CALVES SWIMMING MUD POND.
(West Branch Waters.)
Photographed from Life.

CHAPTER III.

Picture a hungry group at supper around the camp-fire as night shuts down, when the noisy jest and laughter are suddenly interrupted by your guide. Listen! There it is again from over the lake,—the fierce challenge of the bull and the horn-like note of the cow! I'll not try to record the many exciting incidents of those glorious morning and evening watches; how this one saw his lordship in broad daylight swagger across the open, just out of rifle range; how that one, in the darkness of the homeward trail, called a jealous bull so near that he could hear him breathe ere the tell-tale human scent turned his course; or how another stalked a cow moose by mistake, and watched her some time, vainly hoping her lord would call; for every hunter knows of these slips, making success more pleasant when it is yours.

I must tell you, however, of that still October morning, of the faint mist rising from the lake, of the bright hills so fairly mirrored by the clear waters, and of the rising sun so dazzling on the mist and the water. Suddenly the guide and I drop the half-prepared breakfast and take to the canoe in haste. We had heard that note of notes—the angry challenge of a bull moose. The remembrance of that morning brings back the sound as I heard it a few miles away over the hills. Watch how the guide is carefully following the course of the sound. We soon reach the other side. There he is, head on! Wait! he may give a better shot. No! he sees the canoe. Shoot now or he will be gone! Bang! A miss, for he did not flinch! The smoke hides him! Bang! Bang! The guide has fired, too, but the smoke hampers both. There he goes, crashing through the thicket! Let's give him another for luck! He certainly was hard hit, and in that event it was best to let him go, for after a short period of time he would lie down, become stiff, and die. We paddled back to camp, finished breakfast, and in about three hours returned to the place from whence he had entered the woods, and there we found him, cold in death. He was a monster! A wealth of black, glossy hair, a splendid bell, and massive antlers, fit to adorn any mantel.

Photographed from Life.

Three days later another fine bull fell to my party. Just at sunset he was called out from across a pond, and strolled with that majestic woodland swagger through the shallow water. The first shot so confused him that he turned and came directly towards us, but soon veered off. At a closer range this might have been interpreted as a fierce charge of the dying bull, though it was merely an aimless start of surprise. He fell, with the ball behind his shoulder, and we found him quite dead. It was a fatal one, though it failed to stop him until he had gone fifty yards.

There was one section I had not visited, and this was to the east, in the direction of the brook which had proven too small for floating logs. So it was that after pulling the cabin door to, I made tracks toward the stream, which I knew must be asleep under four or five inches of ice and two feet of snow.

In half an hour's time I had reached the bank and crossed over, keeping close to it all the time. I had not gone far beyond the ravine-like formation with the brook hugging its lowest point, when there were unmistakable evidences of large game. Moose it was. Tracks as large as a cow, great rents in the snow crust, through which the brown earth showed in spots; these were some of the traces. I went back across the ravine and proceeded up-stream, following the east bank; saw several fresh tracks, but they were cows, and along in the afternoon, while travelling up an old brook, I saw the imprints of a large bull, and they were big ones, together with a cow and calf. It did not take me long to decide what to do, and as they followed the brook I knew that they had not heard me. The wind was favorable and they were working up