un in a
fog' would describe the sound to me better than anything else, though
after hearing it many times the simile is not at all accurate. This
first indefinite sound is heard early in the season. Later it is
prolonged and more definite, and often repeated as I have given it.

The answer of the bull varies but little. It is a short, hoarse,
grunting roar, frightfully ugly when close at hand, and leaving no
doubt as to the mood he is in. Sometimes when a bull is shy, and the
hunter thinks he is near and listening, though no sound gives any idea
of his whereabouts, he follows the bellow of the cow by the short roar
of the bull, at the same time snapping the sticks under his feet, and
thrashing the bushes with a club. Then, if the bull answers, look out.
Jealous, and fighting mad, he hurls himself out of his concealment and
rushes straight in to meet his rival. Once aroused in this way he
heeds no danger, and the eye must be clear and the muscles steady to
stop him surely ere he reaches the thicket where the hunter is
concealed. Moonlight is poor stuff to shoot by at best, and an
enraged bull moose is a very big and a very ugly customer. It is a
poor thicket, therefore, that does not have at least one good tree
with conveniently low branches. As a rule, however, you may trust your
Indian, who is an arrant coward, to look out for this very carefully.

The trumpet with which the calling is done is simply a piece of birch
bark, rolled up cone-shaped with the smooth side within. It is fifteen
or sixteen inches long, about four inches in diameter at the larger,
and one inch at the smaller end. The right hand is folded round the
smaller end for a mouthpiece; into this the caller grunts and roars
and bellows, at the same time swinging the trumpet's mouth in sweeping
curves to imitate the peculiar quaver of the cow's call. If the bull
is near and suspicious, the sound is deadened by holding the mouth of
the trumpet close to the ground. This, to me, imitates the real sound
more accurately than any other attempt.

So many conditions must be met at once for successful calling, and so
warily does a bull approach, that the chances are always strongly
against the hunter's seeing his game. The old bulls are shy from much
hunting; the younger ones fear the wrath of an older rival. It is only
once in a lifetime, and far back from civilization, where the moose
have not been hunted, that one's call is swiftly answered by a savage
old bu