400 
FOREST AND STREAM 
March 30, 1912 
Fox Hunting at Ticonderoga 
By SPORTSMAN 
“figger.” This, save only as to size, was prac¬ 
tically a counterpart of scores of families with 
whose home life I was more or less conspicu¬ 
ously identified during the weeks to come be¬ 
fore I passed beyond the settled parts of the 
country. I spent quite a pleasant evening, tell¬ 
ing the latest news, and in turn acquiring infor¬ 
mation touching the territory through which I 
was to travel. The question, however, that 
would present itself to my mind, was how they 
w'ould dispose of me for the night. I had not 
learned the resources of a Kansas cabin then. 
At about 10 o’clock my hostess settled the 
lodging question by pointing to one of the two 
beds and saying: “Ye kin lay thar; me an’ my 
man lays in t’other bed.’’ 
On my manifesting solicitude for the daugh¬ 
ter and expressing regret that I should be the 
occasion of inconvenience, I was told “not t’ 
fret about th’ gal; she'd tek keer o' herself.” 
A blanket was then slid out on a wire and I 
had a corner bedroom all to myself. Being very 
tired I slept soundly for several hours, when I 
awakened suddenly to find I had a bedfellow. 
My first idea was that my host had taken up 
quarters with me and given the girl his share 
of the other bed. The smouldering embers in 
the fireplace gave out a fitful glow, and in the 
dim light, on raising my head, I made the start¬ 
ling discovery that my companion was none other 
than the girl herself. On awakening again in 
the first faint glimmerings of day I saw the 
girl busying herself w’ith household duties. T 
subsequently found that such-like innocent free¬ 
dom was by no means uncommon in the rural 
districts, where household accommodations were 
restricted. 
After breakfast, which was a counterpart of 
the evening meal, I intimated to my host that 
I would like to try for a catfish, he having men¬ 
tioned during a former conversation that the 
neighboring branch abounded in that sort of 
game. He volunteered to pilot me to the haunts 
of the fish and also furnish hooks and bait as 
none of my tackle was suitable for such big 
game. The hooks that he produced were some¬ 
what larger than a bluefish hook, and for bait 
he cut some half-pickled beef into three-inch 
chunks. 'We reached the branch in due t’me 
and put out lines. Catfishing in its preliminary 
stages cannot be rightly termed exciting sport. 
On throwing our lines into the muddy waters 
we had but to tie the free ends to convenient 
bushes and await developments. These seemed 
tediously slow in materializing. At last my bush 
showed there was something doing. It was not 
the jerky agitation that one would look for under 
the circumstances, but it merely sagged down 
to the limit of its elasticity and held firm. My 
companion seized the line, saying: “Give us a 
hand: we’ve got a sockdolager.” Presently a 
big, dirty-looking object emerged from the 
depths, garnished with whiplashes. With a pro¬ 
digious haul we landed the creature on the muddy 
bank and I saw it was an enormous bullhead 
minus horns. kW fellow fisher roared whh 
laughter when T put my impressions into words. 
“T don’t know whar ye got that idee,” he said, 
“fer that’s a reg’lar simon pure ‘cat,’ if thar ever 
wuz one, an’ he’s a wliackin’ big un, too.” 
“Is it good to eat?" I queried, mentally think¬ 
ing that my appetite could make big inroads on 
that six-foot fish if such was the case. 
(Confilmed on page 420 .) 
W HILE the rest of the country is taking its 
pleasure on wheels, we are still on run¬ 
ners up in this tight little mountain town 
(Ticonderoga) among the foothills of the Adi- 
rondacks. Our men folks have awakened from 
their winter naps and are now looking over the 
buckets, fixing up the arches or kettles and tap¬ 
ping the glorious old rock maple trees for which 
our section is famous. 
The nights are bright and frosty and the earth 
often dons her thin cloak of ermine before day¬ 
break, called “sugar snow,” from its supposed 
influence on the flow of maple sap. As the 
morning sun begins to temper the air, the young 
hound gets the scent of his enemy, the red fox, 
and sweet melody soon calls every man from 
the sugar bush, for fox pelts bring many dollars 
in these days of the fur craze. 
An old dog fox was down by the pine woods 
in the bush pasture where the game likes to stay 
at this season. He and Madame Fox are not 
above a stray meadow mole. In fact, they seem 
to prefer this rodent at present to grouse meat, 
which is pretty strong, owing to the bird’s fond¬ 
ness for the buds of hemlock. 
The wily old poacher glided off along the ridge 
to the pass between two mountains and crossed 
the old Military Road between the Vineyards, an 
old runway to Buck Mountain which all foxdom 
has used in "its treatment of the hound question 
ever since white men came this way, and per¬ 
haps employed the same tactics with the mon¬ 
grel dogs of the aborigines in pursuit of their 
fur. Straight up the mountain went reynard, 
the dog following hotly in his wake. If you had 
strained your eyes hard or aided them with a 
glass, you could see that fox up there several 
hundred feet above the valley leading that am- 
bitictis puppy a great race. 
He of the brush suddenly decided to return 
to his morning hunting grounds and find his 
consort or let her have a run on her own ac¬ 
count while he rested. At any rate, back he 
cams, and from the baying of the hound and 
your own knowledge of the lay of the land, you 
could guess pretty nearly where he would cross 
the narrow valley. At first he seemed to be 
coming down the runwaj' from the Frenchman’s 
spring, following the deep ravine to the east road, 
then he turned toward the stone bridge, and we 
knew it would be at the pass or by the old pond 
hole that we would probably meet. 
The sugar force was scattered along this 
mountain valley for about a mile, well hidden 
behind evergreens and rocks, for the foxes were 
moving, and there was promise of fun until 
nightfall. Back in the pines another hound 
started the old vixen, and she was heading for 
the apple tree runway at the turn of the road 
leading up to the old mine. I had the pass run- 
wax', the best of the lot. I found a perfect net¬ 
work of tracks there, leading up and down the 
old mountain. 
The farm arsenal consisted of an old musket, 
a muzzleloader, and a rather antiquated and 
somewhat rusty single barrel shotgun whose 
side snap was likel}^ to fall down at unguarded 
moments. For tlrs reason I preferred to stick 
to my .32 caliber revolver, and believed that I 
could do more execution with its six-inch barrel, 
even on foxes. I did not have to wait long. 
Out from a sheltering pine came that beautiful, 
graceful creature that I had before seen only in 
museums and show windows in the city. The 
fox must have played a trick on the hound, for 
the latter was silent and apparently far away 
working up the trail. A sudden spring from the 
ground on to a rail fence, a leaning tree, or 
even a friendly stone wall had broken or faulted 
the scent, and the dog was sorely puzzled. And 
the fox actually laughed with joy and rolled 
over and over in mirth to think how he had 
finally outwitted that smart puppy. Never did 
he suspect the far greater danger lurking on the 
other side of that thick juniper bush a few yards 
down the wind where I lay trying to be steady 
at the critical moment. He came a little nearer 
the juniper. The little nitro cartridge gave a 
short cough and reynard was soon hanging from 
the city man’s shoulder, his black muzzle brush¬ 
ing the fresh snow. 
Bang! went the musket up the valley by the 
apple tree. My host had missed the consort, but. 
the old dog had turned her back from the moun¬ 
tain. She had taken the Pond Hole trail over 
to Miller Mountain, giving the dogs two hours’ 
work in getting her Ijack to the farm. 
It was dinner time, anyway, and as I sat in 
the old log farm house eating fried chicken and 
baked peachblow potatoes, for which the section 
is famous, I listened to Uncle Hiram Cheney’s 
stories compared with which my own experiences 
of the day seemed rather tame. 
“You’ve all heard tell about the black fellows 
and how scarce they are. Well, I’ve seen two 
or three of them in my life, and I’ll tell you 
how I once got one,” . said the veteran medita¬ 
tively. “You see, father was known to be the 
greatest fox hunter in these parts. He knew 
all about the foxes around here and their ways 
and runways.” 
Here I recalled how, in my own boyhood days, 
I had often seen this famous man drive his cut¬ 
ter under the old barn shed on that very farm 
at about 2 o’clock in the afternoon, put his horse 
in the warm barn and take that wonderful old 
double barrel gun from beneath the wolf robes, 
set it against the barn, don the bearpaw snow- 
shoes of Indian manufacture, and go striding 
off over the five-foot snowfall after his dog. 
The Harper boys had told him that they saw a 
big fox down the east road that morning, and 
he thought he would look him up a little, he 
would smilingly say to father, who was no hunter, 
but liked sport of any kind tremendously. Be¬ 
sides, those foxes had thinned down his turkeys 
and chickens all the fall and they were getting 
saucy. 
The old wolf tails hung over the back of that 
cutter all the afternoon, and I kept watching 
them through the tiny panes of the old log house 
windows, from time to time opening the door to 
listen to that glorious voice, telling of the chase 
and echoing, from mountain to mountain. My 
only wish at that time was to be a man and 
hunt with L^ncle Ben out there in the timber. 
