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Moose — Part 2
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When enticed in this manner, the bull is likely to come upon the hunter with a blind rush, and in the darkness of the wood the hunter, whose nerves are liable to fail him at a pinch, may find this sort of sport exciting, but not altogether safe.
The fawns who are born in early summer stay with their mothers for two or three years before they wander off to seek mates for themselves. It is said that they do not get their full growth until they are fourteen or fifteen years old and, if they escape a violent death, live to a great age.
Of one of the strongholds of the moose in the East, Frederic Irland writes: "The camp was on the Crooked Deadwater by the side of a beautiful stream at the head of a great river. Just across the narrow waterway one of the grandest mountains in New Brunswick rises sheer and dark, a great pyramid of eternal verdure, which in the winter is the feeding ground of hundreds of moose. It was into this inviting camp that we stumbled long after dark, scaring a little moose out of the very door-yard, not two hundred feet from the cabin door. The frost came down and cracked the trees that night till they popped with the cold and the sound was like a skirmish of rifles. The next morning when we awoke there was a thin glaze on the snow, and when we walked abroad it was like treading on innumerable panes of crackling window-glass. We heard three different moose get up and run when we were a quarter of a mile off. . . . We climbed the mountain for an hour. Then we came to the tracks of two moose, fresh that very morning. The footprints were not extra large, but the broken twigs on two trees showed where a pair of antlers had scraped on either side and I could scarcely touch the two trees at one time with my outstretched hands. Moose with big horns do not always have large hoofs.
"`They lie down about this time in the morning' said my guide, . . . and after awhile, over the top of a fallen tree-trunk I saw the mane of a great, black animal. The old fellow has not seen us yet. He swings his great horns just a little. The steam rises from his broad nostrils. Lazily he winks his eye. I can see every hair on his back. Carefully I push the camera above the prostrate tree-trunk first brushing the snow away with my hand. Tick, goes the shutter and the great beast is getting up. The antlers swing, he rises, two feet at a time, like an ox, hesitates an instant, as a moose always does, shows the little symptoms of fright so familiar to those who know the habits of the moose, and then goes down the mountains like a runaway locomotive."
In the far Northwest moose were even more abundant, though it is difficult to say how long they will withstand the sudden flood of immigration which the gold fever has recently produced in that direction. "The broad valley and mountain banks of the Klondike" writes Tappan Adney, "are an admirable feeding ground for the moose. The temperature in winter is exceedingly cold and crisp, but the snowfall is light, and by reason of the intense cold the snow does not settle or pack. There is so little wind, especially through the early part of the winter, that the snow accumulates on the trees in strange and often fantastic masses, giving the landscape, especially on the mountain tops, the appearance of having been chiselled out of pure white marble. On account of its lightness, the snow is no impediment to the long-legged gaunt moose, which is not obliged to 'yard,' as in more Southern deep-snow regions, but wanders at will from valley to mountain top in search of the tender twigs of willow, white birch and cotton wood. The Indians surround the moose in its feeding grounds and as it runs one or more of them is tolerably sure of a quick shot." The moose in this section has long been the main support of the Indians and in their household economy no part of the beast is wasted. To quote further, "The hides were brought indoors, the hair was shaved off, and all the sinew and meat adhering was removed by means of a sort of chisel made of a moose's shin bone. . . . The skin was now washed in a pan of hot water. The tanning, with a soup of the liver and brains, is done the next summer. The various portions of the moose were divided among the village. One family got the head, another a slab of ribs, another the fore shoulders. The shin bones were roasted and cracked for their marrow; the ears, although nothing but cartilage, were roasted and chewed up; the rubber-like 'muffle,' or nose, and every particle of flesh, fat or gristle that could be scraped from head or hoofs were disposed of. Even the stomach was emptied of its contents, boiled and eaten."