FOREST SPORTS, 
221 
• 
could show us Moose hunting of quite a novel character. We 
remained part of one day with Adella and his pretty squaw, and 
then started for Anapolis, which we reached in good health and 
spirits, highly gratified with our excursion.” 
Having disposed, in the foregoing pages, of Moose and Cari- 
doo hunting, during the summer and autumnal months, we come 
to their pursuit, at the period of the year when it affords the 
greatest sport and the keenest excitement to the true woodman, 
I mean the long winter of the northern regions. 
So soon as the deep snows have fallen, and the whole sur¬ 
face of the country is overspread, throughout countless leagues 
of extent, by a covering often many feet in depth, obliterating 
all signs of cultivation, overtopping the loftiest fences, and ren¬ 
dering it toilsome in the highest degree for animals of the 
weight and bulk of the Moose and Cariboo, to travel over the 
yielding and unstable surface, and utterly impossible for them 
to obtain subsistence from the soil, these great Deer are wont 
to distribute themselves into parties, varying in number from 
thi’ee or four, to twenty and upwards, and to form what are 
called “ yards” for their winter habitation. 
This is done by trampling down the snow regularly, and in 
due form, over a tract of greater or less extent, according to the 
number of the troop which it is destined to house, until the 
whole area within is hardened into a consistency as solid as a 
threshing floor, while the circumference is defined by the sheer 
walls of the upstanding snow-drift, which often accumulate to 
the height of several feet, by successive falls of snow. 
These “ yards” are generally formed in situations sheltered 
from the prevailing winds by large pines, hemlocks, or white 
aedars; and where there is a plentiful growth both around the 
circumference, and within the area of young evergreens, upon 
the juicy and succulent shoots of which they are accustomed to 
feed. Within the limits of these yards they regularly lie up at 
night, and feed during the prevalence of heavy snow-falls ; nor, 
after they have once established them, do they absent them 
