May 24, 1913 
FOREST AND STREAM 
647 
One Big Buck 
By WILL C. PARSONS 
T hrow her head a little to the left, and I 
think we can make it.” The camp was 
out of meat. We were storm bound, for 
Lake Superior had had its back up, and for 
days had dashed its giant waves against the 
Pictured Rocks with a force that made the 
ground tremble. Twenty miles away, in the 
lee of Grand Island, the sailboats that were to 
have come for us were riding out the storm. 
The commissary was low—very low, and it 
was up to someone to ‘‘bring home the ’coon 
skin.” So two of us started. 
A mile or so back from camp nestled a pine- 
locked lake. At one end a circular bay, its 
amber waters dotted . with lilypads, sent its flow 
into the parent body through a swift little arm. 
Dead and gaunt trees, some fire killed, some 
storm twisted, stood up like the bristles on a 
department store bargain scrub brush. The 
night was about as dark as the inside of a lump 
of anthracite coal, and the bushes were some 
wet and stung spitefully as we brushed through, 
stumbing over the pesky spruce roots and trying 
to make the jacklight do for two. 
At last we were afloat, and the birch was 
sent silently toward the bay. I paddled. Frank 
knelt in the bow, and as his head turned from 
side to side, the rays from the light brought into 
relief deadened snags in the black water, the 
gleam of a closed water lily here and there, and 
once picked up out of the blackness a pair of 
ducks that hustled away on buzzing wings. 
The storm that was hammering the coast 
did not reach us, so sheltered was the lake, but a 
fine mist did, and as the canoe stole in toward 
the inlet, we were cramped and cold. Suddenly 
as the rushes scraped the sides of the craft with 
a whispering sound, there came a splash from 
the shore, and the next instant something landed 
in the canoe with a sound like the blow on a 
bass drum. 
There was silence for about one long breath, 
and then a series of beats that rang out like the 
long roll at midnight. Great Scott! What was 
that? Only a black bass feeding close to shore! 
He weighed three pounds and met his Waterloo 
with a rap from the paddle. “That settles it,” 
said Frank. “We’ve scared everything between 
here and Duluth.” 
Stemming the swift current, for we were 
bound to skirt the shore a dozen times, scare 
or no scare, the canoe reached the bay and began 
its slow monotonous journey, creeping in to shore, 
avoiding snags, and peering and prying into each 
little opening where the lily roots lay in shallow 
water, and a deer would be likely to feed. 
The bay was the “stillest” piece of water 
we had ever struck, and the splash of a leaping 
fish sounded in that ghostly silence like the crack 
of a nitro shell. As the light picked up objects 
one after another, it disclosed a low marshy 
shore, fringed with rank alder growth, while the 
deadening bristled like the teeth of a giant comb. 
Once, twice the round was made. Nothing was 
doing; not even the stealthy plash that heralds 
the stealing away of a Very suspicious buck. 
The deadening, the rank smell of herbage, and 
the sweeping of the light hither and yon gave 
both of us a creepy feeling that cannot be de¬ 
scribed, only felt. To add to the weirdness, a 
wolf was howling back along the main lake, 
and a loon added his tremulo to the discord. 
For the third time the canoe turned and 
started on its stalk. Then in the spot light we 
saw him. Two luminous spots; a shadowy figure. 
As the eye became accustomed to the scene, and 
the canoe drifted, propelled by the last noise¬ 
less thrusts, a noble head came into view, and 
from the mouth hung the dripping lily roots he 
had just garnered from the black ooze of the 
bay. 
We followed (shame to tell it, but we were 
out of meat) the double roar of a ten-gauge 
“soft coal burner” loaded with No. 13 buckshot 
per roar. Then came a mighty splash and a 
threshing of the waters; came a blinding of the 
stern man as Frank swung around throwing the 
bullseye straight in the paddler’s face; came 
Frank’s victorious paean, “Got him!” 
Then other things came, or rather happened. 
Came one badly wounded, but belligerent, sharp¬ 
toed buck for one frail birch canoe; came the 
ripping of the thin, delicately molded sides; 
came an upset; came darkness. The light was 
out; the fight was on. Of course Frank’s gun 
was in two feet and a half of water, and only 
the bay knows how much muck. Of course a 
maple paddle isn’t the best thing in the world 
to caress a wounded buck with, and in the 
blackness, the bleakness, the wetness of the night 
there was enacted a scene for which the multi¬ 
scope fellows would have given a small fortune. 
While the buck was disengaging his legs from 
the canoe, and Frank was diving like a dipper 
duck for his lost artillery, I was backing away, 
hunting for the knife I thought I had—and 
didn’t. 
In some manner the buck’s horns and my 
hands came in contact. With a grip like unto 
the nip of a Mississippi catfish on a section of 
the internal arrangements of a dead hen, I clung. 
Never play that “clung” number in life’s policy 
game. Here is what happened: The buck threw 
up his head and then slammed it down. With 
his application of carpet beating tactics, he landed 
me stomach first on the bosom of the disturbed 
waters, and to tell you the truth, that hurts me 
yet when I think of it. 
Fortunately the disturbed aqueous mixture 
closed over my slender frame before the lord 
of the woods had a chance to upper-cut with his 
antlers, or to straight jab with his sharp hoofs. 
For this, Mr. Buck, I return many thanks. 
Now, Frank weighs about as much as two 
and a half of me. and after failing to recover 
his “soft coal burner.” and after getting his 
eyes and nostrils clear from good old pond lily 
muck, he waded in (literally), and by some 
means unknown to the plaintiff, secured an un¬ 
fair advantage over said buck by grasping that 
part that is supposed to keep the flies away. 
There’s where Frank got in bad with the do¬ 
mestic economy of the deer. The old fellow— 
the buck, not Frank—reared back and sat down 
on the meat hunter. Frank again disappeared 
under the “drink” and the buck turned his atten¬ 
tion to the canoe he had again run afoul of in 
the darkness. Now, my companion is no coward. 
He is also some scrapper; also a “few” on lurid 
and expressive language. He also had not for¬ 
gotten his knife and left it in a tent a mile or 
so away in the blackness. This knife was not 
one of the handsome deer-footed handled af¬ 
fairs you get for fifty tobacco tags, but was a 
regular old butcher product made by a cutler 
friend who knew what a knife ought to be. 
Frank found it, and getting a neck hold on the 
quarry and in spite of all efforts to shake him, 
Frank actually held on and cut the deer’s throat. 
With a last despairing bleat, the show was over; 
that is, the meat-getting part. 
We had the meat, but it was a question for 
a minute whether the shoe was not on the other 
{Continued on page 673.) 
Fishing 
WITH OLD PETE 
His camp’s down on Moosehead 
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fishing that in 3 days will take 
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Pete is one of nearly 1000 registered 
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In Maine Woods 
Pete’s some cook—broiled fish, fried 
potatoes, griddle cakes and maple syrup, 
hot biscuit, coffee. He’ll make you 
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Pete knows how to make a fellow 
comfortable on a bed of hemlock boughs 
under a tent beside a camp-fire. 
It’s the greatest outing in America. And it’s 
EASY TO GO. 
Send for FREE BOOKLETS 
“ I Go A-Fishing” eind 
“ Meiine Guides” 
THE NEW ENGLAND 
LINES 
Room 723 So. Station, 
Boston, Mass. 
