646 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Nov. 22, I913. 
try, I consider it a' matter of importance and 
esteemed it a matter of luck to be guided by 
Bert, whose every look and gesture, word and 
action bespeaks honesty and manliness, and par¬ 
ticularly as a counselor, his fund of common 
sense was ever present, and is it not a fact that 
the greatest trust between men is the trust of 
giving counsel? A few words with Bert was 
better than a whole course of lectures. I feel 
certain that the sportsman who has Bert for a 
guide has his comfort, pleasure and success as¬ 
sured. 
We saw much wild life every day—moose, 
deer, cranes, loons, ducks, partridges and wood¬ 
land birds, and at night we could hear the owls. 
They seemed to be calling “Who, who, who cooks 
for you!” 
Charles Cremin has the territory, the game 
and the outfit, both as to home and outlying 
camps, and a selection of expert guides, and, if 
any sportsman goes there and does not get his 
quota of game, it will be the hunter’s fault. 
On the morning of the second day in camp, 
while Bert was calling moose into two ponds 
which we went to, there was a covey of part¬ 
ridges on each side of us. We left them undis¬ 
turbed. 
The following day was Sunday, and of course 
we observed the moral, religious and dominion 
laws as to shooting game. It was a delightfully 
clear day and we made a lot of photographs on 
the Nepisiguit River. On Monday we went to 
the dead water and saw a cow moose feeding in 
the muddy river bottom. We waited some time, 
expecting to see a bull come out of the woods 
to her, but were disappointed. There were four 
nice fat deer about three hundred yards away, 
but as there was plenty of venison in camp, I 
did not shoot. What I really wanted was a big 
moose bull with good antlers. 
The glory of the Tobique is its regal sal¬ 
mon fishing, and of the Nepisiguit, at its head¬ 
waters is the trout fishing, which I thoroughly 
enjoyed. The fish are good size, numerous and 
very gamey, and take the fly freely, up to the 
very end of the open season. I took the oppor¬ 
tunity to get some nice ones every day. We 
generally hunted for big game in the early morn¬ 
ing light, and at twilight, and had lots of time 
in the interim to fish and get small game for the 
table—partridges were particularly plentiful. 
The following day we went to two beaver 
ponds, about a mile from the home camps, and 
saw many moose signs. The margin of these 
ponds resembled the yard of a cow barn with 
moose foot prints, but we did not see a bull with 
a big set of antlers. The day turned out to be 
a particularly bright one, and we spent most of 
it making photographs, obtaining some very good 
ones on the Nepisiguit Lakes, and on the river. 
The mountains slope down sharply to the water’s 
edge and late in September the foliage is in bril¬ 
liant color. 
This was the last day of the open season 
for trout, and I endeavored to get some big ones 
in the deep, dark waters of the dead-waters. 
I put on two No. 4 flies, and cast at the edge 
of a deep pool a few times, and with some effort 
at accuracy I cast a straight line across the mid¬ 
dle of the pool and a grand fish rose and took 
the fly, a Montreal. Oh, the royal splendor of 
that rise, the thrill that ran through my con¬ 
stitution from finger tips to the soles of my feet, 
with the consciousness that I had securely hooked 
him. I now felt prepared to give him all the 
battle he wanted, then he jumped some feet above 
the surface, not only once, but ten times up and 
down that pool, until I finally could see the line 
on my german silver reel almost exhausted so 
that the metal shone through the few remaining 
coils on it, and I realized that my thumb was 
chafed with the swift recoiling line. I have 
enjoyed several varieties of success in this world 
that leave pleasant impressions in the moments 
of pleasure and enjoyment, but I know the swift 
running out of that tapered line, and the song of 
the reel, is sweeter than any victory I ever have 
gained. The first enthusiasm of capturing such 
a prize was thrilling, but the unbounded pleasure 
of the fight as the fish darted from side to side 
of that stream, and up and down that pool, and 
finally when he was brought to the net and lay on 
the mossy bank, a beautiful prize—Oh! the regal 
splendor of it all. 
On the seventh day we were up early and 
went to a small pond looking for moose, but saw 
not even the sign of one. Bert, as usual, gave 
the moose call, but to no purpose, and we re¬ 
turned with a few partridges, and after a hearty 
breakfast, deliciously prepared by the cook at the 
camp, we pushed our canoe from the landing 
intending to go down the Nepisiguit Lakes and 
river to look for game and make photographs, 
when about three hundred yards from the foot 
of the lake, between the middle and lower lake 
in the thorough, a shallow, narrow place, thickly 
wooded on each side with a second growth of 
trees where there had been a blow-down, in about 
six inches of water stood a cow moose drinking 
in the stream, and in a few minutes a bull came 
out of the woods to her. I looked him over with 
the binoculars while Bert was paddling the canoe 
closer up to them, and seeing that he was a 
very large moose with a very good head, I shot 
at him with my Winchester 45-90, using high 
velocity cartridges. At the report of the rifle 
he shrugged all up and turned completely around. 
I shot again and in response to that shot he 
reared upon his hind legs like a vicious horse, 
trying to unseat his rider. I fired again and he 
ran into the woods. He made a circle of at least 
a half mile before he laid down mortally 
wounded and two more shots were required to 
end him. In dressing him we recovered two 
fully mushroomed bullets, and splintered parts of 
two more. Two shots went clear through his 
body. The vitality of this great beast was amaz¬ 
ing. He traveled over fallen timbers with some 
speed. We got the head and antlers to the canoe 
and as there were some men at work building a 
log camp we arranged with them to come and 
take the meat out, giving Bert a full day to skin 
out the head and prepare it for sending out to 
the taxidermist. I had seen nine moose with 
more or less good heads, and this was the best 
one of them all. 
The legal authorities of the Province of New 
Brunswick evidently think that the shooting of 
one moose bull a year is enough sport for one 
person, as it would be considered a serious judi¬ 
cial error to repeat the performance before an¬ 
other year, but there is caribou and deer and 
lots of black bear for the sportsman. 
A few days after we shot the large moose 
bull, and at the suggestion of Bert, who thor¬ 
oughly understands the habits and knows the 
haunts of the denizens of these wild woods, we 
made a trip up moose brook, a tributary of 
Nepisiguit River, to some dilapidated lumber 
camps long out of use, but where black bears 
were plentiful and where an English sportsman 
got one in a trap. This was quite an amusing 
incident. The bear was fast in the trap and the 
sportsman disclaimed' the wish to shoot a bear 
in a trap, so he suggested the bear be let loose 
and get a sporting chance for his life. The 
theory was all right enough, but his guide not 
being of a scientific sporting turn of mind, did 
no't relish the idea of dallying much with a live 
black bear in a trap. The sportsman challenged 
the guide to help let the bear loose, but after 
coming close up to the bear, he seemed to change 
his mind, and the result was the bear was 
promptly dispatched with a bullet in the skull. 
Theories are the bubbles with which the sci¬ 
entific sportsmen, with a didactic turn of mind, 
amuse themselves, while the honest woodsman 
stands by in stupid admiration and gives dignity 
to these learned vagaries in acknowledgment of 
their wisdom. 
One of the lumber camps which we went to 
had been repaired and turned into a storehouse, 
and stocked with a winter’s supply for a lumber¬ 
ing crew. The bears, and we could see that they 
GILBERT CURRIE AND AUTHOR AT CAMP 
