May 19, 1906.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
wats 

A Moose Snarer’s Conversion. 
WE have in Acadia the birch partridge and 
spruce partridge; the latter is almost extinct in 
the settlements, and it is unlawful to kill spruce 
partridges at any time. The birch partridge is 
hunted in divers ways. You may shoot him 
over a setter or pointer, still-hunt him with- 
out a dog, walk him up in the clearings, shoot 
him at perch, when he is “budding” in the even- 
ings, or hunt him with the bird dog. I have a 
vivid recollection of a certain “patrich hunt.” 
My companion owned the bird dog. He also 
owned a Queen Anne musket which he had 
altered from flint to percussion; it weighed 
twelve pounds, and the “beaver caps” which 
ignited the charge were as large as small thim- 
bles. The bird dog was a small green and 
yellow mongrel, which had an elegant dose of 
mange, and in addition was swarming with fleas. 
We left the house before daylight, drove six or 
eight miles, put the horse into the hovel of a 
deserted lumber camp, and started on our “pat- 
rich hunt” just as the sun rose. The bird dog 
flushed a cock before we had been in the woods 
five minutes; I got a snap shot at him and 
killed him. My companion had hunted with 
officers from the garrison before, so he was 
used to seeing mud hens killed. The mongrel 
took no notice of the bird, he seemed far more 
interested in the squirrels. We reached a brook, 
and the old man cut what he cailed a “gad,” 
rigged up a line, and commenced fishing, ob- 
serving that it was no use to hurry the dog. 
There were some nice little trout in the pool; 
we caught a dozen of them and the bird dog 
_ Started a rabbit, which he pursued for some 
time. There are more exciting occupations than 
catching small trout on a birch pole and throw- 
ing them over your head, to a shrill accom- 
paniment of yaps from a mongrel who is trying 
to achieve the impossible feat of running down 
a rabbit. Suddenly the yapping ceased, the old 
man broke off the top of his “gad,” wound his 
line on it, and remarked that “Abner had settled 
down to business.” Presently the silence was 
broken by a long drawn melancholy howl, which 
suggested that Abner had accidentally stepped 
into a fox trap. The old man gathered up his 
musket, and in spite of his sixty odd years, his 
lameness, and his 200 pounds weight, “made 
tracks” in the direction of the sound. Like Mr. 
Weller, Senior, he moved in a bouyant and 
Weller, Senior, he moved in a buoyant and cork- 
like manner, 
After five minutes’ brisk traveling through the 
scrub, we discovered Abner sitting under a tree, 
in an attitude of the deepest dejection. Every 
now and then he would raise his head, and emit 
a piercing wail. Ten or twelve feet above his 
head sat the “patrich.” The bird did not seem 
at all afraid of the dog, though every now and 
then it would look down in a kind of inquiring 
way. I waived the privilege of first shot, the 
old man took careful aim at the bird’s head, 
pulled the trigger, and—the musket missed fire. 
He recocked the old weapon and pulled the 
trigger again, this time the beaver cap broke, 
and the gun went off with a roar like a small 
cannon. The bird came to the ground like lead, 
the head shot off, and Abner ran in and com- 
menced to worry it. The old gentleman rescued 
the bird, reloaded his musket, picked out the 
touch-hole with a pin, and sat down to enjoy 
a smoke. Abner indulged in a protracted roll 
in the fir needles, instituted a short and vigorous 
search for fleas, and then trotted off in quest 
of another bird. The bird we had just killed was 
evidently one of a flock, for within five minutes 
Abner had another bird treed. While we were 
making our way to the dog, we flushed another 
bird, which I shot at and missed. My friend 
shot the treed bird. The dog went off and 
started another, and the performance was re- 
peated a third time. When the fourth bird was 
treed, we had a little difficulty with the musket. 
It refused to explode at all. 
The old gentleman picked the nipple out with 
a pin, poured fresh powder into it, and snapped 
cap after cap. He refused to take my gun, and 
shoot the bird, the screw on his ramrod was 
broken, so he was unable to draw his charge 
and reload. Finally I scared the bird, and fired 
both barrels after him as he went through the 
trees. I missed him. Abner went after him like 
a bullet from a gun. The old gentleman re- 
marked that he wasn’t going to lose any more 
time, and proceeded to “burn out” his gun. 
The operation of burning out a muzzleloader 
that has missed fire, and refuses to go off, is as 
follows: You disconnect the barrel from the 
stock, wrap birch bark round the breech, and 
make a small fire. You then hitch the barrel 
to a small sapling, place the breech in the fire, 
and retire to a place of safety. The bark ignites, 
and the heat of the barrel explodes the charge. 
Usually the sapling withstands the recoil of the 
barrel; at other times, it or the connecting cord 
gives way. When this happens, the barrel may 
land anywhere between ten feet and one hun- 
dred yards from the fire. In this particular case 
the lashing held. The gun went off, and we 
cooled the barrel off by pouring a tin dipper of 
water down it. At my suggestion the barrel was 
thoroughly scoured with an extemporized clean- 
ing rod, and the remains of a handkerchief. 
Long before we had the old gun ready for 
action, Abner had another bird treed. At my 
friend’s earnest request I went to the dog, and 
after some trouble, I got the bird to fly and 
killed him. In a few minutes, I beheld my friend 
puffing and blowing, as he forced his way 
through the bushes. He had put his gun to- 
gether again, and while Abner departed in 
search for another bird, he “flushed her off” 
several times. Then he remarked that he had 
been intending to give the gun a good clean- 
ing out for some time. We planned to spend 
the night in the woods, so we returned to the 
old lumber camp, cut the night’s wood, and 
prepared supper of fried trout and partridges. 
My companion had been a mighty moose 
hunter in bygone days, and I was looking for- 
ward to some reminiscences of sport in the old 
days when moose were plentiful, and the small 
bore rifle had not been invented. We talked on 
different subjects for some time, then at last I 
brought the subject round to moose snaring, 
and the result of some trials in the next county. 
“If only those fellows had the experience I 
had,” observed the old man, “they would go out 
of the snaring business, and stay clear of it for 
good and all. I suppose I’ve snared more moose 
than any two men living in this county, but it’s 
thirty years since I set my last rope, and if 
the Lord spares me for thirty more years, I’ll 
never set another one.” 
I was amazed to hear that my friend had ever 
been a snarer; he was an active magistrate, a 
prominent member of the church and a thorough 
sportsman after his own light, even if he did 
hunt partridges with a bird dog, and shoot them 
when they were treed. 
“Yes, that old musket you laugh at has more 
moose to its credit than any rifle I know of. 
In my young days moose were plenty, and we 
reckoned on getting our winter’s meat out of 
the woods, as we reckoned on digging our 
potatoes, or buying our molasses. It’s about 
thirty years since the game laws first came in; 
some of us thought they wouldn’t amount to 
anything, and others were more or less careful 
about setting snares, and I was one of them. I 
left the old territory I had been working and 
prepared to set up a line of snares in the woods 
between Long Lake and Beaver River. You 
know the long dead-water on Beaver River? 
Well, I ran my hedge from the center of the 
dead-water, to the foot of Long Lake, and every 
moose that came that way was. bound to fetch 
up against it. There were places the fence was 
ready-made, the fire had gone through there 
two or three years before, and the windfalls 
were piled up ten feet high. I put ten gates in 
the fence, one to every three hundred yards. I 
built it in August, when the cow moose and 
their calves were all further south, in the green 
woods, and the bulls hadn’t commenced to run. 
“IT hung up my poles, and built my camp. 
All that was wanted was the ropes. I never 
went near the place until the end of October. 
Archibald, the game warden, was out all Sep- 
tember, and he cut up over a hundred snares 
and ran in two men from }¥isquodoboit and 

fined them a hundred dollars each. He came to 
my place in close season with a constable and a 
search warrant, and went through the house 
from garret to cellar, but I had no moose meat 
in the house, and he was very civil to me. He 
and the constable stayed to dinner, and he told 
me that he was glad I’d gone out of the busi- 
ness. 
“Toward the end of October, when the cool 
weather came, and meat would keep well, I took 
my canoe, went down Long Lake, camped at 
the foot of it for one night, and the next day I 
went over my route to see if all was well. I 
found everything as I had left it. The moose 
were thick in the district, and they had regular 
roads through the gateways of my fence. Next 
day I lugged the canoe and dunnage over the 
divide, and paddled up the long dead-water to 
the west end of my fence, where my camp was. 
If anyone found the camp they would naturally 
think it belonged to parties from the mines, as 
it’s far closer to the mines than it is to my 
place. All the same, I could get my meat home 
with less than two miles of a carry. I could 
paddle six miles up the lake, and there was a 
wood road within half a mile of the landing. I 
stayed quiet in camp that night, and before day- 
light the next morning I was off to set up my 
ropes. I carried no gun, only an ax and my 
knife, and starting at the far end of the hedge, I 
had all the ropes in working order, before the 
sun melted the hoar frost. I used to use a light, 
tough spring-pole, and let the moose pull it 
down and drag it after him—it was as easy ta 
find him as falling aff a log, he always left a 
plain trail behind him. 
“T put up six out of the ten ropes, and I was 
crossing a bit of bare barren to get to the next 
spring-pole, when I trod on a loose rock, my 
feet went from under me, and I came down on 
my hip with all my weight. I never felt such 
pain in my life. I screamed like a woman. 
When I tried to get up, I found that I’d broken 
my right leg just under the hip. It was the big 
bone, the one the doctors call the femur. Now, 
if a fellow breaks his leg below the knee, he 
can cut two crotched sticks, and make some 
kind of going, if he’s got the sand in him; but 
with a broken thigh, it’s different. The leg is 
just dead weight on you, and every time you 
move, it hurts as if some one was turning a 
blunt knife round and round in you. Somehow 
I managed to crawl over to the bushes, off the 
bare barren. I must have fainted once or twice 
while I was doing so. Then I took stock of 
what I had. I had two bits of hard-tack, and a 
smoked herring, which I had taken for my 
lunch, half a dozen matches, some tobacco, my 
pipe, my ax and knife, and my watch. I als- 
had a notebook and pencil. 
“My camp was over a mile away, and the 
road to it was hard traveling for an able man— 
let alone a cripple. I figured out that it would 
take me three or four days to get there—that 
is, if my strength held out—and I'd only got 
grub enough for one small lunch. It was be- 
tween half-past nine and ten when I fell; it was 
2 o'clock when I got to the edge of the busher 
and that was only two gun-shots. I was dead 
done out, and thirsty. I had crawled to the 
side of a big white birch log, one that had been 
blown down, and when I tried the bark, I found 
it would peel. I stripped some of it off and 
made some kind of a shelter for myself, as I 
saw it was going to freeze again at night. 
“My thirst kept getting worse and worse. I 
tore up the lambkill and tried to get water, but 
the soil was as dry as a bone. The dead leaves 
were damp, and I chewed some of them, but 
they made me more thirsty. Presently it be- 
gan to get dark and cold at the same time. 
The owls began to hoot, and a porcupine started 
to yell for all he was worth. Toward morning 
I went to sleep, but it was a sleep full of the 
worst kind of dreams, and every now and then 
I’d fancy I was at the Spouting Spring, catch- 
ing the water in a birch-bark drinking cup as 
it comes out of the side of the cliff. The leaves 
—and for the matter of that, my clothes—were 
all white with hoar frost. I sucked everything 
I could reach that had a drop of moisture on it, 
and my thirst left me for a little while. Just 
