596 
FOREST AND STREAM 
December, 1917 
MOOSE HUNTING IN CANADA-PART TWO 
HUNTING LEADS MAN INTO BEAUTIFUL SCENERY, AND THE SIMPLE LIFE IN CAMP 
INDUCES CONTEMPLATION OF NATURE AND TENDS TO WHOLESOME THOUGHTS 
By THE EARL OF DUNRAVEN 
til ;, < 
I presume, to all the faculties being concen¬ 
trated on a single sense, that one seems to 
hear distant voices, the ringing of bells and 
all kinds of strange and impossible noises. 
A man becomes so nervously alive to the 
slightest disturbance of the almost awful 
silence of a still night in the woods, that 
the faintest sound—the cracking of a mi¬ 
nute twig, or the fall of a leaf, even at a 
great distance—will make him almost jump 
I KNOW of nothing more enchanting 
than calm and silent autumnal sunset in 
the woods, unless it be the sunrise, 
which, to my mind is more lovely still. 
Sunset is beautiful, but sad; sunrise is 
equally beautiful, and full of life, happi¬ 
ness, and hope. I love to watch the stars 
begin to fade, to see the first faint white 
light clear up the darkness of the eastern 
sky, and gradually deepen into the glorious 
coloring that 
heralds the ap¬ 
proaching sun. 
I hope to see 
Nature awake 
shuddering, as 
she always 
d o e s, ' a n d 
arouse herself 
into active, 
busy life, to 
note the in¬ 
sects, birds, and 
beasts shake 
off slumber and 
set about their 
daily tasks. 
Still, the sun¬ 
set is inex¬ 
pressibly love¬ 
ly, and I do 
not envy the 
condition and 
frame of mind 
of a man who 
cannot be as 
nearly happy as 
man can be, 
when he is ly¬ 
ing comfortably 
on a luxurious 
and soft couch, 
gazing in per¬ 
fect peace on 
the glorious 
scene around 
him rejoicing all his senses, and saturat¬ 
ing himself with the wonderful beauties 
of a northern sunset. 
So I sat quietly, while the Indian guide 
called from the tree-top. Not a sound 
answered to the three or four long- 
drawn-out notes with which he hoped to 
lure the bull. After a long interval he 
called again, but the same perfect, utter si¬ 
lence reigned in the woods, a silence broken 
only by the melancholy hooting of an owl, 
or the imaginary noises that filled my head. 
It is extraordinary how small noises be¬ 
come magnified when the ear is kept at a 
great tension for any length of time, and 
how the head becomes filled with all kinds 
of fictitious sounds; and it is very ^remark¬ 
able also how utterly impossible it is to 
distinguish between a loud noise uttered at 
a distance and a scarcely audible sound 
close by. After listening very intently 
amidst the profound silence of a quiet night 
in the forest for an hour or so, the head 
becomes so surcharged with blood, owing, 
out of his skin. He is also apt to make 
the most ludicrous mistakes. Toward 
morning, about day-break, I have frequent¬ 
ly mistaken the first faint buzz of some 
minute fly, within a foot or so of my ear, 
for the call of my moose. 
A BOUT ten o’clock, the Indian gave it 
up in despair and came down the 
tree; we rolled ourselves up in our 
rugs, pulled the hoods of our blanket coats 
over our heads, and went to sleep. I 
awoke literally shaking with cold. It 
was still the dead of night, and stars were 
shining with intense brilliancy,. to my 
great disappointment, for I was in hopes 
of seeing the first streaks of dawn. It 
was freezing very hard, far too hard for 
me to think of going to sleep again. So 
I roused the Indian, and suggested that 
he should try another call. 
Accordingly, we stole down to the edge of 
the little point of wood in which we had 
ensconced ourselves, and in a few minutes 
the forest was re-echoing the plaintive 
notes of the moose. Not an answer, not 
a sound—utter silence, as if all the world 
were dead, broken suddenly and horribly 
by a yell that made the blood curdle in 
one’s veins. It was the long, quavering, 
human, but unearthly scream of a loon on 
the distant lake After what seemed to be 
many hours, but what was in reality but a 
short time, the first indications of dawn re¬ 
vealed the m- 
selves in the 
rising of the 
morning star, 
and the slight¬ 
est possible 
paling of the 
eastern sky. 
The cold grew 
almost unbear¬ 
able. That cu¬ 
rious shiver 
that runs 
through nature 
—the first icy 
current of air 
that precedes 
the d ay- 
chilled us to 
the bones. I 
rolled myself 
up in my blan¬ 
ket and lighted 
a pipe, trying 
to retain what 
little caloric re¬ 
mained in my 
body, while the 
Indian again 
ascended the 
tree. 
By the time 
he had called 
twice it was 
gray dawn . 
Birds were be¬ 
ginning to move about and busy squir¬ 
rels to look out for their breakfast 
of pine-buds. I sat listening intently, 
and watching the blank, emotionless face 
of the Indian as he gazed around him, 
when suddenly I saw his countenance 
blaze up with vivid excitement. His 
eyes seemed to start from his head, his 
muscles twitched, his face glowed, he 
seemed transformed in a moment into a 
different being. At the same time he be¬ 
gan, with the utmost celerity, but with ex¬ 
treme caution, to descend to the ground. 
He motioned to me not to make any noise, 
and whispered that a moose was coming 
across the barren and must be close by. 
Grasping my rifle, we crawled carefully, 
through the grass, crisp and noisy with 
frost, down to the edge of our island of 
woods, and there, after peering cautiously 
around some stunted juniper bushes, I saw 
standing, about sixty yards off, a bull 
moose. He looked gigantic in the thin 
morning mist which was beginning to drift 
