January 3, 1914 - 
FOREST AND STREAM 
7 
was on Sunday. After Long killed the first bear, 
he called Charlie to come and bring the dogs. 
When Charlie reached him he yelled out, “Good 
God, massa, hab you seed one?” They continued 
the hunt that day, and before dark had killed 
seven bears. Charlie had never seen any bears 
killed before, but after this day was crazy to be 
on a hunt, for, he said, “if dem little niggers of 
mine hab plenty of bear-grease and venison, they 
will fatten well enough.” This fall Long killed 
sixty deer and twenty-five bears, all on the North 
Fork, and the bears were all killed near and 
around where Richardsville now is. This locality 
was a natural home for wild animals— 
“With its woodland dale and dell, 
Rippling brooks and hill-side springs.” 
“A life in the forest deep, 
Where the winds their revels keep; 
Like an eagle in groves of pine, 
Long hunted with his mate.” 
{To be continued.) 
[The western and northwestern portions of 
Pennsylvania, comprising territory at present di¬ 
vided into more than twenty counties, was ac¬ 
quired in the year 1784 by a treaty made at Fort 
Stanwix, now Rome, New York, between the 
Commonwealth and the Six Nations of Iroquois. 
The State of Pennsylvania soon after the Revolu¬ 
tion laid out large portions of this territory in 
the form of donation lands allotted to the soldiers 
of the Pennsylvania Line for their services in the 
Revolution. This incentive opened that portion 
of the state to civilization; but it was many years 
before settlement passed the pioneer stage. Al- 
N ATURALLY in course of time warm rains 
came and they, aided by springlike weather, 
softened the ice so it was no longer safe 
or practicable to run the sled-boats from Glodo’s 
to the blind where, as told in a previous “Talk,” 
the writer came so near being made crow’s food; 
besides other air holes were opening and soon 
Big Lake was dotted with them. 
The local shooters, with one or two excep¬ 
tions, resembled that man in Arkansas whose 
roof needed repair. It was too wet to work when 
it rained, and he didn’t care how many holes 
there were if the weather stayed dry. When 
March winds were blowing cold and ducks were 
everywhere, “Shucks, kaint stand such weather, 
no how!” and they would sit by the nearest fire 
toasting their shins and telling what they “uster 
do.” Then when the sun shone brightly and all 
nature was glad, “Tain’t no duck weather ter- 
day, no use going out; h’its jest like summer,” 
and the crowd of them would loaf or sleep and 
if they heard shooting say, “H’its them fellers 
at Glodo’s a shootin’ at the moon.” This enabled 
the writer to steal another march on them and 
locate a large air hole which opened over night 
within two miles of camp. 
When he and his companion, Fredericks, 
found it, one morning just before sun-up, so 
many ducks got out, it looked as if they had 
been sitting there piled two or three deep. Near 
it was a clump of grass and buck brush large 
enough to partly conceal the small boat. 
Two large stakes which happened to be in 
the freighter, as Frederick’s heavy boat was 
called, were driven, one on each side of the 
little skiff, which was firmly lashed to them. Then 
a short paddle was tied across to the top of the 
stakes and a grass and hayblind built with this 
though the state had bought the land from the 
Indians, it was not until the decisive victory of 
General Wayne in 1795 that there was actual 
security against occasional Indian raids. The 
northwestern portion of the state when originally 
opened for settlement was a game paradise, rival¬ 
ling Kentucky in this particular, and from the 
stories 'that have come down of the prowess of 
the hunters who preceded the settlers, and in 
fact lived with them for many years, the country 
well deserved the title. The Seneca tribe of the 
Iroquois Confederation, occupying a large part 
of northwestern Pennsylvania, was noted as one 
of the strongest and most advanced of the Six 
Nations. This tribe produced Cornplanter, or 
Beautiful Lake, who was a party to the treaty 
by which northwestern Pennsylvania was trans¬ 
ferred to the Commonwealth; Red Jacket, an¬ 
other famous historical character was a Seneca, 
as was also the father of Tecumseh and his twin 
brother the Prophet. In the transfer of the 
Pennsylvania lands Cornplanter reserved a small 
reservation for himself along the northern bound¬ 
ary. It is not generally known that Cornplanter 
was in fact half Indian, his father having been 
a white man named John O’Bail, a Mohawk Val¬ 
ley trader. Cornplanter died February 18th, 1836, 
at the age of 104 years, at Cornplanter Town, 
Pennsylvania. 
It was with Indians of this character that 
many of the great hunters of northwestern Penn¬ 
sylvania lived, and from whom they learned much 
that aided them in their calling. In the series of 
articles beginning this week Dr. McKnight will 
tell something of their deeds and exploits.—Edi¬ 
tor's Note.] 
foundation, the affair much resembling a musk 
rat house. Brush and hay covered the boat’s 
bows and natural cover hid the rest. This left 
a nest-like place amidships where a shooter could 
sit or kneel with little chance of being seen even 
by high-flying ducks, and the only drawback to 
an otherwise perfect blind was the fact the boat 
was part of it and could not be moved without 
tearing things to pieces. That made little differ¬ 
ence as there was no need chasing cripples or 
picking up dead birds. They could remain until 
Fredericks, who was building sixty yards away, 
came after them. 
So little open water was around the lake and 
so many ducks anxious to use what there was, 
they began working here even before the writer 
was ready for them, paying little or no attention 
to what Fredericks was doing next door. When 
decoys were set and it was possible to keep down, 
they just poured in. Deep water ducks of all 
kinds from canvas to butter ball, and puddle 
ducks of every variety from mallard to green¬ 
wing. They came singly, in pairs, in flocks of 
fifty, in droves of five hundred. The Spring 
migration was on and the birds were moving by 
companies, by regiments, by brigades. They were 
everywhere as far as eye could reach. 
Fredericks didn’t half complete his blind — it 
wasn’t necessary — and soon his big 8-gauge added 
its deep-toned boom to the sharper cracks of 
the writer’s twelve, and the celebration was on, 
a regular fourth of July and Christmas com¬ 
bined, with a touch of New Year’s to give it 
color. 
Fredericks was a fine shot, but didn’t like to 
waste eight drams of powder and two ounces of 
shot at any single duck, canvas and mallard ex¬ 
cepted, so he waited for flocks. After he got 
started it was nip and tuck between us which 
killed the most. 
The writer would get several singles and a 
double or so, then a flock would come to his 
partner and it would rain ducks. Both were 
firm believers in fine shot, and used number seven 
in the twelve gauge and a size smaller in the 
big gun. 
The score ran on at evens until quitting time, 
when Fredericks cut down eight from a flock of 
springs, and these added to his previous kill put 
him two ahead on the day. 
Speaking of fine shot as against coarse, the 
writer once went into a deal whereby some local 
shooters, all users of coarse shot, some twos, 
others threes and fours, were to pick and dress 
his common ducks in return for theii feathers. 
All ducks killed were dumped in one pile at 
the pick house, then when dressed and ready to 
be hung to drain and cool, each shooter was given 
his proper number. The locals figured from the 
long shots they had seen the writer make and 
the few cripples he was forced to chase, he must 
be using very heavy shot, B. B.’s at the least. 
They were surprised when they came to pick the 
birds, not only at the fine shot, but at its pene¬ 
tration. Their ducks were hit by only a few 
pellets of shot, while the writer’s showed marks 
of ten, fifteen or twenty, and his sevens, unless 
the bird had been killed at long range, made two 
holes, one going in, one coming out, which was 
all their small bullets could do. 
“It isn’t coarse shot. It’s lots of powder you 
want,” they were told. They saw. Bread and 
butter depending on their kill made them see. 
All became converts to the small shot theory and 
next day every market shooter who could get 
sevens was using them and the rest fell in line 
as quickly as they were able to send in town for 
a supply. 
“Makes a difference of over a dozen birds 
to a hundrd shots,” one said, when next the 
assembly met at the pick house. Twice that, the 
writer thinks would be nearer the truth. 
Professional goose shooters in the grain dis¬ 
trict of central California use more sixes than 
anything else—certainly nothing larger. Per¬ 
sonally, out of many hundreds of geese killed, I 
have shot more with sevens than with sixes and 
very few with anything larger and those when 
young, before I knew much. My preceptor in 
the school of “knowing how” once said, “Young 
man, how many single blackbirds can you kill 
out of five at thirty-five yards?” 
“Nearly all,” I promptly answered. 
“Well,” he continued, “remember next time 
you go goose shooting, how much larger the head 
and neck of a goose is than three blackbirds, and 
shoot accordingly,” which was as good advice as 
could be given a beginner anxious to learn. 
But let us return to Big Lake. At sunset 
many ducks were still in the air, and we let them 
go their way in peace, for we had a job before 
us getting to camp over the soft ice. Together 
in the freighter we picked up decoys and dead 
ducks, stored the former in the little skiff which 
was to be left undisturbed, packed the game 
amidships in the big boat, and started homeward. 
The ice was rotten and mush-like in its softness, 
much worse than we had thought. Our boat was 
loaded full. It had aboard nearly two hundred 
ducks, two big, solid men, besides guns and am¬ 
munition. 
It took plenty of muscle to get started. It 
looked almost impossible to pull out of the water 
and on the ice, but we did, somehow. For fifty 
yards we moved, that was all, only moved, then 
the boat broke through. 
We tried by shifting our load further aft to 
raise the bows and then by running up on the 
Talk of An Old Timer—VII. 
By EDWARD T. MARTIN 
