FOREST AND STREAM 
585 
Going Out in the Snow. 
not frightened and we looked her over very 
carefully until she walked off across the marsh. 
Then we pushed on to the edge of Pynsent 
Lake where we had lunch and left our outfit 
to be rafted across the lake while Dan and 
Smith and I started off again for a walk over 
the marshes. Smith carried his Mauser, while I 
took the spare gun, which was of German make 
having two twelve gauge shot gun barrels and 
a thirty-forty rifle below. We worked up around 
the lake on the high land over the marshes for 
a good many miles, seeing no game except one 
English snipe. I was very much surprised to 
see a Wilson snipe so far north on the twentieth 
of October, as I supposed the snipe started their 
southern migration much earlier in the fall. I 
shot at it when it rose and missed it triumph¬ 
antly with both barrels, thus making myself feel 
very much at home in Newfoundland. I have 
always noticed, that in shooting snipe in the 
morning when I am fresh, I have an even chance 
with it, but, in the afternoon, at the end of a 
long and muddy tramp, the chances are all in 
favor of that elusive bird. 
We had an afternoon of wet sponges working 
around Pynsent Lake and after cutting down 
through about a mile of scrub timber arrived 
at c&mp. Piney, Tom and Net were there and 
had succeeded in getting up the tent. They had 
a log cabin already built there for themselves 
and it was a very comfortable camp in a little 
pine grove near a brook. A fire was cracking 
in our folding stove and I immediately rigged 
up drying lines for my wet clothes. 
During the whole time I was in Newfoundland 
I never came in without being sopping wet from 
the waist down, and this, in spite of my peculiar 
footwear. All the guides in Newfoundland use 
boots made of the skins of the hair seal. They 
are made by the Eskimo women of Labrador and 
are about the height of an ordinary short rubber 
boot, but they are as soft as a glove and can be 
turned wrongside out. The tops tie just below 
the knee and they make ideal footwear for the 
country, being very soft and light and as water¬ 
proof as anything can be. I do not think they 
could be improved on, except in one particular. 
They owe their water proof quality to the seal 
oil in the leather, and, when you remove them 
and turn them wrong side out at night, they 
smell to the heavens. Smith stuck to a pair of 
regular New Brunswick shoe packs but I adopted 
the Eskimo boots and wore them the rest of 
the trip. However, as I generally succeeded 
in sinking in over at least one boot during the 
day and filling it with water, I did not keep 
my feet overly dry. 
The first morning, after our arrival at Pynsent 
Lake camp, was the official opening of the hunt¬ 
ing season and I started out with Dan and Smith 
with Ned Sweetapple. This was supposed to be 
the edge of the caribou country and we hoped 
to see a head." Dan and I climbed two or three 
hundred feet above our camp to a broad, high 
marsh. All the Newfoundland country in the 
Terra Nova district is of the same character. 
It consists of a rolling country with broad flats 
of brown moss-broken strips of spruce and 
birch. Sometimes the timber is of considerable 
extent and again it is merely little bunches of 
scrub spruce. 
When Dan and I had covered about two miles 
and a half we sat down to rest and Dan lit his 
pipe. He had hardly began smoking when a cari¬ 
bou stag, with a doe and fawn, came out of the 
woods hear us and started out across the marshes. 
The stag was quite a good sized beast but too 
small to be worth shooting. He seemed to have 
fairly good brow points but no tops at all to his 
horns. We followed them about a mile and 
then cut into the woods and came out quite close 
to the stag. He was badly startled and went off 
across the marshes on the run, making a beau¬ 
tiful sight with his light body and dark gray 
head. He left the doe and fawn showing that 
the rut was over. 
From there we worked on three or four miles 
more, until we came to a favorable place to 
watch for caribou where we made a fire and 
boiled a pot of tea and ate a substantial lunch 
of bread and butter, cheese and sardines- We 
had hardly finished when a small stag and two 
fawns came trotting across the marsh up to 
within thirty feet, then stopped and stood look¬ 
ing at us for a long time before they grew 
frightened and ran. It was bright sunlight, with 
the sun behind us, and the caribou were at the 
closest possible range when I remembered to 
my disgust that I had left my camera at the 
camp. During the whole time I was in New¬ 
foundland this was the only time I had a chance 
to take a picture of living caribou at close range 
and in good light and it was the only time that 
I did not have my camera with me. However, I 
was not worried about this at that time for I 
thought that we would see a stag every few 
minutes. 
After lunch we worked in a circle back to 
camp and saw several cows in the distance but 
nothing that interested us until about the middle 
of the afternoon when we were sitting down to 
rest. I was searching the distance with my glasses 
and picked up a caribou near some woods about 
a mile away. I passed the glasses to Dan and 
he said that it looked like a good stag. I took 
the glasses again, and happening to get a good 
side view of him, I saw what seemed to be very 
large horns. We at once started after him. 
He was bearing diagonally across the marsh 
to the woods and we ran across it to see if we 
could cut him off. I think we must have run 
about three-fourths of a mile. By the time a 
half mile was passed I was going through all 
the agonies of dissolution. The marsh was par¬ 
ticularly soft and full of holes and we went 
plunging ahead, going half way to our knees 
every few steps. I don’t suppose at our top-most 
speed we made better than five miles an hour. 
At the end of three-fourths of a mile, we were 
still probably six hundred yards from the caribou 
when he disappeared into the woods and there 
was nothing to do but sit down and recover our 
breath. Dan was pretty badly used up but I 
was literally reduced to a pulp. We rested for a 
few minutes then went over to where the cari¬ 
bou had been and saw that he had had about 
four hundred yards to go to our three-fourths 
My Third Head—Note the Wide Spread of Antlers. 
