The barren ground caribou is characteristic of the desolate Arctic barrens and tundras beyond the limit of trees, ranging to the northernmost limit of land beyond 83 degrees of latitude. When explorers first visited these northern wilds, including the treeless coastal belt from the Peninsula of Alaska to Bering Straits, they found these animals almost everywhere in extraordinary abundance. Over great areas of this territory straggling herds of caribou, sometimes numbering hundreds of thousands, drifted with the season from one feeding ground to another.
The advent of white men with guns has resulted in their rapid decrease everywhere and in their extermination over great areas. In many of their old haunts the only trace of their former abundance is in well-marked trails winding by easy grades to the bare tops of the low mountains. They are still numerous on the Peninsula of Alaska and in much greater numbers in parts of the barren grounds of Canada. There, on the shores of Artillery Lake, during the summer of 1907 a small migrating herd of about 2,000 was seen.
When alarmed these caribou often break into a clumsy gallop, which soon changes to a steady shambling trot, their characteristic gait, carrying them rapidly across country. In winter their tracks in the snow show that their feet, instead of being raised high at each step, like those of a Virginia or mule deer, drag through the snow like those of domestic cattle. Their large, broad-spreading hoofs, with sharp, cup-shaped edges, are admirably adapted to secure a firm footing in the yielding and hummocky surface of their haunts in summer and on the snow and ice in winter.
The barren ground caribou, living under severe climatic conditions, has developed an extraordinary method of storing up fat to carry it through winter stresses. Early in fall a layer of pure tallow, called “backfat,” is formed over the entire top of the back from between the shoulders to the rump. This is a solid slab of tallow lying between the superficial muscles and the skin. It is almost as thin as a knife-blade at the shoulders, but thickens gradually to a depth of from 4 to 6 inches at the rump. This slab of tallow is gradually absorbed during the winter and has totally disappeared by spring. In early winter the “backfat” is easily removed and transported in its original form. It is highly prized for food and as an article of trade among the Eskimo and Indian hunters, and figures as one of the chief delicacies at their winter feasts.
The Peary caribou lives in Ellesmere, Grinnell, and other of the northernmost Arctic lands to beyond 83 degrees of north latitude, where in places it is common. It appears to thrive on moss, lichens, and other dwarf and scanty Arctic vegetation, and holds its own against the depredations of packs of the white Arctic wolves. In these northern wilds, amid the most intense cold, the caribou passes from three to five months of continuous night, its wanderings lighted only by the moon, stars, and the marvelous displays of waving northern lights.
Tame reindeer, which are kept by the people of the Arctic border of the Old World from Lapland to Bering Straits, are domesticated descendants of the barren ground caribou of that region. They are used by their owners to pack burdens and haul sledges as well as to supply them with food and clothing. These animals have been successfully introduced in Alaska, and both natives and white men are developing this new and promising stock industry. The herds of tame reindeer are extremely gentle and easily handled. Their progenitors were like other wild caribou—of a dull and nearly uniform color—but domestication has resulted, as with cattle, in producing endless color variations, from white to black, with every imaginable piebald variation.
The changed conditions of life in Alaska, due to the recent development of that territory, have seriously affected the welfare of the natives. Fortunately the introduction of reindeer herds appears to open a promising future for both Eskimos and Indians.
MOOSE (Alces americanus and its subspecies)
The American moose is a large cousin of the elk of the northern forests of Europe and Siberia. The Old World animal is characterized not only by its smaller size, but also by smaller antlers. The moose is a large, grotesquely formed animal, with the most impressive individuality of any of our large game. Its great head, with oddly formed nose, huge palmated antlers, pendulous bell under the neck, short body, and disproportionately long legs unite to lend the impression that it may be a strange survivor from some remote geologic period.
The moose inhabits our northern forests, where it wanders among thickets of spruce, tamarack, birch, aspen, and alder, from the mouth of the Yukon and the lower Mackenzie southward to Maine, northern Minnesota, and down the Rocky Mountains to Wyoming. It varies in size in different parts of its range. The bulls of the Kenai Peninsula and adjacent region in Alaska are the largest of their kind in the world, sometimes weighing more than 1,400 pounds. The enormous antlers of these great northern beasts attain a spread of more than six feet and make the most impressive trophy the big-game hunter can secure in America.