title="[Pg 38]"/> three of the Maine guides can call moose. With his birch horn, and seated beside some lake on a quiet evening, he sends back into the forest or across some shallow logan the weird "woo-oo-oo, woo-woo-oo" of the cow moose calling the bull. If there be a bull within hearing he will respond with a deep grunt. He will then tear along through the woods in the direction of the call, and perhaps splash out with a great noise into the shallow water where he expects to find a mate answering his amorous advances.

Ordinarily the moose is a silent animal, being very careful not to make a noise. Old guides have said that in spite of his great spread of horns he will pass quietly through a thick growth. Generally, if seen in summer at the edge of a lake or stream, he slips noiselessly into the woods, but when the rutting season begins he casts his discretion to the winds and responds to the call of the cow with noisy disregard of consequences. He is also quarrelsome at such times, and should another bull happen to trespass on what he considers his territory there may be trouble. The rutting season is generally over by the first week in October, and the bulls will not answer the calls after that, unless the weather should hold very warm. Most guides claim that during the rutting season the bulls have a wide range, but that the cows remain in one neighborhood.

While yarded moose are very methodical in their habits: they have, however, a single eye to one object, the detection of any intruder, therefore it is only by a knowledge of their habits that they can be approached by the hunter. It is their keen sense of hearing and smell that are to be guarded against, for as a rule, when the animal can see the hunter, he can also see the moose, and his capture becomes simply a question of marksmanship. It is certainly a unique sport and has few successful aspirants.

Of the two, still hunting is usually the more successful and the greater number of moose are secured in that way. In the late fall, the coming of the first snow doubles one's chances of success as every step of the animal is shown. In tracking he usually goes through the worst places possible for him to find, which adds to one's discomfort and lessens one's chances of a shot.

BULL MOOSE SWIMMING MUSQUOCOOK LAKE.
(St. John Waters.)
Photographed from Life.

Nature has bestowed upon him methods of passing through underbrush or blowdowns silently where a man in following makes a noise ten times as loud. The very silence of the forest is noisy. The wind whistling through the tree-tops, the bushes grating against one another, both contribute to make noise.

Those of my readers who have heard the low, weird grunt of the bull moose, and have listened to the music of the crashing of the underbrush as he forces his way through in answer to the melancholy and drawn-out bellow of the cow, will understand full well when I say that it cannot be described, but must be heard to be appreciated, and is certainly worth all the hardships it entails to be listened to only once.

I remember well of a time that my guide called from the edge of a lake at sunset, and received an answer from a large bull on a mountain a mile or two away, where we could hear him coming nearer and nearer as the moments wore on. After a half hour had elapsed he had reached the other side of the lake, and was so close that we did not dare to repeat the call for fear he would detect the artificial from the natural. He did not venture nearer, and as it was too dark to see him across the lake, we returned to camp, but that fifteen minutes will live long in my memory.

To hunt moose successfully one must "rough it," and sleep without a fire, as the best time to hunt is at sunset and daylight, and with their keen sight and scent a fire means no moose.

In his visits to the Maine woods half a century ago, Thoreau made copious notes about the moose, which was then slaughtered indiscriminately, by Indians and others, for their hides. This slaughter, which could not be called hunting, shocked the gentle naturalist from Concord, who made the prediction that "the moose will, perhaps, some day become extinct, and exist only as a fossil relic." This may be true, but the animal has judicial friends, and so long as they protect him, it does not appear as if the moose could become extinct from slaughter. Indeed, it is claimed that as many if not more moose are to be found now than fifty years ago.

LARGE BULL MOOSE ON MUD POND BROOK.
(West Branch Waters.)
Photographed from Life. Time exposure.

CHAPTER II.

One of the greatest moose regions in the world is that portion of land drained by the tributaries of the St. John, Miramichi, and Restigouche rivers. It is true that portions of Nova Scotia, Quebec, and Labrador are roamed over by herds of these magnificent animals, but the best specimens of the race are found within the compass of Eastern New Brunswick.

It is a country of hill and dale, cedar swamps, hardwood ridges, and barrens, where the blueberry, the hackmatack, and here and there stunted tamaracks break the general sweep of waste country. Along these barrens the moose loves to roam. Here he finds the moss of which he is so fond, and here, too, he gets the young shoots of various shrubs on which he feeds. He can also keep a weather eye on the approach of danger, and as he feeds, he occasionally throws his massive head in the air, and takes a sudden and piercing glance around the landscape. If satisfied, he gives a short grunt of evident pleasure and proceeds with his feeding.

The best horns are secured in the months of late October, November, and early December. In January the horn begins to get soft, and soon falls off. It is said by hunters that the largest animals lose their antlers weeks earlier than the younger bulls. It is also claimed that the natural color of the moose-horn is white; that this is the color when the velvet comes off, but that contact with the trees, and rubbing against the bark—something which the moose apparently delights in—causes the horn to take that pretty shade of antique oak. There is all the difference in the world in horns. Some have a multitude of points; some have wider webs; some have stouter horn stems; some set more gracefully on the skull;