1, Woodland caribou; 2, Barren Ground caribou
If we except C. canadensis, the woodland caribou comes next in size to the moose, amongst American cervidæ. Luckily I have been able to obtain some accurate measurements of a bull caribou, taken while the beast was still in the flesh by a man who knew the value of precision. This bull, killed in 1890 by Mr. John Fannin, measured from the nose to the root of the tail 6 ft. 7 ins.; stood 4 ft. 5 ins. at the shoulder, and 4 ft. 7 ins. behind the saddle on the rump; his girth just behind the forelegs was 5 ft. 1 in., and the length of his neck (measured along the top) was 1 ft. 5 ins. His weight was never accurately ascertained, but a fair estimate would be 400 lbs. live weight. These dimensions seem to me to give a better idea of this long, low, heavily-built beast than any which I could pen, but I freely confess that one of them comes as a surprise to me. I should never have imagined that a caribou stood higher behind than he does in front, but I know my authority too well to doubt his accuracy in such a matter. Our British Columbian caribou is reputed to grow larger than the caribou of Eastern Canada, and those heads which I have seen in the east were certainly not nearly as fine as heads which I have seen out here. It is said, too, that the British Columbian caribou is darker in colour than his eastern cousin: a bull killed here in September is nearly as black as a bull moose, and a cow set up in the British Columbian Museum is even blacker than the bull. This seems worth noting, as Caton says of C. tarandus, ‘the colour lighter than any of the other deer.’ The head figured is from a photograph of one killed in British Columbia, and may be considered fairly typical, except perhaps that it is too symmetrical, and that the ploughs are too even. As a rule, one plough is large and much palmated, whilst the other is a mere spike. A large British Columbian caribou head measured 3 ft. 6 ins. in length, 3 ft. in span, and 6 ins. in circumference above the big tine, but I have no record of any exceptional head. As most men know, both male and female caribou have antlers, but the antlers of the cow are light and insignificant compared with those of the bull. The antlers are clear of velvet some little time before the rut, which begins in British Columbia when the first snow begins to fly (in September) in those high upland districts which the caribou inhabit.
The two or three haunts of this deer known to me in British Columbia are all similar in character, lying very high at the top of the timber-line, where dark groves of balsam and other conifers, hung with immense quantities of beard moss, alternate with open glades of yellow swamp grass. The snow in these districts remains unthawed in the timber till late in May, and begins to fall again about the middle or end of September, but the exposed tops of the rolling highland above the timber are said to be free from snow a little earlier than the timber. In early summer the caribou frequent these high grassy downs, lying close to the large patches of snow left in the hollows, seeking as far as may be to avoid that pest created for their special annoyance, the caribou fly. Later on, in August, the caribou are hard to find, having left the hills and sought (so the Indians say) the seclusion of the densest brush to rub off their old coats, clean and burnish their antlers, and generally make ready for the rut. The best time to hunt the bulls is in the rutting season, when they are a little less cautious than usual, and when there is generally a good ‘tracking snow’ to help the hunter, who requires all the help he can get in his match with the keenest-scented beast on earth. Dull-witted the caribou may be, and I very much doubt whether his eyes are any better than a man’s, but his nose is, as our neighbours say, a ‘holy terror.’ I have seen a caribou allow a man to walk almost up to him in very thin covert, and have had his congener, the Spitzbergen reindeer, walk straight back to me when I crouched (after ‘jumping’ him) to see what I was. I shot him at ten paces to save myself from being run over by the inquisitive fool. The last caribou shot by friends of mine out here were killed by the lazy one of the party, while satisfying an inordinate appetite at the unreasonable hour of midday, and in camp. Captain L., like an honest hunter, was scouring the hills; Major P. was feeding contentedly in camp. L., of course, never got a shot during the expedition, but three caribou walked up to lunch with P. and were shot.
But if the eyes of caribou are not very trustworthy, their ears are about as good as the ears of other forest beasts, and their noses are matchless. I have known a herd strike the track of a man in the snow a day old, and turn as if their noses had touched hot iron; and once a caribou has satisfied himself that there is a man about, he will not stop travelling for half a day; good feed won’t tempt him, deep snow won’t stop him, snow-shoes can’t catch him—in fact, the hunter had better look for another, and keep on the right side of him when he finds him.
Caribou feed upon very much the same food as the moose, browsing for the most part, and depending largely during the depth of winter upon beard moss and other lichens for support. Caribou hunting in British Columbia is sufficiently fascinating in itself, but for some of us it has an added charm from the fact that the best chance of getting a grizzly occurs when the bones and offal of two or three of these deer are lying about in the upland forest. Where the caribou are, there also are the grizzlies, in British Columbia at least; and the man who revisits a caribou carcase after a few days’ absence is likely enough to find big tracks going in front of him, and a big, bad-tempered beast suffering from a surfeit of venison lying not far from the body.
Mr. Rowland Ward mentions a head 60 ins. long, with a span of 41⅛ ins., having 15 tines on the one side and 22 tines on the other.
(4) Barren Ground Caribou (C. tarandus arcticus)
Almost all that I know of the Barren Ground Caribou (C. tarandus arcticus) has been derived from the writings of my friend Mr. Warburton Pike, who has enjoyed exceptional opportunities of studying this beast recently in its native haunts, the barren lands of Upper Canada. According to him, the Barren Ground caribou is about one-third smaller than its woodland cousin. This seems fairly conclusive, coming from a man who has seen and shot so many Barren Ground caribou as Mr. Pike has.
The range of this beast is, according to my authority, ‘from the islands in the Arctic Sea to the southern part of Hudson Bay, while the Mackenzie river is the limit of its average western wanderings.’
The Barren Ground caribou appears to rut at about the same season as the woodland variety, and masses up into those huge herds known locally as ‘la foule’ for its winter migration southwards, late in October. A month later the males and females separate, the latter beginning to work their way north again as early as the end of February; they reach the edge of the woods in April, and drop their young far out towards the sea-coast in June. The males stay in the woods until May and never reach the coast, but meet the females on their way inland at the end of July; from this time they stay together till the rutting season is over, and it is time to seek the woods once more. The horns are mostly clear of velvet towards the end of September, and are shed by the old bulls early in December.