Such is moose calling, in one of its phases—­the most exciting, the most disappointing, the most trying way of hunting this noble game.

The call of the cow moose, which the hunter always uses at first, is a low, sudden bellow, quite impossible to describe accurately.  Before ever hearing it, I had frequently asked Indians and hunters what it was like.  The answers were rather unsatisfactory.  “Like a tree falling,” said one.  “Like the sudden swell of a cataract or the rapids at night,” said another.  “Like a rifle-shot, or a man shouting hoarsely,” said a third; and so on till like a menagerie at feeding time was my idea of it.

One night as I sat with my friend at the door of our bark tent, eating our belated supper in tired silence, while the rush of the salmon pool near and the sigh of the night wind in the spruces were lulling us to sleep as we ate, a sound suddenly filled the forest, and was gone.  Strangely enough, we pronounced the word moose together, though neither of us had ever heard the sound before.  ’Like a gun 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.