We started away and found them feeding in an open marsh without any cover but three great boulders about 800 yards from where they were. The biggest stag had a very pretty head, but careful examination with the glass decided me to let him go. Steve said, "Pity that not forty-pointer." The position looked so impossible that I told Steve we never could have got a stalk or a shot. "I drive him," said Steve. Wishing to see how he would manage it I told him to go ahead, while I lay behind the big boulder; meanwhile the stags lay down. He took a tremendous round and presently I saw him about a mile on the other side of the stags, who at the moment got his wind, rose and began to trot away, but not towards me. Suddenly I saw Steve trotting along to turn them, which he did most successfully, for the three stags came along at a swinging trot, the big one behind, and passed in the open about 150 yards from me. The shot was such a sporting one I could not resist it, and as the thud of the bullet came back to me the stag dashed forward at a gallop and rolled over stone dead, shot through the heart. My last stalk and shot of the trip. I cannot pretend that stalking caribou is a high form of sport. If the wind is right and there are not too many hinds about one can take any liberties. Of all the animals I have shot the caribou seems to me the most stupid and the easiest to bag under ordinary circumstances.
UP THE TWO-MILE BROOK, HOMEWARD BOUND
A BROOK IN FLOOD
[To face page 261.
I had a special permit to shoot five stags, but only shot four, not counting the deer we had to shoot for meat, generally hinds.
We soon had the meat in the canoes. The brooks and shallow steadies were now full up from the heavy rains, so we poled where we had to portage coming in. The rain was falling in torrents. We saw our last stag as we came up to Red Hill Pond, but he had no head to speak of. By 4.30 we reached Red Hill Pond, which was up over two feet. The rain was so bad we decided to camp, and soon had a fire as big as a house going, before which we dried ourselves; the men just as cheerful as if it had been bright sunshine. It was an awful night, a gale tearing through the tops of the trees, and the rain coming down in sheets; but the morning of the 23rd was fine, as the wind had come round to the north, and we made an early start as we hoped to reach Ryan's by nightfall. I had had bad luck; I had seen and stalked forty-two stags and never saw one really good head. I think it must have been a bad year for heads, or Millais, Lumsden, Legge and Littledale had cleared the best stags off the ground. A party of Americans had come over from the east the previous year, but spent only two days on the Shoe Hill Ridge and got two good stags.
Steve now regretted that we had not gone back by the Terra Nova river and lake. He said we could have shot every rapid without unloading and would have reached St. John's much quicker than by going back to Belleoram. With a gale of wind behind us, but no rain, we made good time. The two-mile brook was in heavy flood and we poled the canoe up and reached the old camp on Hungry Grove Pond by 11.
Here I left all the provisions that were left over, the fly for the men and the kit I was giving them as a present, and we started for a fifteen-mile tramp to Ryan's at 11.45.
The ground was saturated and we only reached the top of the hill above Ryan's at dark. It was awful going down the hill in the dark, and the men fell with their packs more than once. We simply waded and stumbled along till we saw the welcome lights of the house at 7.30 p.m.—a real hard day's work. I shot five grouse on the way. By the aneroid the top of the six-mile hill was 800 feet above the sea-level at Ryan's.