Moose of the Upper Yellowstone 
Valley. 
Concluded from page 131. 
Throughout the entire year the leaves and 
bark of the willow are the staple food of the 
moose, however much these animals may loiter 
about the ponds in midsummer, spending hours 
or the more tender grasses of the humid bottom 
lands. 
By nature the moose is not a migrant or a 
wanderer, and unless disturbed by man or forced 
by food conditions to change his location, he is 
content to live and die in any locality where 
food is readily obtained and the cover is suffi¬ 
ciently dense to conceal him from his enemies 
twenty miles of plateaus and benches just above 
the river without seeing a moose, a moose track, 
any droppings, a hair or a discarded antler of 
this animal. 
This secretiveness of the moose, in a valley 
never traveled by canoe and well concealed from 
the scout trail following the wooded slopes on 
the eastern side, explains why these animals are 
la 2a 3a lb 2b. 3b 
ANTLERS OF MOOSE OF THE UPPER YELLOWSTONE RIVER VALLEY. 
pulling up tiny sprays of moose grass and other 
small forms of vegetation. 
One thing that surprised me very much was 
the indifference of these moose to the leaves and 
roots of the water lily, which in the smaller 
ponds were very plentiful.' Where the moose of 
Canada, Maine and Minnesota begin pulling seg¬ 
ments of these strong roots to the surface be¬ 
fore even the leaves are visible, here I failed to 
find a nibbled leaf or a 
single detached root, and 
it seems very strange 
that those of the Rocky 
Mountains have never 
acquired the habit of 
feeding on this, the 
most succulent and most 
sought after food of 
the Northern and East¬ 
ern moose. 
From the foothills to 
above timber line grows 
a great abundance of 
grasses and many-hued 
flowers, while lower 
down, forests of pine, 
red cedar and the quak¬ 
ing asp afford a fine 
shelter for the elk and 
blacktail deerj but sel¬ 
dom, if ever, do the 
moose leave the bottom 
land in search of food 
or cover on the moun¬ 
tain side, although daily 
the elk may be seen de¬ 
scending the slopes to 
browse on the willows 
and protect him from the wintry blasts. This 
characteristic is intensified to an extreme de¬ 
gree in the Yellowstone valley where, walled in 
on three sides by high mountains and on the 
fourth by a large and deep lake, he apparently 
selects a limited area, and neither travels up nor 
down the river, nor ascends the foothills a dozen 
feet above the floor of the valley. With moose 
scattered everywhere below, we examined ful’y 
practically unknown to the guides and sportsmen 
residing in the adjoining States. 
During the ten days devoted more particularly 
to moose we saw sixty-eight of these animals, 
and, as on my other expeditions elsewhere, I 
usually saw five moose at night under the jack- 
light to one in day time, it means that we should 
have seen fully 400 in this valley had we traveled 
about the lakes and ponds at night, and these 
would have been but a 
fraction of the number 
occupying the territory. 
Another noteworthy 
fact was the difference 
in the rutting season of 
the moose at this high 
altitude. Only four bulls 
out of thirty-five had 
their horns free of vel¬ 
vet by the last of Sep¬ 
tember, whereas the elk, 
of which I saw some 
200 bulls, had lost their 
velvet by Sept. 1. When 
we were leaving the val¬ 
ley the elk were rapidly 
assembling in small 
bands under the charge 
of individual bulls pre¬ 
paratory to migrating, 
but at no time did I see 
any evidence of mating 
on the part of the moose, 
and only a few times 
did I hear a bull calling. 
The coming season I 
hope to spend a part of 
October about Bridger 
