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.
