. At each return to it, he examines 

 attentively the willows, and judges his proximity to the game. 

 At last he is so near that he knows for an absolute certainty that 

 the moose is lying in a thicket a little distance ahead. Now comes 

 the moment of caution. He divests himself of every article of 

 clothing that might cause the sUghest noise in the forest, even his 

 moccasins are laid aside, and then, on a pointed toe which a 

 ballet-girl might envy, he goes forward for the last stalk. Every 

 bush is now scrutinisjed, every thicket examined. See ! he 

 stops all at once ! You who follow him look, and look in vain ; 

 you can see nothing. He laughs to himself, and points to yon 

 willow covert. No, there is nothing there. He noiselessly cocks 

 his gun. You look again and again, but you can see nothing. 

 Then Twa-poos suddenly stretches out his hand, and breaks a 

 little dry twig from an overhanging branch. In an instant, right 

 in front, thirty or forty yards away, an immense dark-haired 

 animal rises up from the willows- He gives one look in your 

 direction, and that look is his last. Twa-poos has fired^ and the 

 moose is either dead in his thicket or within a hundred yards 

 of it. 



" One word now about this sense of hearing possessed by the 

 moose. The most favourable day for hunting is in wild, windy 

 weather, when the dry branches of the forest crack in the gale. 

 Nevertheless, Indians have assured me that on such days, when 

 they have sighted a moose, they have broken a dry stick, and 

 although many branches were waving and cracking in the woods 



