[May 2, 1908. 
696 
camp unoccupied with the stove and bunks of 
logging days still standing. We took possession 
of this under the protest of the enemy. By the 
time we had put out and cared for our horses 
the opposition was just sitting down to supper 
and of course were forced to invite us to join 
them, and we by the same token were forced to 
accept. They regaled us with dismal tales of 
no deer, told us they had been there all season 
and had got but one fawn—all they had seen. 
It afterward developed that five of them had 
got three. They gave us plainly to understand 
that if we undertook to stop in that camp we 
would have a very disagreeable time. We had 
no such idea in our heads, though we let them 
fume it out without giving them any informa¬ 
tion. We pumped them as to other residents 
of the neighborhood, and they told us there were 
no others, but pressed, they finally said there 
was a solitary ogre who lived a mile further 
on, but that it was dangerous to go near him; 
that he wore a coat of long hair for clothes and 
carried a club. This was undoubtedly out- 
friend to whom we had a letter of introduction, 
or rather of whom we had heard once or twice 
in vague, indefinite rumor. 
Early next morning we took our lives in our 
hands and hit the trail for Lidman’s. We 
found Mr. Lidrnan at breakfast with a couple 
of Scotch collies seated on either hand looking 
expectant. We quickly explained the object of 
our visit, and he glanced all round the room as 
if taking an invoice of stock and said, “Well! 
you can see about all there is of it, and it is 
yours till you get tired of it.” We unloaded 
our goods, put out our team and were at home. 
We only settled ourselves in camp and got an 
early dinner preparing for our first effort at 
hunting in the afternoon. 
Our host thought deer rather plenty in the 
neighborhood, but that owing to the deep snow 
one could scarcely hope to hunt more than two 
miles from camp. The country was hilly and, 
though once covered with a dense pine forest, 
the hills were now bare or overgrown with 
scattered poplars which had attained to a height 
-of only a few feet. Pine stumps dotted the open 
hillsides, resembling vast herds of feeding sheep. 
There was no large standing timber except in 
the swamps and along the streams, or scattered 
hardwood in some of the low lying valleys be¬ 
tween the hills. An ideal country for deer hunt¬ 
ing, but we saw at once that some of our equip¬ 
ment was ill suited to conditions. A 16-gauge 
shotgun with buckshot stood very small chance 
in those hills of magnificent distances. The 
partridge hunting, which had been part of the 
plan, was out of the question on account of the 
slow covering of the ground in the deep snow. 
My rifles, too, are all of the black powder type, 
and in these hills trajectory is a very important 
feature. 
We did fairly well by starting out at 1 o’clock 
and having a fine buck hanging on the pine in 
front of our host’s shack at sunset. The buck, 
though, could have gotten fairly away, owing 
to a 44 caliber cartridge refusing to enter the 
chamber of a .38 caliber rifle, but for his foolish 
effort to see what sort of animal it was that had 
been barking at his heels. 
I think it was the first evening out that our 
host sprung the following mismanagement of 
facts on unsuspecting strangers. “I was out.” 
said he, “with a friend jacking for deer on the 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
lake when we spied a large buck feeding on lily- 
pads at the edge of the water. He was entirely 
unconscious of our presence, and we experi¬ 
mented to see how close we could get to him 
without giving the alarm. We got so very close 
without being discovered that at last I made up 
my mind to catch him by the tail. It was a hard 
point on the lake to land him anyhow- if we 
killed him in the water, so we did not care much 
if he did get away. Giving the canoe a sendoff 
I leaned over the bow while my friend kept his 
paddle in the water to steer it. As we glided 
noiselessly up I reached far forward and seized 
the buck’s tail. As the buck felt my grip close 
on his tail he leaped forward and away we went 
across the floating bog and through the brush 
like an Alaskan dog sledge. I saw by the direc¬ 
tion he was taking that he would pass close to 
the shack and kept a firm hold and bided my 
time. Well, that buck came into the clearing 
just in front of the shack, and when he passed 
under the pine where your deer is hanging I 
let go, and picking up the rifle dropped him. It 
was the easiest time I ever had bringing in a 
big one.” 
We afterward learned from Lidman’s friend, 
who lived some miles away, that when he let 
go and picked up the rifle he made a clean miss 
and the buck got off without a scratch. 
Next morning we strengthened our position 
by borrowing our host’s .30-30 and the few car¬ 
tridges he had on hand. There were only a 
dozen and it seemed careless, not to say shift¬ 
less, in him not to have more, but that dozen 
we got with just as hearty good will as if there 
had been a thousand more behind them. We 
hunted in a hill country where every dome had 
some half dozen deer beds on the top, but to 
catch the deer in bed, or even see him get out, 
was another feature of the game. As we topped 
one of the highest of the domes we sighted a 
deer coming down a larger slope to the right 
and c,cross the basin beneath us. It was about 
two hundred feet down and about two hundred 
feet out, a rather hard riddle to solve on a run¬ 
ning deer, as each zigzag motion tells fearfully 
where, if it had been on a level, the side motion 
could not have been seen at all, just as the side 
motion of a straightaway jacksnipe makes shoot¬ 
ing at it a mere random jab, while the crossing 
bird is an easy mark. 
The .38 and the .30 spat, spit and sputtered 
spitefully, the bullets always striking the short 
cut of the angle of the deer’s zigzag flight mid¬ 
way between the extreme points on either hand. 
The snow flew first on this side and then on 
that; the deer also flew across the basin from 
right to left and halfway up the hill on the left, 
and then, as it came up nearer to the level of 
the guns, the zigzag disappeared and a last dis- 
pairing volley, ere it reached the top of the hill 
and vanished, caught and tumbled it back down 
the hill. Three bullets had struck it, but as all 
had passed clear through there was no clue as 
to which rifle had done the best execution. 
We got our deer in and hung up early in the 
afternoon and made no further effort that day, 
except that just at night I strolled a mile or so 
along the trail we had made. I found that in 
the two hours that had passed since we dragged 
the. last deer along the trail, three others had 
come into it and followed it a quarter of a mile 
toward camp and had turned into the swamp 
just out of sight of the shack. On any day 
since we had come there a walk of three hun¬ 
dred yards would show fresh deer tracks. There 
were very large tracks always in evidence in 
the early morning which our host said were 
made by one “Jumbo” who carried a large rock¬ 
ing chair on the crown of his head for orna¬ 
ment. He had proven himself too cute for all 
comers up to date, and was said to be the 
largest deer for many miles round. 
The third morning it was snowing from the 
northeast when we looked out and we made no 
move toward going hunting. “All day the hoary 
meteor fell” and we loafed about camp over¬ 
hauling our host’s reading matter, and it was 
somewhat startling to find such a display in that 
far corner of the wilderness. There were daily 
papers from Sydney, Australia; Stanley’s “In 
Darkest Africa”; Mike Donovan, on fistic 
science; a few volumes of standard poetry, 
Darwin, on the “Missing Link”; a work on 
elocution, one on etiquette and a very large col¬ 
lection of standard magazines and a department 
store catalogue which has a very wide circula¬ 
tion in the Middle West. I have seen it in sheep 
herders’ camps in the Rocky Mountains, in the 
cowboy camps in Wyoming, Texas and Indian 
Territory, and in Acadian duck hunters’ house¬ 
boats in the sea marsh of the Gulf coast. It is 
in the hands of farmers, mechanics, and in 
many cases of the country merchant. It proved 
to be a full day of solid loafing. 
We were storm bound for several days, for 
even after the snow quit we had to wait several 
days for the civilized end of the road to be¬ 
come broken; the upper end we intended break¬ 
ing ourselves. The next morning it was still 
snowing. It was a clinging, wet snow and pines, 
spruce and tamarack were tall white needles, 
their points lost in the whirling flakes above, 
while birch, willow and all the more flexible 
woods bent over until their tops touched the 
ground, forming great arches of snow. Several 
days later we decided it was safe to start on 
the return trip, further hunting being impossible. 
Taking leave of our host in the gray of the 
morning, we felt that we were taking leave of 
what does not fall to the lot of all wanderers 
in strange lands, a thoroughly honest and dis¬ 
interested hospitality. With a pressing invita¬ 
tion to return next year, we started out into the 
snow. When we got to the old logging camp 
we found that the party that had stopped there 
had gone out ahead of us and broken the road, 
cutting out the trees that had lopped over it 
and leaving us an easy escape. Thus it will 
be seen that there is some good in sportsmen 
no matter what the grade. E. P. Jaques. 
Many Mountain Lions. 
Two hundred cougars have been killed by 
hunters in California since Nov. 1, 1907, when 
the Fish and Game Commission announced a 
bounty of $20 on each scalp. The commission 
has paid out $4,000. The animals have been 
killed for the most part in the mountain coun¬ 
ties where they prey upon deer and cattle. In 
the affidavits accompanying the scalps the state¬ 
ment is generally made that the lions have been 
traced by their depredations among live stock 
and deer. In many cases the carcasses have 
been found and the lion located in a neighbor¬ 
ing tree. The California cougar is a very cun¬ 
ning animal, and it is exceedingly difficult to 
trap him. 
