THE MOOSE OR FLAT-HORNED ELK 
feeding from quite a long distance. If undisturbed they frequent quite a 
small area all the summer, going in circles day after day over the same 
feeding grounds. 
Late in May the female moose produces her calf or calves. Young cows 
generally bear one and adults two, whilst in rare cases three are born. 
“ No one ever saw a cow moose followed by three sucklings or yearlings,” 
says Mr J. G. Lockhart (“ Proc.” U.S. Nat. Mus., Vol. XIII, No. 827, 
p. 305); but this is not quite correct, for Mr Clifford Little, who has had 
such long experience in the Kenai Peninsula, tells me that he has seen 
a cow followed by three calves and that the cows in this part of Alaska 
invariably have two young ones. When very young, the calves will run and 
hide at once like the deer, and Mr Thompson Seton quotes the case of 
two calves which, on finding no cover, took to the water and submerged the 
whole of their bodies (p. 167). When surprised with young the mother 
nearly always utters a peculiar grunt or squeal when calling to her off- 
spring, and I have heard the European elk do the same thing when 
separated from her calf. 
The cow moose is followed by her calf until it is one year old, but then 
she generally drives it away when the new arrival is born. The calves by 
July and August begin to pick about for themselves and spend much time 
on their knees feeding on the ground. Adult cows also adopt this peculiar 
position. 
Both bulls and cows become almost semi-aquatic in summer, and 
though their love for lake edges at this season is said to be due to the wish 
to escape the flies in the woods, I think it is as much due to the desire 
for change of food, for insects are even more numerous in such places 
than in the forests. The bulls often go about in pairs as caribou and our 
red deer do, and there are usually one old and one young bull, which leads 
one to suppose that like other species of deer they adopt the ** fag ” system. 
The antlers of the male are complete in the first or second week in 
September, and I have seen a head quite clear on the second of this month. 
At first these ornaments are quite white but turn chestnut or brown in 
a few days as the juices dry and tree rubbing is over. The points always 
remain light yellow. 
About the middle of September the rut sets in and the whole thoughts of 
the male are turned to love making. The actual date of the rut is very 
variable, for certain males will come to the call early in this month, and 
they have been killed by the artificial lure as late as the beginning of 
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