MOOSE CALLING IN CANADA.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 3677, 1 March 1899, Page 2

MOOSE CALLING IN CANADA.

An article in “Shooting and Fishing'’ says: —The amateur hunter who has called up and shot his moose may well he excused for emulating the example of the late Alexander and indulging in a sigh .that there are.no more worlds to conquer. All of my life has been spent in that wonderful land of forest and stream, lake, and barren—the province of New Bmnswick; I have experienced' many of “life’s concentrated moments ” with the monarch moose, the wandering caribou, the wary deer, and such small fry as the partridge, the woodcock, and. the . Wilson sniper . Four ‘years ago I was privileged to hear, for the firs! time, the moose call delivered by a past master in the art, Canada’s greatest woodman, Henry Braithwaite. It is an axiom of Indian lore that the bull moose can only be called at night, or perhaps early in the morning or late in the afternoon. Braithwaite had a supreme contempt for Indians and Indian maxims. He took his time, as the sayng is, and always called when the sun was high in the sky. And whether his man could hit a loou at 200 yards or cduldn’t hit a flock of wild barns, or whether he tarried in the wild woods for a I week or a month, 01- whether his rifle was a .44-44 or a .50-110, seemed to make no difference to Henry. He always brought out his moose. a

|For a, month or mors I closely studied Henry’s call. Then I practised it for over three years’. I called up several moose, but they came, with faltering step. . They displayed a tendency to remain aloof, attaching themselves immovably to a thick jungle of alders, or else circling cautiously around until they caught my wind. This wps encouraging, but convinced me that I ihad something yet to learn. In addition to the lessons I had received from Htmry, I had the advantage of frequently hearing the call of the genuine cow moose. In my earnest efforts to duplicate the latter, I accidentally discovered that tin wis superior -to- bireh-bark-as -a- material for the horn. I would throw tho call much further, the music was more uniform, and the tone was almost as soft as that of the birch-bark horn. This fall I repaired to a place where moose were said to be plentiful, taking along my'“ mooscophone” and the pessimistic predictons of my friends. - s 1 It was 2 o’clock in the afternoon of the first day of October. We had left home, II a rry and I, the previous day. We had been cruising for an hour or two along tho spongy margin of the big Bantalorurn barren, and, as the day was very ‘warm for the season, the work proved to be quite exhausting. We paused for rest on the western side of one of the numerous pockets or| bays of the main barren. The breeze had just shifted around from tho west, and was then coming-straight from the north. At the first call I thought I heard a distant answer, but the wind that jdayed as bn! a harp its wailing monotone through the stunted spruce and tamai’ack and over the heathy hummocks, swallowed up all other sounds.

Now the mooseophone aforesaid wan modelled very much after the pattern of the old-fashioned ship’s trumpet. It was about 18in long, and had a fell muzzle of the blunderbuss variety, and a mouthpiece of; generous dimensions. Harry though! the call was pretty good, hut might be improved by removing the mouthpiece,' which would leave an opening, about Jin, wide, or similar to that which is commonly used in the birchen horn. I cut off the mouthpiece with my knife, and then tried roy loudest, longest call, with a view to observing what change (if .any) had been made in the tone and volume of the instrument. The effect, to say the least, was rather startling. ■} . y- j A freight) train -seemed to have suddenly jumped the track: in the woods across the barren, apparently about 150' yards away. The crashing of limbs was hdard.j and the hollow revCrheration of trees smitten by a mighty force, il heard the: noise with n, sinkng heart, .for, though if ,could only coine from) a bull moose, I! thought ;the animal had : been alarmed by the loud call, delivered at so . short a range, and wan seeking safety in flight. ■ But in much less time than it takes to set down these words, all doubts were removed. The tumult of crashing limbs and smitten trunks grow louder, and as we crouched in the heather, two promnent yellowish objects that .stood up like a pair of , snowshoes suddenly emerged from the harrier of spruce and firs. They were the horns of a hull moose. For atL instant the moose’, which had located IhC sound to'tho fraction of a yard, seemed to gaze intently across the barren. It wan a trying moment, and, though the animal himself was invisible, we were sorely tempted to shoot. But wo soon saw the wisdom of waiting. AVitJi a confident. belligerent AVuh, wuh! the moose stepped out in the opening quartering down the wind. His object, of cbdrse, was to tack across the barren, and catch the sCent of the syren moOse maiden who was luring him to his doom. His course brought him closer and closer to ns as we knelt in the spongy bog with cocked rifles. Harry’s was a Savage, rifle, mine the regulation Lee-Enfield of the English infantry, loader: with ’ Bum Dum bullet. For about 30 yards, as he noiselessly traversed the bog, the outlines of the nioose were more or less obscured by a few outlying barren spruce and uprooted rampikes. I remember only cautioning Harry, who had never seen a moose in a state of nature before, to wait till he was in plain open sight, and then not to miss, when tho moose swung past tho last outlying intervening snag, an!d his black body appeared in unobstructed view,. The rifles cracked almost simultaneously. Tlie moose continued his course, and looked not to right nor left. Again, and once again the rifles spoke, and then the monster dropped heavily to the turf. Ho had just time to walk abouttwelvo yards after the opening of the fusilade. It was all over in a fraction of a minute, but it was an experience to be remembered for a lifetime. Savagery is only latent in the modern man. Harry and I shook hands silently. an,d then indulged in a war-whoop that startled the echoes for miles around.

Five of the six shots fired had taken effect, three in the shoulder and two behind it. One of the Savage bullets set up a regular tin shojj in the interior anatomy of the moose, and tore the liver and lungs to pieces, incidentally smashing two rifis. The Dum Bums had made a total wreck of both shoulders. It seemed to usjthat any one of the five shots must have soon proved fatal. The horns, though not remarkably wide, were unusually high. They measured 46in across, and had twenty perfect points. The moose was a record-breaker, though, in one respect, for we had left Fredericton on Friday morning and on Saturday afternoon began the homeward march.