CHAPTER XVI.

THE CARIBOU OF THE LABRADOR.

There are supposed to be two distinct forms of caribou in Labrador—the Barren Ground and the Woodland. There are undoubtedly marked differences in horn growth and also in bodily size and weight, the Woodland being the larger and heavier animal. Yet in my opinion no really accurate line of division can be drawn between these sub-races, as I hope to prove by the series of photographs which illustrate this chapter.

I have devoted eight hunting trips to the caribou: three in Newfoundland, two in Labrador proper, and three in Quebec Province. With regard to the last-named place, the herd which migrates in the Saguenay region seems to me to be an offshoot, or perhaps, alas! only a relic of the so-called Labrador “Woodland” herd.

To begin, then, with the north. In these higher latitudes the caribou still remains plentiful, and the form which appears upon the treeless Barrens is a small beast rarely exceeding 300 lbs. in weight, but carrying magnificent antlers.

Of these Barren land caribou, there are said to be three distinct herds. The first inhabits the country round the Koksoak River, the second and the third range the region from Hamilton Inlet to the south-east, to the Barrens that rise round the George and Fraser Rivers.

But reliable or accurate information concerning the movements of these immense herds is not only difficult but practically impossible to obtain. Here and there, it is true, they are seen by the Indians or the Eskimo, who take toll of their thousands, but for the greater part of the year they disappear entirely from human ken. Their movements, like those of their congeners in the Hudson’s Bay Territory, are quite uncertain, and although the Indians on the George River do annually kill deer, yet it is certain that the number of caribou seen by them in some seasons is very much larger than in others. Therefore the Indians obviously cannot foresee the line of migration with any certainty.

The Eskimo nowadays rarely hunt the deer, except in spring time, when the sledging parties from Nain and Okak sometimes meet upon the Barrens of the far interior. The favourite route followed by these people appears to lead in a south-westerly direction. The Nain hunters reach the high level of the inland country at Poungassé, a point fifty miles from the head of Nunaingoak, the bay immediately to the north of the settlement of Nain. But the Eskimo are not always successful; in fact, the entire failure of the hunt is by no means an uncommon occurrence.

My own experience deals chiefly with the movements of this herd, which, very roughly speaking, migrates north-west in the spring and south-east in the autumn.

An old trapper named Broomfield, who lives on the shores of Jack Lane’s Bay, stated to me that for many years prior to 1903, between November 5th and 18th, the caribou appeared regularly in great numbers in the woods along the bay shore and even upon the beaches. “It was no trouble to shoot all I wanted,” he said. But since 1903, he has not killed or so much as seen a single deer.

In 1906, Mrs. Hubbard, during her expedition to which I have already referred, came upon the main migration on August 8th. This grand spectacle she saw towards the northern end of Lake Michikamats, over 200 miles as the crow flies from the eastern coast and more than 150 south-west of Nain. They then appeared to be moving east and crossing and re-crossing the river. Mrs. Hubbard also records another note as to their movements:—

“Towards the end of August the following year (1907), Mr. Cabot, while on a trip inland from Davis Inlet on the east coast, found the caribou in numbers along the Height of Land, and when he joined the Indians there, though the great herd had passed, they had killed near a thousand.” Dillon Wallace reports scattered specimens on the George in September.

In the years 1908 and 1909 few deer were killed by the Eskimo at the heads of the bays, though in the latter year a settler shot some near Christmas time in a bay south of Hopedale.

These few facts were all that we were able to gather about the movements of the Barren Ground caribou prior to starting on our journey into the interior in July, 1910. After our return we learned from the Rev. Mr. Lenz, of the Moravian Mission at Hopedale, that once since Broomfield saw the great herds—that means in a year between 1903 and 1910—the caribou came out on the coast opposite Davis Inlet and were passing in a solid mass of animals for three days.

[Illustration: Typical Barren Ground Horns. Length 58 ins. Spread 48 ins. Killed at Nain.]

[Illustration: Labrador Barren Ground Horns approximating to the Scandinavian Type. Killed at Nain.]

[Illustration: Caribou Head from Northern Quebec, showing the narrow spread of Horns, which is very typical.]

[Illustration: Typical Caribou Horns from Northern Quebec. Length 41 inches.]

[Illustration: Intermediate Type between Labrador Barren Ground and Woodland. Length 50 inches. Killed at Makkovik.]

To return to my own experience. On our journey inland, as I have described in my narrative, we came upon evidence that the great herd had recently passed in huge numbers. The migration paths, twenty feet wide and trodden deep into the Barrens, spread in every direction over the plateau, and the deer must have reached the George in June and early July. There were signs that the Indians had killed a great many in the latter month on the banks of the George itself. The deer which we saw were undoubtedly stragglers from the main migration.

Some number of caribou, however, appear to remain on the highlands behind the coast, for Boaz—the Eskimo who left us and returned to Nain in early August—reported having seen several deer on the hills about the mouth of the Fraser River. We also heard later that a party of Eskimo sailing along the coast from the south of Nain, spied a deer or two on the shore, of which they secured one and carried the meat into Nain. Taking these facts into consideration, it would seem that with regard to their combined movements, the deer’s will is “the wind’s will,” and that though in autumn they are impelled by the migratory instinct to seek the timber and the neighbourhood of the coast, and _vice-versa_ in the spring and summer to return to the barren rocky heights, yet the actual line of migration is seldom for two consecutive years the same, and often not even approximately the same. Consequently their route can never be forecast or calculated, and the chance that a traveller, spending a summer in exploring Labrador, will meet the main migration is small, because such an encounter must be the result of sheer luck, even if that luck is aided by experience.

One finds it difficult to imagine the reasons that govern the choice of route in the deer migration. It is perplexing to know that they seem to desert one line of march for no apparent cause, while they unquestionably return again and again over another where they have been annually slaughtered. It also appears that they can be diverted from their course by the wind of an Indian camp, a shot at their leaders, and most of all by forest fires, which in later years have unluckily been not uncommon in the peninsula. We talk of the uncertainty of cricket, but it is nothing compared with the uncertainty of hunting Barren Ground caribou in Labrador!

The desertion of the coast by the herds is supposed by the Eskimo to have been brought about by the Indians, who want to preserve the deer for themselves. The Eskimo also say that the migration is led by a single stag, which they call “the Master stag.” When the hunters sight the herds, they try to single out this stag and kill him, as that throws the whole company of caribou into confusion. They stop and look about and do not know what to do until another stag takes the lead. In the meantime the hunters can easily kill as many deer as they require.

A certain amount of personal observation and study, supplemented by interviews with many hunters, have given me some idea of the main order of the caribou’s year.

In June the young are dropped, and at this season the deer are moving on to the Barrens and usually towards the east. In July and August, the months of flies, they take refuge upon the high ground among the rocks and where the winds may help to rid them of their tormentors. I shall return to this subject. On the high ground the stags grow their horns, and as soon as these attain a fair growth, but while they are still in velvet, the caribou begin a desultory movement which later quickens into the autumn migration. The rut begins in October and continues possibly into early November, when the stags fight their great battles. As to the time when the horns become clean, the evidence is exceedingly conflicting: though every hunter is very positive about his own facts, yet the dates vary awkwardly.

Hardy’s experience and my own I give below. On August 30th I shot a three-year-old stag; his horns were so soft as to be breakable at the tops between finger and thumb. Yet on August 29th we had seen a rubbing tree, on which a stag had cleaned his horns; this, however, was in the woods by the George River, and the deer may have approximated to the Woodland type. On the other hand Hardy saw a stag at the head of Nunaingoak Bay on September 20th, and the animal was in full velvet. Also, as late as the 28th of the same month, he found a rubbing tree with a fresh piece of velvet beside it which was not more than a couple of days old.

Broomfield assured me that he had killed stags with the velvet still clinging to their horns during the first days of November, but I think the bulk of the evidence goes to prove that the big stags are clean by about the 20th September.

While the antlers are growing, the stags certainly desert the does, and remain for the most part either solitary or in small bands; though here again we have a somewhat contrary opinion, as Mrs. Hubbard says that when she saw them on August 8th “male and female were already herding together.” At any rate this seems to show that the period of segregation does not last very long. From her account the horns, though still in velvet, were fully grown, for she mentions “the horns ... of the stags seemed as if they must surely weigh down the heads on which they rested.” We were less lucky, for of the 72 deer we saw in August not more than three had antlers of any size.

The bigger beasts and the herd-masters appear to drop their horns in November, and probably by December it would be hard to find a fine trophy still on the head where it grew. Throughout our entire travelling over the great central plateau we came almost daily upon cast horns. Some were of a fine size, which proves that large numbers of the deer pass the early winter upon the wind and snow-swept Barrens. Others seek the lower woods, for Hardy found a quantity of cast horns among the stunted forests about Tikortotak Bay.

It is, in fact, very difficult to make any statement concerning the movements of the deer without at once meeting with another experience which contradicts it flatly. To say that all the caribou go to the woods in November is as incorrect as to insist that they remain upon the Barrens. No man knows whither they come nor whither they go, and where they spend the greater portion of the year is a problem yet to be solved.

The truth, I think, is this. In Labrador vast herds roam over a vast country. These herds are subject to certain instincts which draw them to move according to the seasons from one district to another, which instincts the great majority of them obey, though some hold aloof from the general movement. Yet throughout the thousands of square miles that make up their feeding grounds, no man can say where they will be found at any given time.

This view is borne out by the experience of the Eskimo. In one spring caribou may be killed near Hopedale, while the Nain hunters, searching a hundred miles to the north, fail to sight a single animal. The following season the Nain bays may be full of deer and the Hopedale men go hungry. It is, indeed, a gigantic gamble, and even the Indians on the George, whose whole lives have but one object—to find the herds—often fail to come across them for months at a time.

Although in comparison to his Woodland brethren the caribou of the Barren Grounds is both lightly made and small, yet he carries splendid antlers. Of the pairs in my possession, one measures 58½ inches over the curve, and is the tenth longest recorded in Mr. Rowland Ward’s book of Horn Measurements. But among the piles of antlers which we found on the shores of Indian House Lake belonging to caribou slain by the Nascaupees, were several, nay, many, that put to shame this fine head. I remember one in particular which showed 53 points and measured well over 60 inches in length, besides being a heavier type. But, unluckily, long exposure had rendered it so brittle that it crumbled to dust on the slightest pressure.

Another pair of Barren Ground horns procured for me from an Eskimo hunter by Captain Jackson, of the S.S. _Harmony_, and which I presented to the United States National Collection—of which that keen and sound hunter and zoologist, Dr. W. T. Hornaday, is the high priest—though much shorter, carries a large number of points and two evenly developed brows. An even development of brow tines is a very rare feature of the Barren Ground antlers, amongst which one brow is almost always represented by a single spike. In fact I know of no other Barren Ground trophy that carries the two brows in such perfection.

Another point to be noted in the horn development of the Labrador race is the propinquity of bays to brows. In almost every instance the bays, or secondary shovels, are thrust forward upon long and, near the base, thin and round horn-stems; and this is the case although, as may be seen from the illustrations, the development and final palmation of the bays become considerable. In this feature the Labrador caribou of course resembles the Norwegian reindeer, as indeed they resemble them in other respects. For all that the two types are, to my mind, more or less distinct. In an examination of some hundreds of pairs of horns of both countries I found the average development of the top branches superior in the Norwegian antlers, though those from Labrador were the heavier. These slight variations may be accounted for by the fact that the great majority of the caribou of Labrador spend a part of the year in the timber, while the wild Norwegian reindeer never see a tree. This difference of environment may explain the heavier and more massive horns of the former.

There is another point of resemblance between the Barren Ground caribou of Labrador and the reindeer of Norway. In both countries the does carry horns, which are lacking in ten per cent. of the Newfoundland variety. On the Barrens I have never seen a hornless doe, and if such specimens exist I should be inclined to regard them as freaks. Moreover, not only have the does of the Barrens horns, but these horns are long and display many points. Thirteen or fourteen tines are quite common, but I have never come across anything at all approaching the forty-seven point doe’s head which was exhibited in one of the Norwegian museums.

Although in recent years comparatively few caribou have been killed on the coast of Labrador, yet now and again a great piece of good luck falls to the lot of some schooner or Eskimo boat which comes creeping north in the early summer. Such craft, as they pass through the long winding tickles or straits among the rocky islands off the mainland, have aboard them many eyes always on the look-out, so that an animal as large as a caribou has little chance of escaping observation, and from time to time small bodies of deer which have been caught unawares by the break-up of the ice on one of the outer islands, are seen and killed. Such cases used to occur almost every year, but they are now becoming very rare; chiefly, I think, because of forest fires which have been so numerous during the last decade. A forest fire would alter the line of migration and the main herd would avoid the coast, or if they came out to the sea at all, they would choose the shores of one or other of the many great fiords that remain not only uninhabited but still unknown. During the whole summer and autumn of 1910, only a single caribou was killed near Nain, and not one near Hopedale.

In the present year of grace it seems to me that the caribou have but three enemies to fear. First, the Indians, both Montagnais and Nascaupee; the second, the Eskimo sledgers of the spring hunt; and the last and most persistent are the wolves.

The Indians spear a very large number when they meet the main migration; the Eskimo, owing to the fact that they cannot take away more meat than their _komatiks_ will carry, are not likely to make any great slaughter; but year in, year out, the wolves levy a continuous and heavy toll, as they hang for ever on the flanks of the migration. Yet it is probable that the wolves fulfil a purpose in keeping up the standard of the caribou breed, as they kill off the more weakly animals. Perhaps they do the most harm at calving time, when they pursue and slay the does heavy with young, and no doubt many fawns also.

As to the numbers of the Barren Ground caribou, it is impossible to give any opinion or to make even the wildest guess. That they still muster in vast hosts is certain. At Fort Chimo in the north, the factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company watched them pass for three whole days “in hundreds of thousands.” Mr. Lenz, of Hopedale, said that on the occasion when the herds came out opposite Davis Bay Inlet, they were passing in a solid mass for three days. I heard much the same from the Broomfields, who saw the caribou migration in the neighbourhood of Jack Lane’s Bay, advancing in crowded masses for days. Thus, although the deer have probably suffered from forest fires, more particularly in late years since white men have landed on the coast in greater numbers, I cannot find myself in agreement with those who hold that the deer are decreasing at any alarming rate. Some of these opinions are local, of course, for the inhabitants of a district where the deer have been in the habit of appearing more or less regularly, are apt to put down their non-appearance to diminishing numbers, though in reality the causes are very different.

[Illustration: Roads cut by migrating Caribou.]

Some are inclined to attribute the alleged lessening of the herds to the annual slaughter by the Indians, but the tribes are little better armed now than formerly, and the weapon with which the greater part of their killing is done is the spear which they have always used. Consequently, there is no reason to think they destroy more animals than they have destroyed through many generations. In any case the killing would have to be on an incredible scale to really affect the “hundreds of thousands” that have been seen in the close-packed army of the migrations.

Thus the supposed diminution of the Barren Ground herds does not seem traceable to any cause at present ascertainable, and it must be remembered that once the deer reach the western bank of the George River, they pass beyond the ken of man white or red.

The building of the Reid Newfoundland Railway has materially altered the movements of the deer in that island; in like manner forest fires and other causes have in all probability altered the range of those in Labrador. The Indians, as well as the Eskimo, bear witness that if the advance guard of the migration be interfered with, the whole line is diverted from the original route, and as the killing of the leading stag is sometimes the chief aim of the native hunters, one can understand how a good many changes are brought about.

A characteristic of the Labrador caribou that we observed and which caused us surprise, was their dislike to crossing water. We saw them make immense circuits to avoid this necessity: they would travel completely round a lake rather than swim across it. The Newfoundland caribou, on the contrary, take readily to water. But it must be noted that the Barren Ground deer of Labrador, seen on migration by Mrs. Hubbard, swam in a “broad unbroken bridge from mainland to island,”—the island being some three-quarters of a mile out.

I have mentioned that the deer seek refuge on the breezy open Barrens in July and August on account of the flies, those intolerable pests of the Labrador which torture every living creature. In addition to the swarming mosquitoes and smaller flies, they have their own particular persecutors, some of which are over half an inch in length. One species infests the nostrils and throat of the deer and bore into the thicker part of the tongue. These are probably allied to the bot-flies, and few caribou are killed that do not show maggots about the nostrils and the root of the tongue.

There is also another fly, the eggs of which, in all probability, pass through the mouth and throat of the deer into the body. There they mature, raising lumps and swellings, especially along the back and sides of the animal, and finally drill their way out. I have seen hides rendered quite worthless by the action of these larvæ; in fact, many look as if a charge of small shot had been sent through them. Besides this, the deer have to endure the attacks of millions of mosquitoes of a power and virulence unrivalled by their kin elsewhere, not to speak of more than one kind of huge gad-fly that bite with a vigour proportionate to their size.

It is therefore natural that the deer should desert the woods and waters at the fly season to seek relief on high and open ground, where they can, to a certain extent at least, escape from this plague.

[Illustration: A Bear-Path over the Reindeer moss.]

[Illustration: Antlers of Caribou killed by Nascaupee Indians at a crossing-place on Indian House Lake.]

The Barren Ground caribou of Labrador, when met singly or in small bands, are quite difficult of access, though, as with other kinds of deer, the wildness varies with the individual animal or animals. Curiosity is the bane of the caribou, and although some would bound away scared at the bare sight of man, others would circle round us in order to get to windward, and, in doing so, usually approached within range.

Should a hunter, however, chance to come upon a caribou down wind, the animal, in most cases, will quickly put miles between himself and the scent that so terrifies him. Even to this rule there are exceptions, though the exceptions are generally immature beasts.

Yet I have reason to believe that the Barren Ground caribou is not naturally a very shy creature. Warburton Pike, in his work “The Barren Ground of Northern Canada,” describes his meeting with the migration on the shores of Lake Mackay, and says: “The caribou, as is usually the case when they are in large numbers, were very tame; and on several occasions I found myself right in the middle of a band with a splendid chance to pick out any that seemed in good condition.” He adds that even the women and children of the Indians were able to kill them. I am inclined to think that the very wild deer which we came across from time to time had recently been chased, probably by Indians, or possibly wolves.

The caribou of the Barren Ground have unquestionably better sight than the Woodland type, and though in this point they cannot compare with the red deer, yet they are likely to become alarmed while the hunter is still at a distance which would not trouble the equanimity of their Newfoundland cousins even upon the most open country. But in south and central Newfoundland the wolves have been almost exterminated, and the caribou of those wide-rolling barrens have nothing to fear save man.

On the other hand, the Newfoundland deer has good ears, and is not easy of approach in the thick wood which he frequents during the period while he is growing his horns and in the short interval when he cleans them before the rut.

Now for a few words about the so-called Woodland caribou. That a distinct Woodland type does exist is undeniable; but whether there is a third intermediate type produced by the interbreeding of the Woodland and the Barren Ground caribou is a moot point.

First of all we will consider the true Woodland caribou of Canada. This is a big animal, a bull weighing up to 450 lbs., or even 500 lbs. Its hoofs are very large, much larger than those of the Newfoundland variety (_R. Tarandus Terranovæ_), and in colour it is of a darker brown. I have hunted this animal on five separate trips in Quebec Province, and regard it as the extreme type of Woodland caribou of Eastern Canada and Labrador. It is growing rarer and rarer, and is now more plentiful in Quebec than in Labrador, where, according to the evidence of Dr. A. P. Low, it is “almost exterminated,” but the extermination has been caused rather by forest fires than by the rifle or the wolf.

The Quebec Woodland caribou (_R. Tarandus_), when caught in the open, is a sluggish and stupid animal, although in thick wood it is difficult to outwit. I can recall a good instance of the inert characteristic.

One morning I was crossing an upland covered with small trees—a _brulée_ in fact—when I perceived a Woodland stag intently regarding me at a distance of about a quarter of a mile. As I put up my glass to examine his antlers he started away at right angles, and I ran through the trees to cut him off. I did not lose sight of him at once, and, after going about 200 yards, saw him stop. I lay down, and soon had my telescope fixed on his horns. Although he was a big stag and his antlers were wide, they carried few points, and both brows were mere spikes, so I gave up all intention of shooting him, and, rising to my feet, I walked straight towards him. Until I was within fifty yards of him he remained quite still, then circled a little to the left, and almost immediately crossed my wind. I shall never forget his tremendous bound in the air as he made off. In a district infested by wolves no mature deer would allow so near an approach.

The expeditions which have gone into the wooded portions of Labrador have been singularly unsuccessful in killing caribou, and even the settlers at the bayheads obtain very few deer, and those that they do succeed in shooting are often of the Barren Ground variety, which, as I have said, spend some months of the year in the timber.

The Labrador herds undoubtedly migrate south into Northern Quebec, and return according to the season. Thus in the north of Labrador we find the extreme Barren Ground type, and in Quebec Province the extreme Woodland. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of Hamilton Inlet the two types overlap, and it is there—in the timber—that we may suppose they interbreed, as many of the caribou killed near (say) Makkovik and Hopedale present the distinctive features of both races.

But I do not think the hypothesis that interbreeding takes place at points where the herds meet need be regarded as the necessary explanation of the gradual blending of one type with another. This gradation of type may be owing to the effect of environment. For instance, in bodily development the Woodland caribou of the south is a larger and more heavily built beast than the Woodland caribou of Central Labrador, which, in its turn, is heavier than its congener of the Barren Grounds. This inequality of size and weight may be entirely due to the different conditions of food and climate in the respective districts; for it is, of course, well known that animals of the same species tend to be modified according to their surroundings, and to merge into variations from the original type.