F O R E S T A \ D S T R E A M January, 1919 
HUNTING COMPANIONS -AN APPRECIATION 
YOUR OLD HUNTING CHUMS ARE AN ASSET YOU SHOULD CHERISH AND IF 
THEY PASS OUT OF YOUR LIFE YOU WILL [NOT EASILY REPLACE THEM 
By WILLIAM BARBER HAYNES 
D IU yoii ever gO fisBliI'g or hunting 
with a new acquaintance and notice 
how dead the trip was conip'ared to 
one made with an old pal? Perhaps you 
didn’t know why the trip fell below pai*; 
Surely the new friend did his best to be 
agreeable. Now what the trip lacked was 
reminiscence, the golden memories, that 
arise when old pal goes with old pal. 
As the canoe swings around the point 
bf the island it is fine to say “Jim do you 
bemember that day, in the snow, when 
the bluebills decoyed like mad?” 
Jim smiles because he can’t help it and 
says, “Yes.” “Remember how near we 
were to losing the point blind.” “Just 
barely beat Matt to it after the wind 
swuing out of the south to the west and 
made it good.” Then for an hour you 
don’t need to catch anything, or kill any- 
thing, as the mind’s eye pictures the gray 
«day whisking a little spit of snow along 
the ice fringed marsh, when this thing 
befell you and Jim. 
There is the big bend of the channel 
that coils through our pet marsh. On 
rounding this point I would say to one 
companion, “I’d like to have a chance 
again, like we had here once on yellow- 
legs,” and Bennie would grin and say, 
“You mean the day you couldn’t shoot.” 
“The day I was leading them too far,” 
I would answer. “You know a jacksnipe 
lead on a yellowleg isn’t unhealthy for 
the big fellows. Anyway as I remember 
it, we ate yellowlegs a-plenty for supper.” 
To the curly headed chum I would deli- 
cately insinuate, that if a person would 
only lead a redhead just right, the big 
point blind would be a good place for high 
incomers. Whereas the curly headed one 
would again bid me rub it in, as I had 
only wiped his eyes that one time in ten 
years’ trying. 
To five different chums that one spot 
would inspire memories of triumphs 
through which it is good to live. 
A ll through our lakes there are spots 
that inspire these treasures from 
memory. Bright spots, that lay 
along the road like wheat within the chaff 
and just by way of showing that the 
rose is not without its thorn, there are 
places that remind you of how much of 
a fool a duck hunter can be sometimes. 
Three fellows I know, can remember 
how forty-two Canada geese fanned the 
air to rise over a fringe of oaks over our 
favorite bind when we, who know almost 
where they lit, had disposed ourselves 
elsewhere. 
Often I have imagined the sensation 
of having been there at this right place 
with the geese only eighty feet overhead. 
I always do well at this, never getting 
less than five in imagination. Thus you 
see that time heals all wounds, and who 
will aver that the rose is not worth th^' 
thorn? Which leads me to remark that 
your old hunting chums are an asset that 
you should cherish and if they pass out 
of your life you will never easily replace 
them. Congenial spirits are hard to find. 
The chances are that the people you 
\gould like to replace them with have old 
chums themselves that they prefer to go 
with because of these very associations 
that you were not a party to. 
So then you can listen to us three old 
chums talk, as I am broiling some snipe 
in the fireplace at the home camp. 
“Time was when you thought I was 
crazy to try and broil a bird in a fire 
place. Remember how you kicked, when 
I tried it the first time on a bluebill, over 
at the point shanty. Awful fat bluebill 
he was, and the only one we had, on one 
of those off days. So I picked him, and 
broiled him on a stick over the coals.” 
“ ‘Trying to spoil a duck,’ says you; 
‘but I went right ahead.’ When I put 
them on the table I said, ‘Guess I’ve spoil 
him all right,’ but the smell of that roast 
duck spoke richly of what was in store 
for us and I remember it to this day.” 
That bluebill was cooked Maryland 
style, a bit raw as to the center, but we 
went on record that he was the best duck 
we had ever tasted. Many a duck we 
have roasted in the fireplace and in an 
open fire since then. 
“I like a duck that has lots of taste 
to him,” ruminated Pardner. 
.“Take a fat ruddy duck now, he has as 
much more taste than other ducks as a 
big fall mushroom, broiled in butter, has 
over these little white rubber plugs they 
Nothing cements friendship like camp life 
call mushrooms and serve on steaks.” 
“This thing of bearing game home in 
triumph is a large part of the fun of 
going hunting.” 
“It’s the natural thing to do. It’s just 
what a savage would do.” 
“Once I saw a boy with two nice mal- 
lards. Proudly he held his ducks, wait- 
ing for the train, and smeared on his 
clothes was the yellow mud marks that 
said that he had crawled far across a soft 
cornfield in the getting. 
“Several local hunters, less successful, 
awaited the train. I saw one of Akron’s 
rich men edge close to the boy and begin 
talking business. 
“Earnestly talked Mr. Rich Shooter. 
Earnestly the boy’s head shook its nega- 
tive answer. 
“On the train I asked the unsuccessful 
tempter, ‘Didn’t he want to sell them?’ 
“ ‘Naw, he didn’t. I even at the finish 
offered him a $10 bill for the pair and he 
wouldn’t play. Said he was going to 
take them home and eat them. No won- 
der people die in the poor house when 
they turn down easy money like that.’ 
“Mr. Moneybags had simply tried to 
thwart the natural law above outlined.” 
“Mr. mused pardner. “He’s 
that fat man, isn’t he? A fat man is usu- 
ally great on game and fish subsequent 
to its recrudescence on the table.” 
“To a sinewy type of man the pursuit 
is the thing. The chase and the playing 
of the game is the big item. ‘Wait a bit, 
we will get another chance,’ he says to the 
fat man, who responds, ‘Aw, let’s cut it 
out and ga back to the shanty and cook 
up a feed.’ 
“To the fat man the result is the main 
tent, but the sinewy, or raw boned type 
of man, will snatch a bite and return to 
the chase.” 
“Well, then,” said Pardner, “what sort 
of a fish course are you going to serve 
with that ruddy duck ‘and mushrooms?” 
Whereat my mind roamed the coasts 
of our country. Before it flitted mental 
pictures. “In Seattle I would call for 
rock cod ; in Boston I would suggest blue 
fish; on the upper Great Lakes the vote 
would run heavy to whitefish planked on 
birch slabs, while the epicure from the 
Gulf Coast would say ‘Pompano.’ 
“The Philadelphian, being used to the 
fundamental error in construction of 
Delaware shad, would insist on having it, 
bones and all. 
“But for me, having tasted them all, 
I pronounce a brook trout better than 
any; and there is only one better fish 
than a brook trout.” Whereat we all 
three in unison exclaimed “Bluegills.” 
Yes, bluegills. Not the big, brawny 
bluegills of the Great Lakes, or the over- 
grown brand from the larger lakes, but 
the bluegill from the little sweet-water 
lakes that twinkle in the sunshine among 
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 41 ) 
