ater up on to the bank and there stand,
not fifty feet away, towering above us--for he may measure from six to
seven feet at the shoulder and weigh three quarters of a ton--shaking
his great antlers and grunting, or perhaps, more properly speaking,
_barking_ at us while he stamps his big fore hoofs until he shakes the
very river bank.

How children love to take part in such sport! How they thrill over
such an experience! Many a time I have taken them right up to even the
largest of bulls until the little tots could look into the very eyes of
the greatest of all living deer. What fine little hunters, too, they
made, never speaking, not even in a whisper; never moving--save only
their eyelids. In fact, I have been so close to wild moose that on one
occasion I could have spanked a huge bull with my paddle. He was
standing belly-deep in the river with his head under water, and so
close did my canoe glide past him that I had to turn it to prevent it
from running in between his hind legs. It was the sound of turning
aside the canoe that brought his head up, and when he beheld the cause,
he lunged forward and trotted away leaving a great wake of surging foam
behind him. His head, crowned with massive antlers, was a ponderous
affair. His body was as large as that of a Shire stallion and his back
just as flat, while his legs were very much longer. He was the largest
moose I have ever seen--and yet, by leaning slightly toward him, I
could have spanked him with my paddle! One such experience with a
great, wild animal, is more adventuresome, more thrilling and more
satisfactory, than the shooting of a hundred such creatures. It is
more than the sport of kings--it is the sport of men of common sense.

On another occasion, at Shahwandahgooze, in Quebec, in broad daylight,
I paddled a friend of mine right in between three bulls and a cow, and
there we rested with moose on three sides of us. They were standing in
a semicircle and no one of them was more than fifty paces away. They
were unusually fine specimens and had the bulls been triplets they
could not have been more alike even to the detail of their antlers.
The cow paid little attention to us and went on feeding while the
bulls, with heads held much higher than usual, stood as though in
perfect pose for some sculptor. There wasn't a breath of wind and the
wondrous spell must have lasted from eight to ten minutes; then a faint
zephyr came and carried our tell-tale s