126 THE WILD FOWL AND GAME ANIMALS OF ALASKA 



of game, the man who loves the rifle will find his opportunity 

 among the mountains and valleys of the interior. Formerly 

 large mammals were much more numerous in Alaska than at 

 present, and the decrease has come about almost entirely since 

 our ownership of the country. The history of the fur-seal is 

 well known. The sea otter is another animal that is passing 

 away. Its doom is even more certain than that of the fur-seal, 

 for it is a dangerous thing for an animal to wear a coat worth 

 from five hundred to a thousand dollars. All that has kept the 

 sea otter from extinction is its shyness and the fact that the 

 stormy parts of the sea it frequents render its pursuit hazardous 

 and uncertain. Upon the mainland are several fine mammals, 

 among which native reindeer are the most generally distributed. 

 There are two kinds of, these deer — a large, dark-colored one, 

 called the woodland caribou, which lives in the wooded district 

 of the upper Yukon, and a smaller, paler kind, called the barren 

 ground caribou, which lives in the open tundras or treeless 

 country. Barren ground caribou were once exceedingly numer- 

 ous, and the coast hills along the shores of Norton sound are 

 still scored with their trails, leading diagonally up to the cool 

 summits, where the animals used to go in summer to avoid the 

 mosquitoes that swarm on the tundras. But even so far back as 

 1877 the caribou was very rare along most of the coast of Bering 

 sea. When Alaska passed under American controlit became 

 possible for the natives to secure breech-loading rifles, especially 

 where whalers and trading schooners called, and the result was 

 a rapid slaughter of the large game. 



Since the barren ground caribou usually live in the open tun- 

 dras where there is no cover, it is extremely difficult for the 

 hunter to approach unseen. Like the antelope of our western 

 plains, they are inquisitive animals, and before starting away 

 often make a circuit about anything which excites their interest. 

 Before they became sophisticated by the common use of guns, 

 the Eskimos had an ingenious method of stalking them in open 

 ground, which the old hunters told me was very successful. The 

 Eskimos hunted in pairs, and when they found a bunch of caribou 

 on an open plain they would start directly for the animals, one 

 hunter walking immediately behind the other, keeping step, with 

 their bodies touching, so that from the front they appeared like 

 one man. When they were still some distance away, the caribou 

 would throw up their heads and start off to circle around the in- 

 truders. The hunters kept on in their original course, appar- 



