I70 THE AMERICAN MOOSE 



tively recent date that the increased interest in 

 moose hunting as a sport has brought it to atten- 

 tion. At the great International Sportsmen's 

 Exhibition in Vienna in 1910 there was sharp 

 contrast between the choicest red deer heads of the 

 present day and the fine heads brought for exhi- 

 bition from the palaces and royal hunting lodges 

 of various countries, where they had decorated the 

 walls since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 

 Indeed, for the purposes of prize awards, no heads 

 of earlier date than 1848 were considered. 



In Maine the rapid increase in the number of 

 moose during the last decade of the nineteenth 

 century, a result of effective legal protection 

 begun in 1883, has been followed by a noticeable 

 decrease in the size of antlers, owing to the in- 

 creased activity on the part of sportsmen. Maine 

 is suffering from being easy of access, and from 

 being separated by broad areas of farm land from 

 other and wilder portions of the moose's range. 

 Thus new blood cannot easily be introduced, as 

 needed to maintain a high standard in the physical 

 characteristics of the animals. 



On the forehead of the bull calf one can feel two 

 knobs underneath the skin. These knobs become 

 a pair of spikes six or eight inches long in the 



