826 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Nov. 24, 1906. 
the event. Hunters of the club were to shoot 
and prepare the game birds and the rabbits, 
and other members of the Association were 
put on committees for the various duties to be 
performed. Again the president helped out 
with his generous contributions of venison, 
fish and clams. The members had the priv¬ 
ilege of inviting each a lady or gentleman, as 
he preferred. A few guests were present also 
by courtesy of the president. Dr. Field, of the 
State Fish and Game Commission, who is 
much interested in the work of the organiza¬ 
tion, had made all his arrangements to come, 
but was attacked by neuralgia just before get¬ 
ting ready to start, and had to forego the 
pleasure of coming. He has promised, how¬ 
ever, that soon he will come to see the mem¬ 
bers and address them on topics kindred to the 
work of the Commission. The enthusiastic 
labors of the vice-president and of the mem¬ 
bers of the committee ought not to be passed 
over without mention, and the success with 
which the members of the Pythian sisterhood 
took charge of the work of preparing and serv¬ 
ing the supper is worthy of mention. 
The menu was elaborate, _and the jolly com¬ 
pany sat at table for two hours. The list of 
good things included clam chowder, bluefish, 
partridge and woodcock on toast, venison, pies, 
cake, ice cream and other palatable viands. 
When the inner man had been satisfied, the 
people were called to order by the vice-presi¬ 
dent, who introduced the president, Hon. R. 
C. Bates, as toastmaster. He also presented 
him with a beautiful bouquet of chrysanthe¬ 
mums on behalf of the members of the As¬ 
sociation and their friends. Mr. Bates re¬ 
sponded gracefully, and Attorney Jere R. 
Kane, of Spencer, and Selectman A. C. Stod¬ 
dard, were called upon to make brief remarks. 
So passed the evening away, and happy 
memories will remain. A. P. Morin. 
Hunting Tales in a New York Church. 
Once a month the members of the Men’s 
League of the Broadway Tabernacle, Broad¬ 
way and Fifty-sixth street, this city, meet in 
the parish house. Sometimes they have a little 
dinner, and afterward listen to talks on various 
subjects by well-known men. 
Last Thursday night, Nov. 15, there was a 
dinner in the parish house at 6:30, about two 
hundred members and their guests taking part, 
and shortly before 8 o’clock the ladies who 
were invited appeared in the balcony. Mr. 
Irving C. Gaylord, vice-president of the league, 
presided, as the president, Mr. George W. 
Schurman, was absent from the city. In an¬ 
nouncing that the speaking would be limited 
to “Hunters’ Tales,” Mr. Gaylord told a story 
himself that pleased the audience. Some one 
who had stated that Bently had been hunting 
big game was asked if he got anything, and he 
replied, “No; Bently has no imagination.” 
Mr. William H. Sage was the first speaker, 
and he said that in the audience there were at 
least three gentlemen who had heard his story 
(“My First Elk”) before, but his memory, he 
was sure, was as good as theirs and he could 
tell it just as he had done ten years ago, when 
it was new. He was, he said, a poor fly- 
caster. He called himself a camper-out; hunt¬ 
ing was merely incidental. Formerly he had 
hunted a great deal, but since his marriage 
he had not hunted game. “My wife won’t let 
me,” he explained. His first elk hunt took place 
in the Bitter Root range, where he went with 
four other gentlemen. They had nineteen 
cayuses. The countr}'- looked good, but was 
horrible for travelers. Some of the ravines 
were so deep they could not see the bottom, 
and there were places where crossing one of 
these required long, tiresome detours. One 
night his Indian guide said, “Me get bull elk 
to-morrow,” and at 3 o’clock in the morning 
Jim roused him. Jim was in full hunting cos¬ 
tume, consisting of a pair of moccasins. They 
found plenty of tracks of cows and calves, and 
Jim on one occasion announced that a trail he 
found was that of “a bull three days old,” 
meaning the tracks’ age. Then Jim found 
fresh tracks and showed him one from which a 
blade of grass that had been tramped on was 
just resuming its former position. That bull, 
Jim announced, had “thirteen, fourteen horns.” 
Presently Jim wet his finger, raised it to feel 
the direction of the wind, and ordered a flank¬ 
ing movement on all fours around a hill on 
which he was sure the bull was feeding. When 
they had almost circled the hill, and Jim had 
found no continuation of the trail, he said, 
“Bull no come down. Must be up there.” Up 
the hill they went Mr. Sage stopped Jim to 
ask if he heard something go thump, thump. 
Jim had heard nothing, but knew the noise was 
the beating of his patron’s heart. At a signal 
both rose, Mr. Sage fired twice and the elk 
disappeared. Jim ordered that they sit down 
and smoke, and would not have it otherwise, 
so they smoked a while, then went on, found 
blood, made their way through the brush until 
they heard the bull breathing, and Jim ordered 
“more smoke.” They circled, and Mr. Sage 
found a thirteen-point bull, which they skinned 
and cut up. He carried the head and Jim two 
quarters, and they returned to camp. 
The party had, among other things, a small 
jug of whiskey, all agreeing that this should 
not be touched except in case of accident, but 
at a solemn council that night, it was decided 
that Mr. Sage’s shot was an accident, and the 
keg was tapped. 
Mr. William Edward Coffin was called on for 
his story, “A Tenderfoot in the Selkirks.” Mr. 
Coffin illustrated the tendency of Indian guides 
to select curious and varied supplies if it was 
left to them to make purchases. Jack and 
Charlie met him at the railway station on the 
Columbia River with 1,300 pounds of groceries 
they had bought for a twenty-three-day trip 
over the hardest mountain climb imaginable. 
They had evidently procured a full line by 
wholesale measurement from the list supplied 
them by the outfitting station. Among other 
things equally ridiculous they had ordered 15 
pounds of evaporated fruit, 51 cans of potted 
meat, 3 large bottles of lemon and vanilla ex¬ 
tract, 6 bottles of catsup, 6 bottles of Worces¬ 
tershire sauce, enough flour and bacon for a 
full company of cavalrymen, and so on. This, 
too, when 40 pounds was considered a robust 
man’s load in the mountains. Mr. Coffin sold 
most of this truck, and the party started into 
the mountains. The traveling was very hard, 
as it necessitated climbing the steepest moun¬ 
tains among jack pines, growing so thickly it 
was not easy to push through them. At one 
camp it was necessary to build a platform of 
poles to provide a place for their beds. One 
end of the poles was in the mountainside and 
the other end 6 feet in the air, supported by 
uprights. The Indians had to dig a hole for 
their fire, and when standing before it, it was 
breast high. There were seventy-two moun¬ 
tain peaks in view from camp. Traveling over 
the glaciers was an easy matter so long as the 
ice was in the sunlight, but if shaded by a 
mountain peak, or on a cloudy day, the ice was 
very treacherous. On one occasion he stepped 
on a leaf and slipped, then slid down hun¬ 
dreds of feet, until he fortunately tumbled into 
a snow-filled pocket and was rescued by the 
Indians minus some very important sections of 
clothing. The impression he got was much 
like that of the terrapin the darky told about. 
When the buzzard took the terrapin on his 
back and helped him to start, the terrapin fell 
ker-plump. The buzzard asserted that it was 
no use, whereat the terrapin said, “Oh, yes, I 
can fly, all right, but you didn’t teach me how 
to light.” Mr. Coffin had some good shooting 
among the big game. Being a busy man at 
home, he had arranged for the delivery of two 
telegraphic messages weekly, though the cost 
was high. While in camp a messenger came 
out from the railway with two, and a bill for 
$65. One of these convejwd the information 
that a message he had sent to Chicago could 
not be delivered, and the second one, bearing 
a later date, announced that the first message 
had been properly delivered. 
Dr. Robert T. Morris talked on “My Trip 
to Hudson Bay.” in a general way, but re¬ 
ferred particularly to what he and Mr. Charles 
Waite had found to eat along the way. “Give 
me the woods,” said the Doctor; “we are sure 
of something to eat there.” In coming to 
New York that night, he said, he had had a 
long drive through the snow to the railway 
station, only to find the train delayed so much 
that he was not sure of getting anything to 
eat at the New York end of his journey. In 
the woods he was always sure. In going on 
such a long journey he did not carry much 
food, as he liked to depend on his own re¬ 
sources, and as it required more skill to live in 
wild regions, he therefore enjoyed such trips. 
On such a trip one may lose his provisions in 
an accident, but if his purpose is to live off 
the country, he feels more independent. As 
previously told in Forest and Stream, the 
Doctor and Mr. Waite canoed to Hudson Bay 
by way of the Moose River. They had four 
Indians. The first fish they found was the 
jackfish, or great northern pike, whose aver¬ 
age weight in those waters was, he thought, 
about thirty pounds, although he had heard 
stories of much larger ones. This fish fur¬ 
nished the most substantial part of their food. 
They would take the fly, strike on trolling 
spoons, baited hooks, and got into their col¬ 
lecting nets. 
The Doctor doubted whether he had better 
tell it. but on one occasion he had taken a 
jackfish on live bait, and after it got away he 
weighed the bait, and found that the scales 
balanced at 7 pounds. A roar of laughter 
greeted this. 
Pike-perch or dore baked in clay, they found 
to be very satisfying, and he dwelt on the sub¬ 
ject of the brook trout they caught in the 
pools—if the large, quiet places in a river three 
miles in width could be so termed. These, he 
was absolutely certain were the true Salvelinus 
fontinalis — just the same as those found in 
New England brooks, but thev were the 
largest he had ever seen anywhere. These, 
however, were not quite as good as the smaller 
ones he had caught in the States. Fresh¬ 
water codfish they caught on the fly, and also 
large herring that would take the fly like trout 
after 4 o’clock in the afternoon. They caught 
and cooked fresh-water smelt, Labrador white- 
fish, and crawfish. The latter boiled and 
eaten with butter, salt and pepper, were 
very good; but the Indians did not care for 
them. He. corroborated Mr. Coffin’s remarks 
anent Indians, saying they were always fonder 
of the white man’s food than of the delicious 
wild food of which they had an abundance. 
The Doctor said the party found several 
varieties of ducks, and they often ate young 
wild goslings. These latter, he said, were 
easily approached and caught if one was on 
land, but in some way they had learned to- fear 
enemies approaching by water, and would hide 
under something on shore, where they were 
easily caught. It was not hard to tame them, 
and a few attempts were successful, whereas 
the young sheldrakes were vicious and would 
resent familiarity. Young gulls were good, 
snipe very abundant. 
On James Bay, standing at the high-water 
mark, it was often hard to see the low- 
water mark, sometimes five miles away. Be¬ 
cause of the very gradual slope of the shores 
and the rapidity with which the tide rises— 
about as fast as one can walk — it was very 
dangerous to be caught by the flood tide, par¬ 
ticularly on a foggy day. 
The Doctor said they had found very large 
snails on which one could subsist if necessary. 
Most of them were not very good unless other 
things were added, however. Of large game 
they shot very little, because most of the ani¬ 
mals had young to take care of. He killed 
one fat black bear and enjoyed roasted steaks, 
and he killed a moose for a surveying party 
thev found in a starving condition, with most 
of their food spoiled. Of sixteen canoes they 
had started out with there were but six intact. 
His party found the tips of caribou moss 
nutritious, and plenty of cranberries; in fact, 
he was astonished that any one could starve 
in the sub-arctic region, and was impressed 
with the abundance of animal and vegetable 
life. He had been in Labrador at about the 
same time of year as Leonidas Hubbard, who 
