NOTES OF A FUR HUNTER. 665 
and go down again. Whether he did this to get the flies 
from his ears, or whether it is his habit, I don’t know. A 
young man who hunted moose with me had seen the same 
thing, and spoke to me of it. When undisturbed they 
move, on land, slowly and quietly, but when startled, 
are all alive. Their principal gait when not walking is a 
trot, while the deer jumps. In the season for the coming 
together of the sexes, I have seen the male standing on a 
log, and heard him grunt at intervals; at other times I 
have heard them low aloud. Sometimes we call them by 
imitating the low of the male by sounding through a roll 
of birch bark. The males answer this cry, and come to 
it; and as they draw near we place the mouth of the 
trumpet near the water, or, if on land, near the ground, 
which makes the sound seem farther off, and leads the 
moose to rushon. When he gets pretty near, it don’t do 
to keep up the deception; then we dip up and pour out 
water, which brings him right out; or, instead, make a 
kind of “splash” with the paddle, or any noise that will 
sound like the stepping of a moose in water. Care should 
be taken to keep to the leeward of the moose if possible. 
A common way of hunting them is to watch in summer 
nights at places where they come down for lily-pads, and 
shoot them there. Another way is to hunt them down in 
winter when there is a crust. 
The average weight of a moose’s meat after it is dressed 
is four hundred to five hundred pounds. I have killed 
one which I think weighed, meat and hides, one thousand 
pounds. I weighed the meat of one which weighed six 
hundred and thirty pounds. Moose meat is worth say 
ten cents a pound, and the skin has been worth from five 
to twelve dollars since the beginning of the war; I don’t 
know what it is worth now. 
` AMERICAN NAT., VOL. I. 84 
