SPIKE-HORN BULL SWIMMING MUD POND.
(West Branch Waters.)
Photographed from Life.
When the canoe emerged from the stream into the pond the hunter and guide were surprised enough to see, at the edge, in shallow water, a large bull moose. The animal was up to his back feeding on the lily roots, splashing his great head about, and having no fear, in his lonely retreat, of being interrupted by hunters. The wind, being in the right direction, gave the men an advantage, as the moose could not scent them. The guide approached cautiously, never taking his paddle from the water as he propelled the light craft along.
Suddenly the moose heard something, perhaps the gentle splash of water against the canoe, that made him look around. For a second he gazed silently at the two men sitting in the little craft, now scarcely a hundred yards away. Then he swung his great body slowly around (as there was soft mud on the pond bottom, and he could not make way swiftly in it) and started for the bank. The hunter held his fire, fingering his gun-lock nervously, until the moose had reached firm ground. It would not have done to shoot him in the mire, for, the water being shallow, half a dozen men could not have extracted the body; but with the first step the great beast (with mud and water dripping from his body) took upon the shore, a bullet pierced him in the neck. Then there was a succession of shots, and little jets of blood spurted out on the dark brown coat of the forest giant, who by this time was making rapid way along the rocky shore of the pond. A dense cedar swamp lay inland from the shore, and into it the wounded moose did not dare to plunge. He must retreat under fire, like a general with the enemy on one side and a river on the other.
At last he disappeared in a thicket. The hunters had gone ashore and were after him, coming up just as he sank to earth. A bullet behind the ear discharged his debt to nature.
That night a noble head adorned the camp of the hunter, who had unexpectedly made good a promise his wife never expected him to fulfil.
Contrast this experience with another I have in mind, and the two sides of moose hunting will be illustrated. For three seasons a good hunter from a Massachusetts town had gone into Maine to get a moose, and three times he had returned home empty handed. He scorned to shoot deer. He hardly would have brought down a bear had one presented himself to be shot. He wanted moose. It was a hard country for hunting, a place of boulders and blowdowns and stumps,—a desolate waste. He saw moose tracks, and he was there to follow them, which he did long and wearily, for a day, and at night he slept in an abandoned camp. Again on the next day he followed them, seeing them sometimes on the soft, green moss, again at the side of a stream, or in some boggy place. At times they were lost on a rocky slope, or in a region of hard ground. There was no snow to aid the hunter, and the tracking of moose in such a country without it called for the best traits of the seasoned sportsman,—patience and endurance.
BULL MOOSE IN DEEP SNOW.
Taken during January, near Eagle Lake.
Photographed from Life.