FROM A PAINTING BY CARL RUNGIUS COPYRIGHT 1906
BULL MOOSE
Game Animals of America
BULL MOOSE
Monograph Number Five in The Mentor Reading Course
Imagine an animal standing between six and seven feet high at the shoulders, its legs four feet long, its neck and body covered with a heavy thatch of coarse, purplish gray hair, and its huge head crowned with massive antlers spreading from five to six feet in width! That is the moose (Alces americanus). It is the largest animal of the deer family. The only way to appreciate a moose is to see an adult animal alive and full of strength, striding through the forests of Canada or Alaska.
The word moose is a North American Indian name which is said to mean “cropper” or “trimmer,” from the animal’s habits of feeding on the branches of trees. The moose can be recognized by its broad, square-ended, overhanging nose, its high hump on the shoulders, its long, coarse, smoky gray hair, and the antlers of the male, which are enormously flattened and expanded. Moose are found in northern Maine, and some other parts of the Northern States, Canada and Alaska.
It is hard to kill a moose. Most of those killed are shot from ambush. In the autumn months the moose hunter may sometimes make a horn of birch bark and, concealing himself beside a pond at nightfall, may by imitating the call of the cow moose attract a bull within shooting distance.