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810 
buck deer. They had followed it a long time 
before Ben got a snapshot through the trees. 
A few spots of blood showed on the snow and 
they tracked that wounded buck over an hour 
before Ben fired the finishing shot. It was a 
big deer, very fat and its hind quarters made 
a valuable addition to our larder. 
The next morning we all went up for the 
caribou meat and by noon had both hind quar¬ 
ters and the skin hung up at camp. Jimmie set 
a bear trap at the kill. Of all fiendish inven¬ 
tions this bear trap was the worst. The jaws 
were studded with sharp interlocking points and 
a bear caught in it must welcome death as a 
relief. 
With plenty of meat and provisions in camp, 
there was no incentive to get out and hustle for 
the next few days. We leisurely skinned out 
and salted the caribou and bucks’ heads. I la;d 
away the gun and used up a lot of time photo¬ 
graphing the moose birds, chickadees and red 
squirrels around the camp. One squirrel fur¬ 
nished us with some entertainment. He had lost 
part of his tail, so we christened him Stubby. 
He would come into camp and hunt through 
our provision boxes for food. One day Ben 
prepared a big dish of prunes and left them on 
the table, but while we were away Stubby car¬ 
ried off every prune. I am not very keen for 
prunes, so the loss did not affect me much. 
Ben’s turn to laugh came the next day when 
Stubby got away with my bag of chestnuts. I 
had figured on some pleasant evenings roasting 
those chestnuts on the stove, and for a while 
Stubby’s life was in danger. 
The moosebird or Canada jay is an interest¬ 
ing rascal. Until I hunted him with a camera 
I did not know how partial he was for the 
shady side of a tree. He had a most perverse 
way of getting behind some obstruction and 
croaking at me. One of them surprised me with 
a little song. It had only a few notes, to be 
sure, but they came low and sweet and con¬ 
vinced me that the whiskeyjack is in the song 
bird class. 
Sunday was a quiet day in camp. A fierce 
storm raged outside, first snow, then sleet and 
rain. We read all our magazines and papers 
and wondered why we had brought so few with 
us. Ben and I were in bed before 7 o’clock. 
That night the weather turned cold again and 
our fine tracking snow became a noisy crust. 
Ben thought he needed a caribou, and with 
Jimmie started out early Monday morning to 
get one. They found a big track and followed 
it all day. The caribou is a great traveler; he 
is here to-day and gone to-morrow. More often 
he was here yesterday and gone to-day. It was 
that way with this one; they found where he 
had spent the night, but never caught up with 
him. They saw a lot of new country, however, 
and had to hustle to reach camp before dark. 
Jimmie estimated the distance covered as six¬ 
teen miles. I have a great respect for Jimmie’s 
miles; they are good measure. One late after¬ 
noon we were returning to camp on the poor- 
dash road when Jimmie said he would like to 
run up to the place where Ben got his deer. It 
was not more than half a mile and he wanted 
some meat to bait a fisher trap. I said I was 
good for an extra mile and would go with him. 
It was just one hour and twenty minutes later 
when we again came out on the poor-dash road 
and we had been walking steadily all the time. 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
The day after this long tramp Ben announced 
that he was due to stay in camp. Jimmie and 
I left early for Robinson’s lumber camp beyond 
Dungarvon River. I was interested in a colony 
of beavers which were reported to be at Mit¬ 
chell’s Lake near the camp. While crossing the 
Dungarvon on the ice, Jimmie mistook an air 
hole for a rock and wet one foot. He shoved 
out a pole and I crossed the weak spot safely. 
The cook at Robinson’s greeted us cordially 
and set up a good lunch. He and Jimmie were 
at the same camp the previous winter. After 
visiting with the men around the camp, we 
walked down through the work and met some 
of .the lumbermen. The cutting is all done with 
cross-cut saws. This saves a foot or more of 
the tree and also the labor of squaring the ends 
at the mill. 
Mitchell’s Lake is less than a mile from 
Robinson’s cam'p. It was frozen over and we 
walked down it on the ice. The beaver had 
built two dams at the lower end, one about 
thirty feet beyond the other. Most of the fresh 
cutting was on the stream below the dams. A 
yellow birch eighteen inches in diameter was 
cut off two feet above the ground and many 
smaller trees were down and in the water. 
There are two houses on the west shore half 
way up the lake. It is said that when a colony 
gets too large for one house the oldest beavers 
turn the younger out to shift for themselves. 
This theory seems to be borne out here, for 
the new house is only one-third as large as the 
old one. There was no sign of life around the 
houses, but as we walked up to the larger one 
we heard a noise like running water and bubbles 
could be seen under the ice. It was evident the 
beavers had gone out into the lake. 
The beaver is Canada’s sacred animal and is 
protected at all times. I was reminded of a 
story they were telling down at Fredericton. A 
party of congenial spirits were gathered around 
the open fire at The Queen’s one winter’s night. 
The chief game commissioner came in and 
joined the group. Turning to Uncle Henry, 
one of New Brunswick's oldest and best known 
guides, he inquired: “Catching any otter these 
days?” “Yes, some,” replied Henry. “Ever 
catch any beaver in your otter traps?” “Yes, 
sometimes.” “Now,” said the commissioner, 
“what do you do when you get a beaver in your 
otter trap?” “Oh, I skin him and let him go,” 
was Uncle Henry’s dry reply. 
When we left the lake the sky was overcast 
and the air chill. Making only a brief stop at 
Robinson’s, we took the trail up river to the 
new bridge. Jimmie predicted it would be car¬ 
ried away in the spring freshets, it was built so 
low. On the return trip we walked fast and 
reached camp early. During our absence Ben 
had baked cornbread and concocted a fine stew, 
which was well received. It is surprising what 
an appetite comes to a man in the woods. We 
usually carried a light lunch on our trips, pilot 
bread or cornbread, and our two big meals were 
breakfast and supper, or dinner, as it would be 
called in the States. The old woodsmen’s 
scheme of “boiling the kettle” at noon on the 
trail never appealed to me. They lose a lot of 
time and it is a nuisance to be always hitched 
to a teapot. Most guides insist on their tea 
three times a day, but Jimmie is an exception. 
He is an exception in other ways; for instance, 
he is always busy. Around the camp he wa« 
[Nov. 20, 1909. 
chopping wood, bringing water, cutting fresh 
browse for our beds or doing something equally 
useful. At night he would get out of his pack 
a crooked handle knife and carve out axe helves 
or stretchers for skins. 
Another caribou was soon added to our meat 
house and his head graced the camp wall. It 
had ten points. Ben did not think much of his 
horns, they looked too much like a goat’s. A 
small herd had come down from the north and 
crossed Big Hole Brook Lake. We followed 
and soon came up with the tail enders, a bull 
and a spike-horn. One shot brought down the 
bull. The spike-horn ran a few steps at the re¬ 
port, then stopped and slowly circled until he 
got our scent. He was in sight for several 
minutes and I can well understand how the 
natives could shoot down a whole herd in the 
old days. Apparently the sight and hearing of 
a caribou is not nearly as keen as a deer’s. We 
had considerable exercise packing the meat to 
camp. A hind quarter of caribou is all I want 
to walk off with for any distance, and I found 
“a pup at the start was an old dog at the finish” 
as the woodsmen say. 
Thursday Jimmie went into the settlement 
with letters. I went with him half way or as 
far as Camp Storey, visiting his traps and photo- 
graphing an old bear’s den on the way. We 
lunched by the little brook back of our camp 
of two years ago. There we separated, I to re¬ 
turn by way of the big barrens in the hope of 
getting some caribou pictures. I had taken the 
camera and left the rifle behind that day. Near 
where we lunched two buck deer had fought. 
The snow was tracked up for quite a distance 
and bits of hair and some spots of blood showed 
the battle had been fierce. I began to doubt the 
wisdom of traveling around that locality with¬ 
out a gun. Down at the end of the barren I 
found the big caribou track that Ben had fol¬ 
lowed several days before. It was the largest 
track I had seen. I believe these lone bulls have 
larger heads than the bulls which travel with 
the herds. Following one of these old settlers 
on the snow is rare sport, and unless unusually 
lucky you earn all you get. 
From Camp Storey a string of barrens sepa¬ 
rated by small spruce thickets stretch north¬ 
ward for miles. At this time of the year they 
are not frozen hard enough for easy traveling, 
and I went up to my knees in snow and moss 
at every step. No game was on the barrens and 
comparatively few tracks were found. About 
3 o’clock the sun clouded in, the barren was 
desolate and cheerless, indeed. I put up the 
camera, got out the compass and laid a course 
for the poor-dash road. An hour’s traveling 
brought me to it and by dark I made camp. 
Ben and I enjoyed the luxury of a late sleep 
the next morning, and breakfast was hardly over 
before Jimmie returned from the settlement with 
our mail. It was snowing and we hoped enough 
would come to kill the crust underneath. In 
the afternoon Jimmie and I took a cruise around 
to his traps and re-set them. Almost all were 
frozen in the crust. Coming home we walked 
down big Hole Brook Lake on the ice and I 
was surprised to see how large the lake was. 
The snow had stopped when we reached camp. 
We were clearing away the supper dishes 
when I remarked, “We have got to get busy ii 
we are to get a moose; only one more day oi 
hunting.” 
