20 



THE OOLOGIST 



Around Red Lake by Launch 



By L. E. Healey 

 Northern Minnesota has been called 

 the "Rendevous of the American 

 Sportsman." Whether such a name 

 is now considered apropos by the 

 hunter it is hard to say. There was a 

 time not very far removed from the 

 present day when her areas abounded 

 in the most magnificent forests of the 

 continent. These forests were inhabi- 

 tated by elk, caribou, moose, deer, 

 bear, and her less wooded areas by 

 grouse, her lakes by ducks and geese, 

 her streams by beaver; her waters 

 abounded in fish and her blue skies 

 in the fiight of birds. The ruling 

 hand of this happy hunting ground 

 was the American Indian who lived 

 here unmolested and was master of 

 all he surveyed. These days of wild 

 life are fast and disappearing — are 

 gone. The advent of civilization with 

 the lumberman, the hunter and trap- 

 per followed closely by the sportsman 

 and settler has wrought great 

 changes in this, nature's playground. 

 Her forests are depleted and well nigh 

 gone; her elk and caribou have dis- 

 appeared; laws have been enacted 

 protecting the lives of the remaining 

 moose, deer, fur-bearing animals and 

 edible fowl; and the Indian has been 

 crowded onto Reservation and much 

 to the chagrin of the chief of the 

 feather with belt of wampum, his 

 children have been placed in schools 

 and taught the mode of life and the 

 ways of the white man — all in this 

 glorious country of the Creator's handi- 

 work. But her lakes, surely man in 

 his greed for wealth can not molest 

 the beauty of her meriad sheets of 

 water for which the state is famous. 

 Ah no, it is still a garden of lakes, 

 thousands of them, beautiful expanses 

 of water that invite the hunter and 

 the pleasure seeker and many of them 

 still in the wilds. And yet the writer 



knows of one lake, Thief Lake, in 

 Eastern Marshall County which In 

 1916 and for years prior thereto, was 

 the best duck breeding pond and con- 

 sequently duck hunting area in this, 

 the northwestern portion of the state. 

 This lake was something over ten 

 miles long and four miles wide, was 

 the home of thousands of ducks and 

 wild geese, and the balm of comfort 

 to the moose and deer during fly 

 season when they would go into the 

 water and dip themselves to the very 

 nostrils. What has become of this 

 lake? Where was it last fall, the fall 

 of 1917? We drove from our home 

 town by car to investigate before 

 hunting season which in this state 

 opens September fifteenth and behold, 

 a veritable sand storm was sweeping 

 it from end to end, now a desert which 

 was once a lake. Through its center 

 was a high pile of dirt marking the 

 course of a State Ditch. The lake had 

 succumbed to the drainage system laid 

 out by the state engineers and her 

 surface is now thrown open to home- 

 stead entry. Mud Lake has suffered 

 a similar fate as no doubt have many 

 others not named or shown on the 

 maps. To the writer there is a cer- 

 tain sadness connected with this utter 

 destruction of the nesting sights of 

 thousands of our water fowl. If it 

 has the sense of realization, the water 

 fowl which has for generations back 

 and for their own life period nested 

 here, must feel like the youth of the 

 wild timber lands who returns from 

 the village miles distant to find his 

 home utterly destroyed and nothing 

 but ashes remaining to mark the spot 

 which all his life he has known as 

 home. But the larger lakes and the 

 deeper ones will always remain; and 

 so stands Red Lake in the heart of an 

 Indian Reservation, still forested, 

 still wild, still as nature has made 

 her, majestic, awe-inspiring, a broad 



