830 
howling. Finally Anse Moore came along and shot 
the deer. I then cut his throat and had my buck. 
"It isn't much of a story after all, but of course I had 
to run like the very devil to keep in sight of that critter. 
Probably I was about half crazy at the time. If I had 
my rifle I could have killed the animal dwring the first 
fifteen minutes of the run." 
Thus saying, the old veteran of the Civil War straight- 
ened himself proudly up, and driving his long pitchfork 
into a large haycock lifted it bodily from the ground 
and sent tlie fragrant mass aloft, nearly covering Alan- 
son, who was afraid of the "pizen ivy" found in some 
portions of the hay. The loader, as soon as he recovered 
from the shock, retorted, "Yes, the Halls were all great 
men, and there is a little story about their feats in tlie 
lumber woods that mustn't be forgotten. One day an 
uncle of mine cut down an awfully big pine tree, and 
after sawing oft the largest log handed his son, a big 
fellow, his dinner pail and told him to eat and remain 
sitting on that log until he got his team to snake it out 
of the woods, because the Halls had said that they 
would have that log of timber if it took them a month, 
day and night. The boy ate his dinner, and when his 
father came for the timber was still obediently sitting 
upon the log. Judge the old man's surprise when he 
went to hitch on and foimd that all that was left of the 
beautiful pine log was the shell. It was in the spring, 
during peeling time, and the Halls had probablj'- hitched 
on to the timber while the boy was dozing over his good 
luncheon, and had dragged it clean out of its shell with- 
out his noiicing what was going on.." 
"Well," said Amasa, "our folks did know a few tricks 
about lumbering. That deer story is all right, and hap- 
pened just as I told it," Peter Flint. 
Out with the Muzzleloader. 
A GOOD friend of mine, without any apparent intention 
of doing me an injury, recently loaned me a muzzleload- 
ing shotgun with a Londan brand on it and a look about 
it that was purelj"^ businesslike. And to bring the old 
days back from the veil of memory and show an en- 
thusiastic: young M. Chill some vivid touches of the 
ancient times, the dingy old weapon was filched out of a 
dkrk corner of the garret, carefully wrapped with sundry 
newspapers, and one gray, misty morning last week the 
young boy and the old boy in the mettlesome fashion we 
have of doing things carried the gun up beyond the 
massive walls of Cornell and proceeded to "load up." 
Perhaps you have fo;^otten what a delicate, sometimes 
prolonged, task that i§ interspersed with those punctili- 
ous little details which develop cold fingers and a hot 
temper when the frost is on the meadow. But in this 
instance there was a delightsome rattle of shot in the 
greasy leather pouch, and the fantastically figured powder 
fiask coaxed sunny daj^s of the long ago into the fore- 
ground; and the old brown cap box was fished out of the 
right-hand vest pocket, two percussion caps adroitly ab- 
stracted therefrom, and after jarring the powder into 
the nipples fully, just as the fashion of old was, the 
caps were affixed to their places, a final look given to see 
that everything was at the "safety notch," and the walk 
resumed. 
This_ was not intended as a shooting trip, a foraging 
excursion, but rather a sort of loafing jaunt, a raid on 
nature's wealth, with the old gun and its creaking para- 
phernalia as conipan3\ Incidentally Master Louis and 
papa, too, perhaps, entertained the vague notion of getting 
enough red squirrels for an evening stew. When we had 
fairly hidden ourselves in the first piece of woods the sun 
thrashed itself out of a swirling mass of clouds and per- 
mitted its radiance to fall here and there athwart the 
interlacing tree tops, inviting Reddy to come out and have 
a chew of the toothsome beechnut. Presently a clamor- 
ous squeaking of the sly rodent's vocal apparatus heralded 
his nearby presence, and then a moment later the muzzle- 
loader spoke twice in a vei-y sharp tone of voice, but the 
saucy little chap onlj' gufiTawed derisively, flirted his silken 
brush, swung him.self with heroic daring into a neighbor- 
ing tree top and disappeared. Comforting ourselves with 
the reflection that we didn't care much for squirrel stew 
anyhow, we loafed around in the city of low-spoken in- 
habitants for some time without another wild voice to 
disturb our thoughts. i i 
Moving further along we came to some sparse second 
growth timber, where nature's early autumn brush had 
alreadj'' painted the foliage into many colors. Here is the 
charm of the primrose, the delicate tracing of canary 
yellow, the deeper tint of sulphur yellow. AA'ith the blend- 
ing of carmine and yellow into the maroon yellow of 
society's best favor; and the warth of the reds is every- 
where, from the matchless carmine down through the 
gradations of claret, cherry, crimson, vermilion, to the 
entrancing carnation. The elegance of the greens is no 
longer in one shade. Flashes of brilliant green are in- 
terlarded with splashes of beautiful olive and Quaker 
green, the modest but ever restful sage and tea 
green, with variations from all these, which make them 
unapproachable in the domain of artificial still-life color 
effects. And we feast our eyes upon wild confusions of 
orange brown, coffee, amber, seal, japan and Vandyke 
brown, upon the umbers and siennas, upon the cold, 
frigid tracings of blue in many tints, until the University 
clock, just beyong the rang of gently sloping hills, re- 
minds us of the luncheon hour. Then out on the faded 
moss, under the deep blue of the sky and the glow of the 
sunshine, we ate our sandwiches and rested — and were 
boys together. Later on the big boj'' — ^just for a day — 
taught the little boy how to shoot, how to know the hang 
of a gun, how to carry it, how to respect it, and how to fear 
it. As the afternoon advanced and the homeward walk 
proceeded another brave but unavailing attempt to bag 
a squirrel was made. Failing this, we watched the grace- 
ful convolutions of a brigade of crows as it swept by in 
mid air, speaking a language characteristic of these 
shrewd, machinating wearers of faultless black. Far in 
advance, on easy, soaring wing, sped a great hawk, with 
his Machiavelian cast of countenance plainly outlined 
against the vast azure canvas above. Loafing some more, 
breathing afresh the pur, dry air of the high hill country 
and growing apace in newness of life, we at length slid 
down into the snarl of city traffic and the turmoil of un- 
grg-teful cQTOtlcrcialisna. , 
We had a day of rich, full breath afield, out in God's 
o-wn country, where the sunshine is untaxed, and where 
the throbbing of nature's heart may be heard and Bensed 
in all its wondrous charm. And the tousled old muzzle- 
loader made the glad experience seem somewhat akin 
to that of the far-off days when we were all younger. 
But it was the writer's first home-coming from a tramp 
afield for more than a decade when a winsome, sweet- 
faced, dark-eyed little woman of gracious presence and a 
lovely spirit of domesticity, failed to welcome his return. 
On the shadowing hillside a green grave and the voices 
which tenderly whisper in the swaying elm above it tell 
why. " M. Chill. 
Ithaca, N. Y. 
New Hampshire Game. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
The statement of Mr. A. B. F. Kinney, of Worcester 
(in a recent number of Forest and Stream), regarding 
Massachusetts game, is applicable to nearly all parts of 
New England. 
For something over twenty-five years I have hunted 
a great deal over this section of New Hampshire. In 
some seasons I would average four days out of every 
week. In those days it was easier to stai't from foi^ty to 
fifty grouse than to find five or six now. For a number 
of years after I began hunting systematically the birds 
apparently held their own, with the exception of now 
and then a season when woodticks killed off the young 
ones. I owned at the time the only trained dog m the 
town, and did not know of one in any of the adjoining 
towns. None of my neighbors made any pretense of 
wign shooting. I could leave a number of woodcock 
in certain covers, knowing that no one else would be 
likely to disturb them, and it was the same with the 
' grouse. Unfortunately, this state o ftlungs changed. 
Some of my neighbors found that they could occasionally 
kill a grouse or woodcock on the wing, and they kept at 
work, and kept improving. Twenty years ago I could not 
have named any one else in this section whom I thought 
could kill one grouse out of six that they shot at on 
the wing. To-day there is hardly a man or boy about 
here who owns a gun who is not more or less some 
sort of a wing shot, and many of them are quite expert. 
As Mr. Kinney says, "There are just as good covers 
to-day as twentj^ years ago." In this region 1 think there 
are more good grouse grounds. Old growth timber has 
been cut and the ground grown up with birch and small 
pine and such growth. The covers are all that could be 
desired, with the exception that they hold no birds, or 
at best only a few. 
Mr. Kiimey asks, "Why this scarcity of birds?" and 
answers, "To-day better brush shots, better firearms, 
better dogs," and last {hut by no means least) he names 
the market shooter. Mr. Kinney is correct in his state- 
ment, but I think he should .give the first place to the 
market shooter. The latter is certainly entitled to it; 
he surely has earned it, as an exterminator of all kinds 
of game, whether feathered or furred, in all parts of 
the country. Some twenty years since a neighbor of 
Mr. Kinney's was at my house about the middle of Oc- 
tober. We hunted three days, and in that time killed 
more grouse than we would be likely to to-day in a 
month of hunting. Looking over the miles and miles 
of good looking grounds we could see from the hills 
my visitor remarked, "You do not half hunt this region; 
you ouglit to kill 500 grouse every fall. I could." 
There is one thing the incessant hunting of the grouse 
in this section has done. It has made what birds are 
left very much wilder and better able to look out for 
themselves. Formerly our birds would give a dog a 
chance to work up to them. To-day nearly all get up the 
instant they hear anything coming. They are very much 
like deer which have been continually still-hunted for a 
number of years. 
As for woodcock, we never depended on them as niuch 
as on grouse. Still in times past I could find quite a 
number of local birds in a number of covers I knew of. 
To-day I occasionally find one and sometirnes two in 
such places. Some seasons we get some flight birds, 
but they are rather uncertain. 
Various plans are being proposed to better protect 
what birds are left. ' Limiiting the number of birds to 
a gun I do not think would work. A few might regard 
such a law; the majority would not, or only to the extent 
of never telling of having exceeded the limit. Shorten- 
ing the season would to some extent be a benefit; yet 
under such a condition the market shooter would put in 
every day, all day and part of the nights if possible, and 
would kill as he does now — ten times as many birds as 
the average sportsman. A close time might work if it 
was made to last for a generation. A close season for a 
few years would be about as beneficial as has been the 
closing for a few years of certain New Hampshire trout 
brooks. 
Mr. Kinney says that some men say there are as rnany 
birds as there were twenty years ago. I hear such things 
said in this section, and invariably those who say so are 
market shooters. Perhaps those who make the above 
statements believe what they say. Probably they do not. 
It is evident that they do not want any more restrictions. 
Such statements remind me of what I heard about the 
deer in northern New Hampshire. 
At one time deer hunting was allowed, I think, all 
through the winter. At any rate parties would go up the 
east branch of the Pemmigewasset River after a heavy 
crust had formed, and kill a great many deer. These 
deer were openly shipped to any market, I was told. I 
know of one house in that region where they claimed to 
have had seventy-five deer hanging in the barn at one 
time; also of thirty-two being hauled out of the woods 
by one party, all of the killing being done by crust 
hunting. When I was first in the above region it wa,s 
some years after such proceeding had been stopped, and 
I heard two men talking about it. An old fellow said: 
"I don't see no good in these game laws; deer ain't half 
as thick as they were when we could kill them when we 
wanted to." I asked him how he knew, and if he still 
went up the branch every winter looking for j^ards, as 
he formerl3' did. H6 said: "No, I haven't been up there 
since they stopped tts frpTU killing, but I know they ain't 
so thick," • ' ^ ^ 
Of the numerous plans for game protection, it looks 
to me as though the Forest and Stream's platform 
plank to stop at all time the sale of game would be of 
more practical benefit than anything suggested. There 
will be more or less opposition to such a measure when- 
ever it is tried to be passed. The market shooter does not 
vi'ant it. The dealer does not, and neither does the man 
who never uses a gun, the latter saying that if he cannot 
buy M'hat game he wants there might as well not be any. 
It looks to me as though the point to be settled re- 
garding the sale of game is who is to be considered. 
First. — The men who hunt for sport, who have taken 
pains to learn to shoot, who are the promoters and 
backers of the game protective associations, who are 
satisfied to go out now and then during the season, and 
who are satisfied with a few birds (few of this class are 
able to make big bags). 
Second. — The men who shoot for the market, who want 
to be out every day and all day, who vvant every bird 
in every cover they hunt through, and who usually stick 
to it until they get the last one. The dealer who cares 
only for the profit in handling game, and who prefers a 
snared grouse to one shot. The man Avho is too lazy 
to hunt and prefers the easier and surer method of buying 
what he wants. 
One side have had their way for a long time, arid the 
results are reported from all parts of the countryq. Why 
not give the other side a trial? 
G. M. Stark. 
DUNTIAHTON, N. H., Oct. 12. 
The Megantic Preserve. 
Boston, Oct. 14.— The Megantic Club preserve seems 
to be gmng excellent results as a hunting resort this fall, 
as well as it did as a fishing resort through tlie season. 
Mr. C. H. Fairbanks has just returned from his annual 
trip to that "happy hunting ground," where, with Mrs. 
Fairbanks, he spent a delightful vacation. He killed two 
buck deer and Mrs. Fairbanks shot a handsome doe. 
One of the bucks taken by Mr. Fairbanks was a record 
breaker, weighing, when dressed, ^e^lbs, He had a beau- 
tiful set of antlers, one with five prongs and the other 
with six. They saw other deer in good numbers, and 
might have taken them, but two wer« all Mr. Fairbanks 
cared to kill. Their hunting was principally done at 
Chain of Ponds. On their way out a beautiful little fawn 
appeared beside the road and looked inquisitively at the 
team. Mrs. Fairbanks talked to it for perhaps a minute 
before it started back, and even then its curiosity got the 
advantage of its fear, and it stopped. Mr. and Mrs. 
Fairbanks went back and it stood again within a few feet 
of the road and allowed them to talk to it They both say 
that they could not have shot that little fellow, and Mrs. 
Fairbanks was almost sorry that she shot the larger one. 
Dr. Gordon is also out from the Megantic preserve, and 
brings a buck the next in record to that of Mr. Fair- 
banks; dressed weight, 233lbs. A Montreal taxidermist 
pronounces the head one of the best he has ever mounted. 
Dr. W. G. Kendall, of Boston, also brings out from the 
same preserve two bucks. 
Partridge shooting at the Megantic preserve is excel- 
lent. Mr. Fairbanks says that he got all he wanted, at 
least a dozen. _ One himter had over a hundred at his 
cabin at one time, belonging to himself and a couple of 
sportsmen. Mr. L. Dana Chapman, secretary and treas- 
urer of the club, has been sure all the season that par- 
tridge shooting was to be good, and members speak in 
terms of delight concerning the sport of that kind they 
have had. One of the guests has also killed a big bear, 
and bear meat has been on the bill of fare at the club 
camps. Mr. Fairbanks, after getting his deer, was ready 
for bear hunting, but was not successful in that direction. 
There are glowing accounts of big game in the Moose- 
head Lake region, Maine. Mr. Calvin Astin, Brighton; 
George C, Moore, North Chelmsford; Harry B. Moore, 
Brookline, Mass., and George Greeley, Bangor, Mc., 
have been at Seboomok for a week's hunting. They had 
fair success. Mr. Bateman, of Boston, has returned from 
a hunting trip to the Megantic preserve. He had great 
.success, getting two handsome buck deer. He could eas- 
ily have taken others, had he desired. Partridge shooting 
he found to be excellent. 
Oct. 14. — Another terrible hunting tragedy must be 
recorded. Specials to the daily papers from Bangor, Me., 
tell of the accidental shooting of John B. Dumond, of 
Boston. Mr. Dumond was well and very favorably 
known in political circles. He had been a member of the 
Boston Common Council, and later a representative to 
the General Court from Sirtfolk county. Here he had 
made himself famous as the author of the Dumond liquor 
law. With a party of legislative friends— Senator C. H. 
Irmes, of Boston, and Representative C. H. Krebs, of Bos- 
ton — ^lie was at William Wood's camps at Messer Pond, 
28 miles from Grindstone Station. This time the press 
dispatches say it was a registered guide who did the 
shooting — William Hobbs. The party separated in hunt- 
ing deer. Hobbs mistook Dumond's fawn-colored hunt- 
ing coat for a deer and fired, with fatal results. Mr. Du- 
mond lived only half an hour after the shooting — not long 
enough to get him out of the woods. He was especially 
fond of shooting and fond of camp hfe; fond of accom- 
panying his friends into the woods. A shadow of gloom 
has fallen over Boston sportsmen to-day. Where is the 
safety, if a registered guide is to shoot down a sports- 
man mistaken for a deer. Alas for the color of the hunt- 
ing coat! What shall we wear? Oh! Every registered 
guide and everybody who goes into the woods with a 
gun should religiously mind the Forest and Stream's 
admonition: "Never shoot till you are absolutely sure 
of what you are shooting at!" 
Then I would add, on my own responsibility: Keep 
whisky out of the woods. Special. 
Nearly Every Nttmber Since the First, 
PiTTSFiELD, Mass., Oct. 9, 1899. — I inclose $8 for two years' 
subscription to Forest and StriAm. This will complete my file of 
T70REST ANn Stream, inckiding nearly every number since the 
paper was iii'-st published. Chas* D. Bdtlee. 
The FoKEST ANB Stream is put to press each week on Tuesday. 
Correspondence intended for publication should reach us at t^^§ 
Jatest by Monday and as much earlier as practiqabk. 
