Back once again at the beaver dam, Alexandre and Pierre studied the moose-tramped snow and talked earnestly. They agreed that a desperate battle had been fought there between two bull moose a week before, and that those bulls were not in the "yard" where we had blundered. They examined the tracks over an acre or more, and then strode off at an obtuse angle from our former trail. Pierre, apparently not quite satisfied, kept dropping behind or disappearing in the bush at one side of us. So magnificent was his skill at his work that I missed him at times, and at other times found him putting his feet down where mine were lifted up without ever hearing a sound of his step or of his contact with the undergrowth. Alexandre presently motioned us with a warning gesture. He slowed his pace to short steps, with long pauses between. He saw everything that moved, heard every sound; only a deer could throw more and keener faculties into play than this born hunter. He heard a twig snap. We heard nothing. Pierre was away on a side search. Alexandre motioned us to be ready. We crept close together, and I scarcely breathed. We moved cautiously, a step at a time, like chessmen. It was impossible to get an unobstructed view a hundred feet ahead, so thick was the soft-wood growth. It seemed out of the question to try to shoot that distance. We were descending a hill-side into marshy ground. We crossed a corner of a grove of young alders, and saw before us a gentle slope thickly grown with evergreen—tamarack, the artist called it. Suddenly Alexandre bent forward and raised his gun. Two steps forward gave us his view. Five moose were fifty yards away, alarmed and ready to run. A big bull in the front of the group had already thrown back his antlers. By impulse rather than through reason I took aim at a second bull. He was half a height lower down the slope, and to be seen through a web of thin foliage. Alexandre and the artist fired as with a single pull at one trigger. The foremost bull staggered and fell forward, as if his knees had been broken. He was hit twice—in the heart and in the neck. The second bull and two cows and a calf plunged into the bush and disappeared. Pierre found that bull a mile away, shot through the lungs.
It had taken us a week to kill our moose in a country where they were common game. That was "hunter's luck" with a vengeance. But at another season such a delay could scarcely occur. The time to visit that district is in the autumn, before snow falls. Then in a week one ought to be able to bag a moose, and move into the region where caribou are plenty.
Mr. Remington, in the picture called "Hunting the Caribou," depicts a scene at a critical moment in the experience of any man who has journeyed on westward of where we found our moose, to hunt the caribou. There is a precise moment for shooting in the chase of all animals of the deer kind, and when that moment has been allowed to pass, the chance of securing the animal diminishes with astonishing rapidity—with more than the rapidity with which the then startled animal is making his flight, because to his flight you must add the increasing ambush of the forest. What is true of caribou in this respect is true of moose and red deer, elk and musk-ox in America, and of all the horned animals of the forests of the other great hemisphere. Every hunter who sees Mr. Remington's realistic picture knows at a glance that the two men have stolen noiselessly to within easy rifle-shot of a caribou, and that suddenly, at the last moment, the animal has heard them.
SUCCESS
Perhaps he has seen them, and is standing—still as a Barye bronze—with his great, soft, wondering eyes riveted upon theirs. That is a situation familiar to every hunter. His prey has been browsing in fancied security, and yet with that nervous prudence that causes these timid beasts to keep forever raising their heads, and sweeping the view around them with their exquisite sight, and analyzing the atmosphere with their magical sense of smell. In one of these cautious pauses the caribou has seen the hunters. Both hunters and hunted seem instantly to turn to stone. Neither moves a muscle or a hair. If the knee or the foot of one of the men presses too hard upon a twig and it snaps, the caribou is as certain to throw his head high up and dart into the ingulfing net-work of the forest trunks and brush as day is certain to follow night. But when no movement has been made and no mishap has alarmed the beast, it has often happened that the two or more parties to this strangely thrilling situation have held their places for minutes at a stretch—minutes that seemed like quarters of an hour. In such cases the deer or caribou has been known to lower his head and feed again, assured in its mind that the suspected hunter is inanimate and harmless. Nine times in ten, though, the first to move is the beast, which tosses up its head, and "Shoot! shoot!" is the instant command, for the upward throwing of the head is a movement made to put the beast's great antlers into position for flight through the forest.
