116 Thirty-ninth Annual Meeting 



As a producer the sportsman is rather iiiirehable. When 

 unexpected company shows on the horizon and the good wife 

 has nothing to set before tlie guest of high quality, it is con- 

 sidered the proper thing for the man of the house to go out 

 with his rod and return with enough game fishes for a meal 

 — catching ourselves a mess of fish, in other words. 



In West Virginia there is a noted family of hunters and 

 fishers known as the Hammonds of Bug Run. Old Jess 

 Hammond was born in Kentucky, and seeing the clouds of 

 war gathering, refugeed to the forks of Williams River in 

 the heart of a great wilderness, there to take up the life of a 

 hunter and fisherman. He told me at one time that thirteen 

 )'ears elapsed without a person other than his family shelter- 

 ing under his rooftree. He raised a large family of sons, all 

 of whom took to the woods naturally, and they have made 

 themselves the terror to the game and fish of that country. 

 One of the boys threw back to some remote ancestor and is 

 an accomplished fiddler, having even composed some strange, 

 wild airs. To one of these he gave the title of "Hannah 

 Gutting Fish." 



At old man Hammond's house was always a store of the 

 products of the wild : jerked venison, smoked bear meat, 

 wild honey, and other things. In season he partook of all the 

 richness of the wilderness. Not the least of these were the 

 wild ramps, a member of the lily family, the most powerful 

 antiscorbutic known. Except in the dead of winter fish 

 could be had for breakfast by catching a mess of trout while 

 the w'ater w^as heating" to make coffee. Williams River ran 

 by his door. All that was needed if fish \vere desired was to 

 bait a hook, fish the river for a few rods, and breakfast was 

 in hand. 



x\s a compensating provision, however, nature has pro- 

 vided that, while mountain trout are pronounced to be the 

 greatest of all table delicacies, yet the food is so rich that it 

 soon palls upon the appetite and is not desirable as a steady 

 diet. The Hammonds, however, soon found that certain ten- 

 der feet who lived just beyond the fringe of woods would be 



