Jan. 8, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
53 
a mile of the house—west, north or east. We 
can drive direct east to the partridge cove on 
B- Creek. There are birds all up and down 
the creek for miles. Fires did not burn those 
swamps and there is plenty of feed for them 
there; it is good cover for deer and bear. I 
flushed over one hundred birds last Saturday 
and crossed two fresh bear tracks, one old 
sockdolager. 
“I have venison, beef, mutton and young pig 
hung up, also ham, bacon, sausage; lots of 
chickens in the coop; apples, cider. Blue Grass 
and Pommard and Madeira in the cellar; home¬ 
grown taters, carrots, beets, onions, turnips 
and fine endive for salad. Mrs. C-is a good 
cook, and we can knock your car restaurant 
silly. Beds as good as yours at home and lots 
of soft blankets; eggs, butter, cream, home¬ 
made mince and huckleberry pies, old-fashioned 
buckwheat pancakes, popovers, toast and jam; 
nuts, raisins, prunes, dried apples and salt pork; 
fine charcoal broiler, alcohol stove, range and 
chafing dishes; cheese for Welsh rarebits—you 
can bring a bottle of old ale to make the rab¬ 
bits. You can broil your own guinea hen, if 
you wish, and eat your buckwheats off the 
griddle. 
“We won’t starve you here—honest we won’t 
—and it will be cheaper than your fancy hotel 
on wheels. Cigars ordinaire and extraordinaire 
on tap. What’s the matter mit all dat, any¬ 
way? You’re not sprouting into a trust mag¬ 
nate what’s got to travel in a private kyar all 
the time, are ye? Better mossback it .once in 
a while, or you won’t pull the backwoods vote 
when you run for ‘Guvner’.” 
Later: 
“Yours of the 22d at hand. If you come up 
Friday morning a team will meet you at L-- 
and bring you to the ranch. Breakfast will be 
ready when you arrive. Wire me how many 
you will bring. Nearly all hunters have gone 
out on account of snow and cold. 
“I have located a place four miles away 
where no one has hunted to any extent. There 
are a great many deer there—droves of six to 
twelve. It looks to me as if they are prepar¬ 
ing to yard there this winter. We can drive 
there easily and ought to have two or three 
deer in a day. Two and a half miles from here 
partridges are thick around the big dam, and 
on my lands they are plentiful, also. With 
good dogs tve ought to get a good bag. They 
are large birds in very large coveys. I saw as 
many as twenty-five in one bunch; flushed them 
while on a fresh deer track. 
“We will have some good weather after this 
storm. Snow is from six inches to 10 inches 
deep, and you can follow deer easily now.” 
This looked good to all of us. I straightway 
procured a deer license, the first one that I 
have ever taken out in Michigan. The dog 
crates were piled on the car, for we did not 
care to make midnight changes and get up at 
unearthly hours, and the car is to use for hunt¬ 
ing trips, so what was the use of leaving it at 
home? It was vacation for the balance of the 
week, so I took my boy along and told him 
to invite a boy friend. Hough came over from 
Chicago; Briggs, George Morley and myself 
made up the balance of the party. Morley had 
to borrow a dog named “Mack” that proved to 
be a scrapper and wanted to fight the dogs we 
had as well as those outside, and no matter 
whether he was whipped or not, he wanted to 
keep at the performance morning, noon and 
night. We went aboard the car about 8 o’clock 
in the evening and about 9 o’clock my English 
retriever, Fritz, appeared at the car door and 
announced that he was going. How he found 
that car down in the railroad yard, or knew 
anything about it, is more than I know. He 
was not home when I left for the station, but 
he bobbed up smilingly, as he always does, and 
1 did not propose to tramp back to the house 
at that late hour with him, so along he went, 
completely out of place. 
We found on arrival at our destination that 
the ground was covered with snow, lots of deer 
WAITING FOR THE HUNTERS. 
Photograph by O. W. Smith. 
hunters in the locality, but a bright, sunshiny 
day greeted us. Charley was on hand; he had 
had his breakfast, but concluded to stay with 
us instead of our going up to the ranch house, 
as it was handier under the circumstances for 
the shooting. He brought down a quarter of 
venison for our larder, which was already 
pretty well stocked. There was quite a crust 
on the snow, so we were late in starting. We 
took a round-about way to reach our destina¬ 
tion, as Charley was somewhat turned around, 
as he had come upon this wonderful hunting 
ground when he was following the track of a 
deer, but we finally came to the camps near 
where we were to begin operations. We ran 
across one hunting party that had a deer hang¬ 
ing up and had killed a bear a few days before. 
During our stay we ran across nine different 
hunting parties, all of them showing evidences 
of having killed deer. The season was nearing 
its close and most of them were moving out or 
had gone. Out of about thirty deer taken out 
of this locality, I understand only four were 
bucks. Everyone was wearing either a red hat 
or a red shirt as a protection against being shot, 
and we had turned our jackets, that had red 
flannel lining, wrong side out and formed quite 
a flaming procession that looked like a detach¬ 
ment of the British Army moving through the 
woods. 
Charley and George started out with the 
pugnacious pointer, while Briggs and the two 
boys concluded to stay near the sleigh and 
hang around the camp, as the walking was too 
hard for them to tackle. Hough and I, with 
the two dogs, Rex and Pat, made a large cir¬ 
cle, covered some ground that looked as if it 
ought to have birds, but we put up only one 
lone grouse that entire day. We heard Mor¬ 
ley and Charley banging away, came across 
their tracks and saw where they had turned to 
the right, following the fresh tracks of part¬ 
ridges, plainly showing in the snow, but when 
they came in that night, they reported having 
seen only eight birds and not getting one of 
them, although each said he had missed some 
shots that should have scored. Both dogs 
pointed the bird that Hough and I put up in a 
gully. It was a narrow little run, and before we 
could get to the dogs the bird rose from a sec¬ 
ond gully quite a long distance off. I hit it hard 
with the first barrel, feathered it again with 
the second, and Hough got in one shot. From 
the way it sailed over the creek bottom and 
disappeared around a clump of bushes, I felt 
that when it fell it would never get up, but how 
to find it was a conundrum. In an attempt to 
ford the creek both of us got our feet wet, and 
the icy water in our rubbers did not feel good. 
Back we went to the bridge, made a circle and 
followed the line of flight of the disabled 
grouse—I went on for 500 yards deep into the 
black ash swamp, which was full of briers and 
hard to get through. I had given up all idea 
of finding the bird and was on the point of 
turning to the left to join my companion on 
the hillside when I noticed Rex making queer 
motions and then coming to a point, and on 
going to him I found the grouse stone dead on 
the snow. There was not a mark in the snow, 
showing that the bird, when it did fall, was 
lifeless. It was the largest ruffed grouse I 
have ever seen; the kind I have always desig¬ 
nated as the chestnut fellows, for the ruff, in¬ 
stead of being a glossy black, was a chestnut 
bronze, and his tail feathers and back, instead 
of being gray, were rich chestnut in color. He 
was certainly a giant, and I have noticed the 
largest grouse that I have killed have been of 
the chestnut-hued variety. 
We ran across deer tracks and saw one bear 
track during the day, but it was not fresh. The 
hundred birds that Charley was so confident he 
could find feeding on acorns underneath the 
scrub oaks did not materialize. It was just a 
case of not running on to them, I think, as the 
events of the next day seemed to prove. We 
reached the car in good condition to enjoy the 
roast beef and browned potatoes and other 
good things, and the one bird hung from the 
car roof at the rear was the subject of a good 
deal of comment. It was known as “the bird.” 
What a picture the five men, two boys and 
four dogs grouped around it would have made! 
Hough commented upon the size of the bag 
and the $10 non-resident license that he had 
taken out. 
