THE MOOSE OR FLAT-HORNED ELK 
Indian has the amazing skill which allows hi m to look , not on the ground , but 
straight to the front and follow at a full walk the apparently invisible tracks of a 
bull that has walked over rock or sand soil. I have twice enjoyed the company 
of such born hunters, and they were each in their own way fully as sensi- 
tive and as observant as an elk-hound, and no higher praise can be said 
than that. The majority of the so-called moose -tracking Indians are little 
better than white men, and when we have the authority of George Craw- 
ford, a half-breed of Mattawa, and himself, perhaps, the finest moose - 
hunter in Eastern Canada, that there are only six first-class hunters in 
Quebec and Ontario, it shows that the experts in this as in all other trades 
are very rare. Poor Angus, of Mattawa, a pure-bred Algonquin Indian, 
with whom I hunted in Ontario in 1902, was the best man I have ever seen 
in the woods. His observation and knowledge of forest life amounted to 
genius, and he embodied the character of the Indian of the story-book 
better than any other man, black, white or red, with whom I have hunted. 
Nothing escaped his hawk-like eyes, and nothing diverted him from a 
track but nightfall. Strange to say, although we followed many bulls, I 
never obtained a single shot during a month, and had at last to subsist on 
musk rats, no pleasant diet. One week when the bulls were travelling we 
found a fresh spoor every morning and hung on to it till nightfall without 
once seeing our game. 
One instance only I will give of his forest knowledge. We were paddling 
slowly down a lake one frosty morning when Angus suddenly lifted his 
paddle and said: 
“ Do you want to catch a mink, boss ?” 
“ Of course,” I replied, thinking the middle of a Canadian lake a queer 
place for mink trapping. 
“ See that tree fallen into the lake and looking all shiny ? ” He pointed 
to a fallen tree lying in the water some 200 yards ahead. 
“ Yes, I see the tree with the wet bark glistening,” I said. 
“ No, no! ” he jerked, “ No wet — shiny — shiny.” 
I said nothing, five years with Indians had taught me that it is very 
bad policy even to contradict a Redman. 
We moved up to the object and of course Angus was right. The surface 
of the trunk was not wet, but, stripped of its bark, was smooth and dry. 
“ How ? ” I remarked. 
“ Mink coming here to fish every evening and running very fast up and 
down to catch trout, he polish it with his belly fur,” was his reply. 
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