FOREST AND STREAM. 
fOcT. 28,, 1905. 
8 5 ^ 
sweet breath of the pine wood, the fresh breezy air 
are all delightful, and above all there is the joyous an- 
ticipation of good sport on the morrow. Every now 
and then there are kindly greetings on the road; you 
meet your old friends of former trips— “What about 
the birds, Mick?” “Well, you see,”, says he, “Em tuk 
up with the vyage, and so I don’t be follying the 
country, blit the bys that’s be after the cows seed a 
few scsjttered coveys about the Burnt Hills and the Look 
Out. I don’t be thinking they’re powerful plenty at all.” 
Your informant is probably a shooter himself, and this 
pessimistic report is a dodge to keep a few birds for his 
oven gun. ■ By and by you meet another more genial 
knd inventive livier, and with an air of simple candor 
and veracity he says: “How be . the birds?” “Well, I 
never heard tell on the like, jim Malone cum across 
the country from beyant tudder day, may be a week 
agohe last Sunday, he had nara dog, he never stepped 
the pat and begob he put ten fine coveys to.._wing.” 
I knew one gifted artist in' mendacity who promised an 
exalted personage royal sport. “Come out to me. Sir 
William, and I’ll show you thirteen fine coveys.” The 
reality, after a hard day’s tramp, materialized into one 
solitary old cock. However, all things come to an end, 
and by night-fall you have reached your destination— 
either , a camp . in the jvoods, or your headquarter at 
a fisherman’s house. 
It is worth while to make the journey for such a 
kindly welcome. All the village has foregathered in 
your honor — the old man and the boys are soon puffing 
away with your tobacco, the guns are always a special 
object of attraction, and all the queer odds and ends 
. of tinned provisions are turned over and examined. In 
the meantime the mistress and the girls are busy about 
your supper. 
A wise man you go early to bed, and don’t take too 
much of the “craytur.” There is no need to rouse you 
in the early morn, you are off before dawn; the dread 
of some keener sportsman cutting you off lends wings 
to your movements, and before sunrise you are climb- 
ing the hills. We breast the long ascent; it takes it 
out of us a bit. We stay a moment to draw breath; the 
sun is just touching the eastern hills with a soft roseate 
light,’ below us lies the bay with its brown-sailed fishing 
boats and its' purple islands. Through the pure air for 
miles away we can see the gleam of white houses, be- 
hind the dark pine woods, the fir-clad hills, the broad 
open moors, interspersed with verdant marshes in the 
long distance, seem as bright and green as the new 
mown meadows. The wild far-stretching moorland that 
lies before us has a beauty of its own. Everywhere 
there are wild flowers and low berry-bearing shrubs 
with clear bright purling streams and endless lakes; 
much of the open country is stern, wdld and bare, but 
it has a weird beauty of its own, and the clear exhilar- 
ating atmosphere braces you like a subtle tonic. 
, Before we commence our day’s sport, let me say one 
ward about your Newfoundland guide. In his old 
canvas jacket and patched moleskin trousers, your Terra 
Novian fisherman is not so picturesque a figure as the 
Scotch gillie in the garb of old Gael; but for keenness 
of sight, for knowledge of birds and their habits, for 
_ accuracy in marking where the coveys pitch, for en- 
durance and walking powers, and above all, for courtesy 
and kindly manners, I will back him against the best 
of the bra Highlanders that ever drank the mountain 
dew, or scratched himself in the early dawn. If you 
make a bad miss he will always find an excuse for you 
^ — “Sure, they’re as wild as hawks; the devil wouldn’t kill 
the dike of ’em.” 
I remember one day five birds rose, two crossed as 
.1 fired, and both came down. My companion killed 
right and deft, and I finished off the fifth bird with my 
second barrel. The whole thing was a pure fluke, but 
our guide turned to two old fishermen who were cruis- 
ing the hills — “Dat’s the way, Paddy,” said he, “they’re 
doing it all day.” 
' All the English and American sportsmen who have 
visited Newfoundland — Selous, Millais, Pritchard the 
novelist, and Vanderbilt the millionaire, speak in the 
highest terms of the never-failing cheerfulness, their 
patient endurance of fatigue, the remarkable knowledge 
of all woodcraft and habits of the caribou shown by 
their Newfoundland guides. All unanimously declare 
that no better companions, for the woods and wild 
sport, can be found anywhere. And now — 
“Together let us beat this ample field. 
Try what the open— what the covert yields.” 
. Out range the dogs, away they go, with a rushing 
gallop right and left across the wind, by and by you 
notice Grouse is on a hot scent, Don and Ranger take 
it up, and you get excited and nervously finger your 
gun, you work the ground carefully all over, but it 
ends in a fiasco. The birds have lain there all night, 
and at early dawn they have flown to the feeding 
ground. On go the dogs again. Presently you notice 
Grouse begins to draw. He has the birds this time all 
right. As you mount the next low hill you see him 
just below, his lashing tail has become stiff, and with 
head outstretched and rigid body he slowly moves 
along, uiitil at last he stands as motionless as if carved 
in stohe. Ranger and Don, as they mount the ridge, 
suddenly catch sight of Grouse, and at once you see 
them also transformed into statuesque’ canines back- 
ing their companion. 
• Slowly you saunter up to Grouse. Mick — your man 
with the Celtic temperament — may be excited, but if 
you are a genuine sportsman you will keep cool. You 
have broken in your dogs; you know them well, and 
you know, too, that if you get flurried they will soon 
copy your example. 
As you approach Grouse, slowly and cautiously he 
moves ahead. While you have been walking up to him 
the: birds have also moved on, not far, but still further 
off than the old dog considers the correct thing. You 
Took about you, wondering where on earth are the 
Mrds;? , Wheny: whirr ! there is a startling sound, and a 
•dozen: brown birds are in the air scudding away; with 
your right barrel you pick off the old cock, and with 
your left down goes another, shot through the back 
he lies with wings outstretched. Mick declares “Begob 
It was a great shot,” but you know in your hear that it 
was plain afid easy, and that you wguld be the yeriest 
duffer if you had missed them. All the same your 
sportman’s vanity admits the soft impeachment — “Not 
bad, Mick.” The remaining birds have taken refuge in 
a big tuck — a lot of stunted spruces on the hillside lead- 
ing down to the brook. They are scattered and lie 
close. This is the prettiest shooting of all, and one 
and by one you work them all out, getting every variety 
of shot; and if you are in good form you will bag 
nearly the whole covey. 
On you go over the barrens, meeting birds more or 
less — singly and in coveys — and by the brooks an odd 
snipe. Presently, about ii o’clock, you look about for 
a place to boil the kettle. 
This is the most delightful time of all for Mick. The 
amount of “tay” a good hearty Newfoundlander will 
swallow is something incredible. He won’t eat so 
much meat, unless you force it on him; but after you 
have done, he loves to refill the pot and go at it again. 
The knowing shooter takes a good long time over 
his lunch. In the middle of the day is the worst time 
for the birds, while the late afternoon and evening are 
the best. On the return tramp all the scattered coveys 
will be, found in their old haunts. By this time you will 
be a bit stiff and tired, and probably good shot as you 
undoubtedly may be, you will miss an occasional chance; 
but you have had a good day’s sport, a good tramp, 
and you will enjoy your supper as if you had earned it. 
A good day’s grouse shooting in Newfoundland af- 
fords as fine a sport as there is in the world. This, at 
least, is the opinion of Admiral Sir. W. R. Kennedy— 
the best all-round sportsman in the British Navy. 
The habitat of the rock grouse is high mountains. 
In Newfoundland it is only found on the south and west 
of the island. Both species are spread over Hudson 
Bay, Labrador, and the Arctic regions of North Amer- 
ica. The Scotch grouse has been naturalized is Sweden. 
It seems to me desirable that an attempt should be 
made to introduce both the black cock and the grouse 
into this country; more efforts should also be made 
to re-intrqduce the moose. The funds obtained from 
deer and licenses for sporting dogs might very well be 
set apart for the laudable purpose of" preserving our 
rivers, and stocking valuable game birds on our wild 
lands. 
The native grouse is being rapidly thinned out; I 
know many places from whence it has entirely disap- 
peared. An effort has been made to prevent the ex- 
tinction of one of the most valuable game birds in the 
world, by stopping all shooting for one year and putting 
back the opening season until October. We shall see 
this year how it has worked. Grouse being mainly a 
ground bird can be easily decimated. 
In the August Cornhill, 1905, I discussed the question 
of grouse disease, and proposed, as a remedy, to mate 
the home birds with our hardier and stronger breed. 
Mr. Reginald I. Smith, K.C., the editor, intends to 
try the experiment. To be successful it will have to 
be carried out on a large scale. 
Big Game in Quebec* 
Montreal, Oct. 15. — Editor Forest and Stream: “Re- 
.port Your Luck to Forest and Stream.”, Well, then, 
here goes our luck. There were two of us, Frank R. and 
I, and when _ we left Montreal for our trip we had a 
rather faint idea where we were going to. Somebody 
had told us such and such a place was good for deer and 
partridge, and we took their word and went in that direc- 
tion. We went by Grand Trunk Railway to Lennoxville, 
got there at midnight and slept in the waiting room till 
5 the next morning, then we took the Canadian Pacific 
Railway to Cookshire; there we found that the “guy” 
who was to drive us to our camp did not show up, and 
no one else in the town would take us, so we bundled 
ourselves into the cars again over the Michigan Central 
Railroad to Sawyerville, six miles away, and got a team 
there at a ruinous price, to take us. Then away we 
started on our thirty-five-mile drive. It took us over 
seven hours to get within five miles of our camp, and lo, 
and behold, we found that the remaining five miles were 
impassable for the team. The old lumber road had not 
been used for five years, and windfalls blocked the road 
every few yards, and after chopping through a few w^e 
came across a large elm and gave the job up; so we 
bundled out the stuff and let the team go. As it was 
getting dark, wt concluded to wait till morning before 
we dared to tackle the trail; so we made a sort of lean-to 
and all went to sleep. 
Next morning at 7 we started to pack the stuff, each 
carrying about sixty pounds tied over our backs in bags 
and left the remainder for another portage, and then, gun 
in hana, away we piked. Tell you what, that five miles 
was the worst I ever struck. The pack ropes nearly 
strangled us, and if we sat down for a rest it was a job 
to get up again, and every short distance we would run 
foul of a windfall, and you’d get your body over the log 
and have the pack on the other side, and would have a 
regular tug-of-war getting it over, and then it would 
come with a run and knock us down. , We flushed par- 
tridges all along the trail but were too heart miserable to 
even look at them, much less shoot. Then we struck a 
bog and our waterproof leather boots did their duty man- 
fully by leaking like sieves. Then we struck two steep 
mountains, and the Lord only knows what not in the 
misery line. After four hours of plugging we struck the 
camp. The camp, I say, but what a shack it was. It was 
an old lumber camp built about fifteen years ago and not 
used for over five years. We were told we would find it 
in good shape, but alas! half the roof was down, the 
flooring was all gone, the door was off, the stove lay in a 
corner all smashed to bits; numerous empty bottles lying 
around told the tale of a big drunk, a fight, and then a 
rough house. _Well, well, it was raining and we were 
'tired out for fair, so cursing our luck we got a fire' going, 
boiled some coffee and fried some bacon, and I made 
some flapjacks and we dug right in. 
After dinner we set to work to repair the camp a bit, 
and. with the aid of an ax and. some nails, and taking 
some logs from the stable, we succeeded in making 
things look a little better. Then supper and then to bed, 
6:30. Oh, but we were tired out. We arranged-the cedar 
boughs in the upper bunk, crawled up, then under the 
blanlcets — plothes, boots and aU pn-4pnd were asleep in 
a few, minutes. But ffias ! like most lumber camps, it was 
infested with fleas, and we more than, caught it. But we 
went to sleep again and were awakened about I2 by 
. Frank’s dog giving tongue, so evidently something was 
prowling around,^ likely a bear of bobcat. 
The next morning we made another portage and packed 
the remainder of our stuff, hiding the boxes in the brush. 
Our loads this time were not so bad, or else we were used 
to it and did not feel it so badly. Frank carried a bag 
full tied around his neCk and shoulders. I carried a grip 
with 300 shotgun and 150 rifle shells in it, strapped to my 
shoulders ; and then we had the numerous pockets of our 
hunting coats packed with all softs of things (by the 
way, these hunting coats ivere a godsend to us, and the 
amount of game and stuff a fellow can carry in one of 
them is marvellous). Then, rifles in hand, we piked. 
We came across about a dozen partridges along the road, 
but as our scatter guns were at camp we only got one 
with the rifles. Well, we did not find this trip nearly so 
bad as the last one, but were glad enough when we struck 
camp. We were somewhat surprised to see a man there 
smoking and quite at home. He told us he was out 
“gumming” for spruce gum and was on his way to the 
Van Dyke camps, in New Hampshire, a few miles away. 
In him we struck a Klondyke. He knew every foot of 
the country and goes out “gumniing” every fall, carrying 
a blanket, ax and grub across his back and rifle in hand. 
He makes trips for a week or' ten days, and then back to 
his so-called farm (30O acres— two cleared, rest brush) 
and then off again. Some days he gathers as much as 
five pounds of gum, and, at $i a pound, it pays. Well, 
we had' dinner, he cooked it, and we got him to promise 
to stay with us the three weeks without paying him a 
cent, only feeding him. “Bill” looked down upon shot- 
guns and would only use a rifle; he had a .40-72. 
Ihe following morning we went on a partridge hunt, 
and Frank and I did some awful muffing at first, and 
“Bill” ridiculed the idea of wing-shooting, claiming that 
It was only by chance a bird was killed on the wing. Well, 
the first day we only got five birds and missed about 
twenty-five. Frank ran across two deer and let drive at 
ihem with buckshot, but it seemingly only hastened their 
speed. I had a shot at a fox at fifty yards, but failed to 
get him. 
The next day we struck for an old clearing about three 
miles away. We all carried rifles and got two partridges 
on the way. At the clearing we lay down behind stumps 
^ind still-hunted, and after an hour or so Frank got a 
pot at a fine big buck with his .44-40 carbine, and down 
went his flag. We chased him for a mile but he got 
away from us, and we concluded that the .44-40 ,is not 
nearly powerful enough to stop a deer Unless struck in a 
very vital spot. “Bill” fired at a doe on the way back, 
but did not connect. The next day we went after par- 
ti idge again, and steadied down in our shooting and got 
birds, bringing in about fifteen between us. 
Bill” had gone off in another direction to interview a 
deadfall that he had set some months back, and did not 
show up till long after dark, and reported having had a 
running shot at a bear and that the deadfall was down. 
Next day we went back to the clearing and each of us 
got a crack at a deer. Mine was a running shot at 300 
yards at which I pumped five .38-55 in vain. “Bill” had 
nothing m his rifle' and snapped three times at his, and 
by the time he fished some shells out of his clothes the 
deer was gone. Frank struck his between the eyes and 
It dropped in its tracks. It was a three-year-old doe and 
weighed_ about 100 pounds dressed. We had a hard job 
getting It back to camp. Then we had fresh meat for a 
change. 
Ihc next couple of days we hunted partridge and aver- 
aged, about ten or twelve a day between us. . Our camp 
was within twenty-five yards of a brook, and every morn- 
ing we saw fresh signs of deer there, and one morning 
we saw the marks of a moose and heard him calling 
during the day. We tried to call him but it did not 
work. On the following day I got a squint at him as I 
was sitting down near the old clearing; he was about 400 
yards away and was just at the edge of the bush. I 
crawled on my stomach to get nearer, but he must have 
winded me, as when I raised my head he was nowhere to 
be seen. I kicked myself that I did not let fly at him 
at first. 
Thus we spent our time. The last week was the best 
of all, as we got four deer between us. I got my two 
in one afternoon. I was lying behind a stump waiting 
tor a pot at the clearing and went into a doze; I awoke 
with a start and there were a buck and a doe calmly nib- 
bling at the grass not 100 yards away. Two shots from 
my .38-55 and one dropped in its tracks, the other one 
Hhe buck) with flag down went flying for the bush, 
and after running about 200 yards dropped dead The 
first one was shot right through the heart, but it was 
toni up terribly inside. Frank got his buck one-quarter 
camp, walked right on top of him, and with 
Bill s” rifle in his hands, one shot did the trick. “Bill” 
shot a does on his way to the deadfall and carried it to 
camp all by himself. "We did not get a bear but saw 
traces of many. I saw one one dav with my shotgun in 
hand, and only having No. 6 shot,' let him go, which he 
lost no time in doing. 
_ Our three weeks ' were up and we were a little tired of 
it, and then we had the terrible job of packing those three 
deer and all the rest of the stuff, including about 100 
partridge, over the five miles. We expected to do it all 
in one day, but alas ! it took us a day and a half, b'lt 
we had plenty of time, as the team was to meet us the 
following evening. 
following evening and we had six hours to spare and it 
proved to be more too, as the team was five hours late 
Here we parted ,rith “Bill” with promises to return next 
^ason. Then away we go home, getting into Montreal 
Oct. 13, looking like two hobos. 
Notes.— I have come to the conclusion that no lio-ht 
leather boot can be made waterproof. We used lumber- 
man’s larigans with a small sole and heel,' and while they 
were very easy and comfortable, they let in water like 
a- sieve. • Second, I am through ' with, small caliber rifles 
for deer shooting. Frank's .44-40,' though seemingly a big 
caliber, 'was not nearly powerful enough to stop a deer 
'Unless hit in a, very vital spot, and he lost three or four 
deer which, i.f. hit with- a -.40-72, would have- been dead 
meat, I used a .38-55, bur am going to get a .40-72— I 
had to laugh at your, editorial about shooting partrido-e 
