In “Chesuncook,” Thoreau writes:
About half an hour after seeing the moose, we pursued our voyage up Pine Stream . . . Joe exclaimed from the stream that he had killed a moose . . . I took hold of the cars of the moose, while Joe pushed his canoe down-stream toward a favorable shore . . . It was a, brownish-black, or perhaps a dark iron-gray, on the back and sides, but lighter beneath and in front. I took the cord which served for the canoe’s painter, and with Joe’s assistance measured it carefully, the greatest distances first, making a knot each time. The painter being wanted, I reduced these measures that night with equal care to lengths and fractions of my umbrella, beginning with the smallest measures, and untying the knots as I proceeded; and when we arrived at Chesuncook the next day, finding a two-foot rule there, I reduced the last to feet and inches; and, moreover, I made myself a two-foot rule of a thin and narrow strip of black ash, which would fold up conveniently to six inches. All this pains I took because I did not wish to be obliged to say merely that the moose was very large . . .
Thoreau writes in his journal:
The head [of the moose], measuring from the root of the ears to the end of the nose or upper lip 2 feet 1/3 inches
Head and neck (from nose to breast (?) direct) 4 ” 3 1/2 ”
Fore leg below level of body 4 ” 9 1/3 ”
Height behind (from the tips of the hoofs to top of back) 6 ” 11 ”
Height from tips of hoofs to level with back above shoulders a 7 ” 5 ”
Extreme length (from nose to tail) 8 ” 2 ”
The ears 10 inches long.
