
A BIT OF NEW ENGLAND 
SPOR: 
PEMIGEWASSET. 
During the autumn of 1893 I was at a 
picturesque little hamlet in the backwoods 
of New Hampshire, for 2 weeks’ grouse- 
shooting. Among a multitude of pleasant 
memories of days afield, there is one con- 
nected with this trip which I delight to 
bring to mind, and which may bear recital 
to the readers of this magazine. 
I had been hunting several days, over a 
young pointer whose incomplete education 
and generally erratic ideas had necessitated 
an immense amount of careful attention and 
re-arrangement. My patience had been 
sorely tried, my nervous system severely 
strained and both the dog and I needed di- 
version. I make it a point in such cases to 
give that needed separation for at least one 
day and accordingly decided to leave the 
dog to enjoy a day’s idleness at the farm. 
Then I gave myself up to the pleasure of a 
still-hunt after the elusive ruffed grouse. 
Here let me digress a bit to remark that 
for a lover of the gun, who is not bent on 
making a big bag, there 1s a rare type of 
recreation to be found in a day thus spent. 
You meet the grouse on something like 
equal terms, the advantage lying often with 
the bird, and when you bring an old cock 
grouse to bag you are sure to have earned 
your reward. You match your endurance, 
your alertness, your experience against the 
bird’s. In short it is your craft opposed to 
his, and you invariably leave the woods with 
a heightened respect for the manifold de- 
fences with which Nature has endowed this 
king of Northern game birds. 
I left the house early on one of those mar- 
velous October mornings, the mere recol- 
lection of which quickens the hunter’s pulse 
and in the dreary days of Winter increases 
the restless spirit which waits their return. 
The early morning mists partly concealed 
the glorious array of tints which clothed the 
grand old maples, but underneath my feet 
spread a carpet the colors of which the Ori- 
ent could noi rival. 
Before the house ran a cheery little 
stream, soon lost to view in one of the pret- 
tiest bits of woodland that ever sheltered a 
flock of birds. Through the entire cover 
and parallel to the course of the stream ran 
a disused cart-road which years before, in a 
more prosperous era of the hamlet’s exist- 
ence, had been the thoroughfare to a neigh- 
boring grist mill. 
An earlier and more enterprising genera- 
tion had battled with the unproductive soil, 
built tanneries and a smithy by the stream 
431 
and reared families who, rather than con- 
tinue the unequal fight, had drifted to the 
cities, or into the great West, leaving the 
scene of their fathers’ sturdy struggle to 
lapse back, forfeit to old Mother Nature. 
No longer the creak of heavily-laden 
wagons echoed among the beeches. The 
only signs and sounds of life proceeded from 
the rightful inhabitants of such a solitude. 
The squirrels and the blue-jays, the grouse 
and the wood-duck claimed all this territory 
as their home. 
Entering the cover about mid-way be- 
tween the old road and the stream, I had a 
range of perhaps 25 yards on either hand, 
with an opening which marked the water- 
course on one side and on the other the 
woodland aisle where formerly the road 
had wound its uncertain way. Birds I knew 
were there, for a few days previously my 
dog and I had had a demoralizing meeting 
with a round half dozen of them but a short 
distance into the cover. 
The moisture of the slowly melting frost 
made the leaves noiseless under my moc- 
casined feet as I penetrated deeper and 
deeper into the wood. My expectant ears, 
with a keen and eager sense, waited the 
springing of the first bird, while my fore- 
finger fairly itched for a call to action. 
It came—and came as the call to our vol- 
unteers in the late war—to find me unpre- 
pared. A particularly savage outburst from 
a venturesome squirrel in a neighboring tree 
top attracted my attention for a moment, 
when whir-r-r rose a grouse to my right and 
made like the speedy traveler that she was, 
in the direction of the old road. Was I 
surprised? Did I shoot? Yes, to both ques- 
tions. But did I stop her? Emphatically 
no! She had full steam on and the throttle 
wide open when she crossed the road and I 
was conscious, as I pulled the trigger, of 
being yards behind. 
I wasn’t exactly “ rattled’”’ but the episode 
left me in a mood to gently “cuss” and 
sputter, draw up a series of resolutions—and 
then on again. 
The beauty of that wood was wonderful. 
The hues of ferns, of moss, of fallen leaves 
and the blue sky overhead making a scene 
not to be surpassed in coloring by any land- 
scape of the imagination. I was continually 
admiring the lavish charms which Nature 
had laid bare on this rarest of autumnal 
mornings and then, back would go my mind 
to the lost opportunity of a few minutes 
before, and I would re-read the riot-act to 
