September, 1918 
FOREST AND STREAM 
543 
Tramping Leggings and Other Hints 
O N my walking trips about the coun¬ 
try I find it necessary to wear leg¬ 
gings as they protect the clothes and make 
walking easier. I will try to describe a 
pair of light-weight ones that I made from 
two shaped pieces of khaki canvas 
inches by 12 inches each. I sewed these 
‘front 
on the wool trou¬ 
sers so the inner 
seam of the leg 
centered the piece 
of canvas, with 
i l /2 inches turned 
up inside the trousers leg as shown by the 
dotted lines in the left hand drawing. This 
made the legging g inches high at the inner 
seam. I sewed a steel about Y% inch wide 
by inches long along the under side of 
the inner seam to keep the legging ex¬ 
tended upright. To one side of the leg¬ 
ging I sewed a pigskin strap, and to the 
other a brass buckle and leather keeper. 
This strap is pulled until the legging fits 
snugly over the shoe, and when resting the 
strap can be quickly unbuckled for com¬ 
fort. This is the lightest weight legging T 
have ever tried and is the best thing I 
know of for comfort in walking. On a 
day’s tramp every extra ounce carried on 
the leg counts up and this reduces the 
amount of weight to carry, compared with 
the ordinary leather or canvas legging. 
The trousers should be about two inches 
longer in the leg than one generally wears. 
Here is a hint for the camper: To get 
the right length tent poles each time find 
how many axe handle lengths in the re¬ 
quired tent pole, then cut your sapling and 
measure down from the crotch so many 
axe handle lengths. 
Shooting time will soon be here and I 
use a little firearm made with one barrel 
for a bullet, the other for shot. This is a 
handy arm for the hiker as it saves weight. 
I sometimes find it hard to get shells loaded 
with the size shot I use, so here is the 
way I work it. I either reload the used 
shells with powder or else buy a box of 
blanks. Then in small pieces of cheese 
cloth, cut according to the load of shot 
used, I place a charge of shot, close the 
ends together like a bag and tie them with 
silk thread. To use, I open the breech, 
push in the bag of shot, then the blank. 
Then perchance I push a head of game in 
my gamebag. I used this method years 
ago with an old muzzle loading fowling 
piece and find it still works successfully 
with a breech loader. 
In our aluminum cooking outfit there is 
a pot called a bean pot. It is not like the 
ordinary bean pot, for it has a bail handle, 
but it will cook beans and that is what it 
is supposed to do. It has a cover that fits 
tightly on the outside of the pot, to keep 
out ashes, etc. There is a ring in the 
cover to pull it off with, but I soon found 
that the ring was more likely to come off 
before the cover did, so now when un¬ 
packing I place the bean pot on the ground 
between my feet, then grasp the under 
side of the cover just above the place 
where the bail is fastened to the pot. With 
a little tugging the lid comes off. If while 
cooking the lid becomes stuck, take a stick 
and rap lightly upward at different places 
around the lower edge. Do not use much 
force or you are liable to njake the lid 
fly off and spill the contents. 
For the pipe smoker I have illustrated 
a little contrivance 
of mine that allows 
the nicotine and 
dampness to drip 
from the tobacco, 
thus giving a better 
smoke. Take a 
piece of soft tin, 
shape as shown in 
the drawing, the 
size being whatever fits the diameter of 
your pipe bowl. Bend the three points 
down, then place it in your pipe. The 
moisture will drip through the holes and 
you will get more enjoyment from your 
old dottle burner. 
To look at all the pictures wherein fish 
are displayed to their best advantage, 
one overlooks the fact that after the big 
feed is over and the big catch is but 
a memory, there still remains that 
which makes all fish “fish.” We must 
now get rid of all the evidences to sight 
and smell that there has been fish. All 
skin, bones, entrails, etc., should be burned 
or buried—the latter is preferable as there 
is no lingering odor of burnt matter about 
camp. All plates and cutlery should be 
rinsed in cold water, then washed in warm 
water as usual with plenty of soap. And 
while I am writing of odors I will tell 
you how we skin raw onions, of which we 
eat plenty when on our hikes. We cut 
them like a watermelon—that is, halved 
and then quartered lengthwise—then eat 
each piece from the center. This saves 
the eyes from watering as they do when 
one tries to peel the onions. The knife 
with which we cut them is plunged in the 
earth several times and then washed. If 
this is not done everything cut with it 
will taste of onions. 
New tinware will rust if not cared for, 
especially on a camping trip. I rub it all 
over with lard, being sure every part is 
covered, then warm it over the stove be¬ 
fore using. It will not rust if treated in 
this manner. 
Jim Ferguson, “Somewhere in the West.” 
A Pocket Fish Stringer 
| MADE a very good fish stringer from 
* two pieces of wire and a bit of fish line 
that I think is worth passing on to other 
fishermen. It is not original with me, but 
was told me by a man up in the North 
Woods. The wires are four and six inches 
long; the longer one is bent as shown in 
Figure 1, the shorter one (see Figure 2) 
has a loop twisted in one end. A strong 
pair of pincers will twist the wire very 
neatly. I used several feet of varnished 
fish line, wound the ends so that they 
would not fray out, then ran one end 
through the loop of the longer wire. I 
wound the end neatly to the line and var¬ 
nished it with two coats of spar varnish. 
Then I attached the other end of the line 
to the other wire in the same manner. 
The whole affair, as shown in Figure 4, 
a 
FIG 1 
winds up and takes very little room in my 
pocket. The reason of winding the ends 
so carefully instead of tying knots is that 
the stringer can be very thoroughly cleaned 
if there are no rough places to catch the 
fish slime and blood and thereby hold the 
odors. The fish should be strung through 
the gills. 
F. V. W„ Canada. 
