"Now if I were only havin' a bit o' scent 'twould help me," he commented as he surveyed his work.
Foxes prefer meat or fish that is tainted and smells bad, and the more decomposed it is, the better it suits them. Bob had no tainted meat now, so he used what he had, in the hope that it might prove effective. A few drops of perfumery, or "scent," as he called it, would have made the fresh meat that he used more attractive to the animals, but unfortunately he had none of that either.
As he left the marsh and crossed from a neck of woods to the lake shore he saw two moving objects far out upon the ice. He dropped behind a clump of bushes. They were caribou.
His gun would not reach them at that distance, and he picked up a dried stick and broke it. They heard the noise and looked towards him. He stood up, exposing himself for the fraction of a second, then concealed himself behind the bushes again. Caribou are very inquisitive animals, and these walked towards him, for they wanted to ascertain what the strange object was that they had seen. When they had come within easy range he selected the smaller one, a young buck, aimed carefully at a spot behind the shoulders, and fired. The animal fell and its mate stood stupidly still and looked at it, and then advanced and smelled of it. Even the report of the gun had not satisfied its curiosity.
It would have been an easy matter for Bob to shoot this second caribou, but the one he had killed was quite sufficient for his needs, and to kill the other would have been ruthless slaughter, little short of murder, and something that Bob, who was a true sportsman, would not stoop to. He therefore stepped out from his cover and revealed himself. Then when the animal saw him clearly, a living enemy, it turned and fled.
Bob removed the skin and quartered the carcass. These he loaded upon his toboggan and hauled to his tilt. The meat was suspended from the limb of a tree outside, where animals could not reach it and where it would freeze and keep sweet until needed. A small piece was taken into the tilt for immediate use, and some portions of the neck placed in the corner of the tilt where they would decompose somewhat and thus be rendered into desirable fox bait. The skin was stretched against the logs of the side of the shack farthest from the stove, to dry. This would make an excellent cover for Bob's couch and be warm and comfortable to sleep upon. The sinew, taken from the back of the animal, was scraped and hung from the roof to season, for he would need it later to use as thread with which to repair moccasins.