
The veteran woodsman with a fine caribou 
A Valuable 
Chapter 
on the 7 
Caribou, 
One of the . 
Most 4 
Interesting © 
of 
Big Game 
Animals 

en Fiat: 
ees, Sed 
Henry Braithwaite’s Tales of the Forest 
HE caribou ranks among our 
Ve best big game. Unlike the moose 
its principal food is moss and 
lichens which hang from the ever- 
green trees. Like the moose, they shed 
their antlers usually about the last of 
December. About half of the cow cari- 
bou have antlers and some of them 
have very beautiful ones, but small. 
The bulls all have them; some have 
rounding antlers with not many points, 
while others have flat, palmated ant- 
lers having from eighteen to twenty- 
five prongs. I got one once that had 
thirty-two but it was an exception; I 
also had a pair of locked antlers, one of 
which had thirty-one prongs and the 
other ten. 
Caribou do not care to mix with 
other animals and will not stay in the 
neighborhood of moose. I have often 
seen where moose had met caribou and 
always had driven them away. Deer 
and moose will sometimes yard to- 
gether, but caribou will have nothing 
to do with either. 
ARIBOU are now practically ex- 
tinct in New Brunswick. I hear 
of tracks being seen now on only one 
corner of my old hunting grounds. I 
have had a great many letters from 
different parts of the United States 
asking what has become of them. 
There are many theories as to where 
they have gone and I think the causes 
are many. I have noticed for the last 
thirty years that large bulls and calves 
were getting scarcer. As long as I 
can remember sporting’ men have been 
142 
shooting large heads, seldom paying 
any attention to the others. I have 
noticed of late years herds of twenty- 
five or thirty caribou with not more 
than two or three bulls among them 
and about the same proportion of 
calves, the rest being barren cows. I 
have no doubt this is one of the main 
reasons for the reduction in numbers. 
Another cause probably is ticks. One 
of my helpers who was on the survey 
about the time the caribou disap- 
peared said they found several dead 
caribou covered with ticks. I also 
have found dead caribou in the spring 
of the year that were swarming with 
them. Moose very often have ticks 
but they can easily get rid of them 
as soon as they get to water. 
Yi Paaeey have the advantage of cari- 
bou as they can plunge into the 
water and leave nothing out but their 
head. The caribou cannot do this, for 
owing to the thickness of his hair, he 
floats nearly half out of water. 
I consider caribou hunting one of 
the finest sports in the world, perhaps 
because it is the first game I ever 
hunted outside of small animals and 
birds; I shot my first caribou when 
I was thirteen years old. 
When you fire at moose or deer, they 
immediately plunge into the thickest 
woods they can find and leave for 
parts unknown. When you fire at a 
caribou, or a bunch of them, they 
make a rush to open ground if pos- 
sible, then stop and turn around to 
see what’s up. If you can keep them 
from getting their wind, you can play 
hide and seek with them sometimes for 
half a day. Or if you can pick out 
the leader which every drove has, gen- 
erally an old cow, and shoot it, the 
whole drove will sometimes stand. 
REMEMBER once of crossing a 
large lake with a heavily loaded 
toboggan. The hauling was hard and 
I had to stop occasionally and rest. 
When half way across I looked back 
and saw a drove of caribou coming at 
right angles to my trail and I waited 
to see what the effect would be when 
they came to my tracks. When they 
came in sight of them, the leader 
stopped and that halted the whole herd. 
They stood for a few minutes looking 
up and down the lake and then the 
leader walked on to my tracks. He 
smelled first one way and then the 
other. Then he turned about a few 
steps and stood for some time looking | 
back at the drove while another cari- 
bou came to the tracks and looked 
them over the same as the first one 
had done. It looked very much as 
though they were talking it over. 
They stood thus for some time and 
then the leader walked a short dis- 
tance in the opposite direction and 
stopped again. ‘ 
INALLY the second caribou went. 
off in another direction for about 
a hundred yards and_ stopped also. 
The drove then began to get uneasy | 
and moved about, finally the second 
caribou started on again up the lake 

a 
