Musk-Ox, Bison, Sheep and Goat

by Caspar Whitney; George Bird Grinnell; Owen Wister

Andrew J. Stone.

Wherever explorers have gone into Eastern Arctic North America they have found the musk-ox. Lieutenant Peary, who has spent more time in the Arctic than any other living man, writes that he has killed musk-oxen at Cape Bryant on the Northwest Coast, and at the extreme northern end of Greenland Archipelago, north latitude 83° 39´, and it appears from lack of records to the contrary that they are found on all the Arctic islands except, curiously enough, the Islands of Spitzbergen and Franz Josef Land, where they are unknown. That the musk-ox does not seem to migrate on the ice from island to island as the reindeer do, is another curious fact.

Frederick Schwatka, who hunted along the Arctic Coast, and one or two of the scientists, place the southerly range of the musk-oxen at the 60th parallel, but this is fully two, if not four, degrees too far south to correctly represent their present range. Hearne saw tracks in latitude 59°, and musk-oxen in latitude 61°, in 1771, but I have never heard of musk-oxen being killed within recent years so far south as the 62d parallel. It is conceivable, however, that they might stray so far south, though in my opinion highly improbable. Pike records a musk-ox killed at Aylmer Lake, in the Barren Grounds. This is the most southerly killing that I have heard of, and the most southerly one of which Mr. Pike makes record. Aylmer Lake is just above the 64th parallel. I saw no musk-oxen below the 65th degree, and it was my experience, as well as Pike’s, that musk-oxen are not what you may, comparatively speaking, call plentiful until the 66th parallel.

ADULT FEMALE OF THE EAST GREENLAND MUSK-OX

(From a photograph provided by the American Museum of Natural History)

Some writers persist in calling the musk-ox migratory, but there is no reason for doing so. When fully grown, it is about the size of the English black cattle, its height being 4 feet 2 to 4 inches at the shoulder, and its girth very large for its height. Indians estimate the flesh of a mature cow musk-ox equal to that of about three Barren Grounds caribou, which would be from three hundred to three hundred and fifty pounds; the bull may go as much as two hundred pounds heavier. They travel in herds varying from half a dozen to thirty or forty. Some authors have referred to “vast herds,” no doubt confusing musk-oxen with caribou. Fifty would be a large herd, and I suppose from ten to twenty would fairly represent the size of the average herd. As a rule, such a sized herd would have one or two bulls. I found herds that were all bulls, others that were all cows.

The robe is of a very dark brown, which seems black against the snow, and the hair all over the body is coarse and long, reaching down below the belly to the knees (especially long on the rump, where I measured some that was fifteen to twenty inches), and under the throat it hangs down as a thick mane. There appears to be a decided tendency to a hump, which is emphasized by the shorter stiffish hair that covers shoulders and the base of the neck. And there is a saddle mark of a dirty grayish white. Underneath this hair and over all the body grows a coat of mouse gray wool of fine texture, which protects the animal in winter and is shed in the summer. No wool grows on the legs, which are massive, and although short, appear to be shorter than they are because of the long hair that falls over them. In running, they have a rolling, choppy kind of a gait, and I noticed when they fell from a rifle wound they could not get on their feet again.

The growth of the horn is very interesting. It begins exactly as with domestic cattle by a straight shoot out from the head. For the first year, it is impossible to tell the difference between the sexes by the horns. In the second year, the bull horn is a little whiter than that of the cow; the forehead of a two-year musk-ox I killed showed a forehead covered with short, curlish hair. In this year the cow’s horn begins to show a downward turn, and is fully developed at its third year. The bull’s horns, on the contrary, are just beginning to spread at the base in the third year. They continue spreading toward the centre of the forehead until they meet in the bull’s fifth year, but in the sixth year they begin to separate, leaving a crevice in the centre which widens as the bull ages until it is from an inch to an inch and a half wide. In the cow these crevices also open by age to even a greater extent than in the bull. The horns of both bull and cow darken as they reach their full development, until they are quite dark from six to eight inches toward the base; and as the animal ages the extreme darkness of horn disappears, until finally in the old animal of either sex there remains only a black tip about a couple of inches on the very point of the horn. As the crevice between the horns in both sexes widens, the base of the boss on each side thickens to at least three inches in the bull and two or less in the cow. On the boss the horn is corrugated, but at the turn it becomes smooth, and is polished like an ox horn on the point.