82 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Aug. 22 1889. 



HUNTING WITHOUT A GUN. 



FRESH fields for exploration and adventure have be- 

 come few and restricted, and if they had not, there 

 are many who could not and many who would not seek 

 them. 



We, who for one reason or the other never get far from 

 the ground to which our pioneer grandfathers trans- 

 planted their families, must content ourselves with hun- 

 dredth hand exploration and make the most of small 

 adventures. As we till and mow, with all the ease a 

 farmer may, the fields that our grandsires smoothed for 

 us with infinite toil out of the old wilderness, so we float 

 with only the labor of oar and paddle along the streams 

 whereon their way was beset with a century's downfall 

 and drift of bordering forest. Tf afoot we lose our way 

 and faintly realize what it is to "get lost," it must be in 

 second-growth woods where we can almost feel the way 

 of the wind or see it in the drift of the clouds, and we 

 recover our bearings with little exercise of woodcraft. 

 It is a greater adventure for us to meet a raccoon than 

 for them to have encountered a bear; the muskrat and 

 the mink are rarer sights to our eyes than the beavei 

 and otter were to theirs, and they saw moose and deer 

 oftener than we see grouse and woodcock. But we have 

 more time to look at the little that is left us of the wild 

 world, and may possibly discover something that was 

 overlooked by our toiling forefathers. 



With such purpose, and with a whole day to devote to it, 

 I came to the creek this morning, intending to voyage 

 somewhere, perhaps up the South Slang, diverging there- 

 from into Goose Creek, and as far up as its narrow chan- 

 nel would let me, or if another way should invite me 

 more, down to the mouth of Wonakaketukese and cruise 

 along the shore of the Bay of the Vessels, or Tip beautiful 

 Lungahnetsik. 



But my purpose and half-formed plans were frustrated 

 when I found my boat was gone from her soft bed of 

 mud, borrowed by some one, who had not taken the 

 trouble of asking, to ferry himself across to the Myer's 

 Landing. There she was, hauled up on the further 

 shore, not thirty rods away, "so near and yet so far," 

 for between us lay impa'ssable marsh and channel. 

 Should I wait till the uu licensed borrower returned, or 

 should I take a three-mile tramp by way of the first 

 bridge and follow the shore around to where she was 

 now lying ? It would be long waiting if my unknown 

 beneficiar y should choose to come back by another route, 

 or not come back at all. and so of the two the longer and 

 more toilsome seemed the easier and quicker way to re- 

 gain possession of my boat. 



Lighting my pipe and shouldering my paddle, after a 

 long look up and down the channel in fruitless quest of 

 some friendly craft that might give me ferriage, I took 

 the path that boatless generations of red and white men 

 had trod before me. Frequently it led me under some 

 old apple trees, the ragged survivors of the old settler, 

 Davis's orchard, planted a hundred years ago. Near 

 them is a wild plum tree, a giant of its slow-growing 

 race, a foot and a half in diameter, standing patriarchal 

 in a thicket of its sprouts. How the old settler's children 

 must have delighted in the fruit of this tree— a lusty one 

 even in their young day— poor little souls, with nothing 

 to satisfy the child's craving for such fare but what 

 nature had impartially set for them and bird and beast. 

 How sweet to their palates were the red horse plums 

 while they were awaiting the tardy fruitage of these 

 seedling apple trees. 



I fancy that Tom Sweet's bear was on his way to this 

 tree, doubtless well known to all the bears that ranged 

 hereabouts, or was returning from it, overladen with a 

 paunchful of unstoned plums, when the valorous old fish- 

 erman overtook him in midchannel and beat the life out 

 of him with his paddle. The elm Tom stripped the bark 

 from to make a harness for his saddle horse wherewith 

 to haul his trophy home, has gone the way of most of our 

 old trees, and I look in vain for a great elm, with a long 

 scar seaming its trunk, for my imagination to browse 

 upon. 



The apple trees, that for half a century have had no 

 care, have not lost all characteristics of civilization, but 

 show a manner of growth very different from the wild 

 apple trees one finds in pasture land and sometimes in the 

 woods, when one would not guess what they were but for 

 their fruit; for they have tall, slender trunks and a thin 

 ramage of lithe branches, quite unlike what one expects 

 in the apple tree. The wild tree of the pasture is more 

 like its neglected brethren of the orchard, scrubby and 

 beset with sprouts, but with no such mark of the pruning 

 saw as may be seen on these trees where the square-cut 

 stumps of limbs jut from the trunk, their ends almost 

 overgrown with bark and each with a branch of later 

 growth curving upward therefrom, shaped like a mon- 

 strous teapot spout. Many yeais have passed since their 

 branches were thinned but by decay and storm, or their 

 fruit gathered but by the squirrels. 



But what jolly "paring bees" it gave occasion for, up- 

 roarious with the unrestrained fun of old-time merry- 

 makings, when all the young folks of ihe wide neighbor- 

 hood gathered at the house up yonder, to pare, quarter, 

 core and string the apples. Do I hear the squeak of the 

 fiddle tuning up for Money Musk, the squawk of make- 

 believe surprise of a buxom damsel kissed in a romping 

 game, and the guffaw of the swain who caught her? Or 

 was I only dreaming, and the sounds that caught my ear 

 were only the chafing of a branch, the squall of a red- 

 headed woodpecker, the cawing of a crow? Long ago 

 the fiddler exchanged his cracked instrument for a golden 

 harp; the lads and lassies of those days were old men and 

 women when we were babies, and have slept for many 

 years beneath the graveyard golden rods; and their 

 ghosts, if inclined to visit the scenes of their junketings, 

 would find scarcely a trace of it, for the hearthstone is 

 under the turf and the chimney bricks are scattered far 

 and wide. 



There is the swaying branch that fooled my ear, there 

 is the crow, sagging along in flight from shore to shore, 

 and there the woodpecker, trying his luck at fly- catch- 

 ing. Old trees have grown too scarce to supply his 

 stomach's wants, or he has discovered that it is easier to 

 bore thin air than wood for his food, and he seems to be 

 having fair success in this lighter industry. Every loo] 

 he makes from his perch on that basswood stub, thou; 

 it is done with a jerking flight?; quite a-wkVaM cbm: ' 



with the airy swoop of the kingbird or phebe, apparently 

 brings something to his maw, and he repeats his sallies 

 with evident satisfaction. If he learned this trick of the 

 born flycatchers, I wonder if he borrowed one of his 

 notes of the tree toad who must be as intimate an ac- 

 quaintance. 



A golden- winged woodpecker, happy possessor of many 

 befitting names, flies up before me from an ant hill with 

 a loud "yarrup" and a "flicker" of gold and white. 

 While I am speculating on the possibility of his final 

 development with his groundling habits, into a. wood- 

 cock, I stumble through a thicket of willows and upstarts 

 the real woodcock, thridding the soft fluff of leaves with 

 a rapid whir so different from the yellowharamer's flight 

 that I am convinced that my hig'hhole's way to wood- 

 cockery will not be made in my day. He has rid him- 

 self in some measure of the loping flight of ihe wood- 

 pecker, acquired when trees were nearer together than 

 now, and one stroke of the wings would bear a bird from 

 tree to tree, but how and with what years of practice 

 shall he acquire that rapid wingbeat which surrounds 

 the flyer with a brown halo, an aureole, if he might at- 

 tain it, how manage those sudden sniffings of course 

 that one may fancy sometimes surprise even the wood- 

 cock himself, as they certainly do him who essays to 

 stop them. Well, I am content that he should continue 

 even as he is, game for those who hunt without a gun. a 

 delight to the eye that sees him beyond in intervening 

 gun sight, a delight to the ear and* the heart when hi 

 jolly cackle tells of the assured arrival of spring. 



While I stop to mark the woodcock's fl'ght as he darts 

 away to another of his haunts, I am given a rare and 

 pretty sight. Another alights < n the soft inner border of 

 ti e marsh just before me, and struts a moment with 

 lowered wings and spread tail, then daintily prods the 

 mud with his bill, boring till he strikes a worm, which he 

 brings up and swallows. How he knew the worm was 

 there is as much a mystery as how the squirrel kuows 

 where in the unmarked level of the snow to dig for a nut 

 and find it. He alighted silently, with as little fu-s and 

 flutter as the ruffed grouse makes when he alights on his 

 own undisturbed affairs, and you can hardly believe that 

 he is the same bu-d who tears his noisy way through 

 branches or air when rudely or warily, you intrude upon 

 his privacy. He gives you a lesson in silent approach, 

 when he comes to you. I make a wide detour and Jeave 

 the woodcock to his late breakfast or early dinner, and 

 do not hear him fly away, though no doubt his quick ear 

 has caught my careful footfalls. Perhaps not seeing me, 

 he takes me for some kindlier animal than man, or pos- 

 sibly he knows that I am hunting without a gun. 



Above the Myer's Landing the steep banks of Little 

 Otter are scored with frequent gullies, which in the old 

 ti nes, where there were ducks, were the coigns of van- 

 tage of gunners, who creeping down them, were almost 

 sure, to find a flock of woodducks upon a log waiting for 

 a raking shot, or a huddle of unsuspicious teal, or a great 

 drove of dusky ducks, comforting themselves with wild 

 rice, duck gossip and aquatic sport. Those old gunners 

 held the obsolete idea ot sport, that its object was to get 

 game, and perhaps they had an eye to the flesh pots as no 

 sportsman has now, and perhaps had another, or both, to 

 feather beds, for 1 remember some old duck shooters who 

 cared nothing for a duck but for its feathers. The3 r never 

 squandered their handfuls of powder and shot on a single 

 bird, rarely risked the chances of a wing shot at fl icks, 

 but patiently waited for great opportunities of destruc- 

 tion, then picked up their ten or a dozen birds and went 

 home, happy with the result of one wise expenditure of 

 ammunition. The ducks learned nothing from these in- 

 frequent lessons of danger; and the unscathed ones were 

 back in their haunts next day. But the incessant bang- 

 ing of latter day sportsmen has taught the few surviviug 

 wildfowl to avoid the narrow limits of these upper 

 marshes, where it is now unsafe for even a poor bittern 

 or kingfisher to venture. 



As I breast the further bank of one of these gullies I 

 am painfully reminded that here I was given my first 

 chance of a shot at ducks. Coming to the crest of the 

 bank it was my luck to see them before they caught 

 sight of me, a flock of twenty or more, sitting just off 

 the end of this point in such a huddle that a blanket 

 might cover them all. Down I sank close to the ground, 

 and pushing my gun before me, wormed my way through 

 thirty rods of ripe thistles till I was in short range of 

 them. And now I, who had only for a year or so been 

 permitted to use a gun, and with no greater achievement 

 than squirrel shooting to boast of, was to cover myself 

 with glory and suddenly attain a place among great 

 sportsmen. My heart hammered loudly and painfully, 

 but I took careful aim, remembering all I had ever heard 

 of the danger of over-shooting in down-hill shots, and 

 then pulled the trigger manfully, without a wink or a 

 flinch, and the miserable little thin-shelled corroded 

 abomination of a "G. D." cap — may the soul of the 

 Frenchman who made it never find peace — re- 

 sponded only with a flat click. That mischance holds a 

 place among the bitter disappointments of my life; and 

 the old pain visits my heart with the same first sicken- 

 ing twinge whenever I see this spot. I wish the old 

 scent of the marshes and the old indescribable aroma of 

 autumn woods might as easily come to my nostrils, just 

 as of old they arose from marsh and woodland, and I 

 catch a whiff of them sometimes, but faint and elusive, 

 and not to be inhaled with the full invigorating thrill 

 they gave the boy. Alas! the boy's keenness of scent 

 has gone with many another of his youthful belongings. 



In one of those days, when I was hunting with a gun, 

 I stood on the sticky shore of Mud Landing, closely scan- 

 ning marsh and channel that seemed to have no Jiving 

 thing in or upon them, when all at once they burst into 

 teeming life. A hawk, ©red ing over the marsh, made a 

 sudden swoop, when, with a thundering roar of two hun- 

 dred wings, a great flock of woodducks uprose from the 

 sedges and wild rice and at once settled in the channel, 

 so safe from his attack in water deep enough to dive in, 

 that the baffled marsh harrier sailed sullenly away. 

 They were far out of range of my shotgun and not to be 

 more nearly approached without a boat, so that all my 

 satisfaction was in the goodly sight of them and that con- 

 solation of him who hunts with or without a gun — the 

 ill-luck of the hunter. 



This landing, the only one of the lower creek where 

 bank and channel meet, the marsh everywhere else sep- 

 arating them,, was a favorite fishing place for us boys, 

 to whom boating was forbidden. Here we could cast 

 fToni thb shJofre intb deep water with a delightful uneer- 1 



tain ty of what we might catch and, also with great ex- 

 pectations. It might be that our worms would lure only 

 pumpkin-seeds or perch or bullheads, but there was al- 

 ways a possibility of their tempting a hungrv pickeielor 

 pike perch or sheepshead. These last valiant fighters 

 we valued only for the fun of catching, the show they 

 made on our strings and the "lucky bones'' which were, 

 the inner adornment of their heads, or perhaps carried 

 by them as by us. for luck. I have no knowledge that 

 these charms ever brought us good luck, but we felt that 

 the chances were better with a pair of them rattling in 

 our trousers pockets. We did not know that these' fish 

 were good to eat, for our mothers had nut learned that 

 parboiling would make them very toothsome when 

 boiled, broiled or fried, as after wrestling with the tough- 

 ness of the first one, all the sheepshead" we caught went 

 to the cats. 



A little further up stream is Bowfin B^iy, in whose 

 weedy shallows greatly abound the uncouth and worth- 

 less fi-h who gave it a name. If one desires only tne 

 "goode tugging" th-tt Gervai-e Markham promises to 

 show you if you "tie a hooke with a Frogge upon it with 

 a string at the foote of a Goose, and put her into a Pond," 

 he may get as much as he likes of it here with the same 

 b ut (only his frog is better skinned), a strong hook ai d 

 line and a stout pole, not a rod. The stronger the tackle 

 the better, for when the bowfin is hauled in there e mies 

 with him all the marsh growth w thin the line's scope. 

 Of the edible qualities of this fish it may be said that of 

 the many who have tried to eat him few have succeeded, 

 and fewer ye' hive been bold enough to pronounce him 

 good. Tnis maybe said in his commendation, that in 

 his infancy he is much beloved of pike-perch and bass, 

 and so hardy that he maybe kept for the angltr's use 

 half the summer m a tub of unchanged water. 



Here is Potash Lmding, the uppermost of the lower 

 creek on this bank and named for works of that ilk that 

 stood here in did times; and here in olden times the 

 proprietor's clerk of this township suffered the lo-s of 



cled in his own hand and spelling in the archives of the 

 town. The old surveyor was moving " toletill ortor crik 

 forls" with his " wife and five childarn and one woman 

 peggy smith by name and one child wps all in an open 

 hote and it was a dark rany time." There was nothing 

 in the matter-of-fact account of the affair to give one 

 the impression that these women and children were suf- 

 fering unusual hardship in such belated, stormy travel, 

 but the rather, that it was an ordinary circumstance of 

 pioneer life, remarkable only for the casualty by which 

 " Ritings of grate importuus" were "bornt."' Wider 

 apart than the lapse of years which divide them is the 

 difference between our easy lives and theirs of toil and 

 privation. 



It is not easy to imagine these smooth, grassy slopes, 

 shaggy with the wild woods that clothed them then: 

 these shores, bristling with the prone and inclining trees, 

 through which the " open bote '' came to the end of her 

 voyage, nor easy to picture to one.-elf the savage wild- 

 ness of the gorge at the falls, choked with an inextrica- 

 ble confusion of floodwood that the lithe mink could 

 scarcely find a passage through, abovethe hidden current. 



The drought-shrunken stream is too weak to turn the 

 millwheel to day, and the sawyer is idly pottering about 

 among tha scant array of logs in the millyard awaiting 

 the slow filling of the dam. A footman need not take 

 the bridge, and I cross the dribble of waste water dry 

 shod. The jolly sawyer welcomes me as warmly as if I 

 were the owner of a thousand logs, shows me the latest 

 improvement of his mill, consisting of a new prop set in 

 the labyrinth of posts and props that keep the log slide 

 from tumbling down, and then takes me into his museum, 

 the disused grist-mill, whose inner walls are hung with 

 an odd collection of old-time implements and weapons. 

 To each old farming tool and household utensil of clumsy 

 but honest workmanship, to flintlock musket and militia 

 captain's sword, he sets some fanciful history of his own 

 invention, and the forenoon has grown short when I set 

 forth on my way down the left bank. 



As my head gets above the crest of a ridge, some mov- 

 ing objects on the slope of the next catch my eye. which 

 presently make them out to be a family of foxes, five 

 cubs at play and the mother watching their pranks with 

 evident approval and pride in their promise af vulpine 

 excellence. How alert and nimble they are, how differ- 

 ent every motion from the clum.~y gambols of puppies. 

 While I watch them, forecasting sport in November, days, 

 when I shall not go hunting without a gun, and freshen- 

 ing my memory of the runways hereab uts, Madame 

 Vixen, who does not let pride get the better of watchful- 

 ness, by some sense becomes aware of my intrusion, and 

 speedily calls her babies indoors, she lingering last at the 

 threshold to chide me with a snarling bark. Upon closer 

 inspection, the neighborhood of her abode does not be- 

 token neat housekeeping, for there is an untidy litter of 

 bones and feathers strewn about, lamps' legs and turkey 

 pinions enough to enkindle the wrath of all the shep- 

 heids and poultry wives in town. I shall tell them no 

 tale-i of her, and pray that she may be left to rear her 

 young in peace, that none of them may fall in with any 

 but such as hunt without a gun till fields are dun and 

 wooos are brown. 



Following a path much used by cows and fishermen, I 

 skirt Hemlock Point, where many years ago I visited a 

 party of St. Francis Indians, trappers and basket-makers, 

 who were camped here in the si elter of the grent hem- 

 locks. The piace would not invite them to tarry in it 

 now, for not a, tree is le't to shade it, and of the Uautiful 

 hemlocks there remains but the name. Wiih the excep- 

 tion of my friend, the sawyer, and one other, every 

 riparian owner on the lower creek does his worst to strip 

 the banks of trees, to the stream's loss of beauty and his 

 of soil. I must confe-s to some unchristian satisfaction, 

 when the rotting roots of the murdered trees loose their 

 strong, kindly hold, and a rood of land slips into the 

 spring floods. 



The locust trees of the Myer's Landing are close in 

 sight now, and with the nearer pro.-pfct of getting afloat, 

 I begin to rearrange the plan of the voyage that must be 

 shottened to accommodate it to what remains of the day. 

 I ^tumble over the grassgrown foundations of the old 

 Dutchman's house, and wonder to what quarters of the 

 world was scattered" the dusky brood that he and his 

 mulatto wife reared here in the shadow of the locusts 

 that he planted". There is something pathetic in the 



