By Warburton Pike

In a work dealing with the sport of the present day there is no necessity to inquire into the past history of the Musk Ox (Ovibos moschatus), or to speak of its extensive distribution during the early ages of the world. It is enough to pay a visit to the South Kensington Museum and wonder at the specimens of musk-ox heads dug out of the brick earth at Maidenhead and Ilford, differing but slightly from the bleached heads that may be picked up any day in the Barren Ground, and leave to scientists the task of describing the methods by which prehistoric man hunted the musk ox in what is now the pleasant valley of the Thames. I shall only attempt to describe the musk ox of to-day, and give a short account of the manner in which many of them are annually killed by the Northern Indians.

Whoever invented the word ovibos to classify the musk ox hit the nail squarely on the head, and this single word describes so exactly the strange mixture of sheep and bull that there is little left to be said upon the subject. I am indebted to Messrs. Rowland Ward & Co. for the following dimensions, which were taken from an adult bull, not a particularly large one, but a fair average specimen:—

The long hair is never shed, but underneath it lies a thick fleece, which comes off every year and hangs in sheets from the rocks and small bushes against which the animals have been rubbing; and herein lies the distinction between a prime musk-ox robe and one killed out of season. The hair varies from brown to black in different parts of the body, but a saddle of light yellow shows up very conspicuously in the middle of the back. The cows are smaller than the bulls, and their horns never grow together into the solid boss that is to be seen in the case of a bull at the age of six years. In the young, the horns grow straight out from the head after the manner of a barn-yard calf, and do not show the downward curve till the second year.

The present range of the musk ox is limited to the North American continent and the outlying islands in the Arctic Ocean; it is perhaps best defined as lying to the north and east of a line drawn from the mouth of the Mackenzie river to Fort Churchill on Hudson Bay. Latitude 60° is generally accepted as its southern boundary, whilst the musk ox seems capable of existing very far north, as some are recorded to have been killed on Grinnell Land, latitude 82° 27´, within a mile of the winter quarters of H.M.S. ‘Alert,’ in July 1876, but I can find no record of any having been seen in Greenland.

Now, all these places are necessarily hard of access, and to make a successful musk-ox hunt means spending many months in northern latitudes, and undergoing the hardships and risks which Arctic explorers have found only too plentiful in crossing the Barren Ground. A mistaken theory exists among the officers of the Hudson Bay Company, that the musk ox come into the woods in the winter; but as a matter of fact the Indians have to push out far beyond the timber, hauling wood for fuel on their dog-sleighs, and as the robes are not prime till the snow has fallen and the cold is intense, it will be easily understood that the difficulty of getting out to the musk-ox country, finding a band, and hauling in the robes, is a thing to be well considered before starting. In addition to this, it must be remembered that if a party of men and dogs fail to find their game when they are far from timber, the chances are ten to one that nobody will reach the woods alive, as the caribou which roam the Barren Ground in vast herds during the summer seek the better shelter of the thick forest directly the winter sets in, and it is perfectly impossible to haul sufficient provisions for men and dogs in addition to fuel.

My personal experience of the musk ox is derived from two expeditions, one in the autumn and early winter and the other in summer, which I made with some half-breeds from Fort Resolution, a Hudson Bay trading post on the south shore of the Great Slave Lake. We left with canoes in the middle of August, and after travelling 150 miles towards the north-east end of the lake, portaged over a range of mountains on the north shore, and passing through a chain of small lakes reached the end of the dwarf timber by the middle of September. At this point, roughly three hundred miles from Resolution, we established a permanent camp, and, reduced to four in number, set out on foot into the Barren Ground, expecting to find musk ox at any time. We travelled hard towards the north, but only fell in with two solitary bulls, both of which were killed; the rutting season was just coming on, and the bulls were apparently seeking the cows. Winter was approaching, the small lakes were frozen up and the ground covered with snow; we were unprovided with dogs and all the outfit necessary for winter travel, and were forced to abandon the hunt, reaching our camp after three weeks’ absence early in October. On this journey we found the caribou plentiful, and had little trouble from short rations.

The next five weeks were passed at the edge of the woods, and it was well on in November when we started on another expedition; this time I went with a band of Yellow Knife Indians, as most of the half-breeds had deserted. Six sleighs hauled by twenty-four dogs carried a supply of firewood sufficient for three weeks with the strictest economy, and a little dried meat which was to last us till we reached the musk ox. Luckily, we had left a few meat caches on our first trip, or I think we could hardly have made a successful hunt, as men and dogs require more than the usual rations in the excessive cold which prevails in the Barren Ground during the early winter. After ten days’ fair travelling, with some delays from wind storms and the trouble of cutting the meat caches out of the ice in which we had stored them, just as we had come to the end of our provisions two bands of musk ox were discovered. By rough guessing, one band contained a hundred and the other sixty animals, bulls and cows of all ages. The usual methods of winter hunting were employed, and a wholesale slaughter began; the dogs let loose from the sleighs rounded up as many of the animals as they could hold, and, going close up, we killed them as easily as cattle at the shambles.

The musk ox took no notice of the men, and seemed to suppose that the dogs were their only danger; and it is to be presumed that by herding together in this manner they resist the attacks of wolves, which follow the caribou, and probably make an attempt on the musk ox when the more timid caribou are scarce. The animals we killed were all in good condition, and an examination of their stomachs showed that they had been feeding on the different mosses that grow in profusion in the Barren Ground. The snow had drifted away from the ridges, leaving the ground bare in many places, so that the moss was easily obtainable without pawing away the snow.

We killed over forty, as the Indians were, of course, anxious to get as many robes as they could haul, to trade for ammunition and blankets at the Fort, and after we had loaded the sleighs with skins and meat we made the best of our way back to the woods, which we reached on December 2, after various mishaps through getting lost and the dogs playing out in the soft snow. Shortly afterwards we fell in with the caribou again, and reached Fort Resolution a few days before Christmas.

The short Arctic summer was at its height when I saw the musk ox again, at the head waters of the Great Fish river, after a long and tedious journey with dog sleighs, and as we spent six weeks in the heart of the Barren Ground I had every opportunity to notice the habits of these strange animals. Between the hunting grounds of the Yellow Knives and those of the Esquimaux, farther down stream, lies a debatable land of perhaps sixty miles in width, which affords the musk ox a sanctuary, and here there were scattered bands in every direction. At this season the big bulls were usually found alone, the cows and calves keeping together in small bands of ten to twenty. Their natural increase seems to be small, and calves were scarce in proportion to the number of cows. The Indians told me that a cow only calves once in two years, and this is probably true, as among the animals that we killed for food we found none that had lost a calf.

I have often been asked whether the flesh of the musk ox is good to eat, but people do not reflect that in the north, where the supply of provisions is uncertain, any kind of food is good. A fat cow killed in the fall hardly smells or tastes of musk, and I think its flesh would be palatable anywhere; but an old bull, especially in the rutting season, is a thing to be palmed off on your neighbour if there is any choice in the matter. The flesh of the calves we found insipid, and, eaten as it was without bread or vegetables, it failed to satisfy the appetite or to keep up the strength.

In the summer the musk ox live almost entirely on the green leaves of the small willows that grow in patches in the Barren Ground, and do not in this part of the country confine themselves entirely to moss all the year round, as I have seen stated. They fatten up in a wonderful manner during the short time they have for feasting, and begin the winter in splendid condition, though, according to the Indians, they are poor enough at the time of the spring hunt in April.

In summer hunting no dogs are used, but the still more destructive method of driving the musk ox into the water is often put into practice. When a band is discovered, a convenient place is chosen for the slaughter, and piles of rocks adorned with coats and gun-covers are set up a short distance apart, at right angles to the small lake that has been selected. Men are stationed at intervals to head the animals off, while others, making a dÉtour, start the band in the right direction. On coming to the barricade the animals are afraid to pass the line of rocks, and, seeing themselves surrounded, take to the water as their best chance. Then the little canoes are launched and the whole band is quickly exterminated. The musk ox is a poor swimmer. He seems to have some difficulty in keeping his head above water, and never leaves the land except under compulsion.

If the animals are at a long distance from water, or only one or two are required for meat, they are easily approached under cover of the rolling ground, and, being naturally of an unwary disposition, are a sure prey for the Indian if he can persuade his long muzzle-loader to go off at the right moment. It might naturally be supposed that the musk ox is being rapidly exterminated, but I doubt if this is really the case. The head of the Great Fish River has always been the summer hunting ground of the Yellow Knives; and yet their chief told me that he had never known these animals more numerous than at the present day, and certainly a great many were killed while we were waiting for the ice in the river to break up. But this is only the edge of the musk-ox country: the rocky wilderness stretches far towards the north and east to the Arctic Ocean, uninhabited except by a few wandering Esquimaux close to the coast. Into this desert the winter hunters can never penetrate, as it lies too far beyond the tree-line to admit of wood being hauled on dog-sleighs. It is true that the number of hides exported by the Hudson Bay Company is greater than it used to be, but this is easily accounted for by the fact that the robes have increased in value, and the price now paid to the Indians in the north is sufficient to encourage them to haul the skins to the Fort, instead of using them for moccasins, as was formerly the case.

In spite of the many stories that the Indians told me, and the evident dread in which they hold the musk ox, I could not see anything to justify the belief that it is a dangerous animal to attack. I never saw anything resembling a charge, although I have often been close up to a badly wounded bull on purpose to see if there was any truth in these reports. But the Indians are given to superstition, and attribute miraculous powers to the musk ox, and probably the ferocious appearance of an old bull has worked upon their timid imaginations till they are ready to believe thoroughly in these traditions.

On expeditions of this kind there is really no sport in the ordinary acceptance of the term, and under any circumstances the musk ox is so easily approached that one soon tires of the slaughter; the same thing applies to the caribou, which are sometimes found in almost incredible numbers in the Barren Ground in summer or the woods in winter. But it is never a certainty that the game will be forthcoming when most required for meat, and the knowledge that starvation, even to the last extremes, may come upon you at any time, goes far to counterbalance the tameness of the sport when once you have reached the land of plenty. Sufficient excitement and danger will always be found in penetrating the little known desert of the north to satisfy the most enthusiastic sportsman explorer.