STILL-HUNTING 



109 



"No!" said he finally. "That moose can't 

 have any horns. If he had, they'd have knocked 

 the snow off that fir, or else he'd have scrope the 

 other tree." 



I was not sure that "scrope" was a correct past 

 participle of the verb "to scrape," but I was quite 

 sure that the pair of antlers I was looking for had 

 not been carried between those trees. 



Little assistance in judging the age or size of a 

 moose is afforded by the teeth-marks on trees, 

 where the bark has been peeled. After the moose 

 has lost his milk teeth, and has come into posses- 

 sion of those of maturity, there is no increase in 

 their size. An old moose is likely to have defective 

 incisors, but often the front teeth of a three-year- 

 old will show similar defects. The middle front 

 teeth of mature moose are about half an inch in 

 width. They are like gouge chisels, but are often 

 scalloped into a sort of double gouge, which 

 would give the hunter, intent on studying the 

 "peelings" on trees, the impression that the teeth 

 were much smaller than they really are. Further- 

 more, a large moose often leaves on the tree-trunk 

 the marks of the narrower incisors at the end of the 

 little row of chisels, causing the hunter to infer 

 that the peeling was the work of a yearling.' 



^ See pp. 87-89. 



