we 



: 



within the last five hundred years. A region that has been 

 cut over or burned over, does not remain, as the inexperi- 

 enced city dweller might think, a black and barren wilder- 

 ness, but it quickly grows up with a dense growth of poplar, 

 birch, shad bush, willow and other trees and shrubs, which 

 furnish abundant browse for mocse and deer, and which 

 would also support good sized herds of elk if they were once 

 introduced and acclimatized into the region. 



I believe that in certain regions of Minnesota, Wisconsin 

 and Ontario, moose and deer are probably now more numer- 

 ous than they were in the time when the Chippewa Indians 

 still held full sway of all of that country. The Indians, it 

 must be remembered, while they did not wantonly waste the 

 game, always hunted in a given region until that region was 

 exhausted, and all of the old records speak cf periods when 

 game was so scarce that the Chippewa hunters, who knew 

 the country, could not secure enough game to feed their 

 women and children, and the actual starving to death of some 



lucky hunter was by no means a rare incident amcng them. 



I am aware of the fact that hunters-' stories are frequently 



scounted by patient listeners who are not hunters, and are 

 Iways over-trumped by their friends who are hunters, nev- 

 ertheless, I shall take the risk of telling a few hunting stories 

 to illustrate the abundance of wild game in the North woods. 



A few years ago I went on a hunting trip with a camera 

 to a certain region in Minnesota, which I prefer not to de- 

 note any more definitely. Our party of five spent five days 

 in a certain camp. We left camp in the morning about eight 

 o'clock and paddled along the shores of a number of lakes 

 until about five in the afternoon. On the first day of our 

 cruise we saw eleven mocse, and eight deer, and during the 

 five days we saw, by actual count, thirty-six moose, thirty-five 

 deer, one bear, and small game such as rabbits, wocdchucks 

 and squirrels in large numbers. We also saw eagles, grouse, 

 and grouse nests, spruce hens, and a beaver dam, which, 

 however, had -been disturbed by the Indians during the pre- 

 vious winter. I might add that during all of this time none 

 of us ever fired a gun, and I think that of the moose and deer 

 we saw, there were very few, if any, duplicates, because we 



15 



