FOREST SPORTS. 
205 
ever, that, in the wooded fastnesses through which the chase 
ever lies, it is utterly impossible to keep the hounds in hearing, 
and that they could only serve to render the swift and wary 
quarry swifter and warier yet, it will be at once apparent that 
hounds must be dispensed with in this species of hunting. 
The craft of the woodman, therefore, and an accurate know¬ 
ledge of the habits of his game, are the only aids on which the 
hunter can rely; but by these, and the aid of weather to boot, 
he will find little difficulty, beyond that fatigue and roughing 
which give its chiefest zest to life in the woods, in bringing 
these antlered monarchs of the northern wilderness, within range 
of the unerring rifle. 
During the rutting season, in the summer months, there are 
two methods by which the Moose may be taken with something 
approaching very nearly to certainty, by those acquainted with 
the country, and with the instincts of the creature. At this 
period of the year, like all others of the Deer species, the Moose 
is terribly infested and tormented by insects, especially by that 
pest of the woodland wilderness, the black fly, and is in the 
habit of resorting to the ponds and lakelets, which are inter¬ 
spersed every where among his forest haunts, for refuge from 
his blood-sucking enemies. Here he will wade out as far as 
long legs will carry him, and with his head only above the cool 
surface, will wallow about for hours, secure from his winged 
foes, browsing deliciously on the floating leaves and buds of the 
various kinds of lotus, water-lily, and other aquatic plants, and 
luxuriating in the coolness of the pure element. Of this habit 
the hunter makes fatal use. Concealing himself before the first 
dappling of the eastern sky, well to leeward of the trail, by 
which he has previously ascertained, by ocular proof, that the 
Moose enters his forest bath, he quietly awaits his coming, listen¬ 
ing with watchful ears to the slightest crack of the dry twigs, 
the lowest rustle of the parted branches; and is for the most 
part rewarded by a point-blank shot at the huge, unsuspecting 
quarry. 
Another, and yet more fatal method, by which man treache- 
