Am. 1896.] 
From a Shaky Perch. 
Place: a railroad in the pine forest, 245 miles north of 
Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Time: evening, October, '94. A 
deer trail leading from the raili'oad over a burnt ridge 
separacing a cedar swamp from a marsh. Golden rod 
waist high covering the uneven ground. 
The trail leads under the body and between the limbs 
of a small spruce, which at this point is about 6in. in dia- 
meter and about 5ft. from the ground, having been turned 
out of root and left resting on the larger branches. I 
clamber on to this unsteady trunk and, balancing myself j 
inspect the forest beyond. Presently I see a weed shake 
about lOOyds. distant. All is quiet for some seconds, then 
more agitation among the weeds; something is moving — a 
deer probably. It is difficult to keep my position. One 
small limb near the upper part of the trunk suffices to 
steady me somewhat by placing one foot partially on it, 
and I watch the weeds intently. 
There it is, a deer's head just showing above the golden 
rod. My ! but this is a shaky perch to shoot a rifle from. 
Bang I goes my .38 Winchester, and out comes the deer 
jumping wildly toward me, then turning to the right, 
tries to recover the woods. My gun speaks again, but on 
flies the deer over Wgs and through hollows, making a 
very uncertain mark. A third shot at about an even 
100yds. and I saw my ball strike amidships, and the beau- 
tiful creature lay dead in the edge of the cover it strove 
to reach. I saw it was a fawn not yet full grown, and 
naturally looked back over the weed patch to see if it had 
a mate. Yes, the weeds were shaking; up comes another 
head, followed by the report of my rifle. Here he comes! 
bounding off this time to the right of me, and causing me 
to twist my body into a rope, for I could not change the 
position of my feet without falling. Myl what uneven 
ground; now above my gun, now below it and hidden in 
the weeds. Two misses that serve only to locate his 
danger and accelerate his speed, and then he comes out 
on open ground and shows his side in an effort to return 
to the swamp over the ridge. This is truly a race for life, 
and the issue is doubtful. 
To the southwest lies hia mate. My toes point to the 
northwest, while he is northeast of me. Just over the 
narrow ridge is cover and safety. But I see a spot just 
back of his shoulder as my rifle speaks again, and I found 
him some 50ft. beyond. My first shot went under the 
skin at the base of the jaw, while the second, fourth, fifth 
and sixth were misses. Seven shots for two deer; but 
considering the conditions it was one of my experiences 
I will long remember. G. W. Cunningham. 
MEN I HAVE FISHED WITH. 
The Maine Capercailzie. 
Augusta, Aug. Editor Forest and Stream: In- 
closed find a note from our daily paper: "All efforts to 
trace the capercailzie and black game imported into 
Aroostook from Old Sweden last spring have proved in 
vain. Now and then some one spreads the rumor that 
they have been heard or seen. The last report is by a 
Swede who asserts that he saw and heard them in Onta- 
rio, Can. If they have gone to the pine forests of that 
section we will never see them again in Maine, says the 
New Sweden correspondent of the Aroostook Bepubli- 
can" 
It is also reported that there is a herd of over 100 cari- 
bou on Mt. Katahdin, and several people visiting there 
have seen them all together. One man succeeded in get- 
ting a photograph of them, and then lost camera and 
plates by capsizing his canoe. Cushnoo. 
It Educates. 
Philadelphia, Aug. IL— Editor Forest and Stream: I 
feel as if I must write and tell you how much I appreciate 
your valuable paper. The Forest and Stream is the most 
interesting paper I ever read, and I am always on hand 
Thursday at the Reading Raih-oad depot to get a copy 
every week. If all hunters pretending to be sportsmen 
would read its columns we would soon be rid of the game 
hogs that shoot and fish for quantities and not sport. 
C. A. Y. 
Game in Wayne County, Pa. 
Dybbrry, Pa., Aug. 7.— Trout were scarce this spring 
on account of dry weather last fall and in May this year. 
We caught a small pailful (dressed) the last day of the 
season; water very low then and the fish wild and shy. 
It is too early to look for game yet; woodcock scarce; 
some broods of young partridges (ruffed grouse) reported; 
very few squirrels seen yet. G. M. D. 
The Birds in Iowa. 
Brighton, la. — In this locality quail are abundant; 
more seen than for years before. Prairie chickens also 
are doing fine, and a great many are reported where they 
breed. Squirrels are found without number and rabbits 
are too numerous to mention. Single Shot. 
Currituck Bay Birds. 
We know of a party going from New York to Currituck 
this week for bay bird shooting, in which there is room 
for another person; and we believe this to be an excellent 
opportunity for one who can take advantage of it. 
The Forest and Stheam is put to press each week on Tuesday. 
Correspondence intended for publication should reacli'us'iat^the 
latest by Monday, and as much earlier as practicable. 
|i A Stray Shinplaster* 
Comes to us once in a while for a copy 
^ of "Game Laws in ^ Brief;" but shin- 
plasters nowadays are scarcer than Moose 
in New York; and 25 cents in postage 
stamps will do just as well. 
VIIL— Col. Charles H. Raymond. , 
The only fishing companion of earliest boyhood with 
whom I have kept in touch throughout life, and who is 
living to-day, is the subject of this sketch. He was born 
in Albany, N. Y., in January, 1834, and is near my own 
age. He frequently visited me across the river, and we 
hunted turtles in the creeks from the red mill to Quacken- 
dary Hollow — pond turtles, snapping turtles and box 
turtles — and the point w as to collect as many as possible 
and try to train them to race. We fished a little once in 
a while, but to Raymond it was too slow and lacked the 
excitement of grabbing tuttles, and this was characteris- 
tic of his life t&oughout. As a fisherman pure and simple 
he would never have achieved fame. He lacked that 
quality of patience which is not strained, but droppeth 
like the gentle worm overboard when it is the last in the 
bait box. I cared little to fish with him because of this 
lack of patience. He was of the class who say, "Yes, I 
like to fish if they bite fast." But he was a born hunter, 
wing, rifle shot and "bird-dog" man, and took to setters as 
ducks go to a mill pond. 
We would watch old John Chase lift his fyke nets in 
the creek and he would give us the turtles that he caught. 
We would stroll down the Greenbush bank, past old Fort 
Cralo, where I went to school, and watch the sturgeon 
jump in the river. Then a big one would jump every few 
minutes, now there are few, if any, in the Hudson. We 
went back of the nut orchard and drank the strong sul- 
phur water from Harrowgate Spring, which we often talk 
of to-day. It is singular that we never went shooting 
together, perhaps because his ideas of sportsmanship were 
COL. CHARLES H. BATMOND. 
higher than mine, and he could go to more distant and 
better places than I; but whatever the reason, we often 
talked of shooting, but never shot in company, yet I kept 
track of him and of his shooting trips in various parts of 
the country. 
While atill a small boy, too small to carry the smallest 
arms, he followed afleld such sportsmen as the late Dr. 
Judson and his pupil Alexander Bullock, of West Sand- 
lake, Rensselaer county, N. Y., in admiration of their 
skillful handling of the Doctor's slashing English setters, 
of which I heard much at that time. The masterful way 
in which those adepts in the art of wing shooting grassed 
the plump brown woodcock, which they flushed in front 
of their dogs in the rich coverts that lined the banks of 
the Wynantskill, taught him lessons in that "deliberate 
promptitude," so dear to Frank Forrester, that have 
never been forgotten. As he grew older he was per- 
mitted to accompany these sportsmen and shoot with 
them, and I heard a great deal of these trips aft-er I 
became his school-mate at Prof. Anthony's, with the late 
Major George S. Dawson, the subject of sketch No. VI. 
of this series. 
The first field dog that young Raymond owned was a 
setter bred by Doctor Judson, called Prince, a very good 
dog for a boy because he knew the ways of the birds, and, 
as I remember, had a way as well as a will of hi8> own. 
His next, and a rare good one it grew to be, was a pointer 
from my Nell, who was described in the article on Port 
Tyler as a pointer whose father was a setter. She was 
stolen from me and recovered by my father after I 
left Albany, and he bred her to the famous old PumpeUy 
pointer of Albany and gave the choice of the litter to his 
nephew, young Raymond, who named him Don and 
trained him to a perfection that was rare in those days, 
took him to Michigan and shot over him to the surprise of 
the shooters there, who had never seen a field dog work 
on feathered game and had no experience of wing shoot- 
ing. These things to hear I, like Desdemona, would 
seriously incline in after years and the fame of my Nell 
and her progeny seemed partly mine. -Young Raymond 
gave Don to his friend Harry Palmer in 1856, and shot 
over him again two years later. After Mr. Palmer's 
death Don was sold at auction for |50, a very high price 
for a bird dog in Michigan at that time. I had given Nell 
such training as she had. My boyish knowledge of dog 
training must have been crude, although I did not suspect 
it at the time, for I had read Youatt, Frank Forrester 
and other authors, and had seen some bird dogs work, and 
thought, boy-like, that I knew it all; but Nell was not 
broken to suit the fastidious taste of Master Raymond. 
He bred her again to the Pumpelly pointer and one of the 
litter was a beautifully coated liver-colored setter, the first 
one in four litters that showed the blood of her sire, 
James Bleecker's well-known setter. This puppy, Fifine, 
Mr. Raymond gave to Monsieur Pierre Delpit, his fencing 
master, in 1859. 
It waa in Jackson county, Michigan, where Mr. Ray- 
mond and Don surprised the natives, and the woodcock 
and game of all kinds abounded there. Mr. R, learned 
to track the deer amid the oak openings, through the 
mossy swamps around Vin^ard Lake and along the 
windings of Raisin River. Here the early lessons of old 
"Uncle Henry" Harris, the famous hunter of Lake 
George, who taught the boy to "sbute rifil," found their 
academy of graduation, and thereafter, so long as eyes 
held their own, Charles could look with confidence along 
the sights of a^ifle at moving game. We had drifted far 
apart until my return in 1860 from a six years' tramp, 
and W9 no more lured the sunfish from the creeks, nor 
held disputes over the species, ag« or other things apper- 
taining to turtles and tortoises. We left the frogs to be 
stoned by younger boys and contented ourselves with 
reminiscences of our mighty deeds, the only difference of 
opinion, then and to-day, being the question which of us 
it was that attempted to jump a stream and changed his 
mind when halfway across and stuck in the mild. I still 
believe it was Charles. 
In the meantime he had undertaken long journeyings 
abroad, and save a chamois hunt in Switzerland, with its 
climbing, sliding, crevass leaping and glacier scrambling, 
there was no shooting for two years. After wandering 
through Germa,ny and Italy, living on foot for months 
along the valleys and on the mounikins of Switzerland, 
he went back to France and made his home in the Latin 
Quarter of Paris, along about in Trilby's time; and if he 
failed to meet Little Billee I know by what he has told 
me that he must have been on friendly terms with Zoo 
Zou and the Laird, for he knew all the pretty songs men- 
tioned, or hinted at, in Mr, Da Maurier's truthful recital 
of life "in the Quarter," and from conversation with him 
within the year I gained the impression that he even 
knows the fourth and expurgated verse of Au clair de la 
lune. Be that as it may, he returned to his native land 
with the ripened experience of a man of the world and a 
mind weU stored not only with the literature of various 
countries, but enriched by that contact with the people of 
those lands which only travel afoot can give. 
After his return the Insurance Department of the State 
of New York was being organized by the Hon. William 
Barnes, superintendent. Mr. Raymond was appointed to 
a clerkship in that office, from which he rose to succeed 
the Hon. James W. Husted as deputy superintendent of 
the department. While thus engaged he became a mem- 
ber of the Albany Zouave Cadets, a fine body of citizen 
soldiers which was afterward merged into the Tenth 
Regiment New York State National Guard, as Company 
A. Then came the war, when men left the farm, the 
store and the workshop to hasten to preserve the Union. 
The Tenth Regiment volunteered, was recruited to the 
full standard and mustered into the U. S. service as the 
177th N. Y. Volunteers, and on its rolls was "Charles H. 
Raymond, First Lieutenant, Company A." The regiment 
was assigned to the Department of the Gulf, under Gen- 
eral N. P. Banks. Just before the siege of Port Hudson 
he was appointed Aid-de-Camp on the staff of General 
F. S. Nickerson and later was made Assistant Adjutant- 
General on the brigade staff. 
All through that weary siege, lying in the trenches in 
a swampy country which filled the hospitals with mias- 
matic patients, Col. Raymond was at his post of duty, 
even when, as his comrade, Col. David A. Teller, told me 
last month, he had been positively ordered to the hospital, 
and in the first assatdt on the works, May 37, 1863, was 
again at his post, although hardly able to stand. Looking 
over one of his war time letters this sentence is found : 
"This campaigning with fleld men and field guns, but 
without field dogs; Inter arma silent canes, which being 
interpreted means that when men go afield to shoot each 
other, pointers are no longer to the point, and setters get 
a set-back. These are not the dogs of war." 
While in the field Col. Raymond could not entirely sink 
the sportsman in the soldier, for in writing m© of the 
second assault on Port Hudson he said: "You cannot 
think how sad and strange sounded the whistling of the 
quail in tlie fields over which our brigade charged on that 
fateful June 14, and how that weird whistle seemed to 
exult over men who with empty guns were rushing for- 
ward to glory and the grave." A little more than a year 
ago he again visited that battlefield; again heard the 
whistling of the merry Bob Whites, descendants of those 
birds of 1863, and received from the proprietor of the 
plantation, the son of the owner at the time of the battle, 
a cordial invitation to come down when the season 
opened and shoot in peace over the field where his men 
had shot in war some thirty years before. Verily, the 
whirligig of time brings wondrous changes, as well as 
revenges 1 
With the return of peace the colonel went back to his 
former position in the Insurance Department of the 
State, and to the dogs. He bred a ^ood and serviceable 
line of setters from the native strains of Mr. Truax, of 
Albany, N. Y., and of Gen. William J. Sewell, of Cape 
May; Col. E. M. Quimby, of Morristown, and Mr. Theodore 
Morford, of Newton, all in the sporting State of New 
Jersey. With these dogs he established the kennels of 
Fox Farm, near Morristown, N. J. 
In the early '703 Mr. Raymond entered into partner- 
ship with Mr. John A. Little, the General Agent of the 
Mutual Life Insurance Company for New York City. 
Later on, when Mr. Little retired from business, Mr. R. 
assumed sole chai'ge of the Mutual Life's Metropolitan 
Agency*j which includes Long Island and Staten Island, a 
position which he retains to day. In 1890 he was elected 
to the presidency of the National Association of Life 
Underwriters, and few men are wider known or have 
more warm personal friends than the genial and cultured 
gentleman who is the subject of this sketch, of whom a 
writer once said: "The fine and distinctive personality 
of Mr. Raymond is what makes him what he is. W e 
might sweep away all business details, and all that men 
know and value in him would remain ineradicably 
stamped upon the memory and embalmed in the affec- 
tions of those who call him friend. A joyous tempera- 
ment, luminous intellect, almost inerrant sagacity, force- 
ful initiative, womanly tenderness, brilliancy, wit, cour- 
