The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-02-14
QUEER WAYS OF CARIBOU.
Ills Migrations a Puzzle to Guides and

HIS Migrations Puzzle to Guides ant
 sportsmen-The Woodland Caribou''
 Mysterious Ways-Guide With
 sheet-Iron Stove Chased by a Venge
 1ul Bull-A Fight Between a Caribou
 Patriarch and Big Bear.
 mere IS no game animal on this con
 tlnent concerning whose habits so little IS known as the woodland caribou. The more remote barren ground caribou of Newfoundland, Labrador and the north- west territory have their regular migra- tlons in the spring and fall, and their modes of life are well understood, but the woodland caribou remains verita- ble sphinx. His solemn almost patri- archal appearance, his silent, furtive, Whimsical ways, his mysterious move ments from place to place, his remark able power of travelling in the deep snows of winter, his capacity to thrive and fatten upon such airy fare as the relndeer moss, are among the features that give rise to endless debate among guides and sportsmen. In truth, the caribou Is tramp or vagabond without any regular habits at all. He seems to be mbued with the restless spirit of the age, has no fixed abiding place, and is always in a hurry to reach some other place in order to be in time to hurry back again. Seen on the barrens in De- cember he is like a gray ghost from an- other world, his shadow lingering for a moment on the shifting curtain of the snOWs, then vanishing to the limbo of the weird
 In 1S40, old residents say, caribou were plentiful in Maine. They were even found within fourteen miles of Bangor and on all the large bogs to the east. On the Chemo bog herds of fifty or seventy-five were sometimes seen. In 1845 there were no caribou to be found in Maine anywhere, except an oc- casional solitary one in the wilds of Aroostook It would naturally be sup posed that they had shifted to the wide- stretching barrens of New Brunswick, where the reindeer moss Catalonia rangiferina) was abundant, but such was not the case, the animals being very rare in this province at that time and for many years afterward. In 1850 they began to wander into Maine again, and 1t was about this time that they reap peared on the headwaters of the To- bique, Restigouche, Miramichi and Nepisiguit in New Brunswick. At the present time caribou are almost extinct in Maine, according to the reports of the game officials while they are believed to be more numerous in New Bruns- wick than ever before.
 In 1885 an old crown land surveyor, Edward Jack, was employed for some months running lines among the wooded hills of the peninsula of Gaspe. He found the country alive with caribou, herds of fifty and even one hundred in- dividuals being seen daily. For some years after this the interior of Gaspe, especially the Shikshawk mountains, was a caribou paradise and as the country was unknown to sportsmen and the animals little hunted by the French people living on the coast, it seemed likely to remain so. Last fall J. B. Brainerd, of East Orange, Me, and Will liam Chestnut, of this city, hunted the Shikshawk region faithfully. They saw only four inferior specimens of caribou on the entire trip. The great herds seen by MT. Jack had disappeared.
 Thirty years ago the spacious plains of Gaspereaux and Pleasant Brook, in this province, were occupied by many herds of caribou. It was the happy hunting ground of the Milicetes. In those days the game laws were more honored in the breach than the obser- vance, and it was not unusual for the officers of the English regiments sta tioned at Fredericton to haul in twenty or thirty caribou as a result of their an- nua1 hunt in Christmas week. In the year 1885 the caribou vanished from the Gaspereaux and were not seen there again for seven years. After 1892 these barrens could always be relied upon for limited supply. Tn November last Tn American hunting party camping at Pleasant Brook saw one hundred and fifty caribou in the space of five days. Another famous, though seldom hunted, caribou resort in the olden days was the barrens on the head of Renous In 1886 the herds disappeared and only solitary specimens were seen for some years Last year the animals came back with a rush. Parties who hunted in that country with the veteran guides, Henry Braithwaite and Tom Pringle, saw scores of caribou almost daily on the plains These facts show that the cari- | bou is bird of passage, without any regular period of flight They rather point to the conclusion that the penin- sula of Gaspe is the northern home of l the woodland caribou and that he strays to the south when the spirit moves him. !
 A question much discussed is as to | what becomes of the caribou in the ! summer months Unlike the moose and | the deer, he seems to have little use for | water, and hence is rarely sighted on the lakes and streams in hot weather. | There can be little doubt that the cari- bou's method of escaping the flies and ! heat in the summer months is to settle | himself on the mountains or highlands, i where he remains until the rutting sea- son begins in September. At that peri od of the year the antlers of the male are perfect, his neck is twice the ordina- ry size and his strength and vitality are such that he will sometimes carry away as much lead as a moose
 The caribou seems to have a most reckless and negligent manner of grow i ing his horns. No pair of antlers are ever found that much resemble any oth- CT pair, and, in fact, the horns worn by the individual are seldom closely mated. Some specimens have two brow prongs. the points of which overlap each other