Wilderness Ways | Page 3

had small wish to use my rifle, and no desire
whatever to stand that rush at close quarters and be run down. There
was a moment of wild confusion out on the barren just in front of me.
The long swinging trot, that caribou never change if they can help it,

was broken into an awkward jumping gallop. The front rank reared,
plunged, snorted a warning, but were forced onward by the pressure
behind. Then the leading bulls gave a few mighty bounds which
brought them close up to me, but left a clear space for the frightened,
crowding animals behind. The swiftest shot ahead to the lead; the great
herd lengthened out from its compact mass; swerved easily to the left,
as at a word of command; crashed through the fringe of evergreen in
which I had been hiding,--out into the open again with a wild plunge
and a loud cracking of hoofs, where they all settled into their wonderful
trot again, and kept on steadily across the barren below.
That was the sight of a lifetime. One who saw it could never again
think of caribou as ungainly animals.
Megaleep belongs to the tribe of Ishmael. Indeed, his Latin name, as
well as his Indian one, signifies The Wanderer; and if you watch him a
little while you will understand perfectly why he is called so. The first
time I ever met him in summer, in strong contrast to the winter herd,
made his name clear in a moment. It was twilight on a wilderness lake.
I was sitting in my canoe by the inlet, wondering what kind of bait to
use for a big trout which lived in an eddy behind a rock, and which
disdained everything I offered him. The swallows were busy, skimming
low, and taking the young mosquitoes as they rose from the water. One
dipped to the surface near the eddy. As he came down I saw a swift
gleam in the depths below. He touched the water; there was a swirl, a
splash--and the swallow was gone. The trout had him.
Then a cow caribou came out of the woods onto the grassy point above
me to drink. First she wandered all over the point, making it look
afterwards as if a herd had passed. Then she took a sip of water by a
rock, crossed to my side of the point, and took a sip there; then to the
end of the point, and another sip; then back to the first place. A nibble
of grass, and she waded far out from shore to sip there; then back, with
a nod to a lily pad, and a sip nearer the brook. Finally she meandered a
long way up the shore out of sight, and when I picked up the paddle to
go, she came back again. Truly a Wandergeist of the woods, like the
plover of the coast, who never knows what he wants, nor why he circles
about so, nor where he is going next.
If you follow the herds over the barrens and through the forest in winter,
you find the same wandering, unsatisfied creature. And if you are a

sportsman and a keen hunter, with well established ways of trailing and
stalking, you will be driven to desperation a score of times before you
get acquainted with Megaleep. He travels enormous distances without
any known object. His trail is everywhere; he is himself nowhere. You
scour the country for a week, crossing innumerable trails, thinking the
surrounding woods must be full of caribou; then a man in a lumber
camp, where you are overtaken by night, tells you that he saw the herd
you are after 'way down on the Renous barrens, thirty miles below. You
go there, and have the same experience,--signs everywhere, old signs,
new signs, but never a caribou. And, ten to one, while you are there, the
caribou are sniffing your snowshoe track suspiciously back on the
barrens that you have just left.
Even in feeding, when you are hot on their trail and steal forward
expecting to see them every moment, it is the same exasperating story.
They dig a hole through four feet of packed snow to nibble the reindeer
lichen that grows everywhere on the barrens. Before it is half eaten they
wander off to the next barren and dig a larger hole; then away to the
woods for the gray-green hanging moss that grows on the spruces. Here
is a fallen tree half covered with the rich food. Megaleep nibbles a bite
or two, then wanders away and away in search of another tree like the
one he has just left.
And when you find him at last, the chances are still against you. You
are stealing forward cautiously when a fresh