THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
December. In fact, it is said that a highly expert “ caller,” of which there 
are perhaps half a dozen in Eastern Canada, can bring a bull up at almost 
any season, whilst the average hunter is lucky if he can produce an answer 
at any time. 
The moose is very local in the summer, but in the rutting time the male 
begins to travel, although not as a rule to any great extent. The meeting 
places of the sexes are usually situated on the hardwood ridges above the 
swamps, but the fact that males come well at first to callers on the lake 
edges show that the answering cry of the female, if properly given, will 
lure them in any direction. At this season the bull, like other deer, hardly 
feeds at all when in quest of a charmer, but stands for hours in one place 
using his nose and ears, or wanders nosing about where females have 
passed. Sometimes he utters a low grunt or short bellow, afterwards 
thrashing the bushes with his palmated horns as if to warn possible rivals. 
The noise produced by this can be heard at a long distance and is often 
effective in inducing another male to accept the challenge. In fact, it is 
in itself so good a lure that the Yukon and Kenai Indians use no other 
method than beating the willows with the shoulder blade of a moose. The 
result is often to bring a noble trophy to bag. 
The answer of the female to the bull is either a long, yearning, and 
somewhat cowlike cry or a deep grunt, something like that emitted by 
the bull but not so loud. Both sexes seem to approach each other with the 
utmost caution as a rule. They manoeuvre to get the wind which, once 
obtained by the male, is recognized that all possible danger is over. He 
then rushes right up to her and a love -chase commences. 
Mr Thompson Seton, in many of his interesting but imaginative works 
on North American game, does not give us true histories of northern 
mammals. He gives the public what they want, which are romantic stories 
of idealized and humanized creatures which have no real existence in 
fact, and which a large section of his admirers accept forthwith as true 
and sympathetic pictures of animal life. Personally I am not one of those 
who quarrel with him and call him a ‘‘nature -faker,” because I admire all 
of his work and fancy his love of nature is very real and that he only wishes 
to interest the public by any means in his power. He is clever enough to 
know that if he followed the advice of John Burroughs and allowed “ a 
straddle bug to remain a straddle bug,” he would get the same limited 
hearing (combined with a certain degree of boredom) which the average 
reader grants to the true naturalist. He knows too well that his readers 
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