moose’. Landing at an old tote road lead- 
ing to a little nameless lake, we followed 
the fresh track of a moose along the full 
length of the tote road — about two miles. 
Just before nightfall we spent an hour 
or more in a big blueberry marsh that 
would certainly have produced bear two 
weeks before. We saw fresh caribou 
signs in this marsh and came upon the 
trail of one large bull caribou but did 
not have time to follow it. 
4 WELCOME fall in the tempera- 
ture greeted us next morning. I 
was tired of fruitless water hunt- 
ing and argued that the moose had left 
the water, so the guide conceded we 
would try a burning. Eight o’clock 
found us at the rapids where Eight-mile 
Lake empties into Corrie. Two short 
portages are necessary to get a canoe to 
Eight-mile outlet and Boomer suggested 
that he would bring the canoe over these 
while I went ahead ov'er an old tramway 
which formed a part of the old freight 
route from Surgeon Lake to Lake Nipig- 
on in the days before the railroad was 
completed. I had gone but a few rods 
when I saw three partridges. They were 
very tame. As I stood watching them, a 
brush snapped ahead and I set the trig- 
ger on my gun, thinking to make the first 
shot count most if the breaker of the 
twig proved a buck or a bull. Neither 
showed up and I tiptoed over fresh deer 
and moose signs, to the old dam where 
I was to meet the guide, forgetting in 
the thrill from so much fresh sign, to re- 
lease the set trigger. Boomer was wait- 
ing, somewhat nervously to begin the 
day’s hunt he had planned, through a 
big burn on the southwest shore of Eight- 
mile Lake. 
Conditions were perfect for stalking 
except that the ground was bare. Snow 
flurries backed by a strong wind from 
the direction we proposed to hunt, alter- 
nated every few minutes with struggling 
sunshine. If there was any game in the 
promising country ahead, it would have 
to see us to take fright; scent and hear- 
ing were useless this morning. Within 
a stone’s throw of the old dam we came 
upon droppings that were yet steaming, 
in a burned spruce swamp. This sign 
made us as cautious as it was possible 
to be, stepping through mud and water 
nearly to the top of our shoepacks and 
at the same time trying to avoid snap- 
ping all the little limbs of the small dead 
spruce which seemed to protrude every- 
where. 
A large cedar had rotted off just above 
the ground and fallen in a way to afford 
good and quiet going over the deepest 
part of the “coolie” through which we 
were making our way. I had walked 
the length of it and stepped up on the 
mound made by its roots, which had 
not upturned when it fell. From this 
point of vantage I was “taking my 
goin’s ahead” — to borrow the guide’s 
phrase — while he came splashing through 
a few rods behind and a couple of rods to 
my left. Perhaps a hundred yards ahead, 
the “coolie” ended at the base of a large, 
gently sloping hillside whose top was five 
or six hundred yards from where I stood, 
with a semi-ridge about half way up. 
The wind -was blowing directly toward 
me from the top of this hill. The entire 
slope had been burned a few years before 
and fallen twisted trees, that had been 
giants in their day, lay charred and bleak 
in that familiar desolation which every 
big game hunter has seen. 
As I stood there meditating upon the 
awful destruction caused by the great fire 
that had one day raged there, by some- 
one’s carelessness or criminality, my eye 
caught a slight movement, perhaps one 
hundred and twenty-five yards ahead and 
to the left of my course. There was the 
outline of the hams and rear part of a 
large dark grey animal, standing in a 
thicket of burned jackpine. The fresh 
droppings we had just seen and the grey 
color of the animal, suggested caribou to 
my mind, although I had never seen a 
caribou in the wild. The identity of my 
new acquaintance was quickly disclosed 
for the next moment some noise made by 
the guide, laboriously working his way 
through on my left, did the trick. The 
animal started to trot, quartering away 
from me, toward the right and the top of 
the big hill. When I saw the huge bas- 
ket-shaped antlers they were suggestive 
of grandfather’s hickory arm chair and 
I wanted them with a hunter’s desire. 
The gun came to my shoulder is if by 
instinct but went off at the same instant 
owing to my wool glove touching the hair 
trigger, which I had forgotten to release. 
This premature discharge did not strong- 
ly tend to quiet my disconcerted nerves. 
When I was ready with shot number two, 
the moose was traveling at a lively trot 
through the thickest clump of cedars on 
the slope, but I took a chance. At this 
shot the bull stopped. He had not seen 
me but was running away from the 
guide. As he stood there looking back I 
could see only his nose and the movement 
of his stubby tail. The remainder of his 
body was hidden by a maze of dead 
trees. I think he stood there till he lo- 
cated me as well as the guide. Prob- 
ably, the movement of working the bolt 
to get the third shell in the chamber gave 
him his cue. At any rate, when he start- 
ed again he swerved from the quartering 
course and left in earnest, going directly 
away from me — straight up the hill. 
This time he had concluded that whoever 
we were we could not rightfully claim 
kinship or friendship with him, and he 
lost no time increasing the distance be- 
tween His Mooseship and us. 
It seems incredible that so large an 
animal can cover ground as fast as this 
