March ii, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
371 
out: “Git halong, git halong hyar—by the 
Lavvd Charles, but this ’oss must ’ave the dead 
mawch by ’eart!” 
When the ice is marked in sections and cross- 
sections, the plow is driven in deeper till there 
is merely a “bottom” holding each line of 
blocks. This is sawed out with a short saw 
deprived of one handle, and the row moves out 
in the open water; but as it goes a worker 
runs along the margin with a blade-ended bar 
in hand, deftly separating each block by a blow 
in the groove which the plow has made. A 
light boom holds the blocks en masse, con¬ 
venient for being lifted out with the tongs. 
Merrily the teamsters’ sleighs come bowling 
down the slope at the head of the lake, glide 
out on the glassy track and draw up for the 
loads. “Yo! yo yo!” sing the loaders; thump, 
thump, go the blocks, and the sleigh is filled 
like magic, while abbreviated remarks float 
out through the scrape of feet and the clank¬ 
ing of the tongs. Away that driver goes! An¬ 
other comes—and away! Sleigh after sleigh, 
load after load, in quick succession, traverse 
the twin paths up and down the icy sheet. 
So, daily, goes the work. The hardy fellows 
stand the cold like woodsmen, and joke the 
sufferer who gets nipped. Accidents are rare. 
A hand will sometimes get a squeezing or a 
toe gets crushed, and at intervals a man may 
make a false step, to go plunging into the chilly 
water. Then there is a rush for pikes and boat 
hooks, and as the bedraggled, nay, even terri¬ 
fied, fellow rises to the top, he feels himself in 
the grip of something with many fingers, some¬ 
thing not unlike an octopus. The gripping 
fingers tighten, and without any ceremony, or 
at least regard for appearances, he is pulled out. 
A robe or two about him, he jumps for the sleigh, 
and in two minutes he is getting into dry clothes 
before the big roaring fire-place in the house. 
Such is the picture of the old-fashioned ice 
harvest, which still lingers, although the whirl¬ 
wind pace of the twentieth century is commit¬ 
ting the picturesque conditions of earlier days 
to deep oblivion; and in spite of the advance 
culture, the trained tastes, the subordinated 
desires of the modernizing revolution, there is 
that spark of barbarism, that blood strain of 
the wild in us which calls us forth body and 
soul of a stormy winter day to see the ice- 
harvester bare the bosom of the lake or the 
lumberman swing his ax into the heart of the 
mighty pine. 
XT 
WMLM 
I? 
A 
The Otter. 
Concluded from page 331. 
There are few animals as quick as an otter. 
When looking at a person they will dodge a 
bullet as quickly as a seal can. I once fired at 
one which had his head out of his fishing hole 
in the ice. The ball struck not six inches be¬ 
yond in the exact range of the center of the 
hole, but the otter had drawn his head down 
before it struck. I have known of many cas'es 
where they dived before the charge struck. 
They will catch any fish we have by chasing it 
as a cat chases a mouse. A friend of mine 
while fishing in a pool just below a small fall, 
saw several large trout come rushing over the 
fall, and almost at the same time he saw some¬ 
thing which, as he said, looked like a shadow, 
pursuing them round the pool, and an instant 
after an otter raised his head with one of the 
trout in his mouth. 
While they feed on trout where trout are 
plentiful, otters also eat all kinds of coarser fish 
—chubs, suckers and horned pouts. I have 
several times seen them eating eels, which they 
seem to prefer to anything else. Sometimes 
when fish are plentiful and easy to catch, the 
otter will kill them for sport, just as too many 
of our visiting fishermen do. I have known 
one to pile up a large lot of suckers which he 
had caught for the fun of it. Besides fish, they 
often catch muskrats, and in winter I have 
known them to entirely depopulate the houses 
of a large colony of muskrats. When in a 
beaver country they often kill the young beaver, 
and I feel quite sure that they also sometimes 
kill ducks. I was once being paddled up to a 
black duck which we had heard quacking in a 
logan; I saw what I thought were the backs of 
several ducks and beyond them just then a duck 
gave a loud quack and flew. I then saw that 
what I had taken for ducks were two otters 
which seemed to be trying to catch the furthest 
duck. While they were under water I put a 
charge of BBs in one barrel, and on their ris¬ 
ing with their heads close together, I killed 
one and wounded the other. The same fall 
the man who was paddling me on this occasion 
saw two otter trying to catch some woodducks. 
Otters are very tenacious of life and often 
escape when shot squarely through the body 
and sometimes when shot through the head, 
especially when on the ice. An Indian named 
Louis Nicholas crept close to one’s fishing hole 
while the otter was under water. The otter 
came out with a trout in his mouth and lay on 
the ice facing the Indian. The trout being be¬ 
fore his eyes hindered him from seeing the In¬ 
dian, who fired a Spencer rifle ball which went 
into the mouth and out through the back of the 
otter’s head, carrying brains out on the ice, but 
the otter dived into his hole'and the Indian and 
his partner, after cutting ice and looking for 
him nearly half a day, were unable to find him. 
The partner told me that both brains and teeth 
lay on the ice when he went to help search for 
the otter. 
I once bought of an Indian the skin of an 
otter which had an ounce ball fairly through the 
body just back of the shoulders. This otter, 
which was shot lying on the ice, dived into 
his hole, and after being under a long time, sud¬ 
denly threw himself out of another hole some 
rods from the one he entered and died almost 
as soon as he struck the ice. I have known 
many times of otter fairly shot being lost, and 
on the other hand, several times of two being 
killed at a shot and both saved, and in one 
case of three shot and all secured. A hunting 
partner of mine once killed and got three otters 
at two shots from a rifle in less than a minute’s 
time. I once bought the skins of four otters, 
all shot in one forenoon by one man. 
I have known of several otters being got in 
singular ways. Rufus B. Philbrook, who had 
been my partner the year before, was traveling 
on snowshoes up the Allegash Stream above 
the lake. On turning a bend in the stream he 
saw an otter lying on the ice and fired at him 
with his ten-inch rifled pistol. As the otter lay 
still he supposed that he had killed him, but 
seeing his eye look bright as he came up, he 
struck the otter with his belt hatchet. On 
skinning him, Philbrook found that the otter 
had not been touched by the bullet. In another 
instance a man who was not hunting, but who 
carried a revolver, came to a place where 
otters had been playing in the light snow 
around some fishing holes. Seeing a patch of 
dark fur showing through the snow, he fired 
and found that he had shot a dead otter. It 
appeared as if the otter had died on the ice and 
then it had snowed on him, and the other otter 
in playing had partly uncovered him. 
When otters are caught in log slide-traps, or 
killheags, other otters quite often cover them 
up nicely with moss or leaves. I have several 
times seen where mink had so covered other 
mink which were in log traps, but have never 
heard of either mink or otters doing it to an 
animal which was in a steel trap. When otters 
are trapped where they cannot get into the 
water, they will fight a trap terribly, and if they 
cannot pull out or break the chain, will usually 
kill themselves in a short time. No one who 
has not seen it would believe how an otter can 
twist the links of a chain which has no swivel 
in it. ,1 have seen a chain which seemed strong 
enough to hold a horse broken by an otter. I 
have twice set traps on Saturday afternoon and 
on Monday forenoon have found otter dead 
from fighting the trap, which appeared to have 
been dead for twenty-four hours. When caught 
on the land they usually break most of their 
teeth in fighting the trap, and I have several 
times seen the'whole end of the lower jaw 
broken, and I have had several of the old- 
fashioned hand-made traps which plainly 
showed the marks of otter’s teeth on the bed- 
pieces. 
While many animals foot themselves, otters 
seldom do. In buying several thousands of 
