Hunting Moose on Snowshoes. 
Hunting the moose on snowshoes is to my 
mind the finest sport that the American conti¬ 
nent affords. It is a contest of wits with the 
odds in favor of the moose, and the sportsman 
who wins out under such conditions fairly earns 
all that he gets. The art of moose calling is an 
invention of the red man, but to-day in New 
Brunswick at least he has very little opportunity 
to practice the art, the white man having sup¬ 
planted him in the occupation of guiding sports¬ 
men to the haunts of the moose and caribou. 
The white man has acquired all the tricks of 
the trade and no longer regards the Indian as 
a serious competitor. He has moose calling 
down to a science, and when it comes to still¬ 
hunting, the professional guide can astonish the 
novice by his knowledge of the habits of the 
animal. In the early autumn there is little 
chance for the still-hunter; but when the first 
snow comes in the month of November and 
Jack Frost securely seals the lakes and rivers, 
the noblest form of big-game hunting can be 
carried on under conditions that cannot fail to 
appeal to the sportsmen. 
One of the best sections of New Brunswick 
for big game is the stretch of country lying be¬ 
tween the Nashwaak and Miramichi rivers in 
the county of York, comprising an area of about 
fifty miles square. This is the hunting ground 
of the Griffins, familiarly known as old Billy 
and Young Billy, who are numbered among the 
most efficient guides in the Province. 
In the autumn of 1906 it was my good fortune 
to make a week’s hunting trip with young 
Griffin, and I had a most enjoyable and suc¬ 
cessful outing. I set out from my home in 
Fredericton at 6:30 o’clock on the afternoon of 
Thursday, Nov. 22, and a thirty-mile ride by 
rail landed me at Stanley Village where I found 
Billy awaiting me with a horse and sleight. A 
drive of two miles brought us to a place called 
Cross Creek, where I found a comfortable and 
home-like hotel. During the evening, in com¬ 
pany with the guide, I purchased the necessary 
supplies for our trip, after which I went back 
to the hotel and turned in for the night. 
I was aroused long before daylight by a vigor¬ 
ous pounding on the door of my room, and on 
getting up beheld Billy all ready to hit the trail. 
He said that three inches of snow had fallen 
during the night, and advised me to hurry, as 
the team was waiting. Half an hour later we 
were snugly wrapped in buffalo robes and driv¬ 
ing along over a good road behind a spirited 
horse. A drive of some eight miles brought 
us to the edge of the settlement, where we said 
good-bye to the teamster, shouldered our packs, 
snowshoes and rifles and set out on the tote road 
for Billy’s first camp, seven miles distant. 
Just before we started we were overtaken by 
a tote team and cheerfully accepted the team¬ 
ster’s invitation to “jump on and have a ride.” 
Locomotion was slow, but steady, and it was 
close to 12 o’clock when we reached camp and 
saw the team branch off in another direction. 
From here we pushed on three miles to 
“Uncle” Jim Dennison’s lumber camp. It took 
a good two hours to cover that three miles, and 
while I felt the weight of my pack increasing 
at nearly every step, Billy’s seemed to grow 
lighter, and I had to do some hustling to keep 
him in sight. Uncle Jim’s job of watching the 
depot camp of the Miramichi Lumber Company 
is necessarily a lonesome one, and he was more 
than pleased to have us put up at his cosy habi¬ 
tation. 
Soon after reaching the camp we donned our 
snowshoes for the first time and made a trip 
over a nearby ridge to do some reconnoitering. 
At the end of a fifteen minutes’ tramp we jump¬ 
ed a good sized buck, but he did not stop long 
enough to flag us. We tramped about for over 
an hour, and while unsuccessful as far as getting 
game went, I got in some good practice on 
snowshoes which was of good service to me on 
the following day. 
The night passed very pleasantly at the camp 
of our old friend Dennison, but 8 o’clock next 
morning we bade him good-bye and set out on 
our journey. It was an ideal morning for still¬ 
hunting, and hope came high within us as we 
trudged along the tote road. We had covered 
scarcely a mile when Billy discovered fresh 
moose tracks leading across the road. 
“It’s either a cow or a spike horn,” said he, 
“but I guess we’d better investigate.” We set 
down our packs, donned our snowshoes, saw to 
it that our rifles were in good working order, 
and started on the moose’s trail. A cautious 
tramp of less than ten minutes brought us with¬ 
in sight of our quarry. It proved to be a spike 
horn bull, and when we set eyes upon him, he 
was about one hundred yards away, busily en¬ 
gaged in biting twigs from a sapling. We looked 
him over carefully and concluded that he was 
not exactly what we had come after, and al¬ 
though I had never shot a moose, I was not 
anxious to begin on a spike horn. Billy gave 
a couple of grunts in imitation of an old bull, 
at the sound of which the little chap stopped 
feeding, gazed a moment and trotted off. 
Making our way back to the tote road we 
ambled along bravely for another hour, when 
we struck a trail leading across country to 
Billy’s second camp at Hayden Lake. Here 
again we donned our snowshoes, and as the 
country was fairly open we were able to make 
very good progress. At the end of two miles 
we came to an abandoned lumber camp where 
we ran plump on the trail of three big moose 
which had passed that way the day before, feed¬ 
ing as they went. “Those fellows are not far 
from here,” was Billy’s decision after carefully 
examining the tracks, “and I guess we’ll bile 
the kettle and go after them.” We left our 
packs at the lumber camp, and taking up the 
trail, followed it a mile or so to a hardwood 
ridge. Several times the moose had stopped to 
settle an argument in their own peculiar way, 
and this fact, and the marks left upon the trees 
by their antlers, convinced us that they had long 
since passed out of the kindergarten class. 
As we were carefully moving along up the 
side of the ridge, three deer—a buck and two 
does—sprang up within thirty yards of us and 
scampered off. They presented a tempting shot, 
and I started to draw a bead on them, but a 
warning sign from Billy reminded me that we 
were on the tracks of bigger game. 
The trail of the three moose led us across a 
cedar swamp and to the base of another hard¬ 
wood ridge, where we found the spot where 
they had passed the night. A few rods further 
on were signs of more scrapping. It seemed to 
be a general mix-up, although one of the ani¬ 
mals had probably acted as referee. The snow 
was trampled down like a cow yard for a space 
of about twenty yards square, and there were 
other signs to show that the battle had waged 
furiously. 
“Go easy, now,” cautioned Billy; “they’re on 
this ridge for sure.” 
Soon after this we left the trail and moved 
cautiously around the side of the ridge, Billy in 
the lead. I had heard enough about still-hunt¬ 
ing to know that a hunter, if he would get into 
the dooryard of a bull moose, must mind his 
P’s and Q’s. The long gray nostrils of the 
moose are ever on the alert to catch the first 
whiff of human scent, and the click of a snow- 
shoe or the snapping of a twig is sufficient warn¬ 
ing to start him going at a 2.10 clip. If there 
are a dozen moose on a ridge and one takes and 
starts off, the others are certain to take the hint 
and go too, and to follow them under those con¬ 
ditions would be simply a waste of time. 
We had traveled about a hundred and fifty 
yards along the side of the ridge when Billy’s 
eagle eye caught sight of a black spot through 
the trees, about an eighth of a mile away. 
“Looks like a moose lying down,” said he. “If 
it is a stump it would be capped with snow.” 
We crept stealthily along for another hundred 
yards, scarcely daring to look up. It was the 
most exciting job that I had been engaged in 
for a long time, and I could plainly hear my 
heart thumping, when Billy stopped and motion¬ 
ed behind a tree. 
“It’s a moose and a big one, too,” observed 
Billy in a stage whisper. “Let him have it.” I 
looked carefully up the ridge and saw that the 
black spot I had previously seen had grown 
larger, and I could now make out a huge gray 
antler blade resting on the snow beside it. In 
an instant my old rifle was at my shoulder and 
leveled at the moose, which was a good one, 
one hundred and fifty yards away. I pulled the 
trigger, but the animal never budged, and I 
hastily pumped in another shot. The echo of 
the report had scarcely died away when a huge 
black mass arose from the ground and stood 
gazing in our direction as if wondering what 
the trouble was all about. I fired two more 
shots at the moose, which started on the run, 
and then with Billy I advanced at the double, 
as the military men say, shoving some more car¬ 
tridges into the magazine as I went along. 
We had covered about half the distance to 
where the moose was when I fired at him, when 
