Judge Caton, an authority upon the deer of his own country, describes eight well-defined species as inhabiting the North American continent. These are the wapiti (C. canadensis), the moose (C. alces), the woodland caribou (C. tarandus), the Barren Ground caribou (C. tarandus arcticus), the mule deer (C. macrotis), the Columbian black-tailed deer (C. columbianus), the Virginian or white-tailed deer (C. virginianus), and a little-known beast called by Caton C. acapulcensis.
With the last-named a sportsman is likely to have very little to do, as its range is extremely limited and its size insignificant (‘weight from 30 to 40 lbs., height 24 ins. at the shoulder, and length from the end of the nose to the root of the tail 44 ins.’; cf. Caton’s ‘Deer of America,’ pp. 121, 122), whilst its antlers, though quaint, are hardly worth taking as a trophy. Caton gives a cut of the antlers of a full-grown buck of this species. Of the originals of that cut Caton says that they measure in length 7 ins. and 3 lines, in circumference above the burr 2 ins., and that they are more palmated than the horns of any other American deer except moose and caribou. For further information on this deer the reader is referred to Caton’s work, which should be in the library of every man interested in natural history. Of the other seven species of American cervidæ there is much to be said, and little space left to say it in.
(1) Moose (C. alces)
The record head
Of all deer extant to-day, the moose is the largest. Of all earth’s animals, except perhaps old Haploceros, he bears most plainly still the impress of Nature’s ’prentice hand when she made things huge and roughhewn, and had no time to polish her work and smooth off the corners. Evolution does not seem to have affected the moose, for to-day he wanders along that great chain of lakes from the Arctic to the Atlantic, from the mouth of the Mackenzie River to the St. Lawrence—a survival of the earth’s dawn rather than a commonplace nineteenth-century deer. All sorts of stories are told as to his weight and size. Caton, who is always careful not to exaggerate, puts the weight of a bull moose at from 700 to 1,400 lbs., and his height at 6 ft. at the withers. The largest pair of horns of which we have any authentic record (the cut is from a photograph of them) measures in span 66 ins. (or 5 ft. 6 ins.) from tip to tip, but a recent writer in an American work upon sport and natural history (Mr. Hibbs) describes a moose which he saw dead in the Teton Basin, whose antlers spanned 8 ft. 6 ins. from tip to tip, making an arch when inverted under which a man ‘slightly stooping’ could walk. This Titan of the Tetons stood, ‘without his legs under him, 15 hands high,’ so that, allowing for the fact that a moose has, according to Caton, ‘very long legs, to which he is indebted for his great height,’ he must have stood in life, with his legs under him, from 8 to 9 ft. high at the withers. This seems rather tall, even for a moose from the Rocky Mountains. As before stated, this great deer ranges from the Arctic Ocean to the St. Lawrence, and in spite of the persecution of man still abounds as far east as the provinces of Quebec and Ontario; is reported to exist in large numbers on the head-waters of the Clear Water River, in Idaho; is found in Montana and Wyoming, and flourishes exceedingly in the North-Western portions of British Columbia as well as in the adjoining territory of Alaska.
MOOSE AT HOME
With great wisdom the Legislatures both of Canada and the States have taken the moose under their protection, but the great deer would be in no danger of extermination even if the law had overlooked him, as he has haunts still remote, and except in deep snow can take very fair care of himself; indeed, even as lately as 1887 I could have killed seven bull moose in six days’ hunting in Ontario had I been butcher enough to do so, whilst in 1891 I saw two canoes (big freight canoes) come down loaded with magnificent moose horns from a district where almost the only residents are a few Siwashes (Indians) and some Chinese miners! Where Chinese kill game, game must be fairly plentiful still.