Admitting that there are years of plenty and years of scarcity with rabbits, there must be a dearth indeed when one or two cannot be snared in some creek bottom near the night's camp. A gun on the other hand may be only an incumbrance on a long journey. A chance shot may well repay the person carrying it, but very frequently a gun is quite useless.
We crossed the country some years ago between St. Maurice and Lake St. John. It was at the very best time of the year to see game, being in the month of May, when every living thing is full of life and moving about. The trip took us seven days going; coming back by another route we gained one day. On the whole of that journey through bush, lakes and rivers we only fired two cartridges, whereas our small gill-net gave us splendid fish each camping place.
Another trip I remember, this time in the winter, accompanying the men who carried the winter despatches between Pic River and Michipecoten, a distance of 120 miles each way. I was prevailed upon to take a rifle, as the route went over a very high mountain where deer (caribou) were seen every year by the men. Well, I suppose they told the truth; but I carried that gun 240 miles without firing a shot. No, as a possible help to stave off starvation, commend me to a net and snare in preference to a gun.
In my younger days in the Hudson's Bay Company's service I put in many years in what we call the Moose Belt in Quebec — that is, from the St. Maurice River on the east to Lake Nipissing on the west from the Kepewa on the south to near the height of land on the north. All inside these boundaries was teeming with moose. They were killed in the most wanton manner by Algonquin Indians and the lumbermen, in many instances only the hide being taken, and the meat left. Our own Indians, who lived year in and year out in the country, never wasted a particle of meat. If they killed more than the family could consume during the winter months, before the warm days of April set in, it was carefully collected, cut in strips and smoke dried for summer use. While attending to the curing of the meat, the thrifty squaw dressed the hides. These were cut up and made into moccasins and traded at our store during their stay about the post in summer. An ordinary sized hide would cut up into about twenty-two pairs of shoes (without tops) and commanded $1.50 per pair, we selling them for the same price in cash to lumber concerns, making our profit on the goods bartered.
The young Indian the year prior to getting married always exerted himself to show how many moose he could kill. This was their boast and pride to show they were good providers of food. The Indian nature to kill would manifest itself at this time, and the numbers killed by some of the young slips is hardly to be credited. Older men with families never killed for the sake of killing.
I knew a young Indian personally whose mother had been left a widow with a large family. He was the eldest of the children, and that summer began to strut about the post in fine clothes and mix with the men of the tribe. This is one of the traits that shows itself before matrimony is contemplated. The killing of many moose was sure to follow these signs. That young boy actually killed to his own gun ninety moose. Averaging the butchered meat of each moose at the low estimate of 600 pounds, we have a gross weight of 54,000 pounds of good, wholesome food.
This section of country was in those days, I venture to say, the richest in game on the continent of America. Every little creek or lake had its beaver lodge, and even on the main routes of travel one would see beaver swimming two or three times in the course of a day's paddle.
At the posts we lived on fish, game and potatoes. Our allowance of flour was only 100 pounds for each man for the twelve months, and we used to spin this out by eating only a pancake or so on Sundays and a pudding on Christmas.
The choice bits of the moose — the tongue and muzzle — the Indians brought us in quantities, the trade price of each being half a "made beaver," equal to a supposed sum of fifty cents. This was paid in goods, and would be further reduced by 100 per cent, our advance for transport and profit.
One cannot but look back with regret to those days and think such slaughter was murder.