THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
me that he was hunting one season with Mr A. S. Reed, who killed so many 
fine trophies in British Columbia and Alaska, at the head of Dease Lake, 
British Columbia, when Mr Reed shot a bull moose whose head was wider 
than any previously known. Both Mr Reed and Mr Pike measured it and 
it was 81 inches across. They stood the head up against their wooden hut 
and both went out to hunt. When they returned they found the hut and its 
contents, as well as the moose head, a heap of ashes, the Indians having 
forgotten to douse the fire before leaving. This must have been a terrible 
blow to so keen a hunter as Mr Reed. 
No eastern moose quite to be compared with the examples of the north- 
west have yet been killed, though some magnificent examples are in the 
collections of British and American sportsmen. In 1908 I saw the head of 
a moose said to be 70 inches in width which had just been killed on a river 
near Kenora by a local guide. It was somewhat thin in the palm, but of 
enormous spread, a fault also found in the 68|-inch New Brunswick record 
head killed by Dr W. L. Munro in October, 1907. A 70-inch head was killed 
by Mr Lewis Gibb in the Caughnawana Club preserve, Pontiac, Quebec, on 
October 10, 1906, but I have not seen any representation of it. Certainly 
all the finest eastern moose heads are from 60 to 65 inches in spread and 
possess wide palms and numerous points. The first high-class examples 
to be exhibited in England were shown at the American Exhibition held in 
London in 1887. These belonged respectively to Mr Otho Shaw and Mr 
Bierstadt and measured 65 and 64 £ inches span; but since that date sports- 
men have shot many that were quite as good, but are too numerous to men- 
tion. The best eastern moose heads come from the eastern watershed of 
the Rockies, north of Banff, from which I have seen two of 65 -inch spread, 
Very big heads are sometimes killed about the small rivers north of Kenora 
in Eastern Manitoba, and occasionally a fine one comes from the Peace 
River (I have a magnificent example of 64 inches from there). Heads up to 
64 inches also occur occasionally in the Tamiskameng and Kippewa 
district of Ontario, and now and then New Brunswick and Quebec produces 
a big head. The moose of Eastern Quebec, Southern Labrador and Nova 
Scotia are, comparatively speaking, small, and Maine now seldom shows a 
head of over 60 inches. The moose of the Yellowstone, North Wyoming and 
East Kootenay are also of an inferior type. Freak horns amongst moose 
are by no means rare, and I have seen forty to fifty examples. One of the 
commonest variations is “ dropped ” points, growing downwards from 
the underside of the palm. An almost common variation in Alaska is the 
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