e morning his
tracks, within five feet of my rear tent pole, showed how little he
cared for the dwelling of man. But though he circled back and forth for
an hour, answering Simmo's low call with his ridiculous little grunt, he
would not show himself again on the open shore.

I stole up after a while to where I had heard the last twig snap under
his hoofs. Simmo held me back, whispering of danger; but there was a
question in my head which has never received a satisfactory answer: Why
does a bull come to a call anyway? It is held generally--and with truth,
I think--that he comes because he thinks the sound is made by a cow
moose. But how his keen ears could mistake such a palpable fraud is the
greatest mystery in the woods. I have heard a score of hunters and
Indians call, all differently, and have sometimes brought a bull into
the open at the wail of my own bark trumpet; but I have never yet
listened to a call that has any resemblance to the bellow of a cow moose
as I have often heard it in the woods. Nor have I ever heard, or ever
met anybody who has heard, a cow moose give forth any sound like the
"long call" which is made by hunters, and which is used successfully to
bring the bull from a distance.

Others claim, and with some reason, that the bull, more fearless and
careless at this season than at other times, comes merely to investigate
the sound, as he and most other wild creatures do with every queer or
unknown thing they hear. The Alaskan Indians stretch a skin into a kind
of tambourine and beat it with a club to call a bull; which sound,
however, might not be unlike one of the many peculiar bellows that I
have heard from cow moose in the wilderness. And I have twice known
bulls to come to the _chuck_ of an ax on a block; which sound, at a
distance, has some resemblance to the peculiar _chock-chocking_ that the
bulls use to call their mates from a distance.

From any point of view the thing has contradictions enough to make one
wary of a too positive opinion. Here at hand was a "lil fool moose" who
knew no fear, and who might, therefore, enlighten me on the obscure
subject. I told Simmo to keep on calling softly at intervals while I
crept up into the woods to watch the effect.

It was all as dark as a pocket beyond the open shore. One had to feel
his way along, and imitate the moose himself in putting his feet down.
Spite of my precaution a bush whispered; a twig cracked. Instantly there
was a swift answering