Forest and Stream 
|3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy, 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL 26, 1913. 
VOL. LXXX.—No. 17. 
127 Franklin St., New York. 
A Contraband Incident 
A Story of the Forties Written by Nessmuk 
1 Aj\I a hunter, in the American sense of the 
term, for I do not beat covers or “draw” 
them secundem artem with aristocratic 
flourish of flunkeys and dogs, horns and hounds. 
For twenty-five years or more my tastes and in¬ 
clinations have led me to spend a portion of 
each year in the dense forest regions of the 
newer free States, sometimes in company with 
one or more kindred spirits, but quite as often 
alone or with only a faithful still-hunt dog for 
company. 
One can hardly do this sort of thing for a 
score of years without meeting incidents that 
will bear relating, and one comes back to me 
continually with a vividness for which I can 
hardly account. It was not much of an affair, 
either, only a little episode in the lives of three 
human beings. 
In the October of 1840 it was that a Mr. 
Kelly, his son, a lad of eighteen, a “mountain 
man” named Randolph—so at least he called 
himself—and a clerk from Chicago by the name 
of Jason, built a “two-faced camp” near the 
shores of Lake Michigan for a general season 
of fishing and hunting. The camp was built 
near an extensive marsh, and on a small tribu¬ 
tary of the Calumet River, said tributary having 
its rise in a lake of some extent which occupied 
the center of the marsh. The lake was a very 
paradise for fish and wildfowl, although most 
difficult of approach, owing to the uncertainty 
of the quaking bog which composed its shores. 
One could only approach the open water within 
forty or fifty yards when the treachery of the 
floating bed quilt became so tremulously appar¬ 
ent that no prudent man would risk an advance, 
although the armies of ducks which lined the 
shores and the platoons of wild geese swimming 
in the center were sufficiently provoking to a 
lover of sport. Yankee Ingenuity overcame the 
difficulty. 
I managed to roll a light dugout within a 
few rods of the lake, whence, with much ado 
and an old scythe, I cut a channel to the open 
water. My companions laughed at me. They 
cared but little for fishing or fowling, and the 
old farmer prophesied that I would soon be glad 
to relinquish the double-barreled shotgun for the 
more noble rifle, while Randolph was loud in 
his contempt of all scatter guns, and not at all 
complimentary in his remarks concerning the 
Yankees, who, he contended, were the only ones 
who used them. 
“Ef,” said he, “I had to hunt for my life 
’n’ had my choice between a mopstick an’ a 
shotgun, I should take the mopstick.” 
The sport on the lake was such as at least 
satisfied me. I was not a certain shot with the 
rifle, and I did not care to spend day after day 
peering and poking about in the dense gloomy 
forest for a shot at a deer, the chances being 
in the deer’s favor when I did get a shot, so I 
stuck to the lake and the dugout—fishing, smok¬ 
ing and idling through the better part of the 
day—to Randolph's supreme disgust, but making 
good use of the time from four in the after¬ 
noon until nine or ten o'clock at night, and also 
of the early morning while it was yet dusk. For 
then it was that the wildfowl came in large 
flocks from the northward, sitting on the water 
in such multitudes as to give the lake the ap¬ 
pearance of a living field of heads and feathers. 
It was no unusual feat to save twenty or more 
at one discharge of a double barrel, and the 
most inveterate Jersey “duck butcher” could 
have slaughtered to his heart's content. I tired 
of it, however, not that my love of the sport 
flagged, but it has always seemed to me a wicked 
waste of God’s gifts to slay his beautiful creat¬ 
ures when one can make no use of them, and 
it is, moreover, unsportsmanlike. I have long 
ceased to shoot wantonly. The man who shoots 
or angles for the mere pleasure of indiscriminate 
slaughter and subjugation is no true sportsman, 
but a brute. 
It was in the latter part of October, and 
when we had been some three weeks in camp. 
that I took my way toward the channel where 
lay the dugout for the purpose of having one 
more shy at the wild geese on the lake. They 
had been flying in huge flocks all day, and I 
knew the water would be nearly covered with 
them that night, so I stepped into the dugout 
as the dull lead-colored day waned to the gloam¬ 
ing, arranged the screen of spruce boughs and 
marsh grass, fastened the paddle alongside by 
its thong, and waited for darkness and the geese 
to settle down on the face of the water. The 
lake extended from northeast to southwest, and 
the dugout lay at the northeast end, so that when 
the wind was northerly, I had only to cast loose, 
drift silently down on the flocks, and just as 
they, began to show dimly, pour in both barrels, 
then pick up the slain and find my way to camp. 
On the night in question the wind blew almost 
a gale, lashing the surface of the lake into minia¬ 
ture breakers, and whistling through the spruce 
screen in a manner well calculated to impress 
one with the necessity of preserving the center 
of gravity in a little bread tray—for it was hardly 
bigger—on a dark stormy night. As darkness 
began to settle on larke, marsh and forest, the 
wind increased, and it began to snow, while 
flock after flock of geese came skimming along 
just above - the treetops and plunged into the 
lake with a headlong force that denoted great 
haste in the performers or a strong gale abaft 
the beam. I saw that a storm was at hand, and 
decided to wait no longer than until I could 
just distinguish a flock on the water within 
short range before casting loose. I had not 
long to wait. The leaden clouds grew more and 
more inky, the outline of the lake became in¬ 
visible, wildfowl and water were merged in one 
black gloomy field of shapeless space, and I cast 
off the little wooden grapnel, cocked both bar¬ 
rels, rested the gun over my knee, took a squat¬ 
ting position, and slipped quietly along the nar¬ 
row channel. Two or three minutes of rubbing 
through grassy, marshy water brought the dug- 
out to the open, and I shot out into the lake 
with a speed which convinced me that, like the 
old Indian on Baffin’s Bay, I had “too much 
bush.” 
For a minute or two the tiin' craft glided 
silently down the lake, the ducks squattling away 
on either side, and then, directly ahead loomed 
a mass of dark bodies with long necks dimly 
showing through the darkness and storm. A 
slight yawing of the dugout and the long necks 
pointed inward as they “huddled” for flight. 
Two simultaneous streams of flame, a crashing 
roar, a stunning recoil and—the dugout was bot- 
