FOMBST AND STREAM. 
80S 
In Caribou Land* 
The friend who gave me letters and supplied mc with 
information that greatly helped me on my recent trip 
made the condition that I should not tell about the place 
in the newspapers. But, firstly, there are so many pros- 
pectors already in that region that a little more invasion 
can make no practical difference, and in the. second place, 
Forkst and Stream is not so much a newspaper in this 
bad sense as a compendium of knowledge and a guide in 
life, I will therefore state frankly that I have been hunt- 
ing in British Columbia. 
My party consisted of. a prospector and hunter named 
Fred, well versed in game haunts, and an invaluable In- 
dian called Sam for short, and we passed through much 
bad weather and some good hick with mutual content. 
file, first problem that confronts the traveler here, as 
elsewhere, is the question of conveyance. 
In some hunting regions you can travel by canoe. In 
others you can make extensive journeys with pack ani- 
mals. Here you must walk and carry a load if you wish 
to penetrate to the heart of the country. The only com- 
promise that can be made with this stern necessity is to 
have your stuff packed up one of the hand-made and 
corduroyed Government trails 
a certain distance , and then 
climb some exceedingly high 
mountain every time you go 
shooting. 
The reason for this state of 
things lies in what we may 
call, in a double sense, the 
"precipitancy" of the country. 
Many ranges of mountains 
are rockier and in places far 
more difficult and dangerous to 
ascend, and some provinces 
may be wetter. But in the 
hunting region here you are al- 
ways on steep wooded or burnt 
over sidehills. 
It takes a day's travel to find 
a place flat enough to pitch a 
tent. Much of the ground is 
marshy. All of it is overlaid 
with down timber, piled in a 
deep tangle, and the underbrush 
is discouraging. Therefore, 
horses can travel only on the 
artificial trails, and man power 
must do the rest. 
For a person interested in 
the preservation of forests and 
streams, a trip through these 
woods is highly instructive. 
For ten miles from the little 
port whence we started the 
trail lay over "old burn;' 
Blackened skeletons of for- 
mer trees dotted the hillside or 
covered the ground. Under- 
brush flourished, to be sure, 
but the soft carpet of mould 
had been all burned or washed 
away, and along this stretch 
there was hardly a mudhole 
left. The going was excellent. 
The rest of the route lay 
through green timber. The 
damp, mossy ground was elas- 
tic to the tread, the more fre- 
quent streams flowed fuller, and 
morasses, impassable except 
for the corduroy, occurred 
every few hundred yards, ex- 
tending in some instances a 
long way. Many worthy neo- 
ple think that the advance of 
civilization implies the clearing 
. of forests from the ground, and 
that to reject this is but an 
idle sentiment. Doubtless it 
is true that, where land is good 
for farming, the greater part of 
the trees must fall. But there 
I are territories, either mountain- 
ous or sandy, quite unfit for cul- 
tivation, which have heretofore 
[ been reduced to mere deserts of 
stumps by railroads and saw- 
[ nulls (those twin devils of deso- 
lation in a timbered country, un- 
less they be controlled by the hand of science), while 
the fires of the hunter and prospector often work a havoc 
.more sorrowful because more useless. 
It would repay British Columbia, as well as our own 
country, to jealously guard and regulate their remaining 
torests,; cutting ripe trees and ripening those still young, 
repressing fires by active supervision and the enforce- 
ment of careful rules, and saving for the nation 'these 
priceless woodlands that they may be a treasure house 
oi perpetual supply, and a source of perennial waters. Of 
course, this would be costly. It would demand a large 
forestry service and a formidable body of regulations 
but it would pay the people better than a thousand Pacific 
islands with the wealth "of Ormuzd and of Ind" thrown 
in. 
Our first hunting camp was made under an old lean- 
to of hemlock bark that stood' between the trail and a 
good sized stream. The wreck of- a former cabin lay a 
little way off, and kept watch over an abandoned tunnel. 
These tokens of disaster had no depressing effect. We 
unloaded our horses cheerfully, and as we could neither 
use them off the main trail nor get feed for them, we 
turned their heads homeward and started them back 
feeling sure that their appetites and their knowledge of 
the country would bring them safely to their own barn 
Then Sam made supper, and we went soberly to bed 
The next morning Fred and I attacked the mountain 
at its nearest point. We started at 7 130 -o'clock, and the 
labor of the first half-hour was exhausting. Soon we 
got into rather better country. The ground wasn't quite 
so steep; the fallen trees were not piled so thickly, and 
when we got well up into the snow we saw occasional 
caribou tracks, which we would follow for a time until 
they led us into bad places, and then we would look for 
more sign. 
Gradually, however, as we worked west, we seemed to 
pass off the feeding ground, and we had spent an hour 
without sight of a footprint when Fred found that his 
inward monitor called for lunch; So he built a fire and 
made some tea out of melted snow water. This, with 
bread and bacon, refreshed him considerably, and we de- 
cided that, as there was little chance of finding game 
further on, we would make the best of our way back to 
camp, 
Hardly had we taken 100 steps from our lunching place 
when there was' a glint in the brush ahead of us, which 
proved to be the white side of a caribou tail. Several 
of these animals were scattered around in the under- 
growth on the edge of a more distant patch of big tim- 
ber. I could make out a blackish face Looking toward 
me through the leaves some 80yds. away, and I promptly 
tired at it. The shot startled the band into momentary 
activity. I fired at another beast rather over tooyds. 
away, and was grieved to hear Fred say that I had 
missed. Still, a third caribou, however, came quartering 
past us, and this one fell to the shot. I cannot myself, as 
THE ANTLERED BULL. 
a usual thing, tell the immediate effect of a shot. If the 
animal stand in the cover the smoke of the rifle is enough 
to prevent an instant view of the result, but here Fred 
stood at my side and kept tally. I had one more chance 
at quite a distant bull. 1 could see . the horns, but I 
couldn't make out the rest of him, and the chance was 
lost in a few seconds to Fred's great disgust. I myself 
was not displeased; for, on going forward, we found' that 
the first animal I fired at had- dropped, shot through the 
head ; the second lay with a ball through the shoulders, in 
spite of Fred's thinking the shot a miss, while the third 
answered our expectations by staying where he fell. 
While we were dressing the last victim, No. 2 got on 
his legs, and struggled off slowly into the forest a couple 
of hundred yards before I could catch up with him, and 
despatch him, which shows two things, first, that it is 
wise as well as merciful to kill your game thoroughly, 
even when it costs an extra ball, and second, that the 
shattering effect of a .30-30 smokeless Winchester, model 
of 1804, has been exaggerated, or at least that it some- 
times falls below the standard of the catalogue. 
Of these three victims, the first alone had a head worth 
keeping, but by way of compensation these horns were 
wonderfully good, not exceptionally large, but so palmated 
and so fringed with curving points that all the hunters 
and taxidermists who saw them said that I might hunt 
100 years without finding their mates. I have therefore 
decided to abandon so long a search. This bull had a 
musky smell, similar to that of other cervidce and ante- 
lope in the rutting season, and yet different in some way 
from any such odor I had ever met with. The aroma 
seemed to permeate the whole carcass, I spent half an 
hour or more in taking measurements and descriptions of 
the specimen, and in snapping my camera at the body 
in various positions, and people interested in statistics may 
know that this animal measured 58m. from the ground to 
the withers or the croup, and 88in. from the nose to the 
end of the tail bone. As. the meat of the old fellow was 
uneatable, we merely took off the head and the hide, and 
left the rest for the martens and the wolverines. Then the 
other caribou were put in order, and Fred shouldering 
some_75lbs. of hindquarters, while I loaded myself with 
the big head, we started down. 
The weight of an antlered head increases with years, 
especially the hunter's years, and while the fresh trophy 
might have marked but 30 or 40lbs: on a grocer's bal- 
ance, it soon was counted on a different scale. The 
scramble down was wearying in the extreme. In default 
of grasshoppers, the mosquitoes became a burden, and 
when I at last reached the trail my leg muscles w- 
little better than limp fiddle strings, and I lay down on 
the moss and waited for Sam to come and take my load 
to camp, while Fred was sturdily marching along with 
the heavy hindquarters as if it were an every-day task. 
While Fred and I were on the mountain. Sam, after 
fixing the camp like an artist in woodcraft, had gone fish- 
ing and had caught quite a lot of 
fish about 8 or oin. long. Alto- 
gether we captured nearly 100 
little fellows during our stay, I 
myself taking some 5 per cent, 
of that total. 
These fish were like the 
mountain trout of the Rockies, 
except that their spots were yel- 
low instead of black. Those that 
I caught bit very sluggishly, 
something like suckers. I was 
told that true mountain trout 
lived in the creek in summer, 
but ran down to the lake in the 
autumn, while these yellow spot- 
ted cousins of theirs stayed in 
the stream all the year round. 
Locally these fish are known 
as char. Now we have learned 
from Mr. Mather that all our 
native American trout, so called, 
are in fact char. The difference 
between the two fish being that 
one has teeth on the vomer and 
the other hasn't, I have never 
been able to identify the vomer 
to my satisfaction, and I have' 
recently forgotten whether the 
trout or the char haye teeth 
there, but the item about the yel- 
low spots rests on my respon- 
sibility. 
In discussing the results of 
the day's shooting, Fred main- 
tained that his .40-65 Wind 
ter would do fully as good work 
as my smokeless rifle. For pene- 
tration, three of my shots had 
gone through the animals. One 
ball was found under the skin of 
the opposite side and one, in the 
large bull, lodged- in the bodv. 
and we did not trace it. For 
shattering effect, while the balls 
had good stopping power, there 
was no extensive mashing. The 
head shot struck under the eye 
and passed back without enter- 
ing the brain Cavity or even 
cracking its walls, and the fact 
that one bull got up and sham- 
. bled off some distance with a 
shot through both shoulders 
shows clean penetration' rather 
than extensive crushing. Tht 
results were certainly good, but 
not superior, seemingly, to the 
work of the .40-65. 
One advantage of the smaller 
gun is its light weight, a con- 
sideration of much moment to 
aged persons, and another good 
point is the flat trajectory, Here 
too, however, we must beware 
of exaggerations. 
When one begins to speak of 
trajectories in a familiar wary 
there is always a suspicion that the- speaker is merely pre- 
tending to have a knowledge of an "expert" mvstery. 
Some facts, however, are clear to a plain man. Turning 
to the table of trajectories in the Winchester catalogue, vye 
find that, like all other tables of this class which I ba n- 
seen, the curve is indicated by the height of the bail over 
the line of sight at the middle distance. This gives a 
quantity of information of scientific value, but what a 
rifleman wants to know is (when his sights are accurate- 
ly adjusted for say tooyds.) how far the ball will drop 
below that point-blank line at distances of 150 or 200yds. 
or greater ranges. 
Few of us are well enough acquainted with the higher 
mathematics to work out that problem, but a careful 
practical test at targets leads me to believe that the .30 ,10 
bullet will drop at 200yds, nearly ift. below the line of 
sight adjusted for the 100yd. range. There is a margin 
left for individual error in that statement, but it is prob- 
ably close to the fact, and when we read of a gentleman 
who shot game at distances varying from roo to 425yds. 
with a .30-30 rifle, without changing the elevation of his 
gun, we may safely ascribe the result to the idiosyncras v 
of the gentleman. 
A few more words about penetration will end my 
homily on rifles. Amateurs are often deceived on this 
point. A .30-30 rifle ball at a range of 15 or 20ft. will 
make a deep hollow in a plate of %jn. share steel, and 
sometimes may even pass through the plate. The same 
piece of steel, however, at a range of 50yds. will hardly 
be dented by the ball, so great is the loss of penetration 
in this short flight. 
Practical tests show wide variations from the standard 
