EARLY DAY STORIES. 135 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



Hunting and Camping Lore. 



To make a hunting trip thoroughly complete and en- 

 joyable one of the chief requisites is a good camp. Re- 

 member that I am now speaking from experience gained 

 during my own hunting trips chiefly in north Nebraska, but 

 also to some extent in Wyoming and South Dakota. This 

 extended over a period of thirty years, from 1868 to 1897 

 inclusive. I did hunt some, but not a great deal prior to 

 1868, but have hunted none at all since 1897. My hunting 

 was done mostly during the months of September, October, 

 November and December, when cold storms, either of rain 

 or snow, were Hkely to occur, making a good sheltered camp 

 all the more necessary. The best shelter possible for a camp 

 is a dense thicket of brush — nothing else makes so perfect 

 a wind-break. The next best shelter is a steep bank — not 

 a hill, but a bluff as nearly perpendicular as possible, to pro- 

 tect the camp on the north and west. The camp should be 

 only a few feet away from the bluff, and the camp fire 

 should be directly against its steep side so as to throw the 

 heat immediately upon the camp. In the sand hill country 

 I have several times found a good camping place in an old 

 blow-out. These blow-outs are formed by the wind scoop- 

 ing out the sand from the northwest side of a big sand hill, 

 and drifting it over to the southeast side, until it forms a 

 circular hollow in the hill sometimes fifteen or twenty feet 

 deep, and makes on the southeast side of the hill a bare 

 sand bank just like a great snow drift. These blow-outs 

 are scooped out by the wind, sometimes in a dry time to 

 such a depth that when deep snows come in the winter, 

 followed by heavy rains in the spring, the water level is 

 raised so much that the deep blow-outs become filled with 



