734 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Nov. 5, 1910 
to my great surprise, I saw another deer lying. 
Well, that was quite too much. In ten seconds, 
with two shots and with the wind blowing a gale 
directly from me to the deer, I had killed two 
fine bucks. That was a record, I suppose, to in¬ 
vite the pompous strut of pride, but some way I 
did not feel that way. Had I known that there 
were two deer I should have let the second one 
go its way unharmed, for we did not need so 
much meat. 
Before we dressed the bucks we discovered 
that they had been fighting, and that the second 
one had been concealed from me by the thick 
alder bushes. This fact, coupled with the un¬ 
certain light of a late fall evening, will acquit 
me, I hope, of the charge of committing useless 
slaughter. None of the meat will be wasted, for 
Uncle Hi will smoke it and use it during the 
winter. Uncle Hi tells me that hereafter I must 
use only a broom stick while at large in the 
woods. 
'1'he eve of winter has fallen on the mountains. 
The leaves are entirely off every tree and shrub, 
and the towering branches reach out into space, 
gaunt and brown. Ice forms nightly in the dead 
waters and on the ponds, and the sun, when it 
penetrates the gray sky, lacks warmth. Uncle 
Hi says: “Nater’s long night is failin’.” Let 
him tell you about it in his own way: 
“People come in here an’ they say they don’t 
like October and November, ’cause everything 
is dyin’. That isn’t the way to look at it, to my 
mind, boys. Nothin’ is dyin’, but nater is jest 
goin’ to sleep. Nater works hard to do her 
duty durin’ her day, which reaches from April 
to December. Then she gits ready for her night, 
which reaches from December to April. First 
she dresses herself in the most beautiful colors 
—purple an’ red an’ yellow an’ brown an’ all the 
others. When this is done she pulls the snow- 
white cover up over her an’ dreams of the day 
that’s cornin’. No, boys, nothin’ is dyin at this 
time o’ year, as some say. Nater is jest a purty 
woman goin’ to sleep.” 
Is not that a pretty and poetic idea? And it 
comes from this uncultured son of the forest. 
Do you know that I feel much better mentally, 
morally and physically than I did before I met 
Uncle Hi. 
Three days hence we will bid farewell to the 
little log hut, to the woods and streams, to the 
mountains and to Uncle Hi. It will be a part¬ 
ing that will pull at my heart strings, for I was 
weary when I came here, and I was taken in 
and given a new lease of life. 
XII.—RETROSPECT. 
Heigh-ho! How time does gallop! Twenty 
long years have passed since my investment in 
health occasioned these letters — twenty years of 
toil and struggle, but the investment is still pay¬ 
ing fair dividends. At least I have gained 
twenty years of life and good health, whereas 
at the beginning I was in imminent danger of 
losing one, and I already had lost the other. 
More than this, I demonstrated to my own satis¬ 
faction at least that the great outdoors truth¬ 
fully says, “Come all ye who are weary and I 
will give you rest,” and “if ye be sick I will 
heal you.” There is no sanitarium to compare 
with the first temples of God, and there is no 
physic so potent as the breath of the wilderness. 
When I went to the woods I carried a box filled 
with the decoctions of my physician. When I 
returned from the woods I carried the same box 
with the same contents, untouched. In addition, 
twenty-six pounds of excellent and necessary 
adipose tissue were added to my possessions, and 
the wasting malady that had pulled me down 
was gone forever. Twice a year trips have been 
made to the woods since that memorable one. 
I now weigh 189 pounds and my personal medi¬ 
cal expenses during the entire period will not 
aggregate $10. All of this by way of argument 
to those who, feeling the pangs that surely ac¬ 
company a strenuous business life, know not 
what to do. 
The twenty years tell still another story as 
well. Uncle Hi long since went to the Happy 
Hunting Grounds. The last time I hunted with 
him he talked sadly of leaving the woods for¬ 
ever, and expressed the wish that when his time 
came to die the angel would find him in the 
open. I later learned that he died while sitting 
under a tree beside the roadway that passed his 
home. The old log cabin that was his woods 
camp for half a century has been fed to the 
flames, and the territory over which the old man 
hunted and trapped is now the property of an 
outing club. Nine cabins, a club house, a keep¬ 
er’s lodge, an ice house, barns, etc., now occupy 
the little clearing and the adjacent ridge. A 
team of horses furnish communication with the 
railroad and a cow has supplanted the condensed 
milk can. Even the stacks of succulent flapjacks 
that used to hurtle from maker direct to con¬ 
sumer, through a haze of griddle smoke, now 
are served in a neat dining room by a spick and 
span waitress. 
In the woods there are lumber and tote roads, 
and the scars of axes and saws offend the eyes. 
Malice and carelessness have also invaded the 
sacred places, as the broad, black trails of forest 
fires tell all too plainly. But it is still a blessed 
place. The woods are still beautiful and not 
empty of game, the river still offers the finest 
fishing, the pure air is there to cleanse the lungs 
and quicken the lagging heart, and the outing 
club is made up of the best and kindliest of 
men. We, Charlie and I, have a little cabin 
there of three rooms—a big sitting room down 
stairs and two sleeping rooms overhead. In the 
sitting room is a great open fire-place capable 
of accommodating a four-foot log. We have 
easy chairs, pictures and books, for, as we grow 
older, the rougher camp life does not appeal to 
us as it once did. Far afield we go by day, it 
is true, but when the twilight falls, the cabin 
with its warmth and cheer, pulls us thither with 
resistless force. We get a lot of rest and pleas¬ 
ure in that little cabin away from men and things 
of the world. So each spring and each autumn 
finds us there, despite the fact that we often 
plan to go to the other haunts of game and fish, 
and when the wind fairies are singing in the 
pines and the night birds are calling, we sit, four 
feet on the fender, and dream the dream of 
years. Fred L. Purdy. 
Deer in White Plains. 
A large deer was seen on Oct. 29 on the 
grounds of the Keeley Institute at White Plains. 
It fed for some little time on the lawn, and then 
alarmed started off down the street. It was seen 
on Davis avenue, White Plains, where, when 
chased by dogs, it took a cross country route 
through gardens and over fences, at one place 
sailing over a board fence ten feet high. 
“American Game Bird Shooting.” 
Under this title the Forest and Stream Pub¬ 
lishing Company will issue during November a 
companion volume to “American Duck Shoot¬ 
ing,” also by George Bird Grinnell, which cannot 
fail to prove of great interest to all sportsmen. 
It treats of the upland game of North America, 
by which is meant those birds in which the point¬ 
ing dog acts as assistant to the gunner. These 
birds are the woodcock and snipe, all the various 
quails and different grouse with which America 
is so splendidly provided, and the wild turkeys. 
The plan and scope of the book does not differ 
greatly from that of “American Duck Shooting,” 
which met with such a cordial welcome from 
American gunners. All who pursue wild creat¬ 
ures, whether with rifle, shotgun, fishing rod or 
camera, know that to succeed in securing results 
the habits of the game must be learned, and the 
way in which they live their lives understood. 
He who wishes to get close to the wild creatures 
must meet them on their own ground. For this 
reason the first portion of this book, like its pre¬ 
decessor, is devoted to an account of the habits 
of the various game birds, including the food on 
which they subsist, their seasonal movements and 
their habits at all seasons of the year. 
In its second part, the book tells of the various 
ways by which all the different game birds are 
pursued and taken. It gives accounts of the 
shooting of each of the different species, except 
of course those which, like the Canada grouse, 
Franklin’s grouse and some of the ptarmigan, 
are really never pursued for sport, though often 
killed in great numbers for food by natives or 
by travelers through the country where they are 
found. It is a long way from the Arctic circle 
to the Gulf, and almost as far from the Atlantic 
to the Pacific. In this wide terrtory there are 
many game birds living under varying condi¬ 
tions of life and pursued in ways adapted to the 
situations in which they are found. Shooters 
who have read the account of the various forms 
of wildfowl shooting in “American Duck Shoot¬ 
ing” will hardly have need to have the variety 
and attractiveness of these accounts pointed out 
to them. In this second part of the book, under 
the general head, “Aids to Shooting” are taken 
up the guns and loads that the sportsman should 
use, the dogs that he should employ as assistants 
and the clothing that he should wear to get the 
most comfort out of his shooting excursions. 
The third section of the book is devoted to 
the shooting of the future. It takes a look back¬ 
ward over an interesting past, now to be re¬ 
gretted for the selfish and wasteful destruction 
which took place, and under this head is a good 
deal of history dealing with the introduction of 
foreign birds into America, showing what they 
have done here and pointing out that our efforts 
to restock our covers have been aimless and un¬ 
intelligent. Following this comes an interesting 
account of various transplantations of native 
birds from one part of the continent to another, 
most of which will be wholly new to the shooters 
of the present day. Another section of this third 
part tells of successful efforts to rear in domesti¬ 
cation the native birds of which we are so proud, 
and which we have so neglected for foreign 
species. Truly American sportsmen have run 
off after strange gods, but we have faith to be¬ 
lieve that our native birds will come to their 
own again. 
