HUNTER’S JOURNAL Hunting Stories From The Early 1900’s
October 2011 $4.95 Vol. 3 - No. 6
Kayaking The Canyon read on page 4...
The Bengal Tiger read on page 40...
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October 2011
EDITOR’S CORNER Did you know?
Bengal Tiger Facts Tigers do not live in prides as lions do. They do not live as family units because the male plays no part in raising his offspring. Tigers mark their territory by spraying urine on a branch or leaves or bark of a tree, which leaves a particular scent behind. Tigers also spray urine to attract the opposite sex. When an outside individual comes into contact with the scent, it learns that the territory is occupied by another tiger. Hence, every tiger lives independently in its own territory. Male Bengal tigers fiercely defend their territory from other tigers, often engaging in serious fighting. Female tigers are less territorial: occasionally a female will share her territory with other females. A heavy male Bengal tiger weighing 258.6 kg (570 lb) was shot in Northern India in 1938. In 1980 and 1984, scientists captured and tagged two male tigers (M105 and M026) in Nepal that weighed more than 270 kg (600 lb). The largest known Bengal tiger was a male with a head and body length of 221 cm (87 in) measured between pegs, 150 cm (59 in) of chest girth, a shoulder height of 109 cm (43 in) and a tail of just 81 cm (32 in), perhaps bitten off by a rival male. This specimen could not be weighed, but it was calculated to weigh no less than 272 kg (600 lb). Finally, according to the Guinness Book of Records, the heaviest tiger known was a huge male hunted in 1967, that measured 322 cm (127 in) in total length between pegs (338 cm (133 in) over curves), and weighed 388.7 kg (857 lb). This specimen was hunted in northern India by David Hasinger and is on exhibition in the Mammals Hall of the Smithsonian Institution. In the beginning of the 20th century, there were reports of big males measuring about 12 ft (3.7 m) in total length; however, there was not scientific corroboration in the field, and it is probable that this measurement was taken over the curves of the body.
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October 2011
HUNTER’S JOURNAL
Features
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MAGAZINE
OVER PAINTING BY NED SMITH (“Ladies Man”)
Mr. Smith has long been admired for his love for the outdoors and possessing the talent of placing his heart’s passion on canvas. Each issue of Hunter’s Journal features an amazing cover painted by Mr. Ned Smith.
Kayaking The Canyon - earing through treacherous white water may be a crazy way to fish, but it’s a trip you never forget Old Huggers Last Stand - Joe got to his feet again as the bear threw what was left of the hound over the cliff The Cat That Swam For It - There we were, in fine tracking country with a pair of great trailing hounds, hopelessly baffled by an animal that refused to play according to the rules. And it took us a whole winter to solve his style! Bag Of Venom - Sickened, I stared at the rattler’s ugly head, at the long thin line that separated his jaws and gave him a hideous grin Lure That Can’t Miss - A veteran angler says it bluntly: A nymph is the best. Properly presented, it will fool any trout that swims ON A LIGHTER NOTE- Need A Good Laugh!!! Check “The Funnies” Field Notes
The Bengal Tiger - On the page opposite is the eighth painting of a notable series by one of the nation’s most talented wildlife artists, who was specially commissioned to depict - in full color - the world’s largest game animals in their native habitats I Fell For A Leopard - Now he struck blindly at everything under my tree, and his blood began to appear. Round and round he went in a crazy wild dance, and everything he touched was destroyed. Bugs That Outsmart Bass - Some bronzebacks have been towed by so many plugs they are fed up. But they haven’t learned to duck a fly-rod lure The Comeback - The kid grabbed a .22 and snapped off a round. It missed the target and sandbags behind it, and began ricocheting madly How To Hunt Deer - NEW... Continued Story! RECIPES
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October 2011
Kayaking The Canyon
Tearing through treacherous white water may be a crazy way to fi sh, but it’s a trip you never forget where waters run like a mill race, deep pools, and long slides ending where the river bangs into granite cliffs. In those sections less easily reached by usual methods, there is a heap of good fishing water that rarely is worked. But these Rocky Mountain canoe wranglers get in there; Monty Montgomery told me about this craziest way of taking trout in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. It sounded lunatic. But so what, I was ready to try it. “There’s a bunch of sportsmen at Gunnison,” Monty said, “who canoe the canyon and fish as they go.” Traveling maybe a thousand miles by canoe through the QueticoLake Superior country, I’ve ridden some stretches of white water. But the idea of running the Gunnison River, a mountain stream, appeared to be about as reasonable as putting on a fancy rope-spinning act in a roller coaster, or playing a harp After catching them on the fly, you wondered how the on a bucking bronc. If you know chap in waders got any kick at all the way those mountain rivers race, you can conjure up the picture. Just below Gunnison town the sometimes they get in with a splash and a yell. river “canyons up,” as Westerners say. At several Below the tiny town of Sapinero the canyon places, hay-wire roads snake down side gulches to becomes really colossal; there lies the famous the river’s edge. Water between these occasional Black Canyon of the Gunnison. By the records, trails is hard to reach. There are gorges, spots only one party has ever gone through that gorge.
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But before the river reaches the maw of this he thinks it’s fun, agreed to drive the car, drop us deadly stretch, there is a prelude of lesser canyon up canyon, and later pick us up down canyon, if guaranteed to satisfy any “daring young man in we got there. It was while we loaded the car that a flying canoe.” To me, the idea wasn’t so weird; I met the Shitepoke. Some of the canyon busters own factory-made it was challenging. Monty saw he had me hooked. He began canoes; Ralph built the Shitepoke. A canvasfeeding me hair raisers. George Eastman capsized, covered kayak, with aluminum ribs, it looks lost his tackle, saved his life, narrowly escaped about as seaworthy as a paper hat. Ralph declares drowning. Eastman’s canoe, a ninety-dollar job, it is just the thing to skim the rapids. He has an smashed on into the Black Canyon and The kayak took us to never was heard of thereafter. Monty a seldom fished hole. assured me that every season there far out of reach of the were cases like this, and cited names. wading fisherman’s Being pitched into ice water running best cast wild is no warm prospect; but every time Monty gave a name, I had it jotted down. Within an hour after landing in Gunnison I had a date with Ralph Porter, treasurer at the Western State College, to shoot the canyon and to fish as we went. Ralph’s wife, who seems resigned to letting her husband risk his neck if
The double-ended paddle proved indispensable in bringing the kayak through swift water where split-second shifts were called for
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ingenious device for carrying it atop the auto cross clamps that fit at the ends of the cockpit, sponge-rubber cushions to rest on the car top and after the lash ropes are tied at either end, it rides perfectly. We reached an old highway bridge, the clamps were removed, and Ralph made a date to meet Mrs. Porter at 5:30, designating the point we’d reach at that time. These fellows who run the river can time arrival at a certain point within a matter of minutes. Provided, of course, they don’t end up in the river meanwhile. “I always wait until he’s started,” remarked Mrs. Porter, as we lifted the kayak into the edge of swift water. I thought for a moment that perhaps she always took this last look because it really might be the last. “Down we go,” said Ralph. He waded into the stream after I had squaw-squatted in the bottom of the little boat. “See you at 5:30,” he added, waving to his wife, and the current took us. The Gunnison is a world-famous trout stream. Fishing it in the orthodox manner, wading, you feel the mighty force of the rushing water. There are no really quiet spots in that stretch of the Gunnison; it is a hustler, going places. It has power. It is entirely different in the kayak. You float, lightly, skipping along with the dancing riffles. Riding along, you cast first on one side, then on the other, spotting the fly into likely lies. The little craft dances like a bubble. There is no appreciation of the speed you travel while you look only at the flowing water. But look at the bank, and you get a strained feeling around your shoulder blades. You are standing still, but the crazy shore is running, like a wild thing, back upstream toward the Continental Divide, forty miles away. “There’s a likely spot,” Ralph said from the stern. He gave a twist with the double-ended paddle, and we slipped toward a willow-curtained bank. “Pitch one in there.” A two-pound trout slammed at my fly but missed, and before I could cast again the current carried me out of range. Ralph shot his line from
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the rear of the boat. Apparently the same trout bounced from under the brush and smacked at the fly. Another miss. Not a chance in the world to give him a third try. Everything calls for fast action in this canoeing downs the Gunnison; even the misses happen in high-geared seconds. “There’s the first rapids,” Ralph announced. “Better stow your rod!” From where we had put in, the river slides down grade so steadily that it all should be classified as rapids. But directly ahead was a sharp-pitched ramp, where the river stepped down maybe ten or fifteen feet within a distance of a city block. In the channel are boulders as large as an office desk. Waters spout up against them, fraying madly. But there is one clear chute in the center where the powerful river has scoured through. “Sit tight; we’re going to travel,” remarked Ralph. There was no need for such advice. Being in the Shitepoke at that moment was like riding a spring freshet on a corn husk; but it was the Shitepoke or nothing. In we went, waves curling around us. Ralph dipped his double-bladed paddle. I glanced at the shore lines. Those crazy banks of the Gunnison, they run! Occasionally Ralph paddled to keep the Shitepoke headed into the center of the trough. For the most part, we sat tight and left it to its own devices. Strangely enough, I felt no touch of anxiety in the shooting of that first rapids. I’ve been through white water with some of the best canoe men up on the Ontario boundary. But this was a new experience, exciting, exhilarating, novel. The drop of the river was greater, the speed greater, the plunge more fierce than any water I’d shot in the Lake country. All the way it roars and tumbles; in some places it leaps. Below the chute we began fishing again. Ralph even fished the lies back of boulders through part of that rapids. I suppose there is a technique to be followed if one should tie into a five-pounder while running a mill race in a kayak. I should like to see it demonstrated. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to be on shore during the performance. Around the bend we met a fisherman wading,
October 2011
pitching a dry fly, breasting the thrust of the current. He had his landing net on the end of a staff about the size and length of a pitchfork handle; the staff steadied him against the water flow. That is standard equipment for those who wade the Gunnison. We called, asked what luck; he replied “Not much,” and we streaked by. Cliffs rose directly in front of us. The river went broncho again. It jumped down a step in the river bed, lashed through boulders, and rammed into those cliffs in a five-foot wave. We were heading directly into the canyon wall! “Here’s where a couple of us stacked up two years ago,” Ralph remarked casually. “You have to hit right down the center, or -” We hit down the center, bent for that 200-foot mass of granite. I saw the wave where it boiled up against the solid rock. A fellow caught in there would be tossed in against the rock - bang! Down went the Shitepoke over the first slithering step in the rapids. The little boat curtsied to the big cliff. Probably the Shitepoke has done that scores of times. Right ahead of us the boil-up wave lashed into a crest edged with jeweled mane. For a hundred or so feet, Ralph had sat perfectly inactive. Just at the moment it seemed we’d have to take a ducking, his paddle dipped. I didn’t look around, but he must have been working the paddle so fast it looked like the vanes of a whirring windmill. Almost as though it thumbed its prow at the rock cliff, the Shitepoke tossed its head, skipped, danced, jigged a little, and headed over toward still water at the side, performing the act with all the light insouciance of a windblown bubble. Over my shoulder I saw that tumbling wave boiling against the granite. But ahead of us was a quarter-mile stretch where the Gunnison spread out, a hundred feet wide and three feet deep, and merely ran, without turning handsprings. Again I was conscious of the fact that all through that wild run I’d had confidence in the kayak, even though it seemed no more of a boat than a canvas wash basin. Right there and then I took off my hat to the good ship Shitepoke, her skipper and
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maker. “You ought to be around sometime when the high water is running,” remarked Ralph. “That place back there really packs a thrill then.” “I’ll take your word for it,” I assured him. There are several advantages, according to Ralph, in running the upper canyon stretches of the Gunnison in a kayak. Its lightness, the way it rides high, puts it over rocks that anything with deeper draft might rub. It is double-ended, with sharp enough cleavage at bow and stern to rip fast when hard-driven; and at times it is imperative that the little boat cut through water at high speed to dodge what’s ahead. Compared with a canoe, it turns even faster and is shorter by several feet; yet it has sufficient buoyancy to carry two men. Ralph prefers the double-ended paddle. There are moments in this touch-and-go travel when the paddle man in the stern times his stroke to a split second. He must be able to dip on either hand without even the delay that would be required to shift a single blade from one side to the other. I recognized the soundness of this claim. For as we had come down toward that cliff, the trick of getting free without swamping or smashing was, first, a dozen quick, hard strokes on the lefthand side, to drive us for a moment almost at right angles to the current; then a few fast strokes on the other side, to dodge a rock that loomed ahead. “Let’s pull in here,” Ralph suggested now. For fifteen minutes we became orthodox fishermen, standing in the head of a long riffle, wading over submerged boulders. That is the other advantage of running through these sections in a kayak: you are fishing all the way as you ride, and if you come to a good hole, one that can’t be reached easily from the highway, you stop, unload, and get a crack at waters that are not heavily fished. The kayak takes you right into them. The practice is to wear waders or boots in the boat. Offhand, that would seem to be bad business, in view of the danger of being dumped. The fact is, the current is so strong that swimming
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is out of the question. So, floundering enough to keep you from going under in deep water, you simply let the power of the flow carry you to some point where you may get on your feet. But assuming that you don’t capsize, when you stop at a hole to fish before going on, boots or waders are essential. A thunderhead climbed into the sky and frowned over the cliffs. We came to more rapids and ran them; hit riffles and fished there; passed deep, froth-edged pools under vertical granite, and paused at another spot where Ralph lashed up some foam with hard casting. Trout rose, struck - and went merrily on. They were hitting like lightning. Every time one leaped there was a high thrill; every time one splashed away there was something to talk about. I didn’t care; not a whoop. Ralph mourned. In that stretch of river there should have been a dozen good ones, though he had warned me that fishing early in the afternoon was not going to be so good; that from all reports during the past week, from five to darkness was the time to be on the river. I told him I didn’t care whether we’d missed the strikes or not. What I wanted was to run that mountain river, and we’d done that. He still was mourning as we came around a stately bend, where cliffs maybe 500 feet high rose on one side of the stream. Over against the cliffs, where there were slow waters, a fisherman tossed a fly. A three-pound rainbow leaped. The rod arced. We watched a moment, then headed toward the bank. This was where we were to meet Mrs. Porter. She was there, waiting with Ralph’s fishing partner; he and Ralph were going on down into the next stretch of canyon, but I had to return to town. While we stood there a moment the man across the river, a tiny, half-submerged figure against the gigantic walls, landed the three-pounder and tied into another. “They’re beginning to do business,” said Ralph sharply. “Let’s go.” I stood on gravelly shingle and watched until the Shitepoke carried them around the bend. The sun was ready to hide in the west, shadows were
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getting deep and awesome under the canyon walls, and over against the cliffs the wading fisherman had another strike. Perhaps I had missed the fishing. Sure enough, I heard later that Ralph and his buddy began to connect just after they put out. Within an hour, running the next section of the canyon, they took thirteen browns and rainbows, ranging up to three pounds. But I still didn’t care. Kayaking the canyon was real enough sport to satisfy anyone. Maybe you’ve tried canoeing, for one venture; and fishing, for another. But for something with a double kick, something limited so far to a small group of wild-river runners at Gunnison, try mixing whitewater and trout fishing. It’s something different. And it has a good bit more than its fair share of thrills.
THE END
Where’s the Ned Smith Art? By Alexis Dow Campbell
Writers are often reluctant to use clichés or figures of speech, but looking back over the past several months of construction at the Ned Smith Center, an oft-overused expression comes to mind: The only thing constant is change. It’s one of those expressions that is used so often that no one really knows who said it in the first place (it was the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, by the way), and when an expression is in “who said it first” territory, it’s best to avoid it completely; but its aptness just can’t be overlooked. Over the past year at the Ned Smith Center, we’ve been living in a state of exciting, confusing and exhilarating change and motion toward an exciting future. The completion of the Bradenbaugh-Hottenstein Collections Wing is a crucial step forward in the Center’s overall development. As the Center has grown and its programming has expanded, we’d been gradually outgrowing our current facilities, and the new addition will allow us much-needed additional physical space to fulfill our mission. The Lorena Feidt Lemons Educational Suite, located in the lower floor of the wing, will include an additional classroom to supplement the current Seraph Education Room, as well as storage space for educational supplies. “We are thrilled to open the doors of this beautiful new education suite,” said Beth Sanders, Director of Education at the Center. “Students of all ages will have an expanded space to experience fun and interactive educational programs, and we will be able to offer more opportunities to engage children in meaningful and memorable ways. And of course, all of the activities conducted in the indoor classrooms will ultimately prepare the kids for the wonderful discoveries waiting for them just a few steps out the front door of the Center.” Interactive educational programs like the ones conducted at the Center encourage students to reconnect with the natural world, paving the way for a lifelong appreciation and respect for the environment and all its inhabitants. “These experiences are crucial to our youth feeling connected to the environment,” Sanders explained. “As they grow into adults, they can make significant and positive differences in the world.” The Educational Suite also features an observational beehive, one of only a few in public places in Pennsylvania. The hive was built by father-son beekeeping team Don and Gary Carns, who designed and constructed it. Its glass panels allow observers to view a live colony of bees without the risk of being stung. “Honey bees are simply wonderful little creatures,” Sanders said. “Once you learn their value as pollinators and their remarkable teamwork skills, you can’t help but be amazed.” Observers will be able to watch a flurry of activity inside the hive, from the bees building comb, storing honey, packing pollen, and more. “I’m excited for people to come to the Center so I can introduce them to “the girls!” Sanders said, laughing. “I call them “the girls” because the majority of a hive’s colony consists of worker bees, and like the queen, the worker bees are all females. Every time I visit the bees, I am amazed at the highly sophisticated social skills of the colony, and I discover something new to share with you.” The upper floor of the wing is dedicated to the Center’s collections, and features a new gallery space that will be permanently dedicated to Ned Smith’s work. While the Center always had some Ned Smith work on display, either in the Olewine Gallery or the Romberger Hallway Gallery, we haven’t had sufficient gallery space to permanently exhibit Ned Smith’s work. “The permanent Ned Smith Gallery allows us to tell Ned’s story in a new and exciting way,” said Scott Weidensaul, collection curator. “The art in the Ned Smith Gallery will change regularly, giving the public an opportunity to view the collection, much of which has never been exhibited.” The Center’s collections will be stored onsite for the first time, and while security for the collections has always been a high priority, having the collection stored offsite has been... inconvenient to say the least. “Having everything in one location will make the job of mounting future exhibitions so much easier,” says Weidensaul. The curatorial storage area also has ample workspace, which will aid in cataloguing and organizing the collections. The wing also features the beautiful Grace Milliman Pollock Dining Terrace, the perfect location for outdoor receptions and functions. We are in the process of creating a rental policy that will allow the public to more fully utilize the Center’s facilities... look for information on the Ned Smith Center website. Alexis Dow Campbell is the Director of Creative Programming at the Ned Smith Center. She also pens the weekly “On the Go” column in The Patriot-News, and freelances for In Central Pennsylvania Magazine
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October 2011
OLD HUGGER’S Joe got to his feet again as the bear threw what was left of the hound over the cliff
The way I happened to get in on my first bear hunt, which still rates as my most thrilling one, was that quite some years ago a doctor prescribed a month outdoors as the most likely cure for what ailed me, and I chose to take my medicine in the form of trout fishing in the rugged mountains of southwestern Virginia. A man who knew that country said the fishing was extra good in Laurel Branch, so I made a little settlement around Sam Gibson’s general store my headquarters, and from it fished the branch and the half-dozen other mountain streams within hiking distance. There wasn’t any hotel, of course. I boarded with the storekeeper’s widowed sister. That made Sam friendly with me, and I got into the habit of dropping into his store in the evenings. Being a mere “furriner,” I made it a point not to say much - mostly I just sat and smoked and listened to the Laurel Branch men talk. One cold late-April night a dozen of them, seated around the pot-bellied stove, were discussing the stock-killing rampage that a big bear they called Old Hugger was on. One of them was a fierce-looking chap with thin white hair and a big white mustache that swept out across his leathery cheeks. His name was Joe Smith, and I figured that he rated pretty near the top locally because the only rocker always stood empty until he came in and sat down in it. For a while Joe let the others do
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LAST STAND
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the talking. Finally he got up slowly, A savage killer, he goaded the mountaineers then straightened his gaunt six feet almost beyond endurance. three into erectness with an effort I But he had their kind of courage, too, and fought could almost feel. There was cold fire to the bitter end in his faded blue eyes as he looked from one man to another. He looked where you could follow and go to shooting.” at a stumpy, barrel-chested, brown-faced fellow “Old Hugger’s different,” he went on. “Soon named Hamp McCoy last. as he knows he’s being trailed he heads for his “Nineteen sheep in two nights,” Joe said in a den in Hank’s Hole. Then when the dawgs come soft, slow voice. “If I called myself a b’ar hunter up with him up there he can take ’em one at a time any more I’d be shamed.” and hug ’em to death, and there ain’t a man on I was sitting on the counter right behind Hamp, two legs can climb them rocks fast enough to stop and I could see the blood flood up his thick neck him from doing it. I ain’t wasting any more good from under his shirt collar to his ears. But when dawgs like that.” he answered, after waiting a few seconds, his “Good dawgs!” Joe said contemptuously. “A voice was as quiet as Joe’s. b’ar dawg worth his nourishment would bay “I call myself a b’ar hunter, Joe,” he said, “and Hugger and hold him bayed. My Snow would I ain’t shamed.” have, in his day.” Sam Gibson hunched over to spit in the wood “Maybe. Maybe not,” Hamp told him. “Lend box. Then he bit off another chew and put his me Snow and I’ll go after Old Hugger - and if he’s plug back into his vest pocket. “Hamp’s right, worthy of all the bragging on him you’ve done, Joe,” he said mildly. “There ain’t any shame to I’ll bring back that b’ar’s hide!” any b’ar hunter in not being able to come up with Joe shook his head. “No,” he said. “Snow’s Old Hugger. Soon as he knows the dawgs -” too old. I’m going to let him live easy the rest of “Dawgs!” Joe cut in scornfully. “Since my his days. That’s his right, because he was a rightSnow’s got too old to run the hills there ain’t been good dawg.” a real good b’ar hound inside a Sabbath’s day Hamp went over to the stove and opened its journey from Laurel Branch. Snow could have door and spat in on the fire. “Well, then,” he said, bayed Hugger, same as he did Big Foot.” “there ain’t no call for me to -” Snow, sprawled back behind the stove Just then the store door was shoved open and apparently asleep, heard his name. He was a big Lee Hooper hurried in with an old double-barreled hound, more than ten years old, mostly white, and 10 bore hammer gun in the crook of his arm. as rawboned as his owner. He got up stiffly and He was a little, shriveled-up sort of man, with a went over to Joe, then sniffed at his shoes and high-pitched voice that had more whine in it than looked up at him with sorrowful dark eyes. “Get drawl. “That b’ar killed four of my lambs!” he back there, Snow,” Joe said, without looking at squeaked. “Just a little while ago. He was eating him. one of ‘em when I got there, and the other three Hamp eyed the old hound with a speculative was still warm. He’ll put us all in the workhouse look until Snow had flopped behind the stove with his killing!” again. Then he turned to Joe. “Big Foot always “You see that b’ar, Lee?” someone asked. ran a straight-away race,” he said, “and when your “I seen him plain. It was Old Hugger. I dawgs bayed him at last it was up on Pine Ridge, didn’t dare go close to him with nothing but
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this-here old gun, but I took a shoot at him from behind a tree, and he ran off down the branch.” “Down the branch?” Joe demanded. “Not up toward the Hole?” “No, sir, down the branch,” Lee insisted. “Last I saw of him -” Joe stopped him short by holding up his hand. He sat down in his rocker, and everybody looked at him. He looked at Hamp McCoy. “You’ve been bragging on being the big b’ar hunter around here these latter days, Hamp,” he told him. “Now you’ve got your chance to prove it. First set a couple of standers on the trail up to the Hole before it gets light, so’s they can keep Old Hugger from getting into his den. Then your dogs can trail him down and bay him somewhere you can follow ‘em and kill him.” Hamp’s black eyes sparkled, but he shook his head stubbornly. “He’s killed five dawgs on me already,” he objected. “Good b’ar hounds are worth money. There ain’t no reason why I should take all the risks and loss. If you lend me Snow I’ll hunt Hugger. Otherwise I won’t.”
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“No,” Joe refused again. “It’d likely be a long race, and Snow’s too old for it.” Sam Gibson had been sitting there looking gloomy, and I guessed that he was thinking about all the groceries he’d sold the Laurel Branch folks on credit. He’d have a slim chance of collecting it if Hugger’s ruinous stock killing wasn’t stopped short, for lambs were just about the only money crop in those mountains. Now he spoke up: “Something’s got to be done! If there ain’t a b’ar hunter on Laurel Branch who can kill Old Hugger, we’d better send outside for one. Maybe we could get Jack Higgins, over on Cooper Ridge to come and -” Joe Smith’s deeply lined face got hard as rock. “No!” he said sternly. “Calling on him would shame us Laurel Branch men.” He turned to Hamp. “I’ll let Snow hunt with your dawgs just this once, but I’m going along with him.” I could see that Hamp didn’t like that, and I guessed that he wanted the glory of hunting down Old Hugger all to himself. “There ain’t no call for you to be running the hills at your age, and with your bad back, Joe,” he stalled. “If Snow goes, I go,” Joe told him. “We’ve all got to go,” Sam Gibson said. “Every man, young and old, who’s able, and every dawg that’ll face a b’ar. We got to kill Old Hugger before he kills any more lambs. Go home and tell your neighbors, and get your guns and dawgs, and be back here a good hour before daybreak.” The men nodded in agreement - Sam Gibson was their leading citizen. Some of them glanced at me, and then looked questioningly at Sam. “Want to come with us, mister?” he invited. It was cold but windless when I went down the rutted road from the house where I boarded to Sam Gibson’s store. The stars were just starting to fade in the sky and there was a sliver of moon over my shoulder. Light from the kerosene
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lamps in the store showed shadowy figures of with his old muzzle-loader. “Over there!” he men around its door. I could hear hounds howling squeaked, motioning with a skinny arm. “Over and bickering behind the house. On the porch I there’s where Old Hugger was eating my lamb, bumped into Sam. “It’s right cold,” he said. when I took a shoot at him and drove him off.” “Come in and warm up.” Hamp stopped. “Hold all the dawgs here,” I followed him into the store. A dozen men he ordered. He passed the two leashes he was were lounging around the stove. Rifles and holding to another man and went across the field shotguns were stacked in corners, and the air was with Lee and several others. I hadn’t been given heavy with the mingled smells of wood smoke, a hound to hold, so I followed them. damp leather, sweated wool, rank tobacco, and Lee stopped at the ripped-open, half-eaten corn liquor. carcass of a lamb. “He went that way,” he said, “Well,” Sam said, “we’d better be starting.” pointing again. “Joe ain’t here,” someone told him. We all started looking for tracks, but we “Joe started off an hour ago and took Snow couldn’t find any in the grass. When we came to with him,” Sam explained. “He’s gone up the a narrow brook that bordered the field we spread trail toward the Hole to turn Old Hugger when he out. I was farthest down the slope. After half makes for his den, which he most likely will do a minute I spotted the mark of a big paw in the soon’s he hears the dawgs on his trail. Joe’ll join damp soil of the brook’s far bank. It was round, up with us soon as he’s shooed off Hugger.” and a good eight inches across. I called Hamp. After we all piled outdoors there was a scramble He came over and we stepped across the brook and a few yelps and soft voices in the dark while for a closer look. a dozen dogs were being caught and leashed. Then Hamp started off up an overgrown logging road, with the rest of us trailing along behind him. The sky was beginning to get gray, but in the brush it was black dark. We stumbled along until at last we came out in a field on the crest of a ridge. Gray mist smoking up out of the bottoms made some of the near slopes look a long way off, but the high mountain ridges all around us stood out sharp and hard in the thin air and looked a lot nearer than they were. There was a clay-chinked log cabin with smoke coming out of its chimney at the far side of the field, and we headed toward it. I longed to shoot but I was afraid I’d hit one Its unpainted door opened, of the leaping, dodging hounds and Lee Hooper came out
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“That’s Hugger,” he said without hesitation. “There ain’t any other b’ar that big in these mount’ins.” He motioned the men holding the dogs to bring them over to us. “Give me Cracker,” he directed as they neared. “Hold onto the rest of ‘em.” Cracker was an undersize potlicker hound whose ribs showed under a dirty-tan hide. I could picture him running down a rabbit, but I couldn’t imagine him closing in on an infuriated bear. He sniffed at the track, whined, and looked up at his owner with questioning brown eyes. Hamp slipped his leash. After another sniff Cracker threw up his head and gave a yowling bark. Then he put his nose to the ground and ghosted into the underbrush. “Loose ‘em!” Hamp shouted at the holders of the dozen other dogs. The men let them go, and
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gave out a whoop and a holler because the hunt was on. The dogs worked through the laurel tangles slowly, with only an occasional impatient whine or yelp. “Cold trail,” Lee Hooper complained. “It’ll be a sight too hot for you before long,” Hamp told him, and everybody but Lee laughed. The sun was up now, and so were our hopes. After a bit the trail led for half a mile or so, straight as a stretched string, across the steep slope of the ridge. Then it began to twist in almost complete loops. “Old Hugger was watching his back trail coming across here,” Sam Gibson observed. “He’s a right cautious b’ar.” Ten minutes later we came to Laurel Branch, up there a tumbling mountain stream. Most of the dogs were sniffing the ground in wide circles but always coming back to Cracker, who stood like a statue staring across the branch. “Get in there, you!” Hamp admonished, and aimed a kick at him. Cracker dodged it by plunging into the water. He splashed and swam across, and the other dogs followed. We waded after them. On the far bank the hounds circled and sniffed until Sadie, a black and tan, threw up her head and barked sharply. Cracker ran to her, nosed the ground, gave a mournful howl, and led the nondescript pack into the matted underbrush. “Hugger’s headed for Will Kershaw’s place,” someone said. After a five-minute scramble we came out into a clearing and a cabin where a man was standing with a Winchester Model 94 carbine tucked under his arm. “I heard you coming and waited on you,” he greeted us. “Old Hugger’s been here and killed two of my lambs. Just before sunup, it must have been. It was him, all right - not a mark on either of them, but their ribs all busted in. I’ll kill that murdering b’ar if it takes me -” The rest of his threat was drowned out by a chorus of yelps. The trail suddenly had got red-hot. In a flash
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the dogs were off, with Cracker in the lead and Hamp Mccoy on their heels. They ran straight up the side of Laurel Knob, and we hunters soon got strung out. Sam Gibson labored along beside me, his fleshy face purple. “Old Hugger’s killed those lambs of Kershaw’s just out of pure meanness,” he panted. “Then he hung around until he heard the dawgs on his trail. He’s close ahead of us. He’s making for his den up in the Hole, and unless Joe can turn him aside we ain’t got a chance.” My legs were hard and my wind was good from ten days of wading mountain brooks, but I’m never going to forget that next half hour. Hugger, knowing that now the chips were down, was heading straight for his sanctuary Weary and worn out by the grueling hunt, Sam Gibson lent among the rock ledges that crown Joe his rifle and quit the party the towering, heavily wooded slide. mountain they call Laurel Knob. The dogs were Hugger, the two dogs still biting at his hind gaining on him, but you couldn’t say the same for feet, clambered to a narrow rock shelf. There us. The farther up we went the tougher the going he spun round, growling ferociously and with got, until when we were close to the top we had his wicked little eyes glaring menace. Squatting to pull ourselves up from one sapling to another. back on his haunches, he slapped at the dogs with By that time a few of the dogs had caught up with his big paws. the bear. I could hear them snapping and snarling, Cracker dodged a haymaker and closed in and the bear growling, as they raced along a little again, snarling and snapping. The other dog way ahead of us. backed hastily away, lost his balance, and tumbled Without warning I stumbled out of a thicket off the shelf. The bear cuffed at Cracker again. onto bare rock and got my first look at Hugger. I This time he connected. His long claws left two expected to see a big bear, but he was even bigger bloody welts on the little hound’s tan shoulder, than I had imagined him - from 100 feet away he and the impact of the blow knocked the breath bulked as large as a Black Angus bull. He was momentarily from his body. scrambling up a steep rockslide, with Cracker Hugger grunted savagely, and with an ungainly and another dog nipping at his feet. Several other leap hurled himself up onto the ledge above him. hounds were twenty feet below him, barking and He looked gigantic when he reared up on his hind whining as they tried unsuccessfully to get over legs and stood glaring down at us. For the first big smooth boulders. Hamp McCoy, his face time I had a chance for a shot at him without risk bloody from brier scratches, was yelling at them of hitting one of the dogs - which to all Southern as he slipped and skidded trying to run up the
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bear hunters is the one unforgivable sin. I lined up the sights of the crudely remodeled old Krag that Sam Gibson had lent me, and squeezed off. I’ve never been too good at uphill shots, and this one was no exception. My ears still get hot when I remember how I missed that king-size bear at a scant 100 feet! It didn’t seem possible. After that things happened a whole lot faster than I can write them down. As I was working the Krag’s bolt Hamp McCoy yelled and pointed up at the ledge. Twenty feet from where Hugger was standing it turned sharply. Joe Smith, old Snow at his heels, had come around that blind corner. For what seemed a long time but wasn’t, Joe and the bear stood still and stared at each other in surprise. Then, deliberately, Joe began to raise his rifle - a Marlin Model 1895, as I remember it. Before it was halfway to his shoulder Hugger bared his teeth in a vicious snarl and went for him. The big bear moved with a deceptively clumsy shamble that covered the space between them in a wink. Joe pulled the trigger, but by that time
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Hugger was so close that his body had pushed the rifle barrel aside, and the bullet missed him. Before Joe could work another cartridge into the chamber the bear had hold of the rifle. Perhaps he actually intended to take it away from Joe, or perhaps it just happened to be the first thing that his grappling paws came in contact with. Anyhow, Hugger swung it up over his head. Joe hung on to the rifle until his feet were off the ground and his face was inches from the bear’s snarling jaws. Then he let go, and jumped back. In that same instant Snow rushed toward the bear, and Joe stumbled over him and fell. Hugger slammed the rifle down on the rock so hard that it broke in two at the small of the stock. That motion brought him down on his four feet, and he started for Joe again. But Snow was between them. The old hound’s neck hair was standing straight up, his tail was stiff as a ramrod, and his snarl as ferocious as the bear’s own. He crouched low as Hugger, his eyes on Joe, lurched forward. Then he sprang. Hugger half reared up and cuffed at him. Snow dodged the bear’s paws, ducked under them, and clamped his teeth into one of Hugger’s hind legs just above the foot. Hugger roared and backed away, trying to cuff him off. But Snow hung on. By then Joe had got to his knees. He was between Hamp, me, and the bear, so we didn’t dare risk a shot. The other hounds were yammering at the foot of the cliff, but couldn’t find a way up. Snow had to fight it out alone. Hugger backed away slowly, kicking the leg Snow had hold of out in front of him at each step and cuffing at the dog with his forepaws. At the third try he caught Snow on the neck and shoulder, tore loose his hold, and slammed him down on the rock on his back. Before he could get his feet under him the bear pounced with the smooth speed of a cat jumping a mouse. He hooked one of his powerful forelegs around Snow, scooped
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him up, reared on his hind legs with a terrific roar, and crushed the hound against his chest. Snow never whimpered. From 100 feet away I heard the crunch of his cracking ribs as the bear hugged the life out of him. Joe was on his feet now. Not realizing that his rifle was useless, he was reaching over to pick it up. Hugger hurled what was left of Snow off the cliff. Then he started for Joe again. But Snow had sold his life - not given it away. In backing up to get free from him the bear had given Hamp and me a chance to shoot without much danger of hitting Joe. My first shot with the clumsy and unfamiliar old Krag was another miss, but the next nicked one of the bear’s hams and made him howl. Hamp had gone into action with his Colt. Hugger was on all fours again, and Hamp was so close to the face of the cliff that all he could see of the bear was his head. He emptied the gun with a rapid burst of shots. One bullet grazed Hugger’s skull, and its impact knocked him off his legs. He was up again in a flash, but he’d had enough. He leaped off the cliff, landed running in a clump of brush between Hamp and me, and tore downhill with the gory but still combative Cracker and three or four other hounds hot after him. As I’ve said, all this happened fast. It hadn’t been more than a minute since Joe and the bear had come face to face on the ledge.
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Will Kershaw and young Pete Robinson came running up. While I was telling them what had happened, Joe disappeared around the corner of the ledge. A minute afterward he came along the foot of the cliff toward us, the barrel and lock of his smashed rifle in his hand. He walked over to where Snow was lying in a pool of blood and stood looking down at him. Then, real gently, he touched the dead hound’s body with his foot. “Snow was a right-good dawg,” he said slowly. I’m going to kill that b’ar.” Sam Gibson told me afterward it was the first time anyone in that part of the country ever had heard Joe talk like that. Joe stuck his rifle barrel into a hollow tree where he could find it again, and without saying any more took up the chase. Hamp McCoy hadn’t given the dead Snow a second glance. He finished reloading his sixgun, stuck it in its holster, and ran after Joe. The rest of us trailed along behind. Hugger highballed it downhill faster than the dogs could follow. They had started to run him by sight, but when we caught up with them after half an hour’s hard scramble they were milling around on the bank of Laurel Branch, and had lost even the scent. By that time the stragglers, men and hounds, had shortcut across the side of the mountain and rejoined us. Everyone looked sideways at Joe and Hamp, wondering which was going to be the leader. Joe, without saying a word, settled that by
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walking a little way from the rest of us and sitting on a stump. Hamp whistled to the hounds and led them across the shallow riffle. We all waded it after them. Hamp waited for Joe, who came last. Then he said: “Old Hugger’s walked along in the water a ways to fool us - it ain’t the first time he’s done it . . . Joe, suppose you was to take some of the dawgs and work upstream a piece? I’ll take the rest of ‘em and work down. That way we won’t waste time getting on his track again. “The rest of you men might as well stay here until Joe or me finds his trail.” Joe nodded, called a few hounds by name, and started upstream, while Hamp and the rest of the dogs went the other way. “We’d better squatulate while we’ve got the chance,” Will Kershaw said, setting the example by sitting down. “This is going to be a right-long b’ar race, I reckon.” I looked at my watch. It was only 7 o’clock my getting-up time back in the city. While we sat there waiting the locals talked about Old Hugger. Fifty weeks of the year, I learned, he didn’t bother anyone, but for ten days or so each spring he went on the lamb-killing rampages that had made him a hated outlaw. He had been hunted often and wounded more than once, but until this morning he always made it back to the Hole and safety. Now they had him in the open! Sam Gibson interrupted the drawling talk. “Listen!” he said. From up the branch there came a burst of hound music. Joe had hit the trail! Before we had gone far upstream half a dozen hounds, with little Cracker leading, overtook us and rushed past. A bit later Hamp caught up with us, and we kept on to where Joe waited. He pointed up the rocky, brush-clogged ravine called Coon Cove. “It’s Hugger’s trail they’re on, all right - I found his big paw mark in the mud,” he told us. “But he’s a long ways ahead.” The dogs nosed out the trail so slowly that we were able to stay close behind. No one did much talking - it was a tough climb, and we needed all our breath for it. As we neared the head of the cove the brush thinned out and we could catch
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glimpses of the dogs. Cracker and Sadie seemed to be doing all the hunting - the others were just following along after them. We topped out overlooking a jumble of sharpshinned ridges and dark bottoms, and I wondered how we could even hope to run the bear down in that vast wilderness. Far to the westward a misty blue-gray wall, broken only by a deep U-shaped notch almost opposite us, stretched across the horizon. “Hugger’ll head for that low sag in Narrowback,” someone said, pointing toward the notch. “Once he’s through it we will have a b’ar chase on our hands!” The trail led straight down into a bottom. Hugger wasn’t risking any circling now to watch his back track - he was putting all the space he could between himself and us. Scrambling down that mountain was almost as hard work as climbing up the other side had been. And when we reached bottom we ran into trouble. Some of the dogs began to yelp, and suddenly took off at right angles to the direction in which they had been tracking. Cracker and Sadie, after some doubtful circling and nosing, kept on straight ahead. “Those trifling dawgs are after some other b’ar whose trail’s crossed Hugger’s,” Hamp decided. “Hold Cracker and Sadie here while I get ‘em back.” Two men went with him to help. The job took them the better part of an hour. The hounds they brought back had their tails between their legs. Hamp McCoy wasn’t an easy man on dogs. “Leash ‘em all,” he told us. “There’s a plenty of b’ars around here, and we can’t afford to waste time chasing fool hounds.” We started off again on Hugger’s trail. It led up the next ridge and down the far side. The trail was getting colder, so the dogs couldn’t go very fast, but we had all we could do to keep up with them - having to hang onto their leashes didn’t make getting through the heavy brush any easier. We were still at it, having crossed several more ridges, when the sun dropped down toward Narrowback Mountain ahead of us and it began to get dark in the bottoms. Sam Gibson was all in - he wasn’t young any
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more, and years of standing behind the counter in his store had softened him up. His face was splotched, and every little while he stumbled. When we came to a cabin in one of the bottoms he handed Joe his rifle and said he’d have to stay there overnight and go home the next day. Lee Hooper, who had been whining about a blister on his heel, stayed with him. Joe Smith, his tall, lean body bent a little forward and Sam Gibson’s rifle cradled in the crook of his arm, went steadily ahead with his purposeful woodsman’s stride, but each mile the lines in his face got deeper. All of us were tired, whether we admitted it or not. Some of us were limping, and our faces were bloody from brier scratches and caked with long streaks of sweat and dirt. As soon as the sun went down a cold wind began to blow. Then it got dark and we called it a day. We found a little hollow where we were out of the wind and built a good fire. Some of the hunters produced hog-meat sandwiches from their pockets and generously shared them with the rest of us. Two or three had flasks of corn liquor. We had a drink all around, built up the fire, and went to sleep. For breakfast we had the same thing we’d had for supper, only there weren’t any hog-meat sandwiches. We started on Hugger’s trail as soon as it got light enough to see. It still led straight toward the sag in Narrowback Mountain. We hoped that it would take us close enough to some cabin for us to get something to eat, but it didn’t. Old Hugger, unfortunately, was steering shy of cabins. Nosing out a trail that was almost a day old, the leashed hounds had to work slowly; but by noon we were in the notch. The country on the far side of Narrowback was just like the country we had come through - a big jumble of ridges, knobs, and bottoms. Will Kershaw looked it over, shook his head grimly, and growled that if Hugger kept straight on we’d end up in Kentucky. But Hugger didn’t keep straight on. Part way through the notch his trail turned sharply and began to angle up the far slope of the mountain. It brought us out on the razor-sharp ridge which
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had given Narrowback its name. “He’s circling back toward the Hole,” Hamp said. “We’ve got to catch him before he gets there or he’ll beat us again.” Joe nodded agreement. Hamp began to urge the hounds, and they worked out the trail a little faster. After we had gone along the ridge three miles or so they turned downhill into the head of a cove. When they got into one of its dense thickets they really sounded off, and began to strain at the rope leashes. “Old Hugger laid up here overnight,” Hamp said. “The trail’s got hot. He ain’t so far ahead of us. Loose the dawgs - all of ‘em!” The instant they were free the dogs tore off down the cove, barking and yelping. Forgetting that we hadn’t had any breakfast and were sore all over, we raced after them through the tangles, every man yelling. When we tripped and fell, as we did often, we picked ourselves up and kept right on going. That crazy rush took us down the east side of Narrowback and out onto a wide, brushy bottom. Across it we could see another uprising of mountain which someone told me was the west slope of Laurel Knob. It was nearly as steep as a wall - ledges and outcroppings, and rockslides studded with big boulders. There were tangles of hardwood and underbrush, but most of the slope was fairly open and when we got out on it we could see the dogs again. They were clawing up the loose shale of a steep slide that had some big rocks at its top, and they were making plenty of noise. We stopped to watch them and to get our wind back. Will Kershaw was standing beside me. I heard him whistle softly, and saw him raise his carbine. After a moment he lowered it part way and stood staring at the rocks at the top of the slide. I watched too, and after a few seconds saw something dark move quickly from behind one rock to another. By then the dogs were halfway up the slide. Suddenly Hugger came out into the open and began to angle uphill across the slope. Even from 300 yards away he looked plenty big. He shambled along, not seeming to be in much of a hurry. Every few steps he looked back over his
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shoulder at the dogs. Kershaw’s carbine spat. It was a long shot for a little gun, but a good one. The bear went head over heels, rolled down the slope a few yards, and lay there kicking and trying to get back on his feet. Yelping and snarling, the dogs closed in. When they were only a few yards away he managed to get up and head for a near-by thicket. His right foreleg was hanging limp, but he just beat them to it. Kershaw grinned at me. “That’ll slow him down!” he said. I started to run toward the thicket. So did everyone else. The hounds had followed the bear into it, and there was the father and mother of a row going on. Blood-crazy dogs snarled. Hurt ones whined. The bear grunted and roared. Before we got to the thicket Hugger broke out of it and started up the mountain. The dogs were all around him, nipping at his feet and slashing at his flanks. When he put his weight on his broken leg and went down in a tumbling fall they swarmed over him, growling and biting. He somehow scrambled up, reared back on his haunches, grabbed up the nearest hound with his good foreleg, ripped it wide open with a sideways slash of his jaws, and hurled it thirty feet. Then he cuffed and snarled at the other dogs, and even the fightingest of them backed away from him. Free from his tormentors for a moment, Hugger spun round and began to stagger up toward an almost perpendicular rock outcropping. Before he had gone ten feet the dogs were all over him again. He turned on them, roaring furiously, and raised up on his hind legs. “Now’s your chance!” Hamp yelled. “Let him have it!” Rifles and slug-loaded shotguns spat and banged. Hugger went down twice, but somehow he made it to the outcropping - and disappeared. When we got up there the dogs were yowling at the mouth of a yard-wide crevice in the face of rock. Nearly all of them were bleeding, and some of them looked whipped. Joe turned to Hamp. “They won’t go in after him,” he said. “He’s treated ‘em too bad.” Without answering, Hamp grabbed hold of Cracker by the scuff of his neck and his tail and slung him into the dark crevice. For a few
seconds nothing happened. Then we heard a yelp and a rumbling growl, and Cracker came out of the crevice on a dead run. After him came Old Hugger. He was walking on his hind legs like a man, and he towered over tall Joe Smith, who was nearest the mouth of the crevice. That bear was a horrible sight. Blood dripped down his limp foreleg. A slug had gouged out one eye. A rifle bullet must have gone through his lungs, because when he tried to roar a sort of sob came out of his throat and a gush of foamy blood ran down on his chest and belly. But he snarled as he staggered toward us, and his one eye gleamed wickedly. Joe and Hamp were between the bear and the rest of us, so we couldn’t shoot. Both of them stood their ground. Hamp pulled his Colt out of its holster, but Joe turned on him with that cold fire in his faded blue eyes. “I’m going to kill this b’ar,” he said. “It’s my right.” Hamp scowled and muttered something, but stepped back a pace. With Hugger only ten feet away from him, Joe raised the rifle he had got from Sam Gibson - a Savage Model 99, I think it was - and took careful aim. The wallop of the bullet bent the bear back at his hips until his spine was almost parallel with the ground, but somehow he stayed on his legs, straightened up slowly, and took another staggering step toward his executioner. Joe shot again. This time Hugger went down. He kicked once and then lay still. The dogs swarmed over him, biting and snarling. We all gathered around the kill, the way hunters do. Joe Smith stood looking down at Old Hugger. There wasn’t any triumph in his tired, dirty face. “He was a right brave b’ar,” he said slowly. “He killed my dawg, and I killed him. He’s the last b’ar I’ll ever hunt.” He turned away, and walked slowly down the slope. It was young Pete Robinson who put into words what everyone, even hard-boiled Hamp McCoy, must have been thinking. “Old Joe,” Pete said, “looks right lonesome without Snow trailing after him, don’t he now?”
THE END
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The Cat That Swam For It There we were, in fi ne tracking country with a pair of great trailing hounds, hopelessly baffl ed by an animal that refused to play according to the rules. And it took us a whole winter to solve his style!
Don Leavell drove into town in a high state of excitement one afternoon toward the end of March, to report that he had seen a panther that morning along the south edge of the Reelman swamp, on the Manistee River a dozen miles north of my home in Cadillac, Mich. It didn’t seem likely, and I said so. “A panther?” I scoffed. “There hasn’t been one in this part of the country in seventy-five years, maybe longer. You saw a big bobcat.” “I tell you this critter was big!” Don retorted. “It had to be a panther.” I wasn’t convinced. I knew, of course, that panthers had been found sparingly in Michigan in the early days, as over most of the East. But wildlife authorities had long since written them off as extinct and I couldn’t believe that a stray had found its way into those cedar swamps along the Manistee. But Don stuck to his guns. “I had a good look at it,” he insisted, “and I’ve seen enough bobcats in my day to know one when I see it. This was no stub-tail!” He had started out at daybreak that morning to run his line of beaver traps in the Reelman swamp country, he related. Most of the snow was gone in the woods and the dead leaves underfoot were wet enough that a man didn’t make much noise. Following the border of the swamp in the dim light before sunrise, he had jumped the cat from behind a clump of brush at close range. It leaped out and vanished in the swamp, threading the tangled brush like a puff of tawny smoke. Investigating, Don found a small deer in the thicket, freshly killed and still warm. He had surprised the cat on its kill, and he was certain it was a panther. Skeptical as I was, to a hound man any report of that kind calls for investigation. So I rounded up Danny Porter and Howard McDaniel and the three of us drove up to Don’s home at Manton the next morning with two of my best cat-and-bear dogs. We picked Don up and went on to the place where he had seen the cat. But whatever it was, panther or bobcat, it had not come back to its kill. The deer was there
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all right, clawed and partly eaten. But nowhere on the snowless ground could we find any sign to hint at the identity of the killer, and the dogs were unable to pick up a track. Don set traps around the deer carcass but the cat never did return that summer. I did a little sleuthing among the game experts I knew and found a few of them willing to admit that a panther might still be found in our part of the country. One, who had investigated a complaint that a heifer had been badly clawed by a big cat of some kind, in that same general area, went so far as to say he believed the claw marks could have been made by a panther. Nobody thought it probable but nobody could deny the possibility, either. And by the end of the summer I knew I was going to give the Reelman swamp country a good going over with my hounds as soon as snow came. It didn’t come until the first week in December. It was a nice tracking fall, and at daylight the next morning Howard and Danny and I were in Don’s yard. We had John and Banjo, the best cat dogs in my pack, in the back of the car. Would Don like to go along and have a look for his pet panther? We didn’t have to urge him. At the edge of an old brush-grown logging road in the thickest part of the Reelman swamp, shortly before noon, we hit pay dirt in the form of a fresh cat track. It wasn’t quite what we were looking for but it came close enough to stir speculation and debate. It was as big as any bobcat track I had ever seen, maybe a little bigger. Don studied it carefully and voiced the belief it had been made by a young cougar. Danny and Howard voted for a big bobcat. I led Banjo and John up to it and from the way they acted I didn’t know what to think. Those two dogs had come to me from California, and as youngsters they had both been used on mountain lions by a government hunter in the Mount Shasta country. I figured they knew lion scent when they smelled it, and the frenzied way they opened and bawled on
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that big cat track made me wonder whether Don wasn’t right, after all. We slipped their collars and they plowed off into the evergreens like a pair of terriers going for a rat. They were running the track almost without putting their noses to the ground, howling their excitement at every jump. “Whatever he is, he’s not far ahead of ‘em,” Danny exclaimed. “They’ll have him moving in five minutes.” He was right. Off in the tangled green thickets we heard the dogs redouble their frantic clamor when they found the hot bed where the cat had lain up for the day. Their voices faded steadily on the wind, headed toward Ham Creek, and in no time at all they went out of hearing. So far the pattern of the hunt was a familiar one. A dirt road ran between the Reelman and Ham Creek swamps. The cat would go across that before we could get out to head him off, and for the next hour or two we could count on his circling around in the Ham Creek tangles. Sooner or later he’d start back for the Reelman swamp, where he had been jumped, and when he tried to cross the road on the return trip we’d be waiting for him. “We better get on over there, too,” Danny urged. “The way they’re pushing him he may come back sooner than we think.” But when we came out on the snow-covered road, close to an hour later, we could find neither cat nor hound tracks. We walked the length of it between the two swamps and finally admitted to ourselves that we had guessed wrong. This cat was different. He had chosen to stay in the area where the dogs had roused him out. Avoiding the road, he had, for the time being, given us the slip. There was no sound from the dogs. When we heard them again, thirty minutes later, they were far out in the thick tangles of Reelman, angling down toward the Manistee River. We listened long enough to make sure of the direction of the chase and then cut in to overtake them.
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“We’re gonna tie a knot in that cat’s tail now,” Don predicted. “He’s working down into the corner of the swamp along the river and he’ll have to come back almost the same way he went in. We can be there waiting for him if we hurry.” “You think he’s really got a tail?” Howard joshed. “You’ll see what he’s got!” “What if he goes across the river?” I suggested jokingly. “You don’t think any cat will swim the Manistee, do you, especially at this time of year?” Danny demanded. And I admitted I didn’t. Certainly not in the area where the dogs were driving this one. The river ahead of that cat ran fast and heavy, forty to fifty yards wide, and too deep for a fisherman to wade. There’d be a yard or two of ice along each shore now, with a millrace of surging black water in between. Even if the cat found a log or windfall thrusting out into the current, he’d still have a hundred feet to swim. Whatever happened, we needn’t worry about his risking that. Heading for the corner of the swamp, we hurried all we could, though it’s slow business clambering through thickets of cedar and balsam and alder, climbing over logs, crawling around windfalls. We didn’t gain on the hounds but we managed to hold our own, and ahead of us their exultant voices kept urging us on. We separated to fan out and set up road blocks when the cat turned and headed back. I was slowly closing the gap between myself and the dogs. They were no more than a quarter mile ahead now, nearing the river. And then they stopped barking as if somebody had thrown a switch, and I couldn’t hear anything except the low, mournful noise of the winter wind in the trees. I was dumfounded. I had never known John and Banjo to lose a track when they had it smoking in their noses and the cat wasn’t more than a hundred paces ahead of them. I stood still, waiting in vain for them to speak up again.
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Then I started on toward the river to find out what had gone wrong. I had just caught a glimpse of black water through the evergreens ahead when John opened again, making the swamp ring with his wild bawling. But I could hardly believe my ears - the dog was across the river, a good half mile ahead of me, running as if he had never lost the scent! While I listened, Banjo’s deep, chopping voice rolled out and I could hear the two of them pushing the cat off to the south, farther and farther away. It was incredible but it had happened. Whether panther or bobcat, our quarry had crossed the Manistee! I couldn’t really believe it until I went on to the river - and found the tracks. The cat had raced down out of the evergreen thickets without stopping, the way a hard-pressed deer does. His trail ended on a little shelf of snow-covered ice at the edge of the dark, fast-running river, with a network of dog tracks all around it. Apparently the hounds had been as astonished as I was, and it had taken them longer to make up their minds to swim the Manistee than it had the cat. Don was the first to come panting up. “Did he really go across?” he demanded incredulously. “What do you think?” I replied, pointing to the tangle of tracks. “Well, I’ll be!” Don muttered. “I’ve trapped cats for thirty years and I never knew one to swim before. They won’t even put their feet in the water to steal the bait from a mink set. I tell you that’s a young panther!” “Whatever he is, he certainly is an exception to the rule,” I said. “Where do you think he’ll go from here?” “Now, why do you suppose he did that, when he had this whole swamp to run in?” Howard asked, when he and Danny joined us, but none of us had an answer. We had all known bobcats to cross a stream by walking a log or running out on a leaning cedar and jumping to the far bank, but we had never before encountered a swimmer like this.
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Danny and Howard wouldn’t give in to Don on the panther angle, however. “That’s just a smart, tough old bobcat,” Danny declared. “He’s lived here in this swamp for so many years he’s grown used to the river. Likely he’s caught suckers in it and dug clams out of it ever since he was a kitten, and he’s just got over being afraid of water, that’s all.” The dogs were out of hearing by now, somewhere on the far side of the river, and we realized we had our choice of two courses. We could wait where we were on the chance they’d drive the cat back to our side before dark, or we could get across on the nearest bridge and try to locate them again. I like to keep in touch with my dogs on a hunt of that kind, so I voted for the crossing. In the end we agreed to split up. Danny and Don would stay where they were, in the event the chase came back that way. Howard and I would follow the hounds. We walked back to the car, drove down the road where we had hoped hours earlier to head the cat off, crossed the river, and struck into the swamp on foot again. Close to an hour later we cut the tracks left by the cat and the two dogs, in a dense section more than a mile from the Manistee. The cat was still running in long bounds and there was no sign he was tiring. “He may not be a panther but he certainly has staying power,” I commented. It was almost dark when we heard the dogs again, coming back on a long circle toward the river. There was no chance of getting a shot now and we knew it. All we could do was to wait until the hounds quit and then call them in. For another three hours they were within hearing most of the time, as they drove the cat in narrowing circles through the swamp, first on one side of us, then on the other. About 9 o’clock they got enough or he gave them the slip. They stopped bawling and came to my horn, trotting wearily in out of the darkness, as willing to call it a day as we were. We picked Don and Danny up and drove
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home. On the way I promised the others that we’d settle the question of the swimming cat’s identity if it took all winter. We hunted the Reelman swamp every time conditions were right through December and January and February. We shot several cats, but the big fellow eluded us until March, on a fresh fall of snow. We were driving down an old woods road that led into the swamp when we saw his track crossing the road ahead of us. There was no mistaking it, and Don was surer than ever that nothing less than a cougar could have made it. The dogs cold-trailed straight to the river without putting the cat up. There was a brief break in their bawling while they crossed. When they opened on the far side, still coldtrailing, we stared at each other in disbelief. This cat was not only willing to swim the Manistee when hounds were breathing down his neck, he had crossed it this time during the night when he was alone and undisturbed, of his own accord and for no better reason than that he wanted to prowl on the opposite side. The dogs continued to work the cold track, moving farther back from the river, and I wouldn’t have given a counterfeit nickel for our chances. But all of a sudden we heard them jump the cat, heard the wild exuberant note come into their voices, and I changed my mind. They swung west, parallel to the river and moving downstream, and hope surged up in us. “We’ll kill that old yowler this time,” Danny predicted confidently. “They’ve started him moving over there and he means to come back to this side, sure as shooting. Seems that’s his favorite dodge for trying to get rid of the dogs.” But if the cat meant to cross to our side of the Manistee he took his time about it. He circled and walked windfalls and cut capers on his own side for more than an hour. I was about ready to drive across and try to get in front of him when I heard the chase turn and head our way at last.
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We were strung out along the riverbank now, waiting for him, about two miles west of the spot where the dogs had started him. For five minutes they drove him straight at me. Then he angled off toward a place we call the narrows, where the Manistee pinches down to twenty yards of deep, fast water. I knew Don was posted there. The dogs came on, closer and closer to the river, and I waited for the crack of Don’s .22. But when Banjo and John stopped bawling I realized the cat had made it safely. The dogs were swimming now and he was across ahead of them. When I heard the story later I learned that he had come out of the swamp onto a log jam fifty yards downstream from Don, who was waiting on a little spit of land. He had crossed the jam like a streak and plunged into the river before Don could get his rifle up. The range was too long for a shot while the cat was swimming,
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and he gained the bank and vanished in the brush like a wisp of fog. The dogs picked up his track the instant they hit shore and went after him as if they wanted revenge for the cold ducking he had tricked them into. They drove him in a circle behind us, away from the river, and in the thickest part of the swamp they brought him to bay in a log jam. That was a ruckus to make your hair stand up! The cat had his back to a windfall, and while I was still a hundred yards off I could hear him spitting his defiance. Every time he snarled it sounded like a buzz saw biting into a knot. Banjo and John had met too many of his kind to move in and tangle with him, but they crowded him as closely as they dared and heckled him with sullen, savage baying. It’s pretty hard to get close to a cat in a place as thick as that without giving him warning and causing him to break bay, and I didn’t make it. I
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was worming through a cedar thicket as tangled as a fish net when he heard me coming. The dogs changed their tune and I realized he had slipped away from them. But a few seconds later I heard the sharp, spiteful report of Don’s little rifle. The hounds stopped barking and began to growl and worry, and I knew the hunt was ended. Don had come in from the west, working as close as he could without spooking the cat and then waiting in the thick evergreens behind the windfall. When the cat came sneaking out the back way, gaining a few precious yards on the dogs, Don was ready for him. A hollow-point Long Rifle bullet in the neck ended his career, swimming and all. He was no panther, but he was the toughest and meanest-looking bobcat we’d ever seen, and one of the biggest as well. He weighed in on the scales at a flat twentynine pounds but his weight was no true
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yardstick of his size. He was a very old tom with bad teeth. In good condition he’d have weighed well over forty pounds, which would have made him the biggest cat we had ever taken and likely the biggest ever killed in our part of the country. We still don’t know whether Don was right in his firm belief that he saw a panther leave its kill at the edge of the Reelman swamp that spring morning almost a year before. But one thing we know for sure. Those swamp thickets were the home of one of the biggest bobcats we’ll ever see, a strange, canny old tom that had no more dread of water than a beaver - the swimming cat of the Manistee. He had lived there a long time, and his trick of crossing the river at will was a good one. But it wasn’t quite good enough to save him, once John and Banjo got on his track!
THE END
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October 2011
BAG of VENOM The professor of biology told us about it at the beginning of the spring term. He’s Dr. Herbert L. Stahnke, head of the department of biological sciences, Arizona State College, and way up there on research in animal poisons. Any class member, he said, could earn up to 100 extra points toward his final grade in biology by collecting such things as tarantulas, scorpions, black-widow spiders, and poisonous snakes. A two-inch scorpion, for instance, would rate one point; a black widow, up to three. It was a good deal for everyone. Dr. Stahnke has been working for years on ways to treat the Sickened, I stared at the rattler’s ugly head, at the long thin line that separated his jaws and gave him a hideous grin
poison such critters can inject, and has perfected an anti-scorpion serum that’s used by hospitals in the Southwest. Specimens we brought in would be milked of their venom, which, of course, is used in developing antivenin. Now, as an ex-G.I. from Portland, Oregon, getting college training under the G.I. Bill, I could use the extra points. So could my roommate, Donald Hansen, who hails from upstate New York and is a vet of 28. We weren’t just silly kids, unaware of the danger we might face. Well, Donald and I went out looking for scorpions. We looked and searched and sweated. We came home tired, hungry, and discouraged. For all our efforts we had just five little scorpions; three points for Don, two for me. So I buttonholed Dr. Stahnke and put it up to him: “How many points for rattlesnakes?” “Oh, from 10 to 20,” he said. “Depends on their size. You and Don plan to try for some? Well, you two have learned to take care of yourselves. Be sure to go with someone who knows snakes and the snake country, though.” I immediately thought of Johnnie Ray, and as soon as I saw him I put it up to him. He said he’d
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be glad to help us get our points. “I’ll lead you to all the rattlers you can use,” he said. “I know a place that should be crawling with them.” Well, that was Monday and we planned to go out on Saturday, so we were pretty careful to see that nothing happened to Johnnie the rest of the week. Under his direction we made two snare sticks. Each consisted of a sturdy rod about five feet long, along which was a row of staples. We ran a stiff wire through the staples from the handle end, formed it into a loop at the business end, and fastened it to the rod. When one pulled on the wire, the loop would tighten around the rattler’s throat - one hoped. We’d take along five or six gunny sacks to hold our captives. On Saturday morning we picked up Johnnie, who had a big Colt Peacemaker revolver strapped to his hip. To be prepared against possible snakebite, we stopped at a drugstore to pick up two metal tubes of ethyl chloride - a chilling agent used in Dr. Stahnke’s new method of field treatment - and drove to a point several miles southeast of Phoenix. Then we threaded our way along a desert trail to some low hills. “Where we heading?” I asked. “To a den area,” said Johnnie. “Rattlers should be out of winter quarters by now and soaking in this spring sun. We’re almost there. Park the car here.” We were at the base of a 500-foot hill on which, Johnnie said, we’d find our diamondbacks. He spun the cylinder of his Peacemaker to check its ammunition. Don slung his camera around his neck and we picked up our sacks and snare sticks and started up the hill. The east slope was cool and damp in spots that March day, and we climbed slowly and carefully. When Don and I caught up with Johnnie at the crest we found him resting amidst some rocks. “Any rattlers?” I asked. “Sure,” he said, pointing with his cigarette. “There’s one right there.” I saw it, curled up cozily in the sun just six feet from Johnnie. I stared. “Big, isn’t it?” I said uncertainly. I had seen rattlesnakes before - even killed a couple - but I’d never attempted
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to capture one alive. Don had never even seen a wild rattlesnake but he has what it takes and was willing to try. “Shall we get started?” he asked. “Aw, sit down and rest a minute,” said Johnnie. “He hasn’t seen us. If he had, he’d come back here to his den.” “Here?” “Sure, right to these rocks. We’re in the middle of the dens.” I elected to rest standing up. If any rattler was going to give me the business I’d prefer to get it in the foot. Don stood up too. He said he didn’t relish the thought of having his backside frosted with ethyl chloride. Johnnie finished his cigarette and flipped it away. Don set his stick against a rock and got busy checking his camera. I unselfishly handed my stick to Johnnie. He laughed. “Aw, go ahead and take him,” he said. “No,” I said, “you saw him first. I’ll hold the sack for the first honors.” Johnnie eased over the rocks and hunched over the rattlesnake, his feet spread apart on two boulders. Slowly, very slowly, he lowered the loop. Now it was near the snake’s head. The head darted back an inch; the rattler had come wide awake. It shifted its coil slowly. “Wow,” I thought, “that’s a wicked-looking thing.” The head drew back another inch. Now the snake was tense and alert. It sensed danger but its weak eyes could not clearly discern the small wire loop. Johnnie followed the head with his stick. Then he passed the loop over the head to the narrow neck - and pulled the wire. Until then the diamondback had not given us a buzz. Now it set up an awful commotion. Its rattles sang as it twisted and thrashed and writhed and flopped around. Johnnie lifted it clear of the ground and I stepped closer, holding the sack open. Johnnie started to lower the snake, tail first. I watched it - all five feet of it - going into the bag, just a foot from my face. Its rattles sizzled; its body flipped and twisted; its belly glistened; its jaws were wide open, revealing fangs and white throat. My stomach turned over.
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Now it was in the sack and Johnnie loosed the loop and jerked back the stick. I twisted the bag down snug, and Don quickly tied it. With relief, I blew the pent-up air from my lungs. This was going to be a lot more nerve-racking than I’d anticipated. “Well,” said Johnnie calmly, “there ought to be more around here.” We reconnoitered the rocks, carefully watching each step we made. “Hey, here’s another,” I called. “Where?” asked Johnnie, coming back. “There, just under the edge of that rock. See him?” “Wow!” said Johnnie. “I missed that one. Stepped right there too.” “He missed too,” I said fervently. I moved aside and Johnnie cautiously jockeyed for position. The snake was in a difficult lay, and Johnnie had to ease himself down on one knee close in front of the rattler. Its head remained rigid but its fat coils began a long, slow, undulating movement. It too was jockeying for position. Johnnie jabbed the stick forward and passed the loop over the snake’s head, then jerked it out. It lay writhing and hissing in the sun. “Another nice one,” Johnnie beamed. I stared, fascinated. “Well, come on, chum,” said Johnnie. “Open the bag.” I stooped and picked up the twisted top of the sack. Instantly there was a warning buzz from inside and I stopped, smiling sheepishly. But Don quickly reached over and untied the rope. I held the sack open and Johnnie slid the snake into it. When it was tied again we stood and listened to the buzzing rattles, louder now with two snakes together. “Guess I owe you an apology, Johnnie,” I said. “I had my doubts about this sack business but you’ve got us two big ones.” “Why, sure,” he laughed. “You think we come out here huffing up this hill for nothing?” We spread out a little and began working our way north along the hilltop, scanning each bush, shrub, and rock. It was ticklish business. With rattlers out sleeping and sunning themselves,
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there was no telling where or at what moment we’d find one. Suddenly Don called softly, “Hey, here’s one.” I joined him. “Where?” “Under that mesquite bush by the rock.” “Whew!” I said. “Another good one. Nice going, Don. It’s hard to spot one in there.” The scraggly shadows of the mesquite blended perfectly with the snake’s skin design. Don tried his hand at snaring this one and succeeded in fine style; I held the bag open. Johnnie had worked his way out of sight beyond some rocks. Ten yards later Don bagged another one. Then we got another, with me taking a turn. “That makes five, doesn’t it?” asked Don. “Yes, and five years off my life,” I replied. “Let’s go see how Johnnie’s making out.” We found him in the brush beside a large flat boulder, down on his hands and knees. His head was turned sideways and he was poking his stick under the rock. “Any luck?” I asked. “Two more in the sack,” he said. “And there’s a big one under here. I’m not leaving here till I get him. Go round to the other side of the rock it’s open there too - and see if he’s coming out.” I climbed over. The snake stuck out his snout but not his whole head. I tried several times to loop him but he was too wary. Finally Johnnie shoved his hand in under the rocks and groped around for the snake’s tail. “Let me know if he pulls his head back,” he grunted. “O.K. Can you get hold of him?” “No. Can you loop him?” “No. The ornery critter won’t poke his head out far enough. Hey - he’s turned!” “Yeah, I know,” said Johnnie, scrambling to his feet. He pulled the big snake out by its tail and held it at arm’s length - over five feet of dangling, deadly rattler. “Now you see why I wanted him?” he gloated. Maybe the guy has ice water in his veins. Actually, though, it wasn’t just a foolhardy stunt. Johnnie knew that in spring rattlers are strictly loners - that he wouldn’t be ambushed by another snake under the rock. And as long as I could see
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the head, he was safe grabbing the tail. We now had eight rattlesnakes parked in five bags along the hilltop. “You boys are piling up biology points real fast,” said Johnnie. “Beats scorpions at a point apiece,” I admitted. Don nodded. “You bet - Hey, there’s another! This place is lousy with rattlers.” “Yes,” I said, “but I don’t want to wallow around in them waist-deep.” I picked up a sack containing two snakes and waited while Johnnie crept up on our latest one. “Got your sack ready?” he asked. He deftly hooked the snake and I opened the bag. Then all broke loose. The next few moments almost wrecked our point system, my nerves, and the English language. One of the captive snakes reared up through the sack opening and put its head and some six inches of body over the side - right beside my hand. I yelled, flung the sack down, and jumped back. The snake plopped at my feet and I jumped again. Then the rattler raced toward Don, and Don jumped. Next it slewed around and came in my direction. I stamped the ground with my feet and it halted and threw itself on the defensive, neck back, head pointed at me, rattles screaming, coils weaving and shifting about. “Oh no!” I choked. “What a kettle of fish!” I felt sick, mad, and humiliated. Johnnie was holding the latest captive to the ground and it writhed and sizzled. The one remaining in the open sack was noisy and moving - he’d be out at any moment. The loose one, alert, and buzzing on the ground, was ready to throw himself at anything. We had to get him - quick. Don stepped over and diverted the rattler’s attention. I grabbed the sack, shook its occupant to the bottom, and said, “Johnnie, dump yours in here and get that other one.” He did that and Don secured the rope. I mopped my forehead and hands, and said, “Boy, fellows, I’m sorry -” “Forget it,” Johnnie grinned. “I’d have done the same thing myself.” I didn’t believe him, but it helped. “How was I to know the stupid thing would
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crawl up -” “They ain’t stupid.” “So I’ve noticed.” During this exchange of courtesies Don had located another rattlesnake. I got a sack with two big critters in it, untied it, and held it in readiness. I was determined not to upset the applecart a second time. The boys were ready with No. 10, and I opened the sack mouth. Johnnie lifted the big diamondback and paused for Don to guide it in. “Drop the sack!” Johnnie yelled abruptly. “Drop it! He’s comin’ over your hand!” I felt the smooth, cold rub of the slick scales and glimpsed the head as I jerked away one arm. Clutching the sack, I slapped the snake’s head, trying to knock it back in. Then I slapped it again. “Drop it!” yelled Johnnie. “No, I won’t!” I fumed. “I won’t drop it again.” I flopped the sack, jiggled it, juggled it, and scooped the snake back in. The strength of his tail was spent, and he dropped like a hawser to the bottom. I twisted the bag and held it. The sack sounded like a seething beehive. Johnnie still held his snake, and the nearest bag with plenty of room for it was too far to fetch (one didn’t dare run in that area), and we had to sack our newest captive soon or its neck would be injured. I gingerly untwisted the neck of my bag and we quickly slipped the rattler into it. We went back and exchanged our sacks for others containing single snakes, then retraced our way toward the den rocks. We became separated as I searched back along the top of the hill, with the other boys moving down the west side and farther ahead. I saw them snare two snakes before they disappeared behind rocks and brush. I sat down on a rock, for I needed a rest. “Good grief,” I muttered, “what a way to get a grade.” Then I relaxed and laughed out loud. By the time the gunny sack had quieted down to only an occasional burst, I felt refreshed enough to go on. The other boys hadn’t come in sight again; maybe they were having good hunting. I ranged over toward the den with its big, jagged boulders, thinking I might nab some
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more points. I laid the bag down and crept forward, eyes on the ground, picking my way carefully to within a few feet of the rocks. The air was quiet; it was midday now. Only the faint singing of insects touched the desert silence. Pausing between steps and stooping slightly, I studied the ground to the left, then to the right. I took two more cautious steps that brought me almost against a rock. Suddenly I sensed danger and glanced up. I stifled a yell, sucked in a gob of air, and froze. Froze solid! Squarely in front of me, on top of a rock that jutted out shoulder-high and barely 2 ½ feet away, a large rattlesnake lay, poised to strike. Its deadly head and neck were inching back in the familiar S-shape, and its powerful, supple coils were slowly stirring. No sound. No warning. No buzz. It was just waiting, alert, ready to jab at this moving object in front of it. My heart thumped heavily, like an unbalanced crankshaft, then pounded hard against my ribs. Every muscle, nerve, and tissue of my body constricted tightly; a raw, wet, terrifying fear poured through me; the blood drained down into my innards. I was sick with fright. I dared not move. It was too late. Any movement, however slight, would cause the rattler to stab out. I breathed short, tiny draughts to avoid chest motion. I stared at the tense, threatening snake; at his loathsome head; at his vitreous eyes; at the long thin line separating his jaws and giving him a hideous grin; at the diamond patterns blending and oscillating on the sinuous coils. The first nauseating wave in my mind began to subside and I started to think, to weigh my chances. I’d been caught off balance, left arm askew, left leg bent, right heel off the ground. I slowly moved my eyes to the right, to the left. There was another snake crawling out of the rock a few yards away. Then I spotted still another. Probably there were some behind me by now, so I dared not leap back. I couldn’t have moved quickly enough anyhow; that head in front of me would strike much more swiftly. And if it did? In my head or chest, close to the heart. No place
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for a tourniquet. Thoughts raced through my brain. Brain? I had no brain - I’d been a fool to get caught this way. Why had I let myself become separated from the others? Oh Lord, where were those guys? The rattler’s head moved out to the left, slowly, stiffly, still watching me. I felt a pulse of hope. He was uncertain now, searching for a better view of me. Again I weighed my chance of leaping. Better to be bitten in the leg by one of the other snakes than in the neck or chest by him. I tensed for the jump. No, I knew I couldn’t make it. That swift head would dart too fast. My eyes caught a movement in the rocks yards away. The head and shoulders of Johnnie came into sight. Don was behind him. My flesh slacked with relief. Johnnie waved and called, “Any luck?” Then he noticed my immovability, my strained position. “Boy, you are in a spot,” he said softly. Slowly and softly he came over the rock, the noose in front of him. The snake’s weak eyes evidently caught no movement, for its attention was still riveted on me. Now the noose was moving above its coils, settling gently in front of its head, moving back toward the neck. A jerk, a wild scramble, a burst from the rattles, and I relaxed, a free man. I let Don and Johnnie sack that one; I was beat up. “That’s enough,” said Don. “Let’s go home.” “You don’t have to twist my arm,” I said and stepped back. Sz-z-z-z-z! Right at my heels. I’d almost trod on a bagful of rattlers. We took back 17 big rattlesnakes, and they got us 200 points - the maximum of 100 apiece for Don and me. Dr. Stahnke was delighted; his laboratory had been practically empty of the badly needed reptiles. “It wasn’t all soda and skittles,” said Don gravely. “A bad thing happened. I had a chance for a wonderful picture, and I forgot I was carrying a camera.”
THE END
Five patterns of artificial nymphs. (Two on foreflap are plastic types)
Rainbows in the lake went for nymphs
LURE THAT CAN’T MISS A veteran angler says it bluntly: A nymph is the best. Properly presented, it will fool any trout that swims
What would you give, gentlemen, for a lure that will take trout consistently every day of the season in any condition of water and weather? There is such a lure, and you can get it for a few cents a copy in almost any sporting-goods store, or you can make it yourself if you’re handy with thread and scissors. I’m talking about the artificial nymph, five specimens of which are shown in the fly book above. It’s a type of wet fly, and must be of the right size, shape, and color to convince a
trout that it’s a natural underwater insect. If all anglers used such flies properly, the hatcheries would have to put on a swing shift to keep any trout at all in the streams. The only catch is that a nymph, unlike a worm or dry fly, is practically worthless in the hands of a beginner. But the same is true of differential calculus, and maybe you weren’t so hot on the violin the first time you tried it. I’m convinced that if a person doesn’t catch trout with nymphs on any given day, it’s only
So did this brown I lost on a rock
I even taught the warden to use them
because he’s using the wrong size or color or is fishing them incorrectly. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending upon how you look at it, a very small percentage of America’s 12 million anglers are nymph fishermen. In a nation of plug-rod artists, flyrod experts, and spinning enthusiasts, nymph fishing has been largely neglected. The reasons for this are not hard to find. A lot of fishermen have never heard of it. And I’ve met a number of others on the streams who have glanced at the nymph, on the end of my line and said, “I tried those things but never had much luck with them. Give me a dry fly (worm, streamer).” They’ve never had much luck with nymphs because they’ve never learned what this kind of fishing is all about. Success with the nymph depends upon patiently acquired knowledge
I hit the hole, the fish hit the nymph
and skill. Once you have this - and anyone can learn it - the rewards are great. As all entomologists and most anglers know, nymphs or creepers are an immature or larval stage of May flies, stone flies, crane flies, caddis flies, and certain other insects; during this phase of their life cycle they live under water. Later in their development they rise to the surface, where the nymphal case splits and the true insect emerges. This is the moment for which the trout have been waiting. They gulp down a dozen hapless nymphs for every one which escapes to complete its life cycle. Then it is that still pools dimple with tailing trout and dry-fly men grow old before their time. For when trout are feeding upon nymphs - which is 80 percent of the time - they’ll pass up the jauntiest dry fly that ever floated.
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ON A LIGHTER NOTE! The Pessimist and the Optimist... An avid duck hunter was in the market for a new bird dog. His search ended when he found a dog that could actually walk on water to retrieve a duck. Shocked by his find, he was sure none of his friends would ever believe him. He decided to try to break the news to a friend of his, the eternal pessimist who refused to be impressed with anything. This, surely, would impress him. He invited him to hunt with him and his new dog. As they waited by the shore, a flock of ducks flew by they fired, and a duck fell. The dog responded and jumped into the water. The dog, however, did not sink but instead walked across the water to retrieve the bird, never getting more than his paws wet. This continued all day long; each time a duck fell, the dog walked across the surface of the water to retrieve it. The pessimist watched carefully, saw everything, but did not say a single word. On the drive home the hunter asked his friend, “Did you notice anything unusual about my new dog?” “I sure did,” responded the pessimist. “He can’t swim.”
I Marked the Spot Two friends rented a boat and fished in a lake every day. One day they caught 30 fish. One guy said to his friend, “Mark this spot so that we can come back here again tomorrow.” The next day, when they were driving to rent the boat, the same guy asked his friend, “Did you mark that spot?” His friend replied, “Yeah, I put a big ‘X’ on the bottom of the boat.” The first one said, “You simple minded fool! What if we don’t get that same boat today!?!?”
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Nymph fishing is not new. It was practiced at the turn of the century in England, and brought to a high degree of perfection there through the studies of G. E. M. Skues. The father of nymph fishing in America was the equally noted Edward Ringwood Hewitt, who brought the British patterns to this country and tried them on streams in the Catskill Mountains of New York. He soon found, however, that nymphs which worked well on the English chalk streams were somewhat less efficient on our larger, swifter waters, so he began collecting live specimens of American species as models for his own artificials. He discovered early that most of the nymphs common to Eastern streams are brown on the back and yellow, gray, or green on the belly. These colors, in various shades and combinations, have been basic ever since. Productive nymph fishing depends on working an artificial like a natural insect - adrift and feebly swimming, or rising gradually to the surface to hatch. This is done in several ways, depending upon stream conditions. In fast water, the nymph should be cast across the stream and allowed to drift with the current on a slack line. Toward the end of the drift, the drag of the line will pull the nymph out of the main current and into the slower water at the side. Now raise and lower the nymph a few times. Naturally you’ll have considerable slack line, which makes setting the hook extremely difficult. Some anglers watch the bellying line and strike instantly if it begins to straighten. But in a dozen or more years of nymph fishing, I’ve found trout hit these lures so hard that four out of five hook themselves. I remember one really big rainbow that smashed a Stone Creeper in a boulder-strewn run of the Farmington River. (Except as noted, this and other waters mentioned in what follows are in Massachusetts.) The nymph
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was drifting deep, and the first inkling I had of the strike was when the fish catapulted out of white water to land squarely atop a flat boulder in midstream. He lay there flopping for an eternity while I watched helplessly, unable to reach him. Finally, with a convulsive leap, he plopped back into the water and my 4X leader parted on the rock. In quiet pools and in ponds, the nymph should be drawn very slowly through the water some three or four inches below the surface. Sometimes in clear water you’ll see a trout following the lure. At such times it’s fatal to speed the retrieve, as Walt Brooks found out to his sorrow. Walt and I were fishing from shore on Cape Cod’s Scargo Lake, where rainbows up to 10 pounds have been caught. Just at dawn, one of these behemoths rolled up from the steep drop-off and swam lazily after Walt’s nymph. The sight of this monster, so obviously intent on making a meal of the crane-fly nymph, unnerved Walt so that he gave a convulsive jerk. Instantly the great fish swirled away, flinging spray skyward as he disappeared into the depths. If you draw the nymph far enough at the same slow, steady speed, a following fish will usually hit - if, again, your lure is the right size and color. For in no other fishing, not even in dry-fly work, is it so necessary to copy the native natural insects accurately. Just as an example, most stream nymphs are flat, built to cling to rocks and sunken logs. I once tied two nymphs, similar in size and color. One was cylindrical, the other flat. On the cylindrical nymph I caught seven trout; on the flat one I took 73 in the same number of fishing hours. If trout in quiet water won’t hit nymphs fished close to the surface, they can sometimes be coaxed to strike simply by fishing deeper. Sink the first three feet of the leader nearest the nymph and grease the remainder to float. This
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enables the lure to sink deeper into the water. As you draw it slowly toward you, it will rise gradually to the surface just as a natural does. These are the traditional methods of fishing nymphs, but there are others which work on occasion. One advantage of nymphs over other flies and live bait is that they can be fished in different ways to meet varying conditions of water and weather. In nymph fishing, continuous experimenting pays off. One cold, early-season day when the Middle Branch of the Westfield River ran bank-full and muddy, I fished a nymph across and downstream without results. I tried casting almost directly upstream and letting the nymph drift deep on a slack line. This too failed, but when I sank the nymph still deeper by adding lead foil to the leader, I took three good brookies from the quiet eddies at the edge of the runs. It seems strange that big trout should hit such tiny affairs as nymphs, but they do. Some of the largest trout I’ve caught, including a sixpound brown which rolled up out of Maine’s Sandy River, have been taken on No. 12 and No. 14 nymphs. Hewitt’s studies tell us why trout like nymphs. He found the fat content of nymphs to be around 15 percent, as against 2 percent for minnows. Trout are fat fish, themselves, and they require a fatty diet. Nature has shown them where to get it. There’s still another method of fishing nymphs which I discovered quite by accident. I was drifting a nymph through a deep, still glide of the Manhan River when the district conservation officer came along checking licenses. I’d just made a cast, so I left my line out while I fumbled for my wallet. As I handed over my license I felt a smash at the end of the line and a 16-inch brown launched into the air. The warden, who is quite a fisherman himself, was as excited as I. “Don’t lose it!” he shouted. “That’s the first
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fish I’ve seen today.” It was also the first fish I’d hooked that afternoon, and it revealed the proper method for the day. I brought the trout in, leaping again and again, and in the next three hours I took five more trout by letting the nymph dance in the current at the end of 50 feet of motionless line. Incidentally, a few days later I met the warden doing a bit of fishing on his own. He was using a nymph. Drifting a nymph this way is especially good for small, brushy brooks where it is impossible to cast a fly. You can get under hanging banks and into snag holes where even a worm would become snagged. Then just leave the lure there doing its seductive dance. If there’s a trout around he’ll nail it. Another important place where some of the boys who discard nymphs go wrong is in the matter of tackle. It’s a good idea to use a tapered line, but the line is not the vital item it is in dry-fly fishing or bass bugging. The leader, however, should definitely be tapered and, except in the early season, should be at least 12 feet long, ending in a 3X or 4X point. I’ve experimented several times, casting a half-mile stretch of stream with a 7 ½-foot leader and then covering the same water with a 12-foot leader. Every time the results favored the longer leader by an average of four to one. Even the color of the leader is important. I find a mist-gray leader better than a white one in clear water; a brown-stained leader is tops in dirty water. Most important of all is the rod. For best results, nymph fishing requires a soft-action rod. And here the aspiring nymph fisherman is going to run into trouble, for soft-action rods are scarce among American manufacturers today. Back when most fly fishing was done with wet flies, buggy-whip rods were the order of the day. But in the past 10 years the dry-fly
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October 2011
craze has created demand for shorter, stiffer rods which would fling a fly into the teeth of a downstream wind. Urged on by anglers, manufacturers have gone from one extreme to the other, turning out sticks that could almost hold up a tent. For nymph fishing - which calls for a slow, flexible rod that will give action to the fly - they are hopeless. Until rods specially designed for nymphing are available, about all you can do is pick out the softest rod you can find on the dealers’ shelves. It will still be too stiff. As regards the nymphs themselves, the fisherman today can choose from a wide variety. Besides the basic patterns developed by Hewitt and still in use today, there are dozens of variations and new models. Nymphs are all-season lures, from the high, roily waters of spring to the low gin-clear trickles of midsummer. On a broiling July day last year I was fishing a stretch of the Buck River without success. The trout lay hidden under rocks and shelving banks out of the bright sunlight. When a mile of stream yielded not a single fish from the pools and broken glides, I decided to call it a day. I had already removed the nymph from my leader and was nearing the car when my glance fell on a flat stretch of fast water, one of the few left in this shrunken stream. I’d walked around it before. Now, on impulse, I decided to try it. I tied the nymph on again and waded in. And almost immediately I sank up to my thigh in an unsuspected pocket from which a footlong trout fled like a darting shadow. This was encouraging. Even more so was the quick tug at my nymph a moment later as it danced through the rapids. I cast again, and this time the rod bowed to the surge of a fighting brookie. From that 200-yard stretch of fast water I took three more trout. The hard-working nymph had saved another fishless day.
There was another time on Walden Pond. Art Turner had promised to show me some trout and he did. As the sun sank behind the western hills, husky rainbows began rolling all around our boat. Before you could get a fly into the ring of one rise, another trout would bulge the water a rod’s length away. But every fly we cast remained untouched. I ran through the contents of a well-filled fly box, including a what-is-it designed strictly for millinery purposes. None worked. When a two-foot fish splashed water over my Leadwing Coachman with a disdainful flip of his whisk-broom tail, I mentioned my frustration to Art. “When you spoke of showing me some trout,” I said a little hoarsely, “I assumed we were going to catch at least a couple.” Art agreed in a masterpiece of understatement that the situation was “trying.” “You can’t catch ‘em,” he explained. “They won’t hit a thing. I’ve thrown everything but the anchor at ‘em.” “They’re certainly feeding on something,” I said and I tried again to find out what it was. We didn’t find the answer until later. It was a tiny black nymph tied on a No. 20 hook and fished on a 5X tippet. We let it sink, then drew it slowly toward the surface - and the strikes came fast and furious. We lost more trout than we caught on this fragile rig, but we had plenty of action and we managed to land a few. I’m not saying a nymph on the end of your leader will automatically catch trout. I do claim a person with a good selection of nymphs in his fly book who uses them correctly will have few zero days. I’m also certain a man who fishes nymphs exclusively all season long will catch more trout than an angler of equal competence using live bait, dry flies, and streamers.
THE END
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October 2011
FIELD NOTES Don’t Fence Elk Out HICK’S RUN – This summer we had our first damage from elk since I have been stationed in Cameron County and it happened to be damage to our own Sate Property. We have built a large wild turkey holding pen in the Hicks Run Section for State Game Lands No. 14. The large pen covers close to 40 acres and inside is a smaller pen that covers about one acre. This pen is enclosed by a six foot woven wire fence and inside of it we have a small plot of buckwheat. A small four foot gate on the inner pen caused the damage. At first, before the gate was finished, the elk would come along and walk into the small food plot by way of the gate but to our surprise, the very first morning after the gate was put on, we found that the elk just did not like the idea. They had knocked down the fence in several places to get in and also to get out. This happened several nights in a row until we finally drove the animals out of the larger inner pen. Incidentally, since we have planted about 60 acres of food plots in the Hicks Run section, we have seen more elk than in the past four summers that I have been here. The damage they do to the crops is not caused so much by what they eat, rather, by what they knock down in walking through a field of corn or buckwheat. Our Food and Cover foreman measured one of the elk tracks one day and found it to be 4 ½ inches across. – Game Protector Norman E r i c k s o n , Emporium.
Bolt From The Blue MILFORD – On august 28th I was called by James Hamilton to his summer residence on Red Ridge, Milford Township, and was shown a large doe deer which lay dead in the middle of his road. Upon investigation, I found the most unusual circumstance surrounded the death of this deer. One side of the road is lined with apple trees and the other side with maples. August 26th, this doe was feeding on apples which had dropped on the road. Lightning hit a large maple under which the deer was partly standing, blasting a good sized hole in the earth at the base of the tree and killing the deer. The carcass had no visible marks on it and despite the humid weather and the fact that it had lain there all day Sunday, it showed no greenish sports or other evidence of the start to decay. – Game Protector John Lohmann, Milford A Bird In The Hand … FREEPORT – What will a grouse do next? While talking to one of the rabbit farm cooperators, Mr. William Stroup, R. D. Freeport, I learned of another of the grouse’s strange actions. It seems that Mr. Stroup walked about a quarter mile every morning to catch a ride to work. On these mornings he acquired the habit of carrying a handful of scratch feed to put out for several grouse that were in the neighborhood. On August 17th, he took his scratch grain and started to work. While he was
October 2011
waiting for his ride, the absence of the birds began to puzzle the man since they had been showing up regularly before. Finally, he heard one coming up through the woods so he sat very still holding the grain in his hand. The grouse kept straight on coming and much to Stroup’s surprise, jumped on his forearm and remained there for about a half minute. It jumped down then and when the man’s ride came along, the grouse was still feeding on the scratch grain. – Game Protector H. E. Greenwald, Vandergrift. Between The Snake And The Spillway While on a field trip to the Pymatuning area, I observed a water snake attempting to catch a catfish in the shallow water of a spillway. The catfish, in its struggles to elude the snake, wiggled out of the water and up on the stones at the edge of the spillway. After killing the snake, we returned the catfish to water where it swam away apparently uninjured. I had seen water snakes catch fish before, but this was the first instance where the fish actually came out on the shore to avoid being caught. – Student Officer, Blair Thomas, Ross Leffler School of Conservation. Moose Deer WILLIAMSPORT – One evening in July I passed a pond back in the mountains and noticed a doe standing in the water with her head under the water until only the tips of her ears were in sight. I watched her awhile and then timed her as to the length of time her head was under water. The best she could do was about 50 seconds. Then she would come up with a mouth full of some water plant, take a breath, and go back for more. – Game Protector Levi Whippo, Williamsport. Like Mary’s Little Lamb GIRARD – One evening in July a woodchuck hunter and his father were hunting east of Girard. He had just shot a chuck when he looked to his
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left and saw a deer. About the same time his father called and pointed out a large red fox. The men were pretty busy looking for a few minutes but the fox soon left the scene. The deer did not seem to be alarmed at all but as the two men walked toward it, they expected to see it take off at any second. Much to their surprise, the men were able to walk right up to the deer. They petted the animal, fed it tobacco and the deer liked everything, including the attention. Finally, figuring that no one would believe their story anyway, the hunters started for home. To their amazement the deer followed about 30 feet to the rear. The men walked to their home in Girard with the deer following behind. There they took pictures of it, petted it some more and gave it food. By that time quite a crowd had gathered and as dusk fell, some of the men decided that it was time to take the deer back to the woods. They finally managed to entice it away with some more food and led it to a secluded spot where they planned to bid the deer farewell. However, the deer still refused to part with its human company. Not knowing what else to do, the men finally decided to make a run for it, hoping that the deer would stay in the woods. Accordingly, they ran as fast as they could. What happened? After racing a considerable distance, the men looked back over their shoulders to see the deer racing right behind them. Try as they did, they just couldn’t get rid of that deer. Eventually, they returned home with their deer hot in pursuit. Then they decided to call the Game Protector for help. During the interval between their call and our arrival on the scene, the deer had nonchalantly ambled out of town on its own and had disappeared. Three nights later another call was received stating that a tame deer was in the schoolyard of the Girard Grade School. I made another hurried trip, but it was gone by the time I got there. Now I am wondering. About two months ago I chased a “tame” deer into the woods on the outskirts of Albion. Now another “tame” deer of the same description in and around the town of Girard. The two towns are about 12 miles apart. I wonder? – Game Protector Clair Dinger, Albion.
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STRIPED SCOURGE OF ASIA . . .
The
BENGAL TIGER On the page opposite is the eighth painting of a notable series By one of the nation’s most talented wildlife artists, who was specially commissioned to depict - in full color the world’s largest game animals in their native habitats
By and large, the Bengal tiger is the most feared of all wild animals. To millions of Asiatics he is a scourge - a cunning cattle thief and a murderer. But to many a well-heeled sportsman or Oriental potentate he is the most magnificent of all big-game animals, the true king of beasts. Few trophies - even the African lion - rival the tiger for sheer breath-taking beauty and majesty. By nature, the Bengal tiger epitomizes every perverse, cruel, and unpredictable trait of the cat family. Often he seems to delight in slaughter for its own sake, and year after year he takes a dreadful toll of human life in densely populated India. One tiger is credited with having killed eighty natives in a single year! Ordinarily, though, the tiger is no particular menace to the sportsman. Since hunting afoot in the steaming jungle would be not only dangerous but almost unbearably uncomfortable, the hunter usually shoots from a machan, or platform, built a safe distance above the ground in a tree. Or if he can afford the expense, he can hunt in perfect safety from the back of a specially trained elephant, while a small army of beaters tries to send a tiger in his direction. The machan hunter climbs to his platform
at dusk and resigns himself to a long wait. Usually he is armed with a large-caliber British rifle, a .450 or .500, although one of the powerful H. & H. Magnums, .300 or .375 caliber, would be effective. The sportsman must be alert for every sound, since the tiger always approaches the bait - a tethered live animal - very cautiously, often circling it some time before coming in to make the kill. As the cat pounces, the hunter takes careful aim in the dim light of the moon, squeezes off a shot, and gets one of the most desirable of all big-game trophies. Although tigers are found only in Asia, they range over a vast portion of that continent, from northern China to the Malay Peninsula. The Bengal of India is the biggest of all, averaging nine or ten feet from nose to tip of tail, with an occasional animal running to eleven or twelve feet. Average weight exceeds 500 pounds. Unlike the lion, which is a scavenger, the tiger prefers to kill his own meat. When he develops into a cattle killer, as often happens, he does a tremendous amount of damage in the course of a year. And when he becomes a mankiller, the natives know no peace until he has been tracked down and destroyed.
THE END
October 2011
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I Fell for a Leopard I had promised Dr. Jean Reynaud of the French School of Medicine at Kabul, Afghanistan, some real hunting in India. In view of previous entanglements with customs red tape we’d left our Winchesters at home along with our wives and families. I was enjoying a long winter vacation from my work at the American-staffed Habibia College, and Reynaud had conjured up a leave of absence for the first half of January. We were rolling along the Grand Trunk highway east from New Delhi in a badly overcrowded motor bus. Our conversation was carried on alternately in English, French, and Persian, but only in the latter tongue did we have much of a common language background. Somehow our plans had gone awry. A telegram to A. D. Mukerji, my friend in Kashipur who had arranged a tiger hunt for me the previous year, had brought an answer to the effect that encroaching civilization had practically ruined hunting there. It suggested we try some other place. Later I learned that by “ruined hunting” Mukerji meant that one couldn’t shoot more than three or four trophy bucks and stags in one day.
We were headed for the hamlet of Hastinapur where we hoped to get a leopard during this season of light rains. At worst we could shoot pigs, partridges, and nilgai, which are the largest of India’s antelopes. We could, that is, if we had guns. At Hastinapur we were greeted warmly by my old friend, Dr. M. V. Singh, medical officer of Mukerji’s first colonization project. Like most devout Hindus, Singh has never been trained to shoot. But long association with the ever-hunting Mukerji had aroused his interest, and he had learned to blast down such animals as were driven to him. Partridges were another matter, though. Somehow Doc never got the hang of swinging and leading, and he collected his birds - amid much sarcastic humor while they sat on the ground. Singh installed us in a guest house and loaned us
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his own shotgun for the afternoon. Jean and I were eager and couldn’t wait to get going. We walked about four miles, missed four partridges, crippled a fifth, and lost it. We found a nilgai family led by a monstrous blue bull. We stalked the group for a while but never got within shooting range. Then we were joined by four native boys who said they’d beat for us in exchange for shares in the kill. Right away we got several partridges. We located a sounder of pigs in some heavy cane grass bordering a small watercourse, and then the fun began. For an hour our boys, driven no doubt by an imaginary odor of pork chops, beat the pigs back and forth for about a mile. But the porkers steadfastly refused to come out and be shot. Finally they broke over the bank and headed for Jean who, fortunately, was holding the gun. He fired both right and left barrels, and then there was a squealing such as I’d never heard. From my position across the creek, I could see Jean and the boys only from the waist up and had to fill in the rest with my imagination. Reynaud was bent over the gun, fumbling with shells, while two boys surrounded the squealing pig. As they stood, staffs held high, the pig charged. Then as the pig turned to flee, the other boys beat it as it ran. The pig turned on its new tormentors and charged, whereupon the boys changed roles and the other two beat the pig to divert its attention. Though I was afraid one of our friends might get slashed by the pig’s tusks, I laughed heartily and was a bit sorry when Jean finally reloaded the shotgun and ended the show. He’d taken a sow and a small boar. Slim pickings, perhaps, but the results of the day’s hunt lifted our spirits immeasurably. That night Dr. Singh joined us at dinner. Though he could take food with us, our presence at his table would have meant defilement in terms of orthodox Hinduism. He brought with him an older fellow who was dressed
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in a thin muslin dhoti and had a homespun blanket wrapped around his slender frame. He obviously was a man of the poorer classes, but he carried his head proudly and his eyes flashed in the lamplight. This man was Ho Ram, Mukerji’s chief hunter and tracker at Hastinapur. We’d hunted together the year before, and I had a lot of respect for his ability. But I knew the feeling wasn’t mutual. All of the good shooting I’d done with my .270 rifle took place at Kashipur. When I’d hunted this area with Ho Ram I’d bungled stalks and missed shots. In his eyes I was a rank novice. This impassive little brown man, whose worldly possessions I could have bought for $1, looked down on me, and he knew that I knew it. “It will almost certainly rain tonight,” said Dr. Singh. “The soil here is sandy and the rain will wash out old sign. If a panther is in the area he will be easy to trail.” Like all who live in India, Singh referred to the great golden, spotted cat we call a leopard as a panther. “Ho Ram and his men will be out at dawn to look for tracks. If they find any, they will follow the panther to his lying-up place and surround him. A runner will come for us and we shall go out. They will beat the panther to us and you shall have your shoot. I have sent men to procure guns for you, and I think that we shall get a panther tomorrow - if it rains.” Jean and I fell asleep that night thrilling to the roar of a heavy downpour on our roof. In India’s lowlands there’s no such thing as a light rain. The early sun irradiated a million prisms of droplets on the fields of sugar cane that stretched as far as the eye could see. Reynaud and I, shivering at our first touch of morning air, moved into the warming sunshine that flooded our veranda. We lighted our after-breakfast smokes and looked around. Just to the east the fields of sugar cane ended abruptly and a little, dry tropical forest began. It extended for
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perhaps a mile, then petered out as the ravines of the brakes gave out on a flat, swampy, grassland - the ancient bed of the Ganges River. After a while Jean and I wandered idly across the road to Dr. Singh’s home and to his dispensary where we found him preparing inoculation shots. His smile was as warming as the sun, but he was preoccupied with his work and we could tell that we’d barged in on him. “Good morning,” he greeted us. “It is too early to hear from Ho Ram, but I think you’re in luck. Nine times out of 10 we find a panther after a rain like this. I will be finished in about an hour and by then we shall know.” He stabbed his hypodermic needle into a quivering unfortunate, then went on. “Even if we don’t find a panther, I can promise you pigs and partridges. See you later.” We left him and wandered aimlessly about the village, stopping at the little bazaar where I bought a rupee’s worth of cashew nuts. Then we hiked half a mile to a little Jain temple at the edge of a dozen acres of sacred forest. We gazed at this holy place for some time and tried to interpret its carvings. A sambur stag sounded his call from the near-by forest. What would alarm him in these protected woods and in daylight? It was maddening to know that there was a fine animal, the size of a small bull elk, within 100 yards of us and we couldn’t do anything about it. We had no firearms. We’d be lucky to get anything better than muzzleloaders for the coming leopard hunt - if the men found a leopard. Thoughts of the leopard quickened our steps back to Dr. Singh’s dispensary. We found he’d finished his business and was giving orders to six or eight subordinates in machine-gun Hindustani. Ending, he turned to us with the broadest of smiles. “Gentlemen, you are indeed lucky. Ho Ram has located not one but two panthers.” My heart gave a sudden jump. This was
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more like it. But what were we going to shoot the leopards with? Singh must have read my mind or, more likely, the look on my face. “I have located guns for you. Nothing like your fancy rifle with the telescope sight, but good enough to kill a panther.” Since Jean and I had no preparations to make for the hunt, we just got in the waiting jeep. Singh climbed into the driver’s seat, and we were joined by his servant who carried two old hammer double-barreled shotguns that must have been among the first breechloaders ever manufactured. He clutched the relics tightly as the jeep lurched off, bound for some distant rendezvous with Ho Ram. So far as I was concerned, I felt that the servant could keep his old shotguns. I’d prefer getting a leopard with bare hands to shooting one of those antiques. Reynaud said nothing, but I could hear him muttering French words I couldn’t understand. We found our hunting party clustered several miles away at the foot of the brakes. After we disembarked, the servant reluctantly handed us his precious guns and then drove off. “He will bring lunch,” explained Singh. “Now we will rest here and wait for Ho Ram. We rested an hour, which was plenty for me. Then a runner arrived and we all set off for a place where the leopard was supposed to be waiting to be shot. My two doctor friends walked together and talked shop. They’d figured some route around the language barrier and were rolling pills and making incisions at a great rate. I lagged some distance behind to take a picture. Something must have happened to my camera to make it smaller, because I had a great deal of trouble pulling out the lens, focusing, and snapping the shutter. Far be it from me to be nervous over a couple of leopards. We walked a mile or so, waded through sloughs, circled the brakes, and then came to an abrupt halt. “Here,” I thought, “is where
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Shatto shoots a leopard.” Singh turned to me with an apologetic smile. “A runner has come from Ho Ram,” he said. “He says that the male panther is getting restless and that we’d better let the female alone until after we shoot the male.” So we retraced our steps and finally arrived at the cart road along the foot of the brakes. After a short walk, two miles or so, along this road we came upon Ho Ram. The skinny old hunter was squatted along the edge of the road puffing a brown cheroot. After a polite “Nemesta, sahib” to me, he talked at length to Singh. His attitude towards me was aloof, to say the least, and I knew that the only thing that would change it would be performance. I silently vowed he’d see performance today such as he’d never seen before. Singh handed Jean and me each half a dozen shells. “Use the large grape first and then the small grape if you need more,” he said. Large grape, I was told, is the British designation of buckshot with five pellets to the case while small grape defines a case containing nine pellets. “We are near the panther now and must be very quiet. After we reach our stands they will put us in trees and then the panther come out. Whoever sees him first shoots.” He smiled his easy smile. “It will all be very simple.” We padded softly in single file behind the flitting shadow of Ho Ram, and stopped at the crest of a little ridge between two gulleys like ravines. Two men helped Reynaud into a tree. What constitutes a tree in these parts is largely a matter of definition since none of the foliage is higher than 15 feet. Singh was boosted up next, and I was assigned to the right of the three positions. My tree was a 12-foot thorn of some kind, and for the life of me I couldn’t see any way of getting my bulk up it. While I stood arguing, a nearly naked hunter squirreled up into the tree and two others attacked me from the rear and
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pushed me up into his waiting hands. Somehow I found myself standing on a swaying limb about eight feet above ground. My feet were too close together for any sort of balance, but enough thorns stuck into me and my clothes to help me maintain my position, though quite shakily. With unsteady fingers I slipped two large grape into my ancient blunderbuss, cocked the large, ornate hammers, and tried to relax and survey the situation. Ho Ram and his men had disappeared, and I couldn’t see either of my friends in the other trees. They couldn’t see me, either, which was fortunate. I was alone and waiting for the leopard. The drive started at a shouted signal from across the ravine. My pulses leaped as 30 men’s voices raised a series of “ho’s” and “ha’s” that marked a crescent line moving towards me. The leopard was somewhere in between. I wondered where I would aim if the beast ran under my tree, and how I would shoot at all if it came out to the right of me for I wasn’t free to twist far enough in that direction to fire a shot. The leopard appeared out of the shadows. He didn’t leap, run, or move. He just materialized from the dark shade of the ravine. He was a magnificent animal. He radiated the color of burnished gold, and the fiery sheen of his background hues outshone the brilliance of his black rosettes and the shimmering white of his underparts. Now I wished I were holding my beloved .270 rifle instead of this monstrous old shotgun. But I raised the clumsy thing and pointed it at the leopard’s chest. His alert eye caught the movement instantly, and I knew I must fire quickly. Praying that the gun would operate, I pulled the right trigger. The recoil of the piece sent me back somewhat and my right foot slipped, but the thorns in my back and shoulders kept me upright on my perch. The leopard dropped with the shot but recovered as quickly as a ping-pong ball. With
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a blood-curdling snarl he jumped high in the air once, twice, and then, roaring in rage, he attacked a bush and tore it to shreds. Without even a glance he leaped 20 feet backward and tackled a young sapling. He was almost under my tree and I watched, awestruck, while his great teeth crunched through the young tree and, as his flailing forepaws raked off great splotches of bark, actually bit it in two. And I was less than eight feet above him! Now he struck blindly at everything under my tree, and his blood began to appear. Round and round he went in a crazy wild dance, and everything he touched was destroyed. I tried to follow him with my gun but didn’t get very far. Finally he stopped nearly under me, sprawled out on his belly, bit into a stick, clawed up great gobs of turf, and raged a horrible roaring protest. I pointed my gun at his shoulder and pulled the left trigger. Nothing happened. I pulled harder. Still that big hammer stayed cocked as if to mock me. In desperation I yanked on it savagely. The gun still refused to fire, but my right foot slipped, went clear off the branch and dangled tantalizingly in the air. The leopard looked up just as some part of my clothing started to rip. I felt myself beginning to fall. Thorns slapped me in the face, and somehow the ground and the leopard seemed to lift up. Lying half on my chest and face and half on my knees, I stared into the leopard’s face from a distance of about four feet. My hands clutched the shotgun which had fallen crosswise under my belly. I couldn’t pull it out from under and I couldn’t lift myself up. With my chin buried in dirt and my posterior sticking up I hardly presented a dignified appearance. Though the leopard still held the piece of wood in his jaws, his terrible countenance staring into mine bore a look of surprise. His gathering muscles warned me of an impending spring, but I couldn’t do anything except tug futilely at the gun. There was death
in his eyes as he started to leap, and I managed a desperate yell. I don’t know whether the shout disconcerted him or whether he just missed his leap. Anyway he cleared me completely and bounded off through the trees that held my companions. A volley of shots greeted him, and by the time I managed to disentangle myself and get up, his dying growls were just ending. “He may not be dead yet, Ted,” Singh called out. “Don’t come down from your tree until I tell you to.” Ah, so they thought I was still up in the tree! I couldn’t think of a good answer, so I waited until Ho Ram and the beaters came up before approaching the kill. What had they seen? After we’d admired the leopard, taken pictures, and the two doctors had argued over who had inflicted which of the many wounds that had killed the poor beast, Singh turned to me. “You only fired once, Ted. What happened?” “This gun,” I growled. “The left barrel won’t fire.” He looked at my fowling piece, its left hammer still back in full cock. “You must have pulled the right trigger again. It’s easy to do when you’re excited. Remember, you’re not used to a double gun.” “Me pull the right trigger twice?” I just about exploded. “What kind of hunter do you think I am?” Ho Ram came up and engaged Dr. Singh with a brief dialogue, looking at me with what I swear was pity in his eyes. “Why don’t you point your gun in the air and pull the left trigger now?” Singh asked. “Nothing will happen,” I said with some heat. “It will misfire - just as it did when the leopard was under my tree.” I raised the gun and pulled the left trigger. BOOM! Will I never learn to keep my big mouth shut?
THE END
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When anyone mentions bass lures we’re apt to think first of plugs. There is no gainsaying the fact that some plugs are among the deadliest killers in the book - on largemouths and smallmouths both. But at certain times and under certain conditions, it will pay us to widen our thinking to include
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other lures and other methods, particularly in these days of supereducated fish. In the old days, Gramp used to tie on a chunk of wood roughly the shape of a torpedo and, with its six sets of treble hooks, almost as deadly. He’d wind up and let drive from the bottom of the deck, and every bass in the vicinity would come running. But not any more. Bass today are choosy and suspicious. Sometimes they’ll take a plug; at other times they prefer smaller morsels which can be imitated only by the featherweight fly-rod lures. This fact hit me over the head a few years ago
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on a largemouth lake near my Massachusetts home. With three boat liveries and some hundred cottages around its sandy shore, this lake could not be called exactly virgin. But with a little help from the state, it still manages to supply some pretty fair bass. They are highly sophisticated, though. A week after the season opens they’ve seen about every plug on the market, and the survivors have learned to think twice before charging in to grab a wooden minnow. During the season in point, I had not been exactly fortunate. In two trips out I had connected with one undersize bass, and this warm, humid afternoon promised little more success. I drifted over submerged weed beds; I paddled close to sunken logs and skirted lily pads, chucking plugs until my wrist ached. I told myself it was the weather - too muggy; a thunderstorm in the offing had put the fish down. I’d have believed it, too, if it hadn’t been for the old man in the green skiff. The skiff was battered and in need of paint. Its occupant looked battered, too, as if he’d
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weathered a lot of summer suns and driving rains and winds. He eased his craft up to a pile of halfsunken brush, whipped out a cast, and a second later drove his hook into an old mossback that busted clean out of the water. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t fished that same brush heap without a touch ten minutes before. When he had lifted a three-pound bigmouth over the side, I paddled up to see it - and him. It was then that I noticed he was using a fly rod. “Nice fish,” I said. “They’re in here,” he acknowledged. “You have any luck?” “No,” I said, “and I just fished that spot. Worked it over good.” He chuckled. “I seen you,” he said. “You wasn’t using one of these, though.” He held up a fuzzy white object that looked like a miniature dish mop. “These fish are smart,” he went on. “They don’t tackle a lot of things, but they think it’s safe to swaller a little old moth.” And to prove it, he help up another bass, almost a twin of the first. “I got this off the point - where you was fishing,” he added with needless lack of tact. I don’t know whether the old man correctly interpreted the bass’s reactions to his “little old moth” but he did have the answer to their
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wants. That very night I laid in a supply of fly-rod bugs and I have used them with good results on a wide variety of waters ever since. Bass-bugging is a sort of cross between dryfly and plug fishing. You want calm water, and the idea is to lay the bug as close to the target as possible, letting it lie there until the rings made by a quiet splash have died away. Then give it a little twitch - and pause again. After this initial maneuver, it’s a good idea to imitate the struggles of whatever creature the lure is supposed to represent. If it’s a moth, I try to make it flutter helplessly, just as a real moth would do. If I’m using a hair mouse, I give a little direction to its struggles - a desperate floundering toward the safety of a lily pad or log. The hair frog, on the other hand, moves confidently along with just enough commotion to attract any bass that may be lurking in the vicinity. In other words, since bass bugs have none of the built-in action of most modern plugs, the angler has to supply it with judicious twitches of the rod tip. This pin-point casting at pads, stumps, and boulders is a fascinating sport in itself, even when the fish aren’t hitting. If you’re feeling particularly proficient or venturesome, you can vary it by landing your lure on the bank or on a log and then jumping it into the water. This is extremely effective if it comes off, for bass frequently lie in wait for just such happenings and are quick to take advantage of them. If successful, it is guaranteed to awe any fishing partner; if not, it’s best to maintain a dignified silence while he rows to shore and you disengage the barb from its desperate hold on a tree. Once in a while, chance turns such an accident into victory. One day on a Canadian bass lake I flung a reckless cast that draped my hair mouse on a dead branch overhanging the water. As it swung there four or five inches above the surface, a sizable smallmouth engulfed it in a mighty leap and continued on over the branch to free the line. “I thought there was a bass in there,” I said modestly when the battle was over. “Oh,” my companion replied acidly, “I had an idea you were after a flying fish.” Sometimes a bass will nail the bug almost as
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it strikes the water. At other times he’ll take it as it lies motionless upon the surface and, again, not until you have started it struggling toward the boat. But it’s always best to be ready the instant the lure touches the water, for with bass you never know. Bass bugs come in a number of shapes and sizes, and each season there are more new ones. There are bugs fashioned to look like insects, bugs which resemble mice and frogs, and bugs which have no living counterparts anywhere on earth. And they all take fish. Natural action seems to be the main factor in the effectiveness of bass bugs, with size and color following in that order. For ease and accuracy in casting, the bug should be as streamline as possible; beware of the ultra-fluffy creation with its consequent air resistance. It should be light, too, with what little weight there is concentrated into a small, compact body. Anyone who has tried to cast a weighted fly knows how difficult and unpleasant a task it is. For the same reasons, anything that tends to lighten and streamline a bass bug makes for easier casting. The deer-hair creations are particularly good; they cast like bullets and have the added advantage of great buoyancy, which is very important. Bass bugs, to be successful, should ride high in the water. Cork, of course, also combine lightness with buoyancy, and many fine bugs are made of this material. But keep away from those tied with large feathers for wings and tails. As to color, my own favorites are black, red and white, and green. Why a black lure should be so effective I have never understood. But it is, both in plugs and bugs, by day or by night. Any of the other color schemes - yellow, green and yellow, and so on, will also take fish when they’re feeding. I mentioned the difficulties of casting heavy lures on a fly rod, and it may as well be admitted that the best fly-rod bugs are not so simple nor so pleasant to cast as a dry fly. They can’t be, by their very nature, but improvements in tackle have changed the picture considerably in recent years. Formerly, people thought that any big rod would fill the bill as a bass rod. By this they meant a 9 ½ - foot, 7-ounce stick. Such a rod will serve the
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purpose, it is true, but it is by no means best for bugging. Length in a rod is no longer a prime consideration. Formerly, a rod had to be long to counteract its extreme whippiness, and to exert sufficient leverage to tire a fish. The larger the fish, the longer the rod - which is the reason for the twelve-foot salmon rods of olden times. Rod makers today can build any action you want, from soft to dry fly, into a seven-foot stick. Modern methods can pack immense power into a few feet of bamboo, steel, or plastic, with correspondingly light weights. A short rod is much easier to handle and far less tiring to use. Bass-bugging calls for a special sort of rod. You’re casting a comparatively heavy lure and one which, at best, creates some air resistance. Therefore, your rod must have plenty of backbone. But your casting rhythm is slower in this kind of fishing - so you don’t want too fast an action, which you frequently get in a stiff rod. After considerable looking around, I have finally acquired what I consider the ideal bassbug rod. It is eight feet long, weighs just under six ounces, and has an action that starts right down at the grip. I can cast all day with this rod without laming my arm, and it will subdue any fish I am likely to encounter. In fact, I’ve used it frequently for heavy striped bass in salt water. A rod like this needs a heavy line to bring out its action. At first I used an H-C-H, but I soon found that for throwing bugs the best line is a torpedohead or quick-taper line with plenty of weight up forward. By cutting off a few feet of running line, I have added several yards to my casts. The first twenty feet or so should be greased, of course, as in dry-fly fishing. I use a nine-foot leader, tapering to 2X, and I shouldn’t care to go any finer. Bass hit with a terrific wallop, and besides having to stand this initial strain, the leader frequently comes in for the additional abuse of rubbing on roots and rocks. I don’t think bass are as gut-shy as trout, anyway. As for the actual casting, the secret lies in slowing your rhythm. Allow more than the usual amount of time on your back cast and this, together with the heavy line and the stiff action,
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will enable you to shoot the bug through the air in good shape on your forward cast. The heavier the lure, the longer you should wait on your back cast. It’s a bit trying at first to a person used to whipping out a gossamer dry fly, but with practice one soon gets the feel of the slower rhythm. You don’t need to cast far, anyway. I’ve taken many a bass within twenty feet of the boat. Accuracy is what counts - accuracy and a deliberate, silent approach. Bass are tough, belligerent critters, but they can be spooked as quickly as a trout. If you can see them, they can see you, and at such times they will seldom take your lure. Once on a Cape Cod pond, a companion and I were drifting along beside a weed bed when, looking over the side, we saw three big bass fanning below us. We drew away a respectable distance and cast to them, but all our attempts failed. They would drift leisurely up to our lures and then back away and slant into the depths again. Finally, after marking the spot, we left. We waited for nearly an hour and then came back, easing the boat cautiously toward shore from the deep water. A full forty feet away we stopped and flung a cork frog to the edge of the pads. On the second cast a 4 ½ - pound smallmouth shot up from the depths and took the frog. The first bass bugs came out quite a few years ago. Even before that the bass boys were using wet flies which looked like outsize lures for trout. I came across half a dozen in my dad’s desk among them a Parmachene Belle, something that resembled a Dark Montreal, and a third I later identified as a Lord Baltimore. The moths had done a job on them. The gut snell, an abomination with which old-time flies were tied, had let go on a couple, but just for fun I tried out the rest that summer in Maine and found they’d still take bass. One day on the St. Croix River I hooked seventyeight bass on these old flies before the snell on that last one finally gave up. Streamers are killers, too. The Supervisor, for instance. Ditto Dark Tiger, a red-and-white bucktail, Green Ghost, Black Ghost, Mickey Finn, and Warden’s Worry. To make wet flies or streamers even more
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effective, try adding a small gold or nickel spinner ahead of them. The flash of the spinner often attracts bass that might have overlooked the fly alone, or else it gives them that extra urge to hit it. This works well in rough water, too. Up on Sunapee lake in New Hampshire a friend and I were fishing streamers along the shoreline. A heavy chop came up and the action of the waves seemed to hold our lures near the surface. Partner put a gold spinner just ahead of the fly. This sank the lure and he began to take fish. I followed his lead and we caught bass off the windy shore till our wrists ached. And don’t overlook dry flies in your fly-rod fishing for bass. This, of course, is something like bugging except that it enables you to use your lightest rod and finest tackle. A friend of mine and I go frequently to the Sudbury River, near home, to fish for bluegills and crappies with dry flies. Toward dusk the water is alive with feeding panfish rippling on all sides of the boat. One evening as I drifted a McGinty idly along the quiet current, a big bulge suddenly boiled the water beneath it and at the prick of the No. 10 hook a bass somersaulted into the air. It would be hard to say which was the more surprised, the bass or I. I had a three-ounce rod and a 4X leader and by the time that fish came alongside where I could boat him I knew I’d been in a battle. Since then I’ve gone out with bushy flies - Wulffs and bivisibles on No. 8 hooks - and have taken a number of bass on them. And once in Ontario I had another experience which taught me that bass will take a dry fly readily. This was a muskie trip, and fly fishing was far from my thoughts. Then one evening as I wandered along the shore of the lake just before dusk, I happened to notice the dimpling rise of a feeding fish in a little cove. I didn’t know what it was but I intended to find out. I had a fly rod in camp but no dry flies. Then I remembered an old rusty creation in the band of a hat in my duffel bag. I ran back to camp and dug it out - a weird-looking red-and-white affair. I grabbed my fly rod and sped back to the cove. I greased the fly with mosquito dope and made a hurried cast. The heavy leader landed the fly with a splash but,
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even so, it had hardly touched the water before a slashing rise swept it out of sight. The line came taut and at the same instant a smallmouth bass shot out of the depths and tail-walked across the cove. After that I had a new hobby in the evening - roaming the shoreline with my fly rod, casting at likely-looking spots, and trying to locate some rising fish. A while ago I moved to a town on the outskirts of Boston. A river, rising miles inland, flows through suburban towns, under busy highways, and winds at length through the city itself to pour its waters into Boston Harbor. It is a river famed in history; its placid surface once mirrored the hulls of British men-of-war, and Paul Revere rowed across it on a memorable April night. Poets have hymned its beauty in a former day but at present it is an urban stream, flanked by factories, and sadly polluted in its lower reaches. Consequently, I was a bit startled when a new acquaintance told me there were bass in its waters a scant five miles from Boston’s City Hall. I must have looked my surprise. “Come out someday and I’ll show you,” he said. More out of curiosity than with the expectation of catching a bass, I went with him on a July afternoon. We put his auto-top boat in beside a bridge which shook to the roar of traffic. My friend screwed an outboard motor to the transom and we chugged into the river, threading our way through a procession of motor boats, canoes, paddle boats, and a couple of police craft. Gradually we drew away to quieter waters where here and there were grassy islands. Opposite one of these, my friend cut his motor. “Toss your bug near that sunken tree,” he said. I had on a hair frog and I dropped it between two forked limbs. Chug! The rise was sharp and explosive as a green form lanced out. Wonderingly, I played the bass to the boat and looked up into my companion’s twinkling eyes. “Believe me now?” he asked. I nodded humbly. That afternoon on fly-rod bugs and streamers, he and I took and released twenty-two largemouth bass. THE END
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The kid grabbed a .22 and snapped off a round. It missed the target and sandbags behind it, and began ricocheting madly
This was the big night. The boys had received their last lessons in dry firing. Tonight they’d use live bullets. The range was set up in a brickand-concrete building, and as the instructors distributed rifles and target ammunition they cautioned their youthful charges against any careless shooting that might endanger the lives of those in the room. The very words of caution seemed to give Dick Beesley an idea. Grabbing a .22, he snapped off a round that missed the target and the sandbags behind it. With nothing to check its passage, the bullet whined back and forth between the ceiling, floor, and walls until its course was spent. Miraculously no one was touched by its wild flight. Shocked silence followed. Art Hotz told the boys to stack their rifles in the rack and return to their seats. Then he stood the culprit before him. That was the beginning of the end of one dramatic episode in the life of a blue-eyed, tousled-haired youngster who stayed on intimate terms with trouble. Dick Beesley was born in Lincoln, Nebr., on
August 31, 1939. Shortly afterward his family moved to Cuba, a small town in western New York, where he lived as a normal baby until a few weeks after his third birthday when fate took its first swipe at him. He went under with polio which sapped strength from legs that were just beginning to grow sturdy and firm. The dread disease struck when his family was packing to move to Newport, Tenn., and Mrs. Beesley had to stay behind with Dick almost two months before he could be moved. He made the trip on a bed set up in the back seat of the family’s car. In the face of this first adversity, Dick showed amazing will power for his age. For a whole year he massaged and worked out his leg muscles until they were strong enough to support him. By March 1943 he had almost regained the full use of his legs when he went to visit his grandparents in Indiana. Despite physical awkwardness that was a hang-over from polio, Dick tried to do everything his playmates did. He kept up with the boys in the neighborhood, too, until he fell out of a tree and broke his neck. The neck brace the doctors locked him in might have curbed the activities of almost anyone, child or adult, but it was only an added challenge to this kid who didn’t want to be licked. He graduated from being just active
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to doing the impossible - trying all sorts of physical feats that would have multiplied the gray hairs of his father and mother if they’d known about them. Eventually they found out when, while still in his brace, Dick slipped off a rain spout he was climbing, fell, and sustained a serious spinal injury. He went back to bed again, this time for months, while both his neck and spine were healing. He had plenty of time to look at picture books and have stories read to him, and soon he acquired an escort of heroes that included such robust characters as Daniel Boone, Meriwether Lewis, and Jim Bridger. Through them he found adventure in forests and on the plains. For the third time he learned to walk, at first with braces and then without them. But just at the age when the kids around him were absorbed in baseball, football, and other rugged team sports, Dick had to sit on the sidelines and watch. He didn’t sit long. He was too eager for recognition on his own, too anxious to be a part of the act. He left the sidelines for the fields and woods. He was eight years old when his family moved to Ashland, Nebr., a typical Midwestern town with a population of 1,700. It is a neighborly, friendly community like many others that depend on agriculture for their well-being. But it was there that Dick made his first black mark on the outdoors. He saved his pennies and bought an air rifle, then a .22, and spent hours stalking songbirds, breaking up the nests of pheasants and sparrows, and taking a toll of wild creatures at all seasons. Farmers around Ashland learned to watch him as they would a marauding hawk or coyote. Dick’s parents admit he was a problem both at home and in school. Since he seemed to feel that he was an outsider, ignored by others, he devised all manner of sly tricks to attract attention. One was being either far ahead or far behind in his school work. He kept his teachers upset and his classmates in turmoil by picking
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at them. But the real problem he presented was not so much that he was mischievous or constantly playing pranks. Though he was by no means popular among them, he exerted a definite influence on youngsters of his own age. In time a whole pack of kids around town had BB guns and .22’s, and they not only played havoc with songbirds and game birds but were a constant threat to farmers and to themselves. That was the way things were in Ashland in 1948 when Art Hotz and one of his fishing partners, Lee Wagner, organized their first junior sportsmen’s club. Art had just sold his interest in a farm, had some spare time on his hands, and conceived the idea of the club. Lee agreed to help him set it up. In addition to having an interest in helping boys, these two outdoorsmen admitted to a little selfish element in their project. They wanted to improve the community’s fishing and hunting. But there had been a few minor accidents involving boys and guns, and no one, including parents, had made any real effort to put the kids on the right track so far as guns and fishing rods were concerned. In organizing their junior club, limited to boys between 8 and 16, Hotz and Wagner agreed that several basic principles should be impressed on the budding hunters and fishermen. The most important, of course, were sportsmanship and conservation. By developing those virtues, it was hoped, the group would learn that living by the rules would greatly increase their fun outdoors, both then and in the future. Art avoided the lecture-and-study curriculum usually forced on kids in schools. His idea was to give capsuled doses of conservation generously sugar-coated with things boys like to do - things such as target shooting, tying flies, and camping. Art and Lee set up a program centering around just those activities, along with how to use fly and bait-casting rods, fishing, out-of-
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doors cooking, and other projects which call for the use of hands as well as heads. They ran into a problem right at the start. One day Lee Wagner was thumbing through a sheaf of applications for charter memberships to the club when he turned to Art and said, “I’ve got one here from a buckaroo named Dick Beesley.” “No,” Art exclaimed, “not the Beesley kid?” Lee put down his papers. “The same.” “What’ll we do?” Art asked. “What can we do?” Lee replied. “We’re looking for the tougher element, and if you asked me we’ve found it.” “Don’t misunderstand me,” Art said. “That boy needs so much attention we won’t have any left for the others. I’m sure he’ll disrupt the club. Can’t we postpone his admission?” “Discrimination is as bad as favoritism,” Lee said. “We’ll have to find some way to process the tough kids along with the rest.” Dick attended the first meeting accompanied by his father. Out of desperation, the club’s directors laid down some stringent rules, including no killing of songbirds, no destruction of trees and shrubs in the wild, no starting fires, even campfires, unless an adult was present. There were others embracing clubroom deportment. The 48 boys who attended that first meeting nodded gravely and agreed to live by the edict. Even young Beesley. Probably because Art and Lee kept a sharp eye open for trouble, the club’s first few meetings went smoothly. There were reports that Dick, of all the kids, was still reducing the songbird population around town, but no one was ready or willing to prove it. While attending the meetings Dick was a model boy. He learned quickly, and was unusually deft with his hands. In the fly-tying class he made almost flawless patterns before the other kids got through the beginner stages. He got off base occasionally, like the time he bragged that his mother and
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father had given him a fly-tying outfit which the parents of other members couldn’t afford. Dick’s parents were as helpless as Hotz and Wagner in keeping the boy’s exuberance under control. Their son’s afflictions had understandably developed in them a sense of overprotection in sheltering their boy from happenings that wouldn’t have bothered ordinary youngsters. After all, you can’t whale the daylights out of a boy with a “soft back.” Because Dick realized that he was more or less immune from punishment, he began to make trouble. Some club members resented his bragging and said so. Lee stopped the swift exchange of words, but he couldn’t foresee that the dissension would carry over the school days from one meeting to the next. In time most of the members became antagonistic to him, so Dick slipped back into his old role of defensive bullying. When he showed up at the next meeting he was smirking with defiance. Art glanced at Lee. “Keep a tight rein tonight,” he warned. “I smell trouble.” The boys had been given their pre-range instructions, and it was on the night they were to use live ammunition for the first time that Dick Beesley pulled his stunt of jerking up the rifle and firing it wildly at the target. Art stood him before the group. “You’re one of the brightest boys in this class,” he said, “and a natural leader. You could be a real help in building this organization, but instead you’re tearing it down - with stunts like the one you just pulled.” “Aw - it didn’t hurt nobody, did it?” Dick shrugged. “No, it didn’t then, and it won’t the next time either,” Art replied. “Because there won’t be any next time. Get your things and go home.” Beesley began to cry, and pulled on his coat. “I’ll be back,” he replied, tears streaming down his cheeks, “as soon as my mom and dad hear about this.”
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It was the only time Art ever saw the kid shed a tear. But in spite of his painful background, the next few weeks were the most miserable Dick ever experienced. At school the kids laughed at him, and shut him out of every activity. They made him an outcast, and it was the worst punishment they could possibly have given him. Unable to take it any longer, he ran away from home. His father and mother were frantic. A search was organized immediately, and the local adult sportsmen’s club, the Boy Scouts, and even the kids in the junior club participated in it. But none of the searching parties found him. He showed up late at night on the second day, hungry and bedraggled. Even today he won’t tell why he left home, where he was, or what he did. Dick’s mother went to see Art Hotz. “I know my boy has caused plenty of trouble,” she said, “but it’s his suppressed energy boiling over. The only thing he talks about is this club. He’s learned his lesson. I think if you’ll take him back he’ll be a different boy from now on.” “We’re afraid of him,” Art admitted frankly. “He’s got a special knack for keeping everyone upset.” “It’s only because he’s lacked proper instruction in guns and in the outdoors,” Mrs. Beesley insisted. “Isn’t that what the club’s for?” Art talked it over with his partner, and they agreed to give Dick a chance to redeem himself. They didn’t ask the boy to make any promises. They just put him to work, and gave him a part in the very next program. In a way this program was a momentous event. On the evening of November 10, 1949, the kids kicked off Wildlife Conservation Week in Nebraska by inviting to their meeting such important guests as Dr. Herbert B. Kennedy, Vice Chairman of the Game, Forestation, and Parks Commission; Paul T. Gilbert, Executive Secretary of the Commission and chief
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conservation officer; the local mayor, editor, sports writers, and radio announcers. The governor sent his personal representative. The boys put on the program themselves. Dick’s part was the presentation of copies of America’s Conservation Pledge to the notables who were there and a short talk on its importance to all of us. His recitation was letter perfect; he performed like a veteran. Art and Lee Wagner thought they had their problem well in hand, but it wasn’t long before Dick broke out in a new place. Spring painted the hills and valleys of Nebraska and school turned out. A couple of weeks later the club made a fishing trip to the Platteview Lakes, near Louisville, not far away. The boys spread out along the shoreline with their fishing equipment, and for a while concentrated on trying to hook fish. But the strikes were slow, and it wasn’t long before they stuck their cane poles in the bank or laid down their rods with baited hooks still in the water, and gathered under a near-by tree to play games. The first cork that bobbled wasn’t Dick’s, but he saw it first and went after it. Though its owner begged to make the catch himself, Dick shoved him away and landed the fish. For this unsporting act the outing’s directors sent him to the car and he stayed in it until the day was over. He promised to do better. The next trip was to Duncan, and on it Dick devoted himself entirely to being a nuisance. Instead of fishing, he wandered up and down the river bank, threw rocks in the water, and worried the other boys who were trying to have fun. Art caught him flipping pebbles at a buddy’s cork. “Why aren’t you fishing?” he demanded. “Because the big ones won’t bite,” Dick said sullenly, “and you won’t let us keep the little ones.” “Haven’t we told you often enough,” Art explained, “that the baby fish you put back
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soon grow into big fish that are a lot more fun to catch?” “Then I’ll wait for ‘em to grow,” Dick said. Art sent him to the cabin and went to find Lee Wagner. “So far as I’m concerned,” he said, “we’re through with that kid.” “Let’s don’t give up on him just yet,” Lee suggested. “It’s boys like him we really had in mind when we started this club.” When they returned to Ashland, Art made a last, desperate attempt to salvage young Beesley. He took him on walks in the woods, fished for catfish with him in a near-by creek, and had long talks that included some adroitly worded lessons in conservation. The club made its third fishing trip a few weeks later, going after catfish on the Platte River. To add to the intrigue of the outing, they decided to camp overnight at the head of a wide sandbar flanking the river bend. When the boys unloaded their gear and began putting up tents, Dick threw his tent, sleeping bag, and other equipment in a pile and ran down the bar to put out his lines just in front of the campfire site. Art looked at Lee Wagner and shook his head. But Lee grinned. “Come to think of it,” he said, “the kid’s smart. He’s got the choice catfish set. Now he can put up his tent while the others are stringing out their poles.” Then it happened! One of the boys ran down the bank yelling, “Dick’s got one!” Like a cloud of mosquitoes, 30 kids converged on the point where Beesley had set out his lines. Dick waded through them, brought a flapping nine-inch catfish into shallow water, and wrapped his fingers around it. The bite of the hook had been thin and he easily worked it out of the wide mouth. Art and Lee stood in the background while Dick looked at his catch. Art opened his mouth to suggest that the fish was too small to keep when suddenly, with the other boys screaming
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excitedly in his ears, Dick threw the fish back. “Not big enough,” he explained. Art and Lee shook hands at the rim of the campfire. From that moment, Dick Beesley became one of the most valuable members of the club. Though he still wore his inferiority complex, he did more than his share of the work and tried in every way to outdo the other boys. He insisted on going along when the club removed some 30,000 game fish from drying potholes and sloughs in the vicinity of Ashland. It was on one of those trips, while he was carrying a tub of fish, that Dick again injured his back. But this time it wasn’t too serious - he just overextended himself. He couldn’t do enough. He took part in the planting of 1,000 trees at the Boy Scout camp near Fremont, and earned his tree-planting badge three years in a row. Last year, Dick’s family moved to Beatrice, a few miles south of Lincoln. Although he wanted to keep his membership in the original club at Ashland, Dick became active in the Beatrice Sportsmen’s Club and immediately joined in the project of erecting conservation signs all over Gage County. He’s 14 now and following in the footsteps of his dad who for many years has been with the Soil Conservation Service. In his backyard he’s put up a bird-feeding station and several squirrel boxes. He promotes and helps to plant shelter belts, which he calls “apartments for birds,” and spends most of his waking hours thinking and talking conservation. He’s a terrific shot with a .22, and is working for a place on the Beatrice rifle team. He supplemented his outdoor activities in 1951 by taking care of 100 Rhode Island Red chickens, and in 1952 raised a Hereford calf. Despite all this activity, Dick continued to have physical troubles. His back was operated on in May and November, 1951. He was seriously ill just before Christmas that year, and
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had to have a third operation during the holiday season. But each time fate throws him another curve ball, he makes the catch cheerfully and looks forward to the time when he’ll be O.K. again. That, to date, is the story of Dick Beesley. But it doesn’t end there. There has evolved from the experience of this one boy and this one club an even bigger story and, justly enough, young Beesley has played a star role in it. Dr. Kennedy was so impressed by the part Dick played in the Ashland meeting and in the presentation ceremonies of the Conservation Pledge that he invited Art Hotz to Omaha to meet the directors of the Woodmen of the World, a fraternal and community-service organization with about 5,000 lodges and nearly 500,000 members in 44 states. Art told the group’s officials the story of Dick Beesley and the Ashland club, with the result that Farrar Newberry, President of the Woodmen of the World, agreed to place the facilities of the society at Art’s disposal to promote the junior conservation club idea which had done so much to help one boy make a comeback. Several top executives of the Woodmen of the World went to work on the project immediately. E. E. (Blue) Howell, an All-America football player of Nebraska, ‘28, and later head coach at Kansas State Teachers and backfield coach at both L.S.U. and Yale, was assigned to direct the Boys of Woodcraft Sportsmen’s Club national movement. Soon Art was brought to Omaha to collaborate with Howell in organizing these clubs all over America. W.O.W. provided funds to buy each new club a membership in the National Rifle Association, to purchase the first supply of ammunition for practice, and to put up bond for the rifles furnished each club by N.R.A. Money was also allocated for fly-tying kits, flags, copies of the Conservation Pledge, and a summer camp in each state where the organization warranted it. And no strings attached. All that a club had to
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do was agree to meet at least once a month and to build toward good conservation and good citizenship. I attended two Boys of Woodcraft meetings in Nebraska, one at North Platte and the other at Lincoln. Each was conducted by the boys themselves, and they opened the meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, a raucous verse of America, and the Conservation Pledge. The ceremonies were solemn and inspiring. After that, talks on outdoor topics were made by the boys, and invited guests gave simple, interesting addresses on such subjects as soil, gun safety, and raising fish for stocking. The boys then divided themselves into groups for instructions in fly tying and shooting. While I was watching a rifle match between the Lincoln and York clubs one of the instructors told me that a few months before the kids challenged their dads to a contest with the .22’s. They trimmed the old men, but good. Later the groups reconvened to view wildlife films, which ran the program to completion in a full two hours. No B.O.W. meeting is supposed to last longer than that. The Boys of Woodcraft program has grown amazingly fast in three years. From the one club in Ashland in 1949, the organization has expanded to 30 clubs with a membership of 1,006 in Nebraska, and a total of 447 clubs with 23, 724 members all over the United States. New clubs are being organized each month. Art is looking forward to his first Youth Conservation Congress. Where it will be held and when hasn’t been decided, but kids from all over America will participate in it. Art expects there’ll be a lot of converted Dick Beesleys present to swap experiences and discuss future plans for working toward a complete and satisfying fulfillment of the Conservation Pledge.
THE END
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HOW TO HUNT
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DEER CONTINUED FROM LAST ISSUE...
7. Group Hunting While hunting alone, I have often wished for a companion who could circle ahead and intercept the deer that I was trailing or who could replace me on the trail so that I could make a stalk on some position which seemed particularly promising. This idea of companionship is good, but it is difficult to find a hunting companion who will be a help rather than a hindrance. Two people in the woods will double the amount of scent and noise and unless they are equally used to the woods and to each other’s hunting methods, they soon become two individual hunters instead of a team. Unless they work, as a team, the chances of either of them sighting a deer depends more on luck than it does on hunting skill. I have had a few companions that were able to hunt with me and we have shared many a pleasant and successful trip. Others I have hunted with in an effort to give some
hunting experience. There are several ways in which two hunters may work as a team in deer hunting. They may go into the woods and travel a short distance apart in an effort to stalk feeding or resting deer. If they start a deer, they may separate, with one man on the trail and the other off to one side so that he may sight the deer if it should turn in an effort to evade the trailer. They should keep in touch with each other so that as soon as the deer’s course may be predicted, one of the men can circle and cut in ahead of the deer and intercept it on its expected course. This is where most hunting teams become individual hunters. If the deer fails to show up at the expected place at the expected time, the watcher is apt to start hunting aimlessly instead of trying to intercept the deer at another point or rejoin his companion in order to determine the deer’s new course. If two hunters are able to contact each other occasionally, they may be
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able to alternate on the trail and may hunt all day without too much fatigue to either. A large part of my hunting has been done in a farming country where deer were in patches of woods which varied in size from several thousand acres down to practically nothing. When hunting the smaller of these wood patches, one man would start and trail the deer, and his companion would watch the place where the animal could be expected to leave the woods. In this type of hunting, the man who jumps and trails the deer should not try to stalk or to intercept the animal, but should confine his attention to the trail unless he should overtake the deer and have a good chance for a shot. When the trailer hunts as he would if alone, he is apt to cause the deer to change its course enough so that his companion will have no chance to prevent the animal from reaching another piece of woods and prolonging the hunt. Of course, when hunting with a group that is large enough to cover all probable crossing places, it is not so important for the trailer to stick to his trailing. In such cases it is probably better to organize a “drive� which is a different type of hunting and requires different tactics. While hunting with one or two companions, it is desirable for them to have a plan and for each man to play his part in that plan until the deer’s actions prove it to be useless and the hunters have a chance to meet and devise another plan. Nothing discourages a trailer more than to follow a trail to the place where a man has been stationed only to find that he is gone. Nothing is more exasperating to a watcher than to stay at a stand for hours only to find that the deer has taken some other direction and that nobody has informed him of the change. The hunters must work as a team or they will lose confidence in each other and in that case it is better that they hunt individually. Lack of planning has turned many a hunt which might have been an enjoyable and successful affair into a series of frustrating events. I joined in one of these hunts one Thanksgiving morning
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when the four men involved should have been able to bag four deer. The actual results were somewhat different. There had been about a foot of snow on the ground for two days, making tracking conditions almost ideal, but the hunters had had very little luck in finding deer or their tracks. There were quite a few deer in the area, but they were not in their usual haunts. I had not been able to hunt during this period, but had kept in touch with the overall situation by contact with hunters and by checking the roads for tracks. I had decided that some of the deer had taken refuge in a piece of woods which had not been hunted since the last snowfall. This piece of woods extended north and south for about two miles and was at no place over a half-mile in width. Swamps, with considerable water, bounded the tract on the north and about half of the west side. Wide fields separated it, in most places, from woods to the east and southeast. Most of the deer which used this tract were those which ordinarily ranged in the woods to the east and southeast, and if started, could be expected to travel in an easterly direction. There were three trails that deer usually used when traveling to and from this tract. One was located at the extreme north end and crossed a shallow swamp or meadow. Another crossed some two hundred yards of open fields at a point about a half-mile south of the northerly crossing. The third, the best protected and the probable choice of the deer, was near the south end of the tract. There was nothing to prevent the deer from traveling to the southwest, except their instinctive urge to stay on, or return to, familiar territory. With one man on each of these three trails and a fourth in the woods to start the deer and to keep them moving, there was a situation in which someone was almost sure to have a chance to do some shooting. I was eating breakfast when three men called to ask my opinion about the probable location of the deer and to see if I would hunt with them. I gave them my idea about where the deer were
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located and, instead of waiting for me, they started for the woods with no plan except to see if my idea was right. When I found that they had gone on without me, I hurried along on their trail with the hope of overtaking them before they could alarm the deer and destroy an almost perfect setup. I had only covered about half the necessary distance when I heard a series of rifle shots that sounded like the start of a small war. At least fifteen shots were fired in the initial fusillade and after a few minutes another series of eight or ten shots. It didn’t seem possible that deer could be the target for all of this shooting unless they had been caught in the open and I knew there was a large field about where the shooting seemed to be located. When I came to the opening, I expected to see dead deer all over the place, yet all that was there were tracks of the three men heading in a straight line across the five hundred yards of open country towards a small pine-covered knoll at the edge of the opposite woods. Tracks and an occasional empty shell in the snow showed where the men had first sighted the deer and opened up at a range of about five hundred yards. The only gun in the party which was capable of throwing a bullet that distance with any chance of a hit was a .30/30, and with such a gun equipped with open sights, and sighted in for two hundred yards or less, any fatal hit would be the result of an accident. As it was, the initial shooting failed to drive the deer to cover and they permitted the men to approach to a point about two hundred yards nearer and to fire the other eight or ten shots that finally caused the deer to take cover in the woods. When I came to the place where the last shooting had occurred, I decided that no deer had been killed and, since all of the others had apparently gone into the woods leaving all of the crossings open, that it was up to me to take all possible advantage of the situation. I would not have time to reach the crossing to the north in case the deer decided to use that route, so I
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headed for the nearer to the south. The contour of the land was such that I was able to approach without being seen to a point which was about seventy-five yards from the place where this trail emerged from the woods. When I reached a position where I was forced to expose myself, there was a doe standing in the field near the woods looking out over the crossing, apparently undecided about chancing the open territory. I shot her and, as she dropped, several other deer showed their flags as they retreated from the edge of the woods. I did not follow them, but did a quick job of woods dressing the dead doe and headed for the other southern crossing. I met another hunter who had been attracted by the shooting and we arrived in sight of the crossing in time to see three deer cross, but not in time to shoot at them. After a time I left the hunt and returned to the place where I had shot the doe, only to find that some other hunter had dragged her to his car and had gone. The first mistake which these men made was shooting at the deer when they were out of effective range. (The bullets from one of the guns, a .38/55, struck the snow at a point which was less than half the distance between the hunters and the deer.) Their second mistake was their all following the tracks instead of trying to get into position on their probable course. (I found later that one of the men abandoned the chase before they ever took up the trail because he had used all of his ammunition.) I made two mistakes. The first was in shooting the doe. This was the natural thing to do, yet had I known, as they did, the number of deer involved, I would have waited until all of them had entered the field before shooting. My second mistake was in dressing my deer before heading for the next crossing. This action delayed me long enough so that the deer crossed before I could get into position. The procedure these men should have followed is obvious. On sighting the deer,
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they should have separated, leaving one man to stalk the animals in an attempt to reach a position where his bullets might be effective. If he failed in his attempt, he should have followed their trail, driving them into the range of his companions, who should have placed themselves in position which would intercept the deer. Lack of a plan, lack of team work and a selfish desire to be in on the expected kill, spoiled this hunt. None of the men involved were able to kill a deer except for my doe, and some other hunter received the credit for that kill. Planning for a hunt of this sort should be done as soon as a deer has been located in a particular patch of woods or as soon as tracks are discovered which indicate the presence of deer in the area. The first thing hunters want to know is where the deer will go, if started. This is hard to predict if the animal is a lone buck, but it is better than an even chance that he will join a doe at the first opportunity. A doe’s probable course may be pre-determined, if the hunters have a fair knowledge of the range of the deer in that vicinity and of the trails which they usually follow. There is always a good chance of error which should be corrected as soon as the deer’s actions are revealed. For instance, it might be assumed at the beginning of a hunt that the deer being followed are deer which belong on a range which is mostly to the northeast of the deer’s location. But after following the deer for a time, we find from the course of their trail that they are heading for a range that is southeast of the area. There is no object in following these deer until the watchers have been changed to a new position where they may intercept the deer on their new course. It is usually safe to leave a doe’s track long enough to warn the watchers of any change of plan, for doe seldom travel far unless followed. A lone buck is a different proposition and will travel for greater distances regardless of the hunter’s actions.
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Three of us found the tracks of a doe and a young buck where they had crossed a north and south road. I knew of such a pair of deer which had a range in the area west of that road. As these deer were headed north-east, I assumed that they were those particular deer and that they would recross the road if followed. There were two crossings north of the place where the deer had crossed, one about a halfmile and the other nearly a mile away. I decided that these deer would not use the nearer of the two crossings because it was close to a house and was seldom used except at night and then mostly by deer which were traveling to the east. I sent my companions to the other crossing without giving them any reasons for thinking deer would use that place. I followed the two deer through the woods where they crossed the road within fifty feet of the car of my companions. They had gone to another crossing which the deer would have used if they had continued on their northeast course. My failure to share my intimate knowledge of these deer resulted in the failure of any of us to obtain a shot. There is the possibility that I was wrong in my deductions and that the presence of my companions prevented the deer from proceeding on the northeast course. Another time, a similar pair of deer were seen in a field near a road and I was asked to help hunt them. There was no snow on he ground so the actual tracking was out of the question. They had entered a fairly narrow piece of woods and I thought that if a man zigzagged along and did not hurry, the deer might be nudged along much the same as if trailed. I had no knowledge of these deer and the only facts that I could use to predict their course were that they had not crossed the road and that they had apparently arrived from the north. The woods which they had entered extended to the east for about three-quarters of a mile, made a right-angle turn around a pond, and then extended north for about the same distance to a
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road which separated this woods from a much larger wooded area to the north. There were two family groups of deer in the area to the south and one to the east, and I was uncertain of the number to the north. These deer could belong in any of these areas, but as they had apparently arrived from the north, I decided that they would return to the north. None of the others would agree with my deductions, yet one of the men agreed to travel through the woods to a point where I would be waiting unless he or one of the others shot the deer before that time. The other men would cover the east and south crossings in case I was wrong. Two hours later I shot a spike-horn buck as it tried to follow a doe across the road into the larger piece of woods. The doe reached safety before I could shoot. I will admit that there was a lot of guesswork in my deciding the probable course of these deer, but I was positive I was right. I stayed at my post and killed the deer, while the others who had covered the other crossings had gone home long before my shot. I was hunting with three companions when we came to the track of a doe where it crossed a road and entered a large piece of woods. Deer were scarce that year or we would not have bothered with that one, for the piece of woods which it had entered was a very difficult place to hunt. There was a good tracking snow, so the deer could be followed; nevertheless, the woods were such that it would be nearly impossible to predict where the deer would stop to observe its back trail. The under-brush was also so thick that it would be difficult to obtain a clear shot anywhere except at a few small clearings which the deer would probably avoid. Because of the size and shape of the woods, it would be impossible to drive the deer from there without the aid of a small army of hunters. I predicted that the deer would stay in the woods until near sunset unless it followed its back trail as soon as it was started. I picked the place where the deer would cross a road if it
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should decide to leave the woods. I refused to follow the track until I had the assurance of the one hunter in whom I had confidence that he would cover that crossing from sunset to dark. One of the others accompanied me into the woods, the fourth man circling to a place where he thought the deer might cross a woodroad. I saw the deer several times that day, but the man whom I had stationed on the road killed it after sunset at the crossing I had predicted the deer would use at that time. It is unusual to be correct in making long range predictions such as this unless the hunter is familiar with the actions of the particular deer which he is following, the deer’s range and its feeding grounds. In the above case, I had followed the same deer in the same area several days before and I was quite sure it would leave the large piece of woods for a favored feeding ground as soon as it was hungry. In order to reach this feeding area, it would have to cross a road, and the crossing which I selected was the most probable of the ones which crossed the road. One of the most discouraging hunts I have ever experienced occurred when I trailed two deer all day long, knew where they were going for a half-hour before they arrived, was unable to get a companion in position for the kill and was unable to do the job myself. After almost a day of frustration, I sent two men to cover a crossing and they let the deer pass, unseen, between them. When I arrived at the crossing, they joined me on the track long enough to determine the deer’s future intentions. This did not take long, but my companions were uncertain and would not go to the place which I had picked as the next crossing. I left them to follow the trail while I went to a gap in a stone wall which I thought the deer would use. It would be necessary for the deer to cross a small open field in order to reach this gap so I stationed myself about a hundred feet away where I could watch both field and gap. The deer came into sight about a hundred
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yards away, walking towards the gap. They approached at an angle and when they were about a hundred feet from me and about the same distance from the gap, I fired and missed. They broke into a run and I fired five more shots without a hit. Six shots and six misses at a distance of not over two hundred feet was the frustrating climax of a frustrating day. These incidents have all had does leading the chase. When it comes to predicting what a lone buck will do, we have a different proposition. In the first place, it is difficult to define a buck’s range, and, during the hunting season, he is seldom on that range but off hunting does. If the hunter runs across a buck which is away from his home range, but has not attached himself to some doe, he will probably head for his old range if started and if followed for any great distance. When I run across one of these ranging bucks, I consider myself lucky if I have the opportunity to sight him twice before he heads for home. By the time I am sure of his intentions, it is usually too late to contact a companion and try to get ahead of the deer. When followed on their home range, bucks usually travel greater distances between stops than does, usually traveling in the thickest and most diff cult parts of their range. When bucks are with does, they follow the does’ lead, and all the hunter must remember is that the buck is seldom at the head of the parade. Quite often bucks refuse to bed down with does, but go off by themselves for their daytime rest. It follows that if a hunter is able to place himself between one of these bucks and the nearest doe, he will have a good chance for a shot—if some other hunter can start the buck. Two companions and I were roaming the woods one morning, looking for deer or for tracks that we could follow. We came to a place where several deer had been feeding on the previous night. In checking the tracks, we saw where a large buck had left the other deer and headed south. I was quite sure that it would be an easy task to locate and hunt the
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does, but the buck’s track was a challenge we couldn’t resist, so we followed him in an effort to get a line on his intentions. We came to a twenty-acre field which the deer had skirted to the west. South of this field was a small but ideal bedding where we suspected the buck would be resting. One of my companions was a young man who had never shot a deer. Wishing to give him some experience, I stationed him at an open gate which was about midway in the fence that ran along the north edge of the field. His instruction were either to shoot the deer or to get out of the way and permit the deer to pass unless he wanted to get run over. I left the other man at the southwest corner of the field to cover the deer’s back track. I circled to the south so as to approach the deer’s probable location from the south. I did not see the deer when it left its bed, but two shotgun blasts followed and, after a time, a third. This told me that I had made the right moves. The young man did not hit the deer, but we all have a right to a touch of buck fever when we see a ten-point buck heading for the exact spot where we are standing. I doubt if he ever forgot that hunt. In this case I had made all of the right guesses. I had assumed that the buck would attempt to rejoin the does. (This is usually the case unless they have no further use for him. If that is the case, the buck would be seeking other does and would not bed down in the vicinity of the deer which he had left.) I had assumed that he would return to the place where he had left the other deer, either by the direct route across the field or by his back track. (This reasoning involved the assumption that the buck did not know the exact location of the other deer’s bed and that he must follow their tracks to them. If these deer had bedded in a place where their scent carried to the buck’s resting place, he would have gone directly to them and none of us would have had a chance for a shot.) Of course, if I had had any idea that the buck would not
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have returned to the other tracks, I would have used other tactics and would have attempted a cautious stalk to his resting place instead of merely trying to jump him out and into the range of my companions. There is a lot of guesswork involved in deer hunting, but it is surprising how many times the hunter is right, if he has a good knowledge of deer habits and of the country being hunted.
8. Other Hunting Methods
The driving of deer by large groups has always been popular and successful, but numerous objections to this method of hunting have caused the Maine Legislature to pass laws limiting the number of hunters participating in such a hunt. The object of the drive is for one group of hunters to drive the deer out of a particular piece of woods, or section of country, into the range of another group waiting to shoot them. In order to be successful, there should be enough drivers so that the area to be hunted, will be covered from side to side by men who are near enough together so that there will be little chance of failure to move the deer and prevent their cutting back. The watchers should be posted so as to cover all probable escape routes which the deer might be expected to use while fleeing from the drivers. It is obvious that it would require a small army of hunters in order to make a perfect drive in any sizeable piece of woods. Since these large groups are illegal, knowledge must be substituted for numbers by those hunters who care to hunt in this manner. Three men can drive quite a large piece of woods if they do not attempt to drive the deer in a direction other than they wish to travel, but try to nudge them along their natural course. Two men on watch can usually cover the most probable escape routes if the deer are not too much alarmed by their pursuers. Two more men may be added to the drivers, if they are available, and they will add to the ground that may be covered. Driving by a group of this size
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is legal in Maine at the present time. Excessive noise made by these large groups was responsible for a part of the public objection to this type of hunting. The object of this noise was to panic the deer so that they would run blindly instead of using strategy to avoid the drivers. This system might be successful in driving the true wilderness deer, but deer which have lived for years in constant contact with humans are not as easily panicked and the noise of the drivers gives them ample warning of the hunters’ intentions and an accurate picture of their location. These deer might be panicked momentarily, but this initial fright would not cause them to leave any large piece of woods before they have recovered and evaluated the situation. Their accurate knowledge of the drivers’ positions will enable them to circle the outside drivers or permit them to run between these men. Sometimes they are able to pick the probable course of these drivers so that they may remain perfectly motionless in some small thicket and permit the noisy drivers to pass on each side of them. The only real need for noise by these drivers is to keep them in line, also to keep them in touch with each other in the event a deer should try to pass between them, reducing the chance of hitting a companion while shooting at the deer. The center man on a drive should announce his position periodically so that others may adjust their position in relation to his location. In case one of the men jumps a deer, the entire line should shift so that the center of the line is on the deer’s course while the others are in a position to shoot or turn the deer if it should attempt to pass between them. These outside men should be quiet because nothing will turn a deer any quicker than for it to encounter an unexpected danger while it is trying to avoid a known one. The success or failure of this type of hunting depends on the participant’s knowledge of the wood and of the probable course which the deer will take when startled. The best way to obtain
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this knowledge is for the hunters to drive deer in an area until they are able to discern a definite pattern of action which may be a guide to future drives. This holds true in any type of hunting. The man that does not correct the mistakes which are learned from experience will never become a very successful hunter. I know of one piece of woods which has been driven many times by large groups of hunters and I have never known of a deer being killed there by the watchers. This woods is nearly four miles long and about a mile wide at the widest point. The drivers invariably drive from the south with the watchers stationed in open territory at the north end of the woods. If the deer should leave this piece of woods it would be necessary for them to cross nearly a mile of open country in order for them to reach the safety of another wooded area. As a result of this condition, the deer turn back before reaching the north edge of the woods, preferring to risk the drivers instead of the open country. Quite a few deer have been killed by these drivers, but none by the watchers. There is a place in the woods, about a mile from the north end, where nine out of ten deer which travel that woods pass through a grove of hemlocks where there is no underbrush and there is good visibility for a hunter. As far as I know, the organizers of these drives have never stationed a watcher at this place. The pattern is there, but none of the drivers seem to have noticed the possibilities of this place. Sometimes it is almost impossible to move a deer out of a piece of woods. I remember a small wooded area which usually held a deer. This cover was about two hundred yards wide and less than a half-mile long. One day two rabbit hunters with two dogs were planning to hunt it and another fellow and I decided that it would be a good time to try to shoot any deer which might be driven out by the dogs. He entered the woods with the rabbit hunters and I went to the north end where deer could be expected to go if started. The dogs started on a rabbit trail
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and the men drove the woods from the south. There were no deer ahead of the men when they reached my position and we decided that there had been none in the woods at that time. We went to a place near the south end where we might have a chance to shoot the rabbit and my companion met a deer face to face killing it with a charge of rabbit shot. The deer had stayed in that piece of woods with three men and two dogs for nearly three-quarters of an hour. This is an unusual case only because of the small size of the area hunted. On several occasions, I have entered woods which have just been hunted by drivers and have been able to start deer which evaded the drive. When a hunter decides to get his deer by waiting for it to come to him instead of going to the deer, he is apt to be in for a long wait, unless he has a good knowledge of the deer’s usual actions in the section of the country where he is hunting. Watching a well-traveled deer trail can be productive if there are other hunters in the woods who keep the deer on the move. Otherwise these trails are apt to be disappointing except for the possible chance that roving bucks might use them. If they are trails which are used by deer which are traveling to and from feeding and bedding areas, the hunter’s chances are good in the early morning and in the late afternoon. Before watching any trail or crossing place, he will do well to find out when and why the deer use that particular trail. I know of one feeding area which is used by ten or twelve different family groups of deer. This is an area of fields bounded on three sides by extensive woods and is the nearest area of this type of food for the deer which utilize these woods as their range. All deer located in the area north of these fields (usually four groups) use a trail that crosses a brook, in order to get to the fields from the wooded section of their range. On their return to the woods, they separate and some of the groups use a trail which crosses the brook about three hundred yards east of the first-mentioned crossing, while
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the others use a trail located nearly a half-mile to the west of the same crossing. The first trail would be an ideal place to watch in the late afternoon, yet would be totally unproductive in the early morning when the deer were returning by different routes. All three of these crossings are equally obvious to an experienced hunter, but unless the man knew of the habits of these deer, he could spend considerable time in watching any one of these places at the wrong time of day. Deer will often use a different trail when they are followed or driven than the one which they utilize while traveling unmolested. I have known of deer using all three of the above mentioned trails in both directions, when they were frightened by men or dogs. Feeding areas are probably the most productive places for a hunter to wait for deer. Patches of beech and oak trees, apple orchards, and clover patches or similar green vegetation are usually the more productive of these feeding areas, but any place where deer are known to feed may be watched with some chance of success. As a rule, individual groups of deer do not visit the same feeding area on successive nights, but move around their range with fair regularity, so that they return to a feeding area on every second, third or fourth night. If there are several of these groups in the area, each feeding place might be visited by different deer on each successive night. Some of these feeding areas are visited by deer quite early in the afternoon, while others are not visited until after dark. This difference is caused to a great extent by the distance between the feeding area and the bedding area and by the nature of the cover adjacent to the feeding area. The amount of moonlight also affects the feeding time of the deer. I know of an orchard which the deer visit almost every night during the fall and early winter. It is in sight of my former home where I had the opportunity to watch this spot from a
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distance. I have never seen a deer in that orchard in the daytime. I also know of a single apple tree which stands less than a half-mile from that orchard and I have seen and shot deer under this tree before sundown. The single tree is near the woods, which means safety, while it is necessary for deer to cross about two hundred yards of open country in order to reach the orchard. Naturally they wait for darkness before crossing this open area. The shooting of deer from an automobile is forbidden in most states, but the practice of driving along the roads until a deer is sighted, stopping the car, stepping to the side of the road and shooting at it is a common practice in many places. Deer are not particularly afraid of automobiles and these road hunters can usually drive quite near the animals without alarming them. In some sections where hunting is heavy, the act of stopping a car will cause the deer to retreat to safety in the woods, so it is often better to chance a long shot than to risk alarming the deer by a too close approach. Automobile hunters can cut their driving time and increase their chances of sighting a deer if they are able to recognize the places the deer are most likely to use at the time the hunter approaches them. Places where deer trails cross roads are probably the least productive to the road hunter, because, although he might sight a deer, he will seldom have the time to stop and leave his car before the deer is out of sight in the surrounding woods. Feeding areas are the finest spots to find deer; and if the road hunter concentrates on several of these places and visits them daily at feeding time, he is almost sure to sight a deer sooner or later. For the best results, these feeding places should be in open areas so that the deer may be seen from a moving car and should be far enough from the road so that the act of stopping the car will not be too alarming to them. It is not necessary to con-
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fine this type of hunting to the back roads, as many hunters do, for the deer will often visit a choice clover patch near a well-traveled road in preference to some less palatable food in a more secluded spot. Road hunters are responsible for a tremendous waste of deer which are wounded but not recovered. Hunters using other methods wound deer, but the man who is on the ground and in the woods will usually know when he has wounded one and will usually make a sincere effort to find and kill the animal. On the other hand, the road hunter often shoots at a deer which is near the woods and if the deer does not drop in its tracks, he will often assume that he has missed his shot, traveling on in search of another target. This would not be so bad if these men would take the time and effort to walk to the spot where the deer was standing and make sure that they had actually missed their shot. Too many of them merely drive off without investigating. There must be some psychological reason for this reluctance to leave the road, and the car, in order to check the effect of their marksmanship. This practice certainly shows that these men lack confidence in either their shooting ability or in their gun. I remember two incidents that showed me the importance of checking the results of my shooting. I was not hunting from a road, but the experiences taught me that it is very easy to walk away from a dead deer. I had not hunted long enough to have much confidence in my marksmanship when I shot at a deer which was standing by a clump of bushes near the edge of a field. When I shot, a deer jumped into the woods and I fired a second shot, thinking I had missed the first one. The deer continued on into the woods and I started to leave the place, thinking that I had done some very poor shooting. I began to wonder why I had missed so easy a shot and I finally went back with the intention of looking for the marks of my bullets on the trees in back of the place where the deer had been standing. I found
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a dead deer in the tall grass. This deer had been killed instantly and had abruptly dropped to the ground simultaneously with the appearance of the second deer which I had mistaken for the first. Often a hunter is unable to see clearly at the time of the shot because of the effect of the gases from the explosion in the air around the gun’s muzzle. This combination of powder gas and air turbulence will distort, if not totally obscure, the vision at the time of the shot so that a man cannot be exactly sure of the results without checking the scene. This is probably what happened to my vision on this occasion. In the second incident, I was trailing a deer which I sighted standing in back of a pile of pulp in a chopping. All that I could see was its head, which appeared to be sitting on the pile of wood. I shot at the head and it disappeared. Having little confidence in my marksmanship I waited for the deer to run from the cover of the pulp so that I could try another shot. Nothing happened. It would require the aid of a psychiatrist to explain what followed. The evidence should have convinced me that I had killed the deer. However, I almost convinced myself that I had not even seen a deer, that I had not shot at one, and that it would be useless even to look for one behind that pile of pulp. Common sense finally won the mental conflict and I collected my deer. Since then I have always checked the result of every shot, even when I was sure that I had missed. I was well concealed by a stone wall and watching a feeding deer and waiting for it to walk into the range of my gun, when a road hunter spotted the animal from his car and stopped and fired. I was sure that he had hit the deer, which ran into the woods, and I started to walk towards him with the intention of congratulating him and offering my help in recovering the animal, but he got in his car and drove off. I went to the edge of the woods, found a blood trail which I followed for about a hundred feet and found a dead deer.
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Another road hunter told me about shooting at a deer and how he had missed the shot. The next day, while hunting in that locality, I found a blood trail near the place. I followed this trail for a short distance and overtook a deer which had two broken front legs. It was a simple matter for me to finish killing this deer. I have found several dead or badly wounded deer which had been shot by hunters who never bothered to check the results of their shooting. Some of them were worth recovering, while others were too long dead to be edible and were nothing but carrion. Much of this waste could be avoided and many apparently unsuccessful hunters could fill their license by merely investigating every shot which they make. Many deer hunters are not aware of the extent of this waste, but fox hunters can tell of the large number of dead deer which are left in the woods at the end of the deer hunting season. A large proportion of these unrecovered deer are wounded late in the afternoon after the sun has set. At this time of day, many deer will be sighted at the edge of fields and if such deer are wounded at this time, it is almost impossible to trail them into the woods because of the increasing darkness. Some could be recovered if the shooter would return to the scene the following morning. Few hunters will do this, preferring to hunt another deer in another section of the country. In the past twenty years, I have failed to recover two badly wounded deer and in each case they were shot late in the day, and bad weather the following night made it impossible to follow their tracks the next day. I am quite sure that both of these deer were killed though I never found any trace of one of them. Fox tracks led me to the remains of the other. The hunter should be very careful while shooting late in the day, for, although visibility may appear to be good, the diminishing light can cause slight sighting errors which may cause a serious wound instead of a clean kill. Every shot should be investigated at the time
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and if there is the slightest chance that a deer has been wounded, the hunter should return the following day and attempt to recover the animal. If he finds that he cannot return on the following day, he should notify a game warden or a local guide of the fact that he has wounded a deer, so that the animal may be recovered if such recovery is possible. Before a hunter snoots from or near a road, he should check the laws of the area in which he is hunting, for in some states, shooting is prohibited within a specified distance of a road. In places where such shooting is legal, the hunter should use caution and not shoot lengthwise or across the road, even if this means passing up a chance to bag a deer. The safety of other motorists is more important than killing the best deer that travels the woods.
to be continued...
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RECIPES
October 2011
Sweet and Sour Rabbit 2 large eggs 1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour - divided use 1 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons water 3 pounds rabbit 4 cups vegetable oil
1-1/4 cups pineapple juice - divided use 2 tablespoons granulated sugar 1 tablespoon cornstarch 1 (8-ounce) can crushed pineapple, drained 2 tablespoons white distilled vinegar 2 teaspoons prepared mustard
Combine eggs, 1/4 cup flour, salt, and water in a bowl; mix well and chill for 1 hour. Debone the rabbit and cut into 1-inch pieces. Coat the pieces with 1 cup flour then dip singly into the chilled batter. Deep-fry in oil at 375째F (190째C) until golden brown; drain. To prepare the sauce, heat 1 cup pineapple juice and sugar in a saucepan, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Stir in a mixture of cornstarch and 1/4 cup pineapple juice. Cook until the mixture thickens, stirring constantly. Add crushed pineapple (drained), vinegar, and prepared mustard; mix well. Serve warm with the rabbit. Makes 6 servings.
Savory Venison Chili 1/4 pound bacon, chopped 1 onion chopped 6 carrots, sliced 2 teaspoons chili powder 1 teaspoon marjoram 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes 2 pounds venison, cubed
1 (28-ounce) can crushed Italian tomatoes 1 1/2 cups chicken broth 1/2 cup red wine 1/4 cup tomato paste 1 (16-ounce) can kidney beans 1 cup baby lima beans
1. Brown chopped bacon in a skillet over medium heat for about 10 minutes, or until crisp. 2. Divide the drippings, placing in a baking dish; add chopped onion, sliced carrots, chili powder, marjoram. and red pepper flakes. Cook for 5 minutes; add the reserved bacon. 3. In the original skillet with of the drippings, cook cubed venison over medium-high heat until browned. Remove and set aside. 4. Add crushed Italian tomatoes, chicken broth, red wine, and tomato paste. Bring to a simmer and cook, uncovered, for 40 minutes; stirring occasionally. Do not boil. Add drained kidney beans and baby lima beans. Heat through. Makes 6 servings.