RUFFED GROUSE AND WOODCOCK SHOOTING 



T was a glorious autum- 

 nal morning when G , 



a young Canadian mining 

 engineer, and the writer, 

 accompanied by a cross- 

 bred retriever - spaniel, 

 left the picturesque little 

 settlement of Muskoka 

 for a day's grouse shoot- 

 ing in the lake woods, 

 which lay some six miles 

 from the settlement. 

 A great part of the way led along the lake shore, and 

 delightful was it to watch the different kinds of fish 

 basking under the rays of the hot sun, in the crystal 

 clear water. Trout, pickerel, perch and sunfish were to 

 be seen on every gravelly shallow. Dotted here and 

 there upon the mirror-like surface of the wide, forest- 

 fringed sheet of water, were the boats of the whitefish- 

 catchers, the crews of which were busily engaged in 

 their occupation. One party of fishermen, consisting 

 of three blanket-clad Indians, were silently angling 

 from their quaintly fashioned birch-bark canoe, for any 

 finned creatures sufficiently uneducated to take the 



huge cubes of salt pork, which they had stuck upon 



102 



