A bull moose on the shore of Chamberlain Lake. Staff photo by John Ewing.

With the animal squarely in our sights, we paused briefly and then shot it several times - with the long lens of a camera. Moments later, the moose turned and walked slowly up the bank into the woods.

In a similar situation in 1853, Henry David Thoreau and his two traveling companions shot the moose with a rifle and then tracked the wounded animal through the woods to a bony stretch of Pine Stream, where it lay dead.

While not a sportsman, Thoreau had wanted to observe a moose hunt in Maine, curious as he was about American Indian customs and the habits of all those who lived in the woods.

''Though I had not come a-hunting, and felt some compunctions about accompanying the hunters, I wished to see a moose near at hand, and was not sorry to learn how the Indian managed to kill one,'' Thoreau wrote. ''I went as reporter or chaplain to the hunters.''

A moose in the tranquil wilderness. Clicking on this photo will allow you to download a Quicktime movie of a moose by WGME-TV photographer Scott Episcopo. This 1.5 M file will take several minutes to download. To view this video, your browser will need the QuickTime System extension version 2.1 or later. QuickTime is available at http://www.quicktime.apple.com

But the author was not a disinterested observer long. Standing over the moose's ''still warm and palpitating body'' lying in the stream, he was filled with remorse, and felt some responsibility for the animal's death.

''One moose killed was as good, if not as bad, as a dozen,'' Thoreau wrote. ''The afternoon's tragedy, and my share in it, as it affected the innocence, destroyed the pleasure of my adventure.''

Still, the author paid close attention as his Penobscot Indian guide skinned the moose, watching as Joe Aitteon peeled back the animal's ''seemly robe.'' And he fashioned a ruler out of black ash to measure the 7-foot-5-inch critter.

''I can hardly believe my own measure,'' Thoreau wrote, astonished at the animal's height.

Today, the moose is the state's de facto mascot, with a population of more than 30,000 roaming the woods. Its cartoonish image appears on T-shirts and mugs, and its droppings are made into jewelry.

In Thoreau's time there were far fewer moose around, because there was no limit then on the number one could kill, and the mature forest offered much less food for the animal to eat.

In the 1930s, with the moose count down to perhaps 3,000, the Legislature suspended the hunt. The prohibition lasted nearly 50 years, during which time timber harvesting thinned the forest and allowed broadleaf hardwoods - a staple of the moose diet - to grow.

Now, the population is back up, and 1,500 moose-hunting licenses are issued each year, with that number due to increase soon to 2,000. There is no doubt Thoreau would be appalled that so many of these ''great frightened rabbits'' are being killed today.

''This hunting of the moose merely for satisfaction of killing him - not even for the sake of his hide - without making any extraordinary exertion or running any risk yourself, is too much like going out by night to some wood-side pasture and shooting your neighbor's horses,'' Thoreau wrote.

With our camera, we shot several moose on our trip, including one bull that was standing in the middle of the fast-moving Webster Stream. But on Pine Stream, where a century and a half ago Thoreau's party used a gun to shoot a moose, there were only ghosts.