Still another is worthy of mention.
At one time the guide and myself were coming back to camp, just about dusk, after a long tramp, and were within sight of the tents, when we heard a moose off to the right and close to the trail. The guide tried to coax him out of the thicket by gently sounding the birch horn, which he had with him. The moose turned with a crash and ran towards us, grunting all the time. We were crouched behind a pile of birch brush. The big fellow kept coming, until it seemed as if he might at any moment jump over the brush pile and appear before us. It was too dark to shoot, so I slightly changed my position, thinking I might see the moose outlined against the sky. Just as I moved, the moose turned, ran some distance back into the woods and stopped, grunting again as if he was not certain about it all; but he was soon off, this time silently.
The next morning I was out early examining the tracks, and found it only sixteen paces from where we were behind the brush pile to where his lordship had been standing. I could see where he had barked the trees with his antlers when he was first frightened.
It is fortunate for some of the sportsmen who journey to the north woods after big game in the fall that their guides live so far away, otherwise their reputation might suffer. This concerns both their personal traits and their ability as hunters. Camp life brings out a man's true qualities. The experience of a sportsman during his first attempt to lure a moose from his home in the forest is related as follows:—
One of the party tried his luck at calling. He left the guide at the camp. Quietly hiding among some shrubs, he gave a gentle but long-drawn-out call and waited results. Hardly had the notes died away than there was a tremendous crash, the alders parted, and the head of a large bull moose appeared in the leafy frame within ten feet of the hunter. This abrupt entrance dumfounded the sportsman whose confusion and consternation were pretty evenly balanced at a moment when he needed his wits. Who was the more frightened it was hard to tell. At any rate the caller returned to camp posthaste minus his gun, horn, and hat, and with an expression that was indeed pitiable.
A guide, who had a well-known preacher in the woods for a short time one season, refused to take him the following year. On being asked the reason he said:—
"That man cares only for himself and thinks his guide can be wound up with a key to work like a machine. He may be good enough to preach the Gospel, but he ain't good enough for me to guide."
YOUNG BULL AND COW MOOSE SWIMMING.
(Lobster Lake.)
Photographed from Life.