638 
FOREST AND S T R E A M 
November, 1918 
A HUNTER’S ADVENTURES WITH ALCES 
THE CONDUCT OF REAL LIVE MOOSE IN THEIR NATIVE SHAGGY WOODS IS NOT 
PATTERNED AFTER THAT OF THEIR ^BROTHERS IN MUCH HUNTED REGIONS 
By CHARLES A. BRAMBLE 
A NYONE who has the patience to wade 
through my story will be in a posi¬ 
tion to draw many morals therefrom. 
In the first place it should become fairly 
evident that only the most pussy-footed 
hunter has any chance of seeing a real live 
moose in his native shaggy wood; secondly, 
that nothing but the very latest high-power 
rifle, firing a pencil-pointed bullet at as¬ 
tronomical velocities, should be relied upon, 
and—but really there are so many beautiful 
morals to be extracted that I cannot possi¬ 
bly remember half of them, so will just 
leave their discovery to the reader. 
The Great Chief of the Bull Moose Clan 
has told us in some of his Writings of cer¬ 
tain wonderful experiences which befell 
him in Quebec, but I scarcely think there 
was anything in the conduct of the Col¬ 
onel’s bull that would strike an old hunter 
as particularly unusual. Let me illustrate 
my meaning: 
One fall I was in camp on a tributary 
of the English River in northeastern Mani¬ 
toba. My 7x6 “A” tent had been pitched 
near a small barren, 
through which a slug¬ 
gish creek wound its 
lily-choked way, and 
which positively and 
literally reeked moose. 
It was the height of 
the rutting season and 
I was in as good a 
moose country as 
there is on the conti¬ 
nent, so without mak¬ 
ing any undue noise 
I took a cruise around 
with my camera be¬ 
fore doing any chop¬ 
ping. But though 
there were fresh 
tracks and signs ga¬ 
lore I saw no moose. 
So I got busy, rigged 
up my tent, spread my 
blankets, cooked and 
ate my bannocks and 
rice-fed mallard, and 
lighting the inevitable 
pipe prepared to enjoy 
the best hour of the 
twenty - four ■— those 
witching sixty minutes 
when the day breeze 
is hushed, a great 
calm has fallen over 
the wilderness, and 
the sinking sun col¬ 
ors the woodlands with tints no painter's 
palette may adequately reproduce. 
I had followed various meandering water¬ 
ways for weeks, and the paddling and por¬ 
taging had been sufficiently strenuous so 
that I was in a mood to thoroughly appre¬ 
ciate the fragrant pine boughs upon which 
my blankets were spread. I may add that 
there are but few spruce and still fewer 
fir in that particular region, so the voy- 
ageur is tied down to the red pine, which 
though not particularly soft is delightfully 
scented. Gradually the daylight faded, and 
the stars came out, but not for long, as 
clouds worked up from the eastward, and 
when I turned in at about nine o’clock it 
was as dark as a good hound’s mouth. 
Now our western weather is always one 
thing or the other: either quite warm or 
most decidedly chilly. The change in 
Manitoba comes usually ^bout the tenth of 
October, but during September the nights 
are generally warm, the days baking, and 
a fire is needed merely for cooking pur¬ 
poses. Thus I let the embers die down be¬ 
fore crawling into my blankets. Sleep 
came without wooing, as she generally does 
when a man has a taste for solitary camp¬ 
ing and does his own guiding and chores; 
I was soon in oblivion. 
“Wooah! Wooah! Wooah!” (and so 
on ad infinitum). The racket sounded 
close to my head, and in about thirty sec¬ 
onds I was outside the tent, gun in hand. 
A bull moose was woofing and carrying on 
at a great rate, and I could almost feel his 
breath, yet so inky was the night that noth¬ 
ing could I see. Knowing something of 
the habits of the great beasts, I realized 
that there are safer positions than to be 
face to face with a big bull when he has 
the cow with him, the night is black, and 
not an air stirs to carry the dreaded hu¬ 
man scent to his wide nostrils. So I fired 
a charge of No. 5’s into the air, privately 
deciding that if that didn’t settle the mat¬ 
ter the left barrel would be let off too. 
However, the report, which sounded sim¬ 
ply deafening as it broke the stillness, did 
the business, and Mr. Moose slipped away 
so quietly that one had to strain one’s ears 
to hear even a dry stick snap. But he did 
not go far, not more than a couple of hun¬ 
dred yards, and for the next half hour I 
heard him thrashing about, and woofing, 
being evidently very, very angry. A cow 
and calf were with him, and he was natu¬ 
rally indignant at having his private pas¬ 
ture invaded. Moreover, the night being 
so dark and calm, he had almost stepped 
on the tent, which happened to be pitched 
fairly across the trail which led from his 
dining room to his chamber, in other 
words, the barren where he fed, and the 
warm sheltered sidehill where he rested 
with his family most of the day. 
N EXT morning the trio were yet on 
the sidehill when I broke camp, and 
at intervals I could hear his angry 
calls. My tape measure proved he had 
pulled up just six feet from my head, for 
there were the deep 
tracks, as big as soup 
plates, showing he 
had suddenly thrown 
himself upon his 
haunches on seeing 
the strange object 
barring his path. 
A few days later I 
was rowing my canoe 
— we always carry 
oars as well as pad¬ 
dles, the former for 
open, the latter for 
narrow waters —. 
against quite a stiff 
breeze, and having 
had a surfeit of duck 
shooting was not pay¬ 
ing much attention to 
what lay ahead. Now, 
when you row for 
hours at a stretch the 
action becomes me¬ 
chanical ; you keep on 
pegging away, the 
miles slip by and you 
indulge in all kinds of 
day dreams, paying 
but little heed to your 
surroundings, provid¬ 
ed the course be clear 
—as it was in this in¬ 
stance, for I was on a 
lakeland you are not 
hunting, hence I failed to hear the grunting 
call of a bull moose. Yet, when I did notice 
it and glanced cautiously over my right 
shoulder, I wondered I had not heard it 
earlier. Perhaps the creaking of my oars 
in the rowlocks had masked the sounds. 
Well, any way, there he was. A noble 
fellow, big as they grow, though with a 
head that had probably gone back a bit with 
age—and the camera was, of course, abso¬ 
lutely ungetatable, being in a dunnage bag 
Courtesy of the National Transcontinental Railway. 
A grand moose country—the English River in Manitoba 
