112, 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
(Feb. 8, 1896, 
of the farmers was badly soratched about the face. They 
left the remainder of the food and the clothing in the old 
man's den and sorrowfully took themselves back to camp. 
The next day they packed their tents and luggage on the 
horses and started cut the way they had come in — that 
is on foot, leading the horses, as there were no wagon 
roads. 
They went to Cleveland and showing their battered 
forms to the officers of the law reported their experiences. 
Then the officers collected a large body of humane men, 
who were willing to go out after a forlorn human being, 
and under the guidance of one of our hunters went back 
to the scene of conflict. After much tracking and beating 
of brush, the party finally bayed the old man in his lair 
and surrounding him with a large force captured him. 
He was brought to Cleveland, and after being washed and 
shorn of his matted hair and beard was sent to the insane 
asylum, where I dare say he now reposes in comfort, un- 
less death has relieved him of all earthly cares. 
Such are the experiences of sportsmen. What do you 
suppose some of them will find next? A. B. Wingfield. 
SNOWSHOES. 
Seeing Mr. Hough's references to snowshoes in his ex- 
cellent article on trapping. I thought it might interest 
some of your readers to know something about their 
manufacture, as when a child I used to watch the squaws 
who were making them for my father, and later I had 
hundreds of pairs made for myself, I have had good op- 
portunities to learn how they are made. ' 
The best bows are made from coarse-grained white ash, 
although sometimes brown ash and even yellow birch are 
used. These bows are made from green wood and shaped 
in any desired form by bending them round a small round 
stick placed on the side of the knee. For nice shoes they 
should always be hollowed on the outside of the heads and 
tails with a crooked knife, so that the strings may be pro- 
tected from wear where they pass through the bows. 
Fifty years ago nearly all our snowshoes were made with 
a very large square-ended toe. These required more skill 
to use, as they tripped easily, and many white men used 
to fasten several ounces of lead on the tails to counter- 
balance the weight of the toes, though an expert always 
preferred them without. The toe and heel bars were 
made of seasoned wood, usually hornbeam or rock maple. 
In those days the heels were fastened with wooden pegs, 
later with common cut nails heated in the fire so they 
could, be clinched, and later still by copper rivets with 
washers. 
Common sole shoes for lumbermen were then, as now, 
rough, coarse affairs. They were filled with moose, cow 
or horse hide, cut very coarsely, and not stretched before 
filling, and consequently when wet sagged badly. They 
were intended more to stand and chop in than for steady 
travel, and were sold as cheaply as $1.50 to $2.50 per pair. 
Snowshoes made for trappers, scalers and explorers were 
an entirely different article, and their making required a 
great deal of skill, and only a very few women in the 
tribe could make a really first-class shoe, and they would 
never make but a few pairs in a season as well as they 
could for any reasonable pay, as drawing the filling so 
tightly soon made their fingers sere, so that they pre- 
ferred to do inferior work for less pay. The best shoes 
were filled with either fall-killed caribou, deer or nice 
calf. 
It is a widespread but entirely erroneous belief that no 
filling can equal caribou. Fall-killed caribou makes an 
excellent filling, but having traveled thousands of miles 
on all kinds, and in all Kinds of traveling, I believe that 
those filled with deer killed in August, September or Oc- 
tober, or those made from a calf six or eight weeks old, are 
just as good. When the hair of either caribou or deer 
grows long, it is at the expense of the thickness and 
strength of the hide. The hide of a winter or spring 
killed animal is not only thinner, but is not so tough. I 
once traveled in company with a hunter whose shoes 
were filled with the skin of a caribou which he had shot 
in February, and he had seen the shoes filled with it; but 
in March, when I was with him, his shoes were all in rav- 
elings as soon as it grew warm, while a pair of calf -filled, 
which I had worn a great deal more than his had been 
worn, were in perfect condition. This was all owing to 
his caribou having been killed after the hide had become 
thin. 
In filling with either, the hair is first removed and then 
the hide is cut in square or oblong pieces, then the corners 
are rounded, and the pieces are cut into strings with a 
knife by going round the piece till all is cut. The work of 
removing the hair and cutting the strings used to be done 
almost entirely by the men when the shoes were made by 
married women. Great care and skill were required to 
cut the strings of an exact width, as thin parts had to be 
cut wider than thick, so that when stretched all the 
strings would be of the same size. Thin parts of the skin 
or thinner separate skins were used for heads and tails, as 
they were filled with much finer fillling. 
As fast as cut, the string was wound tightly in balls. 
Afterward these balls were made into skeins and stretched. 
This, when they camped in the woods, was done by cut- 
ting the tops off from two small trees which grew within 
2ft. of each other. The tops were bent together and the 
skein was slipped over them; the natural spring of the 
trees drew the skein very tightly, and then a stick was 
passed through the skein and it was twisted very hard 
many times. When not near woods, the squaws put one 
foot in one end of the skein and passed a short stick through 
the upper end, and then twisted with the stick till all the 
stretch was taken out. The string was then wound into 
balls. In filling, the ball which was being filled from was 
always kept in water. On this account shoes were never 
filled in warm weather, as the warmth caused the tightly 
wound hide to heat and rot. 
In filling, the heads and tails were filled first. These 
were often filled in fancy figures. Where the string 
passed through the bows, it was protected by a tag of 
dressed leather which it passed round, and which kept it 
from being cut by crust. The middles or bodies of nice 
shoes were filled with coarser string than the heads, 
drawn as tightly as the person filling had power, I have 
seen it drawn so tight as to bend the bows in. The mid- 
dles were usually filled close out to the bows in plain fill- 
ing, but Borne fancy shoes had a row of round twisted 
strings an inch long going round the middle at right 
angles to the bow and the fine filling inside, and I have 
seen shoes which had two and even three such rows, one 
inside of the other, separated from each other by work eo 
that all the real filling there was was a quite small pad 
for the foot to rest on. This kind of filling was not com- 
mon, as it was expensive and would not stretch more than 
the plainly filled. I have seen such fancy filled shoes sell 
at $10 a pair. 
The only instruments used in filling were the snOwshoe 
needle, which was 4 or 5in. long and i to lin. wide, taper- 
ing toward each end, with a square hole in the center, 
through which the string to be used passed, and a punch 
made of hard wood with one end blunt when the hand 
pressed it, the other end sharp and hardened in the fire. 
Sometimes the horn of a spike-horn buck was used with 
leather fastened on the base to prevent wearing the hand. 
Snowshoe needles were at first made of bone or hard 
wood, later they were made of iron. The skin of the 
neck of a deer was not used in filling, unless for the 
standards on each side the foot hole, as it was too thick 
and spongy. 
Indians protected the shoes which they used themselves 
from wear by winding the bows with coarse string of 
either raw or dressed skin. They also worked dressed 
leather under where the foot came, and sometimes wove 
in strings of dressed leather where the wear from the heel 
came. They also used to turn their shoes over, wearing 
them on both sides. Protected in these ways shoes would 
last much longer. 
In later years most shoes were made with round pointed 
toes, to suit the demands of trade. Also some with toes 
as wide and round as a section of barrel hoop. These 
were called Esquimau shoes. I have never known an 
Indian (the Penobscots and Passamaquoddy) to make 
any of the narrow shoes turned up at the toes, so common 
in Canada. Most of the shoes sold for caribou hide are 
not filled with caribou, as I have seen plenty of so-called 
caribou shoes for sale in years gone by when there was 
not a caribou in the State. Shoes filled on honor with 
either fall-killed caribou, deer or calf, will when worn 
on dry snow usually sag so as to show the print of the 
foot, but when wet they tighten, so when one strikes a 
pair of wet shoes together, after they have been taken off, 
they will hum as if one struck a tightly stretched line. 
Many shoes look as if tightly filled when they are not. 
This is done by filling loosely and placing them near an 
open fire when drying ; the heat contracts the string and 
they seem tighter than the really honestly filled, but as 
soon as wet they show what they are. An expert can 
tell what they are by trying to move the filling on the 
bow back and forth with the thumb and forefinger. If 
they are honestly filled the string round the bows can be 
moved. If tightened by fire the filling adheres to the 
bows as if glued. To any one buying nice snowshoes I 
would give the old Indian's advice, :, She very honest man, 
best way you watch him." M. H. 
WITH THE BOBO BEAR PACK.-Il. 
At the Home of the Black Bear. 
The soil of the Mississippi Delta is for the most part 
exceedingly rich, else it could not produce the extremely 
abundant and heavy growth of vegetation that it carries. 
The region on which we were hunting was covered with 
a solid mass of cane which stood about 15 to 25ft. high 
and was thick as the hair on a dog's back. All through 
the growth of cane stood great forest trees — ash, oak, 
hickory, gum and other trees which reach giant siz9. 
Across the brakes ran an occasional cypress swamp, at 
the head of which the growth merged into shorter and 
less bulky trees, often those of the persimmon, the holly 
or other trees, which were sometimes covered densely 
with the wild grapevines. It appears, however, that all 
the soil is not uniformly rich, or rather that parts of it 
are more so than others. Some of the ridges are espe- 
cially strong and rich of soil, and here the heavy blue 
cane grows most densely and impenetrably — so much so 
that if I should say how solid a front it offers to the 
hunter I should hardly be believed. Oh these richest 
and heaviest ridges the natural food of the bears was 
most abundant, and the hunter craft of Bobo had found 
out the very place where the bear was feeding — a series 
of blue cane ridges about eight miles from our camp. 
Here the party had been able so far to get a start in less 
than half an hour after turning the dogs loose each day. 
On two separate days, as I have above remarked, they 
got two starts and killed two bears before going back to 
camp. 
It was therefore with feelings of practical certainty 
that we all started out on the first hunt after my arrival 
in camp, which fell on a Friday morning. We numbered 
about a dozen hunters in alL Col. Dick Payne and Boney 
Lsavell stayed in camp and fought the war over again 
some more, but this on Capt. Leavell's part was an act of 
generosity to myself. I had no horse, of course, and he 
insisted on my riding his hunting mare Gladys. This I 
did reluctantly, as it unhorsed him for the day. But 
when I forgot that part of it I was very glad, for a better 
mount for the work in hand no one ever had, and I soon 
saw that staying with the pack was much simplified by 
the sagacity of Gladys, who had evidently been on 
many a bear hunt before and knew what was expected 
of her. 
We got a late start on this morning, but no one minded 
that, for it seemed sure that we could kill a bear in a few 
hours and get back to camp before dark all right. But 
for some reason the luck took its first turn against the 
party and we met with only disappointment. We had 
out only about half the pack, the rest being crippled or 
lost, but among our dogs we had some good bear dogs as 
any of the pack. We cast off on a heavy ridge and some 
of the young dogs soon opened, but for over an hour we 
had no token of serious business from any of the old re- 
liables. At length we heard old Ronce running alone, but 
we could not be sure what was his course, and none of 
the rest went to him, as the pack was as usual split up 
into several eager sections, all hustling for themselves. 
In fox hunting it may be possible to keep the pack in part 
at least well together, but in bear hunting this is impossi- 
ble. The dogs are of different nose and speed, and train- 
ing and experience, and if considerable time passes before 
a bear trail is struck they scatter out and break away in 
spite of the efforts of all hands to confine them to bears 
and bears only. Had Ronce struck his trail near by a good 
number of the other dogs, they would all have gone to 
him, and we should have had our run in less than three- 
quarters of an hour after we got on our grounds. As it 
was, we went working back and forth across the ridges 
tiil late in the af ternoon, It wa$ f eared the bear ha - 
moved out of the country on account of being hunted so 
steadily, and perhaps this was so. But finally, as we were 
riding down one of the long sloughs which made up out 
of the head of a big cypress swamp, the dogs struck a hot 
trail and went off roaring most delightfully, more than 
half the pack, with a lot of the reliable bear dogs among 
them. We could then hear the wild answers of one dog 
after another, from all over the country, as they hurried 
in to join the pack. The savage chorus grew and grew 
and then faded away as the chase swept on. Bobo's face 
brightened, and he went off after the pack in happy 
frame of mind. In a moment the hunting party was split 
into half a dozen groups, each riding as seemed best to 
him. I found myself in company of Mr. Felix Payne, Mr. 
Foster, Mr. Dunn and one or two of the negroes. Then 
we lost each other somehow and somewhere, and I was 
for a time alone with Mr. Payne, a very good bear hunter, 
and one pretty safe to be near when the bear was killed. 
We kept on riding across the ridges, and at length started 
down a long slough, paralleling the course of the pack, 
which could barely hear at times by the intentest listen- 
ing. 
A Wild, Mysterious Region. 
"They are going to the Hurricane, sure!" said Mr. 
Payne, and then we settled down into hard riding for a 
while, trying to head the pack, Noel Money had at this 
time joined us, coming across a heavy cane ridge to get 
into our slough. 
I should explain that the "Hurricane" is a strip of 
country about eighteen miles long and perhaps a mile or 
more wide, which nmrks the course of an ancient cyclone 
across that region. I presume there does not exist on 
earth a worse bit of country of its siza. The giant trees — 
many of them 5, 6 or 8ft. in diameter at the stump — he 
heaped and crossed in a Titanic windfall whose like few 
men have ever seen. Over all this the heavy cane has 
grown, and as fire has once passed over a portion of that 
country, a dense crop of blackberry, bittersweet and other 
thorny vines has sprung up over all, binding the cane fast 
in a network fearsome to face. Into this cover no horse- 
man on earth can ride, not even Bobo, and the foot trav- 
eler is but little better off, for he cannot get over a mile 
in half a day, and could not follow a straight course even 
to save his life. Woe to the man who ever should be lost 
there, for no mortal could be of service to him. He- might 
know his way to camp, but unless fortune brought him 
soon at the edge of the matted windfall he could never 
get out alive; and no matter how loud and long he blew 
his horn, he might as well blow it in his grave, for no 
earthly ear would hear it if he were half a mile from the 
edge. There was something frightful and uncanny to us 
all about this weird strip of solitude. One bear had gone 
into this Hurricane — as they all tried to do — and was 
killed net over 200yds. from the edge. It took over an 
hour to get him out, and when the rest of the party came 
up they thought the kill had been made at least half a 
mile away, for they could barely hear the horns which 
were blown to call in the chase. There was some strange 
quality in the acoustics of the Hurricane which made it 
impossible to hear anything more than 200 or 300yds. at 
the furthest. The loudest horn at that distance sounded 
faint, and even the whole pack running would then sound 
as if it were nearly a mile away. If ever the chase got 
into this mysterious, demonish stretch of ghostland it was 
all up for the day unless the dogs bayed the game close to 
the edge or drove it out again — which latter was not apt 
to happen, for the locality was the high fastness of no one 
knows what amount or kind of game. Certainly the 
Hurricane was a protector of game, and it was no doubt 
the home of many wolves, panthers and wildcats. The 
bears may winter there, but they do not like that country 
and do their feeding elsewhere, heading for the place of 
safety when started from the fat cane ridges where they 
are reveling in hickory nuts, acorns and persimmons. 
No wonder then that we rode hard to head the pack 
when the chase lined out for the haunted Hurricane. Mr. 
Payne, Mr. Money and myself and one colored boy broke 
through a mass of cane and found ourselves at the edge 
of a vast cypress swamp, which served as moat to the fast- 
ness beyond, This a man or a horse could not cross, so we 
stopped. Far on ahead we heard faint and phantom-like 
baying, as of the pack of the Wild Huntsman baying in 
the clouds. 
Disappointment. 
"It's all up," said Mr. Payne. "They've headed us and 
gone on in." Mr. Payne thought the dogs were running 
a wolf, something which was not likely they would do; 
but we could hear but very faintly, and could not distin- 
guish any voices of the bear dogs. Mr. Payne therefore 
thought it best to try to call back the pack out of the Hur- 
ricane, and we all blew for a long time. This, we learned 
afterward, was a mistake. 
Our detachment had waited for half an hour or more, 
and we began to find a wandering dog or two coming in 
now and then to us before we started out of the Hurricane 
to find the rest of the party. We met Bobo not far up the 
slough, and learned the unfortunate news that the bear 
had gone by him with a good lot of the bear dogs an hour 
before, and that our blowing had simply called off part of 
the pack. Bobo had thought that the bear was killed 
when he heard us blowing, or he could hav« followed on 
and headed the bear himself and killed it. This was very 
awkward, as it was now late. We tried to mend matters 
by riding down another slough along the side of the Hur- 
ricane, but though we once in a while heard a faint note 
or two we could not locate the pack. At dark Bobo, 
Payne, Money and myself were still waiting at the side of 
the Hurricane, into which our pack had passed and been 
swallowed up completely. The others of the party had 
gone to camp, and at length we also rode home, despond- 
ent, with seventeen dogs out of the twenty-three starters 
missing. The day had been most disastrous, and it seemed 
as though our hunting had come to an end, and that the 
Bobo bear pack had run its last chase. On the way home 
through the woods Bobo sang very loud and continu- 
ously — a sure sign that he was in a deuce of a temper over 
things. 
So we got no bear that first day, though we had some-, 
thing of a run. For my part, I think they get bears ea-. 
tirely too easily down there, and believe it would be better 
fun if it were not so easy, as well as a great deal better for 
the bear Bupply, which surely cannot last forever. As I 
was only having the sort of fun I am somewhat used to, 
through hunting in countries where game is not so abun- 
dant, I had no complaint to make; but the others, who had 
been killing a bear or so every day, protested loudly 
against this unkindness of fa$e, 
t 
