222 
FRANK FORESTER’S FIELD SPORTS. 
selves to a greater distance, unless disturbed by hunters, than is 
necessary to procure subsistence. 
To discover the “lie” of these yards, is the great object of 
the hunter; and in Lower Canada, and Nova Scotia, in the 
vicinity of the garrison towns, the Indians seek them out with 
great skill and perseverance, well assured of receiving a hand¬ 
some remuneration for their trouble, from the numerous sports¬ 
men who are to be found in all her Majesty’s regiments, and from 
the civilians of the British Provinces; in the country districts of 
which, generally speaking, many more resident gentlemen are 
to be found, than in corresponding regions of the United States, 
northward at least of the Potomac, owing to the settlement of 
much of the country, in military grants, by half-pay officers. 
When a yard is discovered, and a runner makes his appear¬ 
ance in the settlements, or in a garrison, announcing the glad 
tidings, great is the bustle and excitement, and great the prepa¬ 
ration among the old stagers, no less than the tyros ; for a tramp 
after Moose in the northern wilderness, is no holyday’s frolic 
for boys, but right strong work for stout men; and is not to be 
undertaken without due provision of the needful. 
On some occasions immense sport is realized, and it rarely or 
never happens that the hunters, if they be willing to rough it, 
and be endowed with the thews and nerves of men, fail of suc¬ 
cess sufficient to compensate amply for fatigue and hardship. 
“ In the winter of 1842, twenty-three officers,” as we are in 
formed by Porter, in his edition of Hawker, “ of the Grenadier 
and Coldstream Guards”—then in garrison at Quebec and Mon¬ 
treal—“ killed during a short hunting tour, ninety-three Moose ! 
The Hon. Captain Grimston also killed a Cariboo, the only one 
shot by any of the hunters, though their tracks were seen by 
several of them. None of the parties were absent more than 
fourteen days from the garrison, of which not above six or eight 
were spent on the hunting-grounds.” 
A more remarkable fact was the killing of three Moose, a 
few years since, with a common fowlingpiece, by an officer not 
reputed to be very crack as a shot, or very thorough-going as a 
