£2S 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Sept. 20, 1903. 
Henry Braithwaite, that lovable old-timer who person- 
ally superintended the turning on of the water into the 
Wirarnichi River in the remote past. We three fore- 
gathered forthwith and began to buy stockings. We 
bought some, and then some, and then some more. 1 
certainly would counsel any one intending to hunt in 
New Brunswick at any season of the year to purchase his 
clolliing at Fredericton. The woolen socks you get there, 
for instance, are just the sort you need, and cost about 
one-third of what they do in the States. One ought to 
have from eight to twelve pairs of stockings at least for a 
winter trip, a couple of pairs of heavy over-stockings, and 
a good pair of shoepacks in size about three or four 
numbers larger than his regular shoe. For dry, cold 
snow, many prefer the moccasin, among these Henry 
Braithwaite, who will not wear a shoepack if he can 
help it. I found the shoepack very useful, as we met 
much thawing weather, and also found my Yankee wear 
of Gold Seal rubbers very serviceable. I also committed 
the heinous crime of using a pair of Alaska model snow- 
shoes, five feet long and one foot wide, the bow turned 
up in front after the fashion of the "tripping shoe" of the 
far North. These shoes created in turn horror, conster- 
nation, amusement and scorn, wherever they went in the 
Province. I had them fitted with straps such as we used 
in hunting in the Rocky Mountains — straps which must 
have caused Adam Moore and Henry Braithwaite many 
a pang of misery. I would not counsel any one else, un- 
less wedded to his idols, to take -this sort of snowshoe 
into New Brunswick with him. Let him get all his out- 
fit on the spot. He can get practical footwear and any 
sort of snowshoes that he needs at Fredericton, and 
much better snowshoes than he can get in the United 
States. Luckily, I had with me a pair of genuine Arthur 
Pringle shoes which dear old Frank Risteen had made 
for me by Arthur several years ago. These snowshoes 
saved my life — that is to say, prevented me from being 
publicly mobbed by the public of that Province, who look 
upon any long-bowed shoes as seditious and dangerous. 
In parentheses I may say that I wore the flat-bow shoes 
and the regulation New Brunswick tie, fashioned after 
the Millicet Indian tie, every once in a while; that is to 
say, whenever I felt that I could spare another toe nail. 
Then I would hie me back to the long bows and straps 
and give my toenails a chance to grow out again. If you 
are a snowshoer you will know about these things, and if 
you are not a snowshoer you will learn about them when 
you go against a New Brunswick trip in the winter 
time. You will then learn the source of that greeting 
which all New Brunswickers exchange: "Good raorn- 
ingi sir. How many toenails have you lost this week?" 
Inquiry of almost any man in regard to himself and 
family" will usually discover the fact that the New Bruns- 
wick human being sheds his toenails as regularly, if not 
a? painlessly, as the moose does his horns. A little ball 
of ice under a snowshoe strap will do wonders in a day's 
tramp down hill under a heavy pack. Try it, and you 
will learn all about it. I had tried it before. Hence 
the heresy of the long bows. In straight-away walkmg, 
and in not too rough a country, the long bow is, in my 
Opinion, "more comfortable to wear than the codfish model, 
which is universal throughout New Brunswick. I would 
not advise it as a hunting shoe. 
One will perhaps prefer to take his own arms and am- 
munition with him. I took both my .30-30 and .30-40, for 
no special reason except that I dislike to be confined to 
a single gun. which may get out of order. The .30-30 I 
left at Fredericton. Had I taken Uncle Henry's advice, I 
would have left the .30-40 also, and would have bought 
rae a gun down which one may drop a can of frozen beans 
in- lieu of better ammunition. Uncle Adam, upon the 
other hand, slyly said that he thought the .30-40 would 
do the trick. I relied upon it, as will appear. Later also 
we may discuss somewhat of the ancient war between 
L-ncle Henry and the small-bores. 
We had a little meeting of sportsmen the first night m 
Fredericton, there being present Adam and Henry, Jack, 
rt brother of Adam, Billv Walker, Mr. Edgecombe, presi- 
dent of the Board of Trade; Bob Allen, of the Tourist 
Association; Arthur Shute, and a lot of other awfully 
good fellows. All these filled me so full of moose and 
caribou stories that I began to feci that it was not really 
worth while to leave Fredericton, which I had already 
discovered to be a mighty comfortable place. Nor was 
this resolution without a certain support in recent facts. 
Mr. W. T. Chestnut, sometimes called Billy Chestnut for 
short, had, in the week just past, gone out and killed his 
caribou within twenty-five miles of the town. They told 
me of moose which had crossed the river practically at 
the edge of Fredericton— showed me the very place 
where one moose came down the road just beyond the 
edge of town, and, refusing to be frightened, at length 
deliberately turned around, took his time, and walked 
back into the water again. They showed me good deer 
country running right up to the edge of the town, and 
told nie innumerable stories of how this, that and the 
other fellow had gone out and done this, that and the 
other thing in about fifteen minutes after leaving home. 
All of which, by the way, was strictly and literally true. 
"You must not get too much worked up by these 
stones." said Billy Chestnut to me. "The finest story of 
that kind we ever knew to happen here was that of a 
yoimg dude who came in here from Boston. He came 
into our store about the first thing he did, and stood look- 
ing aroimd. He wore a suit of bicycle clothes, carried an 
old .44 gun, and said, kind of off-hand like, that he had 
come to kill a moose and would be glad if I would tell 
him which way to go. He said he did not have very 
much money and not very much time, but he thought he 
would kill a moose or so. The law then allowed one to 
Icill two moose. Well, this fellow, acting upon my ad- 
vice, went into the country about twenty miles from 
here, and put up at a farmhouse. He took lunch and 
then walked out into the edge of the woods a little way, 
and blamed if he didn't meet two moose, and kill them 
both ! The next day he was back here in town. 'I got 
'em,' said he. He thought it was the easiest thing in the 
world to kill a moose, and, in fact, was the only fellow 
not surprised at his feat ! I may add that he came up 
again the next year and did not get any moose at all." 
"still running ahead of my story, I may supplement the 
fr/regoing statement with the story of three Fredericton 
.shooters who had just come back to town about the time 
Adam and I returned from the wilderness. One of these 
men w^nt VP about twenty-five miles on the railroad, and 
in less than fifteen minutes killed a caribou, which he put 
in the express car and sent back home, and it reached 
Fredericton the evening of that same day. The other 
two members of this party each killed his caribou before 
noon of the next day. At about the same time a bunch 
of caribou broicd through the ice on the St. John River 
not far from Fredericton, and one of the animals was 
drowned. It is no exaggeration to say that game is 
abundant even close about this old settled community, 
although the true hunting country is much further away 
and more difficult of access. 
I must linger also in the preliminaries of my story 
sufficiently to tell of the day which we passed at the 
Pine Bluff Camp, six miles up the lovely St. John River. 
This house party was gotten up in honor of the visitor, 
and there were present Mr. W. T. Chestnut and his 
brother, Mr. Harry Chestnut, Adam Moore, Henry 
Braithwaite, Arthur Shute, Billy Walker, Gus Tweedale, 
Bob Allen, Harry Atherton and Bud Babbitt, sometime 
known as "the Deacon." For the refreshment of these 
the Chestnut boys had provided a noble pasty, composed 
of partridges, the same blended with fine herbs and other 
articles wisely added thereunto. This with many other 
concomitants furnished an ample luncheon, superin- 
tended by no less a personage than Joe Paul, a brother 
of Jim Paul, the guide and sportsmen's show performer. 
Joe Paul is homelier than Jim, and deaf as a post, yet 
they say he can draw the long bow upon occasion just 
as well as Jim. 
Pine Bluff Camp is rarely open in the winter time, but 
it is ideal at any season of the year. Built of small round 
logs, provided with an ample fireplace, with its walls 
decorated with trophies and weapons of the chase, it is a 
beautiful tabernacle of sport and fit to be enjoyed by the 
sportsmen who built it. Here are antlers of moose and 
caribou, and pieces of beaver cuttings, and the skulls of 
all manner of animals native to that country. Among 
other curios was. the iron head of an old Indian toma- 
hawk, which was dug up on an island in the St. John 
River some years ago. Authorities state that, from the 
model of this Indian ax, it is undoubtedly 150 years old 
or more. Yet in the eye of the ax head there may still 
be seen the wrapping of birch bark, which the former 
owner used to tighten it upon the shaft. Wonderful 
fabric is this birch bark, for here is some of it, subjected 
to earth and air and water for more than a century, and 
yet shows unmistakably the grain of this useful product 
of the wild woods. 
It was a jolly day at Pine Bluff, and here we heard 
more moose stories and mofe caribou stories which I may 
not pause to narrate, as well as many partridge and 
woodcock stories. For instance, Harry Qiestnut men- 
tioned casually that his bag of woodcock for the season 
just closed was 110. He shoots over a level-headed old 
setter which he purchased years ago from W. B. Wells, 
of Chatham, Ont., and tells me that there is grand grouse 
and woodcock shooting near Fredericton. 
I noticed Adam Moore and Henry Braithwaite poring 
over some maps of the Province, and I could hear all 
sorts of talk about the Tobique and Nictau and Mira- 
michi, the Little Southwest and the "Big Divide," and a 
lot of things which at that time I did not understand so 
well as I do now. Presently I learned that these hos- 
pitable New Brunswickers were indeed planning upon a 
large scale to give me what Adam Moore promised should 
be "the biggest trip ever undertaken in the Province by a 
sportsman at this season of the year." Henry Braith- 
waite .and Billy Chestnut and Mr. L. I. Flower, of Central 
C^ambridge, were all to come up with us to Adam's camps 
on the Nictau lakes. There we were to kill each his 
moose and caribou, and then undertake a little enterprise 
which had long been in the brains of both Adam and 
Henry; to wit, to cross over from Adam Moore's coun- 
try, south over the unknown Tobique Divide, and come 
out in Henry Braithwaite's country, on the headwaters of 
the Miramichi system. I learned that Mr. Flower could 
not go, that Billy Chestnut could not go, and that finally 
Henry could not go with us, for the reason that he had 
just received word from Mr. Arthur S. Phillips, of Fall 
River, Mass., that his services were engaged for the 
month of December. This left Adam and me as the sole 
members of the original party, and Adam and Henry 
were now discussing whether or not it would be safe to 
try to make a winter journey across this unexplored 
country which lay between their two game ranges. Billy 
Chestnut got wind of it and told us not to try to make it 
across. Henry rather thought that it might be done, but 
was not sure. ' I did not know anything about it. Adam 
said nothing, but apparently kept up something of a 
thinking. The oddest of it all to me was that there 
should be any part of New Brunswick which was not 
thoroughly well known. Henry Braithwaite has been 
trapping pretty much all over that Province for forty 
years, and when not hunting, trapping and guiding, has 
been engaged with the lumber companies cruising. Adam 
Moore has traveled all over the Tobique and Nepisiquit 
countries, and every spring runs a bear line more than 
200 miles in extent, with some fifty or sixty traps on it. 
Now, how these two men, who both knew there was no 
one in between them, and who both agreed that it could 
not be so very far from one fellow's country to the other, 
could have been in their business so long and not have 
known every inch of the whole Province, was what 
seemed to me a singular thing. I had the notion that 
New Brunswick was an old country, and thoroughly well 
known, and moreover not so big but what one could 
travel all over it easily. That was my first impression. I 
knew more about it when I came out. 
E. Hough. 
Hartfoed Building, Chicago, 111. 
A visitor to Shenandoah writes thus of the mules, which 
the big strike is giving a taste of outdoors: "Some of 
them had not been out of the underground tunnels 
where they work for 12 years. None of them had been 
up for five or six, unless it was to go to the mule hos- 
pital. When they were brought up they were stunned 
by the sunlight; they were turned out to grass, and did 
not know what to do. They smelt the air, and looked 
off great distances, and put their noses to the field; and 
then, after a while, they laid themselves down and in 
sudden access of joy rolled, and kj^lced, and nipped one 
another on the H?c|c " 
Woodcock* 
Woodcock shooting has a peculiar fascination for 
nearly all sportsmen, and one or two couple of these 
beautiful birds is considered a sufficient reward for 
many hours of hard work by man and dog in the most 
difficult cover. Unfortunately, it is becoming more and 
more difficult to find even a few woodcock in many of 
the best covers in the country at the time of the autumn 
migration, where formerly they afforded the finest sport. 
This is not at all surprising when we consider the num- 
ber of gunners and the high prices paid for woodcock in 
the markets of our large cities, but there was a sudden 
falling off in the fall flights about ten years ago, and 
there are certain reasons for this which we think are not 
generally known. 
Years ago there were Avell-defined frost lines in our 
Southern States, and the winter temperature was never 
known to drop much below certain well-defined limits 
south of the latitude of these supposed lines. Suddenly 
the cold waves became intense, all the winds of the 
Arctic circle rushed in, and the frost king extended his 
realms into almost tropical regions. In fact, his influ- 
ence was felt to the ultima thule of the Florida peninsula, 
and he carried with him snow and sleet far down into 
South Carolina and Georgia. 
The destruction of the Florida orange groves is well 
remembered, and for several years we had no crop worth 
mentioning. No* one has called attention to the effect of 
these cold waves upon the woodcock. In the winter of 
1893, surprised in their usual winter haunts by the sud- 
den influx of cold and sleet, they rose en masse and fled 
before the blast of cold wind to the coast of Georgia, 
v/here they pitched at first in any spot where they could 
find food. If they had taken to the great canebrakes, the 
majority would have been safe. Doubtless many did so, 
but others descended upon islands and rice fields, where 
they found scant cover. There they were found and 
slaughtered in immense numbers for days. All the 
swamps were alive with them and everywhere the guns 
were booming. 
We heard that there was a flight of woodcock, and 
supposed that this meant, as usual, that we could find a 
few birds and possibly bag half a dozen. After 3 o'clock 
in the afternoon, we drove to a swamp, about two miles 
from a large city. We found birds at once among the 
bushes, upon the high ground, before entering the swamp 
proper; in fact, they were everywhere, and in a short 
time we had fired all the shells we had with us — a box 
containing twenty-five. 
LTpon a kind of knoll covered with bushes and' thorny 
vines, and where the ground was springy, the woodcock 
were innumerable, when the dog pointed, and we went 
in to flush, so niany would rise that it was very puzzling. 
Two or three would get up in front of the dog, and others 
on both sides of us. At the shot more would rise, and it 
was most confusing. We never expect to see anything 
like it again. The woodcock were of all sizes, from the 
splendid specimens, nearly as large as a female teal, to 
the little birds from the far North, hardly as large as a 
robin or small Wilson's snipe. 
For many days the weather must have been about the 
same, as the woodcock continued to be killed, and the 
markets were full of them. We think that large numbers 
were shipped to distant cities. Bags of fifty to one gun 
were common, and the price declined to ten to twenty 
cents each. At last a change came in the weather, and 
the remnants of the grand army of woodcock which had 
entered the country disappeared. It was the winter march 
into Russia, and Moscow over again, with birds instead of 
men as the victims. 
We are speaking now of but one of the great cold 
waves, of which we have personal knowledge, but there 
were probably other years, when sudden changes in the 
v/eather produced somewhat similar results. We do not 
think, however, that the destruction of woodcock was 
as great. 
Such a concentration of birds must be very disastrous 
in its effects. Any one can kill them with any kind of a 
gun, and without a dog. All the woodcock usually dis- 
tributed over a wide area, and in summer breeding all 
over the Northeastern States and Canada, were forced 
down into a narrow strip of country bordering on the 
coast. The arrival of such a host of birds was heralded 
far and near. Every one became excited and all the dogs 
and guns in the country were carried into the field. 
Such a slaughter could not be repeated, as after one 
such experience the woodcock would probably not re- 
main so far north, but distribute themselves in the far 
South, in the early part of the winter. 
However, we have had fewer flight birds in New York 
since that cold wave winter, and its effects on the wood- 
cock have no doubt been felt in many other States. 
Theodore Gordok. 
West Haverstraw, N. Y., Aug 26. 
[To write now about woodcock shooting seems almost 
like writing about the pursuit of the great auk. Indeed 
the woodcock is so nearly extinct that it ought to have 
protection everywhere, in the hope that by such protection 
it might be enabled to re-establish itself. The examples 
given by Mr. Gordon are extremely interesting. 
A valuable note on the destruction of woodcock — among 
other birds — in South Carolina, during the great cold 
wave of Feb. 13 and 14, 1899, was published in the Auk 
of that year by Mr. Arthur T. Wayne, who says of the 
species under consideration : "The woodcock (Philohela 
minor) arrived in countless thousands. Prior to their 
arrival I had seen but two birds the entire winter. They 
were everywhere, and were completely bewildered. Tens 
of thousands were killed by would-be sportsmen, and 
thousands were frozen to death. The great majority were 
£0 emaciated that they were practically feathers and of 
course were unable to withstand the cold. One man 
killed 200 pairs in a few hours. I shot a dozen birds. 
Late Tuesday afternoon, I easily caught several birds on 
the snow and put them into a thawed spot on the edge of 
a swift-running stream in order that they would not 
perish, but upon going to the place the next morning I 
found one frozen. These were fearfully emaciated and 
could scarcely fly. Two birds were killed in Charleston in 
Broad street. It will be many years before this fine bin' 
can establish itself under the most favorable condition? 
The question of the woodcock's future is one of gre 
interest ^ tlv?8e older sportsrowi, whg qsij ^e^eqit 
