[Illustration: Antlers of moose shot September 19, 1915, with Springfield rifle No. 6000, Model 1903.
This rifle, now a retired veteran, is not heavy enough for steady use on heavy game; but it is so handy and accurate, has such penetration, and keeps in such good order that it has been my chief hunting-rifle for the last dozen years on three continents, and has repeatedly killed heavy game. With it I have shot some three hundred head of all kinds, including the following:
Lion, hyena, elephant, rhinoceros (square-mouthed and hook-nosed), hippopotamus, zebras of two kinds, wart-hog, giraffe, giant eland, common eland, roan antelope, oryx, wildebeest, topi, white-withered lechwe, waterbucks, hartebeests, kobs, impalla, gerenuk, gazelles, reedbucks, bushbucks, klipspringer, oribis, duikers, steinbok, dikdik, monkeys.
Jaguar, tapir, big peccary, giant ant-eater, capybara, wood-deer, monkey.
Cougar, black bear, moose, caribou, white-tail deer.
Ostrich, bustard, wild turkey, crane, pelican, maribou, ibis, whale-head stork, jabiru stork, guinea-fowl, francolin.]
The frontispiece I owe to the courtesy of Mr. Theodore Pitman, a fellow Harvard student of Archie's, whom we met on Buckskin Mountain; being both a hunter and a lover of the picturesque, he was as much impressed as we were by the scene when a cougar stood in a pine, with the Grand Canyon as a background. The photograph at the end of the book is by Doctor Alexander Lambert, and the tail-piece is from a photograph by him.
I had been told by old hunters that black bears would sometimes attack moose calves, and in one instance, in the Rockies, my informant described to me how a big grizzly, but a few weeks out of its den in spring, attacked and slew full-grown moose. I was not surprised at the latter statement, having myself come across cattle-killing grizzlies; but I wondered at a black bear, which is not much of a beast of prey, venturing to meddle with the young of so formidable a fighter as a moose. However, it is true. Recently my nephew Hall Roosevelt, who was working at Dawson City, went on a moose hunt in the valley of the Yukon. One night a moose cow passed by the camp, having first swum a stream in front of the camp. She was followed at some little distance by a calf. The latter halted near the camp. Suddenly a black bear, with a tremendous crashing of branches, came with a rush through the bushes, and seized the calf; although it was driven off, it had with its teeth so injured the spine of the calf that they were obliged to shoot the latter.