GAME-MOOSE-CRUSTING MOOSE-A CATAMOUNT-CHASE

BETWEEN A DEER AND A PANTHER-A BEAR CAUGHT IN A TRAP.

BACKWOODS, July 14, 1846.

DEAR H- —:

GAME of all kinds swarm the forest; bears, wolves, panthers, deer, and moose. I was not aware that so many moose were to be found here: yet I do not believe there is an animal of the African desert with which our people are not more familiar than with it. In size, at least, he is worthy of attention, being much taller than the ox. You will sometimes find an old bull moose eight feet high. The body is about the size of a cow, while the legs are long and slender, giving to the huge bulk the appearance of being mounted on stilts. The horns are broad, flat, and branching, shooting in a horizontal curve from the head. I saw

one pair from a moose that a cousin of Cheney killed, that were nearly four feet across from tip to tip, and the horn itself fifteen inches broad. The speed of these animals through the thick forests, seems almost miraculous, when we consider their enormous bulk and branching horns. They seldom break into a gallop, but when roused by a dog, start off on a rapid pace, or half trot, with the nose erect and the head working sideways to let their horns pass through the branches. They are rarely, if ever, taken by dogs, as they run on the start twenty miles without stopping, over mountains, through swamps, and across lakes and rivers. They are mostly killed early in the spring-being then unable to travel the woods, as the snow is often four and five feet deep, and covered with a thick sharp crust. At these times, and indeed in the early part of winter, they seek out some lonely spot near a spring or water-course, and there "yard," as it is termed; i. e. they trample down the snow around them and browse, eating everything clean as far as they go. Sometimes you will find an old bull moose "yarding" alone, sometimes two or three together. When found in this state, they are easily killed, for they cannot run fast,

as they sink nearly up to their backs in the snow at every jump.

Endowed, like most animals, with an instinct that approaches marvelously near to reason, they have another mode of "yarding," which furnishes greater security than the one just described. You know that mountain chains are ordinarily covered with heavy timber, while the hills and swelling knolls at their bases are crowned with a younger growth, furnishing buds and tender sprouts in abundance. If you don't, the moose do; and so, during a thaw in January or early spring, when the snow is from three to five feet deep, a big fellow will begin to travel over and around one of these hills. He knows that "after a thaw comes a freeze;" and hence, makes the best use of his time. He will not stop to eat, but keeps moving until the entire hill is bi-sected and intersected from crown to base with paths he himself has made. Therefore, when the weather changes, his field of operations is still left open. The crust freezes almost to the consistency of ice, and yet not sufficiently strong to bear his enormous bulk; little, however, does he care for that: the hill is at his disposal, and he quietly loiters along the paths he

has made, "browsing" as he goes-expecting, most rationally, that before he has finished the hill, another thaw will come, when he will be able, without inconvenience, to change his location. Is not this adapting one's self to circumstances?

But it is no child's play to go after these fellows in midwinter; for the places they select are remote and lonely. It generally requires one to be absent days, and from the more open settlements, weeks, to take them. The hunters lash on their great snow-shoes, which, like an immense webbed foot, keep them on the surface; and taking a sled and blankets with them, start for some deep, dark, and secluded spot which these animals are known to haunt. By night they sleep on the snow, wrapped in their blankets; and when they draw near the place where they expect to find a "yard," the utmost circumspection is used, and every advance made with the stealthiness of an Indian. Sometimes a moose will wind his enemies, and then he is all agitation and excitement; but the fatal bullet ends at once his troubles and fears, and his huge carcass is cut up, and the choicest parts carried home on the sled or sleds. Many a crimson spot is thus left or the snow in this wilderness, around

PANTHER AND DEER CHASE.

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which at night the wolves and panthers gather, filling the solitude with their cries.

Two Indians killed eighteen in this region last spring, and one hunter told me that he had shot three in a single day in the early part of March. These enormous wild cattle are of a black color, and when closely pressed, will fight desperately. Wolves have fine picking in deep snow, especially when there is a stiff crust on the surface. The slender hoof of the deer, which yard like the moose, cuts through at every leap, letting them up to the belly without giving firm ground to spring from, even then; while the broadspreading paw of the wolf supports him and he skims along the surface. In this unequal chase, he soon overtakes his victim, and devours him. "But the wildest chase I ever saw," remarked a hunter to me once, with whom I was in the forest several days, "was between a panther and a deer, in the open woods." They were not fifteen feet apart, he said, when they passed him, and such lightning speed he never before witnessed. Though he had his rifle in his hand, and they were but a few rods distant when he saw them, he never thought of firing.

They came and went more like shadows than living