December, 1917 
FOREST AND STREAM 
597 
up from his nostrils, and his whole aspect, 
looming in the fog, was vast -and almost 
terrific. He stood there perfectly motion¬ 
less, staring at the spot from which he had 
heard the cry of the supposed cow, irreso¬ 
lute whether to come on or not. The In¬ 
dian was anxious to bring him a little 
closer, but I did not wish to run the risk 
of scaring him; and so, taking aim as fair¬ 
ly as I could, considering I was shaking all 
over with cold. I fired and struck him be¬ 
hind the shoulder. He plunged forward on 
his knees, jumped up, rushed forward about 
two hundred yards, and then fell dead at 
the edge of the heavy timber on the far 
side of the barren he once roamed. 
W E went to work then and there to 
skin and clean him, an operation 
which probably took us an hour or 
more, and having rested ourselves a few 
minutes, we started off to take a little 
cruise around the edge of the barren and 
see if there were any caribou on it. I 
should explain that “erasing” is, in the 
provinces, performed on land as well as at 
sea. A man says he has spent all sum¬ 
mer “cruising” the woods in search of pine 
and timber, and if your Indian wants you to 
go out for a walk, he will say, “Let us take a 
cruise around somewhere.” Accordingly, 
we trudged off over the soft yielding sur¬ 
face of the bog, and taking, advantage of 
some stunted bushes, crossed to the oppo¬ 
site side, so as to be well down wind in 
case any animal should be on it. The In¬ 
dian then ascended to the top of the highest 
pine-tree he could find, taking my glasses 
with him, and had a good look over the 
barren. There was not a thing to be seen. 
We then passed through a small strip of 
wood, and came out upon another plain, 
and there, on ascending a tree to look 
round, the Indian espied two caribou feed¬ 
ing toward the timber. We had to wait 
some little time till they got behind an 
island of trees, and then running as fast 
as the soft nature of the ground would 
permit, we contrived to get close up to 
them just as they entered the thick woods, 
and, after an exciting stalk of about half 
an hour, I managed to kill both. 
Having performed the obsequies of the 
chase upon the two caribou, we returned to 
our calling-place. By this time it was about 
noon; the sun was blazing dow-n with al¬ 
most tropical heat. We had been awake 
the greater part of the night, and had done 
a hard morning’s work, and felt a decided 
need for refreshment. In a few minutes 
we had lighted a little fire, put the kettle 
on to boil, and set the moose kidneys, im¬ 
paled on sharp sticks, to roast by the fire; 
and with fresh kidneys, good strong tea, 
plenty of sugar and salt, and some hard 
biscuit, I made one of those sumptuous 
breakfasts that fall only to the lot of the 
man who has worked hard in the open. 
Breakfast over, I told the Indian to go 
down to camp and bring up the other men 
to assist in cutting up and smoking the 
meat. As soon as he had departed, I laid 
myself out for a rest. I shifted my bed— 
that is to say, my heap of dried bracken 
and pine tops—under the shadow of a pine, 
spread my blanket out, and lay down to 
smoke the pipe of peace in the most con¬ 
tented frame of mind that a man can ever 
hope to enjoy in this uneasy and trouble¬ 
some world. I had suffered frorp cold and 
from hunger. I was now warm and well 
fed. I was tired after a hard day’s work 
and a long night’s vigil, and was thorough¬ 
ly capable of enjoying that greatness of all 
luxuries—sweet repose after severe exer¬ 
cise. The day was so warm that the shade 
of the trees fell cool and grateful, and I 
lay flat on my back, smoking my pipe, and 
gazing up through the branches into a per¬ 
fectly clear sky, with occasionally a little 
white cloud like a bit of swan’s-down float¬ 
ing across it, and felt, as I had often felt 
before, that no luxury of civilization can at 
all compare with the comfort a man can 
obtain in the widnerness. I lay smoking 
till I dropped off to sleep, and slept sound¬ 
ly until the men, coming up from camp, 
awoke me from my delightful slumbers. 
Such is a pretty fair sample of a good 
day’s sport. It was not a very excit¬ 
ing day, and I have alluded to it chiefly 
because the incidents are fresh in my mind. 
The great interest of moose-calling comes 
in when a bull answers early in the even¬ 
ing, and will not come up boldly, and you 
and the bull spend the whole night trying 
to outwit each other. Sometimes when you 
think you have succeeded in deceiving him, 
a little air of wind will spring up, he will 
get scent of you, and be off in a second. 
Sometimes the bull will answer at intervals 
for several hours, will come up to the edge 
of the open ground, and there stop and 
cease speaking. You wait, anxiously watch¬ 
ing for him all night, and in the morning, 
when you examine the ground, you find 
that some thing had scared him, and that 
he had silently made off, so silently that his 
departure was unnoticed. It is marvelous 
how so great and heavy a creature can 
move through the woods without making 
the smallest sound; but he can do so, and 
does to the great confusion of the hunter. 
Sometimes another bull appears upon the 
scene, and a frightful battle ensues or a 
cow will commence calling, and rob you of 
your, prey, or you may get an answer or 
two in the evening, and then hear nothing 
for several hours, and go to sleep and 
awake in the morning to find that the bull 
had walked calmly up to within ten vards 
of you. Very frequently you may leave 
camp on a perfectly clear fine afternoon, 
when suddenly a change will come on, and 
you may have to pass a long dreary night 
on some bare and naked spot of ground, 
exposed to the pitiless pelting of the storm. 
One such night I well remember last fall. 
It rained and thundered and blew the whole 
time, from about eight o’clock until day¬ 
light at last gave us a chance of dragging 
our chilled and benumbed bodies back to 
camp. Fortunately, such exposure, though 
unpleasant, never does anyone any harm, 
in the wilderness. 
Occasionally, a moose will answer, but 
nothing will induce him to come up, and 
in the morning, if there is a little wind, 
you can resort to the only other legitimate 
way of hunting the moose, namely, “creep¬ 
ing” or “still hunting,” which is, as nearly 
as possible, equivalent to deer-stalking, as 
practised in the British Isles. 
The moose may also be run down in the 
winter on snowshoes. This may be called 
partly a legitimate and partly an illegiti¬ 
mate mode of killing the animal. -If the 
snow is not very deep, the moose can travel, 
and to come up with him requires immense 
endurance on the part of a man, but no 
skill except that involved in the art of run¬ 
ning on snow-shoes. You simply start the 
animal and follow after him for a day, or 
sometimes two or three days, when you 
come up with him and walk as close as you 
like and shoot him with deliberate calm. 
S UCH is a brief outline of some 
Canadian sports. Life in the woods 
need not be devoted entirely to 
to hunting, but can be varied to a great 
extent by fishing and trapping. It 
would be hard, I think, for a man to 
spend a holiday more pleasantly and bene¬ 
ficially than in the Canadian woods. Hunt¬ 
ing leads him into beautiful scenery: his 
method of life induces a due contempla¬ 
tion of Nature and tends to wholesome 
thougths. He may not have much oppor¬ 
tunity for improving his mind with litera¬ 
ture, but he can read out of the great book 
of Nature and find “books in the running 
brooks, sermons in stones, and good in 
everything.” 
