Waterbury evening Democrat., 1906-02-15
HUNTING THE CARIBOU.
tT IS THE GREATEST OF ALL SPORTS IN NEwFouNDLAND.
Great Herds Make Annual Pilgrim age Across the Island-Big Game Hunters Find It Paradise
 Government Protection.


 Graceful, imposing, many-pointed, and unique in the possession of beau tifuily palmated brow palms, the ant lers of the Newfoundland caribou are, from a decorative standpoint we must concede, without peer in the list of experiments trophies.
 Some there are, no doubt, who would take issue with us on this point, giving preference, perhaps, to the antlers of the moose or even to those of the wapiti; but these are they who have never hunted the carl bou in Newfoundland, now the only readily accessible region where finely developed specimens are still to be found.
 The hunting of them there may be strenuous or luxuriously easy, as the taste or the limitations of the sports man may dictate.
 If he be strenuously inclined he may canoe and portage well into the inte. rior from the railway and stalk his stag on his own stamping ground, as it were.
 Or he may, during the annual mi grafton. camp in close proximity to the railway, never lacking the table luxury that dining car affords, and he may bag his game from, the best that the passing herds can boast.
 Here a fine caribou stag often weighs 500 lbs, and antlers with spread of from three to four feet and with 30 to 50 well-developed points, are not uncommon.
 The barren lands'' of extreme northern Canada afford no finer exam pies than these and the monotony of the "barrens" no less than the diff ficulty of access, has kept many sportsman from adding the finest head of them all to his collection.
 Some of the great hunters of the world-men like F. c. Selous, who has more lions to his gun than any living sportsman-find the hunting of the caribou in Newfoundland the most exciting and exhilarating sport. Since the buffalo was exterminated on the western plains some 30 years ago there is left in North America no place where big game is so plentiful as in the oldest colony. At one spot there-Howley's station-when the caribou are making their great annual migration, literally thousands of head can be counted pouring across the railway track.
 So exact is this great migrating movement in time and place, writes a recent observer, that hunters former ly camped by the rails, or in section houses, or. ran their chartered private cars on to Howley's siding and se- cured their heads without walking half a mile from their china break fast dishes. Warned probably by the fate of the buffalo in the West. hoy ever, and realizing that in the caribou Newfoundland has one of the grand. est game heritages within easy reach of North American sportsmen. the government has taken measures to protect the crossing places" and give the herds unmolested access 10 the milder climate of the southern interior. Three miles of country. each side of the railway, five miles each way from Howiey's station, has been reserved as neutral ground and gov. ernment agents patrol the district during the migrating season. Hunting in this reserve is prohibited, and the caribou cross freely in the fall and again on their way north about the month of May.
 To the sportsman we may say that after many hunting trips for "big game" in various parts of the United States and Canada, we have found no finer sport nor more interesting quarry than the caribou of the New. foundland muskeg.