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698 
After Caribou on The Barrens of Newfoundland 
Story of a Trip which Was Attended by Some Excitement but Ended in Success—Big Game Hunting at its Best 
By “Double Barrel.” 
(This concludes one of the best accounts of a caribou hunt ever contributed to the 
columns of “Forest and Stream.” “Double Barrel” desires to preserve his anonymity but 
the thanks and appreciation of all who have followed this story go out to him just the same. 
Back to the roar of the city streets, 
Back once more to the grind and strain, 
Still, I feel the moss 'neath my feet 
And the smell of the barrens wet with rain. 
Smith did not care to hunt any more caribou. 
His heels were again very sore and he could 
hardly walk. He said if we rested one day and 
went out the next it would suit him as he had 
all the hunting he desired. 
Though the hunting had been poor, as far as 
heads were concerned, yet I felt that the trip 
was probably more enjoyable than if there had 
been more caribou, because we had to hunt long 
and hard to get our heads. Newfoundland dif¬ 
fers from any country in which I have hunted, in 
that there is no game, except caribou. In New 
Brunswick, when you are through shooting 
moose, you can hunt deer, and so in the West, 
and in practically all other game countries there 
is always some other kind of game which you 
can hunt when you have secured your main 
trophies, but in Newfoundland, on the Terra 
Nova, there is absolutely nothing else to do. 
There were not even partridges and rabbits in 
sufficient quantity to count, and, when you were 
through hunting caribou, you were through with 
your trip. The very country itself is bare of life. 
There are not even squirrels in Newfoundland 
and how silent the woods are when there are no 
squirrels! So too, there are very few birds. We 
saw a few camp robbers, or moose birds, and 
perhaps a half dozen other birds. Of animals 
we saw about three rabbits and they were the 
only animals, except the caribou. Were it not 
for the latter, Newfoundland would be a country 
entirely lacking animal life. 
After the termination of Smith’s hunt we spent 
one more day in our main camp resting up and 
getting things ready for our trip and then turned 
our faces to the river and went down to the log 
camp. The next morning a very heavy rain came 
on and Dan suggested that it would be wise to 
stay in camp another day while Ned and Tom 
carried all the extra stuff up the river. This was 
about seven miles so that Ned and Tom were 
elected to have a pleasant day in the rain, carry¬ 
ing out the caribou skins and heads, while Piney 
took care of things around the camp. Dan said 
he would like to go out and shoot a caribou for 
himself and that he would give us a piece of the 
meat to take home. We had been unable to taxe 
any of the meat of our caribou out to the lower 
camp, so Smith gladly gave Dan his rifle to hunt 
with while we went after more trout. 
Dan returned at dark with the hind quarters of 
a small stag, some pieces of the tenderloin and 
the skin. He told us that he would be delighted 
to have us take out the hind quarters and we 
were glad to do so. During the day Dan had 
visited the camp of two trappers and found them 
the sorest and angriest of men. It seems that they 
had caught alive a beautiful silver female fox, 
which was worth close to five thousand dollars 
for breeding purposes on a fox farm. They had 
made a stout pen of logs and put in it a lot of 
caribou meat for the fox to eat and then had 
gone to look at some other traps. On their 
return they found that a bear had visited their 
camp and knocked the pen to pieces to get at the 
meat, and of course, their fortune had gone 
through the first hole in the pen. No speculator 
in Wall Street, who sees his millions melt away 
in a panic was ever worse hit by fate than these 
two woodsmen. 
Ned and Tom did not get back until late tired 
from a long, hard trip. Dan never seemed to 
mind how much work Ned and Tom did, and 
before the end of the trip, our stock joke was to 
say, “Let the Sweetapple twins do your work.” 
They were at it morning, noon and night. 
The next day was fine and we planned to leave 
the river that day. It was the last of the week, 
and, unless we caught the train that left Terra 
Nova early Friday morning, we could not get 
