Aug. 1, 1896.] 
FOREST AND STREAM^ 
87 
MEN I HAVE FISHED WITH. 
IV.— Porter Tyler. 
At first Old Port Tyler was a far-off and almost myth- 
ical person. He appeared vaguely in the stories of older 
boys who had really seen him, always in connection with 
fish and game. Garry Van O'Linda had seen him cross 
the ferry to Albany with a lot of rabbits and partridges, 
and Charley Melius saw him with a great load of wild 
pigeons, but to me he was a mysterious person who lived 
by fishing, shooting and trapping. A man rowed a light 
boat around Dow's Point and John Atwood said, "That's 
Old Port, he's been down the dead crick after snipe," and 
here was the real live man at last, but his mysterious and 
poetical life seemed as far off as ever. A most ideal life 
to me, and he was at once enthroned among my collec- 
tion of idols, which then included Davy Crockett. Daniel 
Boone, Baron Trenck, Natty Bumpo and Charles XII,, of 
Sweden, These men I had not seen, but Port Tyler had 
passed Dow's Point before my eyes, and his boat may 
have contained untold numbers of snipe and countless 
fish. 
Gradually it was learned that he was a bachelor and 
lived alone near the red mill, "Mechanic street" they call 
it now; then it was "up by Fred Aiken's woods," and 
they said that he had huts and caves all over the country 
and lived in them when he pleased. These stories, and 
the fact that a lunatic named Asher Cone had a hut back 
of Harrongate Spring and chased the boys with a club 
when he saw them, added mystery and perhaps a bit of 
awe to the personality of Old Port. In my own case this 
was true, and at the age of twelve I never even hoped for 
personal acquaintance with a man whom I placed higher 
than the rulers of kingdoms, for he was my ideal of the 
highest form of manhood, I may as well say right here 
that this was my ideal fifteen years later, and was lived up 
to as closely as possible; personal freedom from dictation 
by others, a love of nature, and above all a sense of per- 
fect independence caused me to. cast civilization aside, 
and — whisper it — after six years return, not a prodigal, 
but like him with a flag of truce, which the small boy 
terms letter in the post office." If this is an unpar- 
donable digression charge it to Old Port; he caused it. 
The pigeons were flying well one October day and I 
had about twenty. They were in scattered flocks seeking 
mast and my neck was stiff from looking upward for 
them. Often a dozen would start from a tree where none 
were seen and a wing shot was not possible, if I had been 
capable of it. Resting on a log and watching the open 
for a flight to come, and, like Irving's skipper who guided 
his craft up the Hudson, "thinking of nothing in the 
past, the present or the future," I suddenly became aware 
that a man stood beside me. The leaves were damp from 
a two days' rain, a high-hole was drumming away on an 
old stub near by and a couple of bluejays were scolding 
about something, perhaps about men, and being intent on 
watching for pigeons to come my way the whole com- 
bination favored a silent approach that a falling shadow 
was the first intimation of. The stranger said: 
"There's a big flock feedin' on beechnuts over there in 
Teller's woods an' they may come this way; there's some- 
body just south of 'em 'cause the crows all left there a 
hoUerm'." 
He was a small man, rather thin, but wiry, clothing 
not noticeable except a little faded, a keen gray eye and 
a light double gun were the first impressions made by the 
speaker. For young men it might be well to say that all 
guns in those days were muzzleloaders and that the use 
of single-barreled guns was so common that the exception 
was a matter of remark, therefore the fact that he carried 
a "double-barreled gun" was duly noted. I told him that 
I had been through Teller's woods an hour before, but 
only found a few pigeons there and got but three of 
them. 
"The big flock was down to the crick for water then," 
said he, "and I saw 'em rise and go into the woods, about 
three or four hundred of 'em in the flock, and they haven't 
left yet. You can stay here and get a few shots if they 
come this way, as they will be Ijkely to if that man over 
south of 'em gets among 'em. I'll work off to the east'ard 
and get beyond 'em if that man don't start 'em first," and 
he moved off and was soon lost in the underbrush. He 
was a man I had never seen before, and the incident was 
only called to mind when, out after rabbits in the winter, 
on Crehan's farm above the mill pond, in jumping a little 
stream I landed near a man who was skinning a mink. 
It was the stranger of the pigeon hunt, and instinctively 
came the knowledge that this was the mysterious woods- 
man of whom so much had been heard. To my surprise 
he knew who I was, and said: "O, yes, I've often seen you 
down the crick and in the woods, and when I saw the 
gun you carried I knew it belonged to your brother Har- 
leigh, for he told me that you had it most ev'ry day when 
you were out of school." 
This was the first mink I had ever seen, and I watched 
the skinning, which went very well until the tail was 
reached, and this could not be skinned far because the 
skin wa<3 so tight. We talked until he had finished, set 
his steel trap, and gathered his skins and went on with 
the hides of two minks and six muskrats, a very g'ood 
morning's work. Truly he was not now "mysterious," he 
was no longer a half mythical person, but a real live man, 
and to me a most interesting one, whom I hoped to know 
much better. 
In the spring, perhaps of 1848 or '49, just after the ice 
had left the river and the creeks, a party of tis hojs went 
down the island creek,;aa we called it, Popskinny, or Pops- 
quinea, as it appears on maps, to fish. It was merely an 
arm of the river which crooked out and in again, making 
an island some four or five miles long, beginning a couple 
of miles below Greenbush. The water was cold yet, but 
the hardy yellow perch were astir and the creek was full 
of them, A railroad has filled the creek in where it 
crosses and the water is shallow to-day and but few fiah 
go in it now. There had been a few perch and bullheads 
taken when Old Port came rowing a light scow down the 
creek. Some one said that he had gill nets for herring 
set further down and this was a way of taking fish that I 
wanted to see, so when he stopped to ask "what luck" I 
got permission to get in his boat and go with him. Two 
nets, each about 100ft. long and 4ft. deep, were stretched 
across the creek and had been there all night. I helped 
aise them and it was such funl To-day it would not be 
fun; we take such different views of a thing at different 
times of life. He took perhaps a bushel of perch, half as 
many suckers and some 200 "herrin'," as the alewife is 
called up the Hudson, "The perch an' herrin' ain't worth 
much," 6aid he, "about 10 cents a string of a dozen or fif- 
teen, accordin' to size, but the herrin' fetches $3 jjer 100 
as early as this; when they begin to catch them in the 
river they drop to half that price, and by May 1 they are 
so plenty and cheap that I don't bother with 'em. At this 
time, you see, the people want to eat them fresh and 
they're fine, but later they are spawning and are only fit 
for saltin' down." This was the financial part of Port's 
herring fishing. I went in his boat with him to the nets 
many times, even as late as 1868, when he was a man of 
fifty-eight and I of thirty-five, for he asked me to his 
house and I became intimate with him from that first trip 
to the nets. 
"It's a cur'us thing," he said on one of these trips, "to 
know how the herrin' get past these gill nets that reach from 
shore to shore and from top to bottom, but they do; last 
night I set my two about 100yds. above two of Cutty Car- 
son's, and when I got through settin' them there was Lou 
Crandell settin' his above mine; but I'll get about as many 
herrin' as they will, yet I can't see how the fish get past 
the first net. They don't jump 'em, for I have watched 
all night to see if they jump the cork-line. As 
far as that is concerned, I'd just as soon have my 
nets in the middle as anywhere else." This is a puz- 
zle, a greater one even than how the shad got up the 
Hudson past drifting gill nets and staked ones, to be 
caught by the seiners of the upper river; but these do not 
reach from bank to bank and from surface to bottom, as 
the nets in the Popsquinea did. 
He it was who first attracted my attention co the breed- 
ing habits of fish. We were trolling minnows for pike 
down this creek, the water had fallen and left strings of 
perch eggs hanging to the bushes above water, "Porter," 
said I, for the days were getting long and permitted the 
occasional use of his proper name, "there must be millions 
of perch eggs left to die that way every year; I should 
suppose instinct would teach the fish not to spawn high 
up during a freshet." 
"Well, a yellow perch is a dull kind of a fish, and don't 
know as much as a herrin'. When a flood comes and 
covers all these bottom lands the herrin' go all over them, 
but the minute the water begins to fall they scoot for the 
creek and seem to find the ditches leading to it, and they 
don't spawn on the flats, but among drift stuff'; their 
eggs are separate, and stick fast to what they touch. 
These strings of perch eggs are not fast to the limbs, but 
are just hung over 'em with both ends down. I have put 
lots of 'em back in the water. Maybe it's of no use, for 
there's plenty of 'em and they ain't o' much account. It's 
cur'us, though, to watch 'em spawn, I've seen 'em spawn 
in my nets when I've been watching at night with a 
lantern. When they are first laid they come out small 
and there's nothin' in 'em until the he one goes over 'em, 
and then they swell up as big a mass as the fish that laid 
'em." 
When we came to his net he showed me perch nearly 
ripe, and stripped a ripe male. I took perch eggs that 
day — in 1867— and hatched them in the State Geological 
rooms on State street, Albany, by permission of Dr. Hall, 
the curator, and through my intimacy with this observant 
field naturalist I became a fiahculturist and made it a life 
work. 
There was a gap of some nine years in my intercourse 
with Porter, as I spent the years 1854-60 in the West and 
parts of 1862-65 in the army, but the old man gave me 
a warm welcome, "For," said he, "I liked you because 
you took so much interest in all the live things, even if 
they were no-account things." I never saw him after 
1868, He died at his home, which he owned, in 1882, 
aged seventy-two years. Some of the Albany shooting 
men thought him an old poacher because he sold much 
of his game and they said that he snared partridges 
(ruffed grouse) and it may be that he did, I can't say, but 
to me be was a kind friend and instructor of my boyhood 
in things of interest, if not of usefulness. He was one of 
those real outdoor observers and the kind of naturalist 
with whom the modes of feeding and habits of birds, beasts 
and fishes take the first place, while of their structure he 
knew little more than an outside view of fur, fin and 
feather gave him, yet his knowledge of many things was 
far beyond what a scientific education could have given 
him. Not that I wish to underrate such an education, or 
to speak slightingly of it, for it is of very great value, but 
it is a fact that with most of our biologists structure and 
comparative anatomy are the beginning and end of their 
knowledge of animal life, and a day spent with Port 
Tyler would have opened up a new chapter to them. 
Such a day might also have been of use to that class of 
sportsmen who are mere butchers and measure the pleas- 
ures of an outing by the amount of slaughter they have 
done, and whose only knowledge of nature is where 
certain kinds of game could be found at certain seasons, 
A man who when out shooting would stop, lean his gun 
against a tree and spend half an hour watching a little 
chipmunk dig his hole, has higher tastes than a mere 
game butcher, and Port Tyler did that one day when I 
ran across him in the Indian Orchard. "It's cur'us how 
he does it," he remarked, "and because you don't find the 
dirt piled up about the hole they say he begins to dig at 
the bottom; your brother Harleigh told me that, but I 
think he was joking." This last by way of apology, for 
his sense of humor was not keen, and he did not always 
realize the fact that some people would trifle with such 
questions, and that innocent and unsuspecting nature 
invited just such remarks as the above. "That little cuss 
is cute," he said, "he leaves a clean hole between two 
roots, with no aigp. that he has been diggin', but Harleigh 
is wrong; he begins at the top and carries the dirt away 
in his cheeks and drops it when he gets far enough, so 
that it will not attract attention. Maybe when he gets 
down he can pack it one side into some hollow and save 
labor. He ran off when you came, and there he is on 
that fence there by Cassin's house, jerkin' his tail, because 
he is mad at you for coming here to stop his work," He 
knew that the little ground squirrel was a "chipmunk" 
and stored its food under the protecting roots of trees, 
and by observation had learned how it dug a hole without 
leaving outside evidence of it, even though he knew noth- 
ing of its anatomy. 
Port's great fur harvest sometimes came in midwinter, 
but always in early spring, by a "January thaw," and 
surely in April. The ice never melts in the Hudson about 
Albany, but is broken up by floods when the snow melts 
in the upper country or in the Mohawk Valley, and often 
goes out in great fields, nearly 2ft. thick, which crown 
on top of each other and break by the overhanging 
weight." Grounding on shallows just above Castleton, 
which bar in the river the Dutch knew as the "Over- 
slaugh," the water is dammed and floods the lower parts 
of Albany so that boats can often float up Broadway as 
far as State street, and all the flats and bottom lauds on 
both sides of the river are several feet under water, often 
for weeks or until the ice dam breaks. The muskrats of 
that region have been so accustomed to this state of 
things that they rarely build houses, as in other parts of 
the country, although I have seen an occasional house 
there; but houses being of no use in such events, the in- 
stinct to build has been nearly lost. When the freshet 
comes the musquash is drowned out of the holes in the 
bank and seeks the piles of flotsam to hide among. Every 
gun in Greenbush and on the hills below is brought out 
and everything in the shape of a boat that can be had is 
put into commission for the slaughter, and the roar of 
successive guns reminds a veteran of a skirmish line. 
Many men are shooting for profit. Old Port among them, 
but a larger number are out for fun and pile the rodents 
in their boat to give to some one who will want them. 
In the early 503 there would be found a number who 
were shooting for fun and saving the animals for Porter. 
Among these were Col. David A. Teller, James Miller, 
Reuben and Ira Wood, Harleigh Mather, Godfrey Rhodes, 
Bill Fairchild, myself and about a dozen others. The 
result was that Port had to hire help to skin the animals, 
while he would stretch the hides. 
At this late day, with a memory hardly worth a hill of 
beans, it is not safe to make an estimate of the slaughter 
of muskrats during a freshet on the eastern shore of the 
Hudson River, between Daw's Point, which is less than 
two miles below Albany, and Castleton, which is nearly 
ten miles from the city. I had to go to school, sure, for 
my father well knew that only an iron hand could keep 
me there, and he had it; but two days in the week I 
claimed for rest and recreation. The latter I had, while 
the former was not needed. With this explanation, I will 
say that it was poor shooting when I did not pick up 
thirty muskrats in a day during a freshet, and men have 
killed as high as 300 in a day. Perhaps with about fifty 
gunners there was an average of thirty musquash eachj 
which would count up to over 10,000 in a week! It 
seems too big a figure for eight miles on one side of a 
river, but the flats, or bottoms, were from a half to three- 
quarters of a mile wide, rich with alluvial deposit from 
each overflow and rank with vegatation along the river, 
the island creek and the ditches which drained the bot- 
toms into the creek; also our sociable little mammal 
is largely a vegetable feeder. With donations from his 
friends in addition to his own gun Port Tyler one year 
marketed over 2,000 muskrat skins, a few obtained by 
winter trapping, but mainly shot during the freshets. 
Just what these were worth at that time is forgotten; all 
were not "prime" because of the shot holes, but they 
brought enough to keep this man of simple tastes until 
the fall season, even if the spring run of "herring" were 
not considered, and in addition to the winter's fUr there 
was always a few mink and other skins, for he was not 
above taking in a prowling cat, as he said: "A common 
cat skin is not worth much, but when I've killed her the 
skin might as well be saved, and I kill 'em on principle, 
for they kill nesting partridges, rabbits and every young 
song bird they can get hold of," 
Port once said to me that a game dealer, hotel keeper, 
or some other man, wanted him to shoot reedbirds in the 
fall, "Now, what do you suppose he called reedbirds?" 
he asked, "they're bobolinks in their fall gray coat — and 
that's goin' too far. I've shot blackbirds and snowbirds 
for market, and while I was a-shootin' 'em I thought it 
was small business compared to shootin' quail, pa'tridge 
an' rabbits; but whenitco.nes to shootin' bobolinks, which 
makes the medders ring with song in the spring, I'll be 
durned ef I'll do itl You've offen seen a he bobolink fly 
toward his mate an' then set his wings all a-tremble as he 
told her that she was the best she bobolink he ever see — 
and the musici I've offen sot and listened to him when I 
ought to be goin' on to my herrin' nets in the spring. Of 
course the bobolink gets gray in the fall, an' he looks just 
like a she one, but that's his natm-', an' I ain't a-goin' to 
shoot him for market, I'd rather hear him sing, an' be- 
sides he's too small to eat." I have always held this 
opinion, that it is a sin to kill this songster for the morsel 
of meat it has, and have consistently refused to touch 
"reedbirds" when they have been served at dinners. The 
bird is nearly extinct in the meadows which it once en- 
livened, and during a life of thirteen years on Long Island 
I have not seen a bobolink, Guns, guns, guns! I some- 
times think it would be well if gunpowder had never been 
made. The true game birds holcl their own in many 
places fairly well — only men of intelligence can find them 
—but in the older settled regions the redheaded wood- 
pecker has gone and the brown thrasher and bobolink 
have almost disappeared. The reason is a combination of 
gun and boy. 
Game that Port didn't sell he cooked for small parties 
at his house. He was a good cook, and when it was 
known that he had a few ruffed grouse on hand a supper 
party would be organized at once, and he would furnish 
everything but the liquors. He was a very temperate 
man and seldom used either wines or stronger stuff, and 
said that he did not care to sell it even if he had license 
to do so, but the jolly old cocks who were fond of his 
game suppers did not allow themselves to suffer on this 
account. I attended only one of these affairs, as I was 
rather young for that sort of thing, but I had been out 
after grouse and had three, which I gave toPnrter, whom 
I met when near home. The cause of this generosity 
was because I did not dare to take them home, having 
surreptitiously borrowed a fine double gun from my 
father which I was forbidden to take or handle, but as he 
never used it he often loaned it to me without his knowl- 
edge. Under these conditions Porter got the birds and I 
was invited to the feast. General Martin Miller, of the 
State militia, presided; in times when Greenbush was at 
peace with all foreign countries he kept a grocery store 
and was commonly known as Mat. Miller; Tobias Teller, 
Bill Fairchild, Godfrey Rhodes, Port and I; fourteen of 
us in all, six men and eight grouse. After the last bone 
had been polished Bill Fairchild was thoughtful, and as 
he was sucking away on the backbone of a grouse, trying 
to extract the very last of the bitter that is so dear to the 
lover of all kinds of grouse, he asked: 
"Porter, did you ever eat a muskrat?" 
