Trophies taken 
at 
Braithwaite’s 
Camp. 
Note 
well-formed 
palms 

The Lordly 
Moose—Life 
Habits 
and 
Some Hunting 
Experiences 
Henry Braithwaite’s Tales of the Forest 
CONSIDER moose the most noble 
animals on the continent, and ac- 
cording te naturalists they are the 
oldest game now in existence. 
When you stop to think how animals 
as large as moose can live through cold 
winters in the deep snow, and upon the 
kind of food they have to subsist on, it 
is simply remarkable. Considering the 
enemies they have on all sides; I often 
wonder they were not exterminated 
years ago. 
The late Dr. Wheeler who hunted 
many years with me, and who was 
killed in France during the World 
War, in one of his articles referring to 
moose called them “swamp hogs.” I 
think that is a very appropiate name, 
as they spend most of their time in 
summer in swamps, lakes and dead 
waters, feeding on pond lilies and 
aquatic plants. They will go down to 
the bottom of the lakes and feed on the 
vegetation that grows there, and will 
stay under water long enough to drown 
two or three men, one after another. 
They nearly destroyed many of the 
best fishing lakes by feeding on the 
bottoms and making the water so 
muddy the fish couldn’t live in them. 
I remember once paddling along a 
dead water when something rose behind 
me which took such a start out of me 
that I nearly upset the canoe, thinking 
it was some sea monster that had come 
up the river and gotten into the lake, 
but it was only a moose. 
N winter the moose lives on ever- 
green trees such as the fir and all 
sorts of hard woods, breaking down 
the small trees with the weight of his 
body and eating the smaller parts of 
the limbs. He will peel the bark of 
the large trees such as the mountain 
ash. Different kinds of striped 
maples, willow, poplar and ground 
hemlock are the favorite foods. Large 
412 
hemlocks, if blown down near a moose 
yard, will be soon cleaned up by them. 
They seldom eat spruce or cedar. I 
remember once of seeing where a moose 
had taken a very small bite of cedar, 
but I think he did it by mistake; I was 
much surprised to see it. 
Moose shed their antlers every year, 
usually about Christmas, although I 
have seen old bulls shed them the last 
of November. I never saw a cow 
moose with antlers. A moose may drop 
one antler one week and the other the 
next week. The reason why so few 
are found is because other animals, es- 
pecially porcupines, eat them. The new 
antlers commence growing in the 
spring and are usually about a foot 
long by April. They reach perfection 
when the moose is about nine or ten 
years of age, after that they begin to 
deteriorate. I have seen bulls twelve 
and fourteen years with only spikes, 
tough looking as though they had rot- 
ted off. The antlers are always flat 
with a big blade. I saw one blade that 
was eighteen inches wide. 
N my first hunting I had little ex- 
perience with moose as they had 
practically all been killed off before I 
hunted there. I well remember my 
first real moose hunt. I had heard so 
many stories about the way they 
hunted moose in those days, the hard 
runs the hunters had and the wind- 
falls they jumped over on snow shoes, © 
that I was anxious to take a hand, or 
rather a leg in it too. It was in 1868 
and I had heard that moose were get- 
ting quite plentiful in the country 
about a day’s travel from where I live 
and I decided to have my first moose 
hunt. I picked out a neighbor and we 
fitted up with toboggans to have our 
hunt which was not a difficult task as 
I had plenty of experience in outfitting 
on caribou hunts. Arriving on the 
hunting grounds that night, we pre- 
pared to camp. We cut wood half the 
night and sat up the other half and 
burned it. 
GOOD deal of the country had 
been burned over, but there were 
spots of green woods through it. Early 
the next morning, as soon as we could 
see, we went into the first bunch of 
green woods and then started the 
moose out of it. They ran across a 
strip of open ground to another bunch 
of green woods and there started more 
moose. I came up to them in some 
open grounds and found I had nine 
moose plowing through the snow 
ahead in Indian file. It was certainly 
a grand sight for a hunter. I shot two 
which I thought was all we could take 
care of. In a few minutes my pal 
came up and wanted to know why I 
didn’t shoot more. I told him they 
were only a short distance ahead and 
he could go on and shoot as many as he 
liked. I knew I was safe in giving 
such liberty as he was one of those men 
who might meet a moose but would 
never overtake one. 
Skinning our two, we started haul- 
ing out the meat that day to the port- 
age road a mile away. We went back 
to the tent that night and finished 
hauling the next forenoon. The job 
was just finished when a team came 
along to the settlement for supplies 
for a lumber camp, so we loaded our 
meat on and they hauled it out for a 
mere trifle. We were away from home 
just four days and came back with two 
fine moose. 
E kept what meat we thought 
we could take care of, gave a 
few pieces to the neighbors and sold — 
the balance to a butcher at a reason- 
able price. 
(Continued on page 433) 
He took it to market, sold 
ee 
