FOREST AND STREAM 
69 
LURING THE MONARCH 
NO ETHICS OF SPORTSMANSHIP ARE VIOLA¬ 
TED IN CALLING MOOSE WITHIN RANGE 
A WHOLE lot has been said and written, 
and yet will be, on this subject, about 
which, by the way, not fifty people 
in America have the combined experience 
and literary skill to write. 
In the first place, is it not partially a 
mere question of tradition versus facts? 
I mean that sportsmanship, as now held 
up as the idol of sportsmen, one might say 
the fetich, is not founded alone upon jus¬ 
tice and humanity, as its exponents would 
have us believe, but upon preconceived 
opinions set up by certain sportsmen, the 
kind that one might call aristocratic; mean¬ 
ing those whose skill is greater than most 
of their fellows. 
To be concrete: The loud-crying 
“sportsman,” with the words “humaneness” 
and “fair play” on his lips, lays down the 
law that to shoot a game bird on the ground 
is anathema, which reminds me of a scene 
in the forest: 
Hank, licensed guide, and the Judge are 
out after pa’tridges, which they need, as 
the larder is empty. Hank espies a bird 
on a limb, and the next moment it lies on 
the ground stone-dead. 
Follows great reproachfulness on the part 
of the Judge. “For God’s sake, Hank, 
don’t do that! Give the bird a chance for 
its life! Shoot it on the wing or not at 
all!” 
Hank is crestfallen but not entirely clear 
in his mind. Pretty soon a second bird 
is met in the path. The Judge covers it; it 
takes wing, the Judge fires and the bird 
falls awkwardly, having one broken wing. 
In the wild chase that follows the bird 
•escapes in the thick jungle, greatly to the 
Judge’s disgust. 
“Never mind,” he says to himself, “I 
acted like a real sportsman!” 
Did he? Hank told me afterwards that 
he wasn’t of that opinion. “Ef you shoot 
’em settin’, you miss one in a hundred, 
and you kill ’em dead. Ef you blaze away 
flyin’ you get about half on ’em or more, 
but a hull lot gets away wounded, to be 
gobbled up by foxes or cats, or die a lin¬ 
gerin’ death.” 
Come now, honest Injun, was Hank 
right? My good friends, he was! How 
many amongst you have seen birds, par¬ 
ticularly quail shooting, wounded and lost, 
by the score? Many are retrieved, but 
their agony before the dogs get them—is 
the price of “sportsmanship.” Do you be¬ 
gin to see that this sportsmanship, I mean 
the quality set up by the sporting “pur¬ 
ists,” as one might call them, is not a real 
thing, founded as they aver, on fair play 
and love of the animal? It is a mere 
tradition, totally at variance, in many cases, 
with benevolence. Moreover it smacks fet¬ 
idly of snobbish superciliousness. It exalts 
skill at the expense of real benevolence 
towards dumb creatures. Think this over. 
Is there cant somewhere among these 
■“sportsmen”? 
Ey Edward Breck. 
r pAKE another instance. Sportsmen will 
pretty nearly all agree that to watch 
a good bird dog work is one of the 
joys of life. .And yet that dog runs 
along ahead of the man and tells him just 
where the bird is and puts the bird up at 
command. In other words the dog makes 
the man’s task incomparatively easier. And 
yet most sportsmen seem to think that the 
more strenuous a thing is the more sports- 
The Skill of the Moose Caller is a Reve¬ 
lation to Those Who Know Nothing 
of it Beyond Hearsay. 
manlike it is, and it is the ease that most 
aver is coupled with “calling” that they 
object to mostly. Of that a little later. 
From the above, and taking the tenets of 
the real “sportsmen” as a guide, it would 
follow that using a dog in shooting birds 
is unsportsmanlike! And, conversely, to 
get your birds without a dog is the acme 
of rightness. 
Another interesting consideration. Since 
it is legitimate to have a dog help you, 
and to admire (and rightly) its clever 
work, is there then no righteousness in 
admiring the great skill exhibited by a 
moose-caller, in fooling the bull at a time 
when he is most on his guard? And if 
you possess the skill yourself is it not 
quite right to exercise it? For my part, I 
know of nothing in sport that compares 
even faintly with the fascination of calling 
one’s own bull. 
This skill is denied by some hunters, 
but by almost none that have had much 
experience. For one who has ever ex¬ 
pressed denial of this skill of the caller, 
I can name ten whose names entitle to 
respect, and who admire the caller’s skill. 
Mind you, I mean men who have “been 
there,” and been there a lot, years and 
years. I would like to say here that, ac¬ 
cording to what I have heard and experi¬ 
enced, “New Brunswick” seems to be a far 
easier place to call moose in than, say, 
Nova Scotia. You often hear of from 
three to ten moose being seen on the shore 
of a New Brunswick pond in September. 
You will never have such an embarrass¬ 
ment of riches anywhere else. 
But, having proved that the ideal of 
sportsmanship has not yet been rightly 
standardized, let us have a look at the real 
ethics of calling moose. And firstly let 
us set up a few theses: 
(i) It is wrong (and hence unsports¬ 
manlike) to hunt anything in the breeding 
period. “Aha!” I seem to hear. Quite 
right, and the discussion might end right 
here. I believe that the season for moose 
should not open before the animals are at 
least nearly all mated, especially the big 
bulls. This is about October first or a 
little earlier, leaving a fortnight’s margin 
for calling. 
The larger bulls mate rather early; I 
believe most of them by the middle of 
September. Hence if a bull is shot near 
October first he has in all probability done 
his duty to posterity for that season. After 
carefully studying conditions for many 
years I am convinced that this is true. 
T HESE are the factors in this particu¬ 
lar problem. A man may draw thi 
conclusion he likes. He may say that 
Maine has been right in cutting out the 
calling-season entirely, or he may say, “The 
bulls are all mated by October. My con¬ 
science is clear then.” 
Of course the degree of pleasure each 
man takes in the game is likely to influ¬ 
ence his decision. Some moose mate later 
also, but I have come to the conclusion 
that it is confined mostly to the bulls who 
have tired of, or been driven off by their 
first mates, for bulls are not strictly monog¬ 
amous. This may seem a dogmatic state¬ 
ment that requires proof. I Can only say 
that nearly every moose-hunter whose 
word and experience I respect, agrees with 
me in this judgment. Absolute proof about 
such a thing is next to impossible to get. 
Three or four authenticated cases are 
not enough. But the consensus of opinion 
is as good as anything. I speak of men 
who practically live in the moose country. 
Many of these have been observing for 
years at my instigation. 
(2) With good hunters a moose stands 
less chance still-hunting than in the calling 
season. This is denied of course by sev¬ 
eral writers, but by few who have really 
