Deer Hunting On The AuSable River, Alcona Co., Michigan

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The following was contributed by:

Ronald J. Sortor
enchantedforest@centuryinter.net




 


    Deer Hunting On The AuSable River, Alcona Co., Michigan

                          by W. Mackay Laffan



(Note:  This story was written and illustrated by W. Mackay Laffan and
published in 1878 in Scribner's Monthly. Reprinted here with permission
of Michigan-Out-of-Doors Magazine)

        An invitation to a few weeks' deer-shooting in the wilds of
Michigan
was not to be foregone.  There had been occasional rumors heard in the
East of the winter sports of the Michigan backwoods; rumors that had
lost none of their attractiveness by their journey from the West, and
which served to make the opportunity, when it arrive, wholly
irresistible.  I was to join a party of gentlemen, who for several years
had hunted upon the AuSable River in northern Michigan, upon one of
their annual trips; and we were all to meet upon an appointed day at Bay
City, which is at the head, if head it can be called, of Saginaw Bay. 
Our route thence was by steamer to Tawas, and from Tawas by teams to the
hunting -grounds in the Michigan backwoods.

        The steamboat wharf at Bay City was full of bustle and
activity.  
There were piles of baggage and numbers of anxious owners. Conspicuous
among
the parcels were the gun-cases, some made of new pig leather or water-
proofing, and evidently out for the first time, and others of
weatherworn aspect telling of many a campaign and of much serious
usage.  Every object upon the wharf and about the freight office to
which a dog could be tied had a dog tied to it, and all these dogs were
rearing, and plunging, and tugging at their chains and giving vent to
occasional sharp yells, in a condition of great excitement - a feeling
more or less shared by the numerous higher animals who were present. 

The crowd was composed of hunting parties bound for the backwoods by way
of the various settlements on the Lake Huron side of the Michigan
peninsula; of lumbermen going to the camps; of farmers going home, and
of the usual variety of more or less accentuated Western types.  

Therewas a good deal of confusion about it, and among it all our party
met,
and, after a few moments of spasmodic and pleasant welcome, and the
interchange of hearty greetings, got on board the steamer.  Our dogs,
twelve in number, were safely bestowed between decks, and as remotely
from the dogs of other people as possible; all our baggage was put away,
nothing missing or forgotten, and we moved off from the wharf with that
sense of entire comfort the is incident only to well-ordered and
properly premeditated excursions.

        We had a delightful run up Saginaw Bay on a beautiful October
evening, 
on which the sun went down with one of the gorgeous displays 
of color which England's most eminent art critic has told us are seen 
but very seldom in a life-time.  It was an impressive and singularly 
beautiful spectacle, but one of which the West is prodigal, and 
which is not consistent with insular conditions of fog and moisture.  
A note of admiration sounded with the captain's hearing had the 
effect of eliciting his practical  valuation of it.  Humph!  he said,  
rain like blazes all day to-marrow.   It was a  matter of common regret 
that the barometric impressions of this worthy navigator were 
invariably correct.  

We made some stoppages at points upon the shore, where
seemingly unaccountable wharves projected from the outskirts of
desolation.  At these we took off people who might have been fugitives
from some new Siberia, and debarked people who might have been exiles
going thither.  But at half-past eight o'clock we reached East Tawas,
where the boat came alongside, we were cheerily hailed out of the
darkness by a mighty hunter of the wilderness named Curtis (Ebenezar D.
Curtis), who had come down with his stout team to meet us and help to
carry our multifarious traps.  

We disembarked amid a dreadful howling of dogs, who charged about in 
every direction, dragging their masters inthe darkness over all manner
of 
calamitous obstructions, regardless of kicks, cuffs or vigorous
exhortation.  
In half an hour we werecomfortably ensconced in an inn with an enormous 
landlord, whose mightygirth shook with unctuous premonitions of an
excellent 
supper.  He produced half of a deer slain that very day, and gave us an 
earnest of our coming sport in the shape of a vast quantity of broiled 
venison, all of which we dutifully ate.

        Our captain, for we had a captain, as every well-constituted
hunting
party should, was Mr. John Erwin, of Cleveland, a gentleman at whose
door lies the death of a grievous quantity of game of all kinds, and
whose seventy years seem to have imparted vigor and activity to a yet
stalwart and symmetrical frame.
  
Hale, hearty, capable of enduring  all manner of fatigue, unerring with 
his rifle, full of the craft of the woods and an inexhaustible fund of 
kindly humor, he was the soul of ourparty.  We were under his orders 
the next day, and so remained until our hunt was over.  He was
implicitly 
obeyed; none of his orders were unpleasant; they simply implied the 
necessary discipline of the party.
 
We left Tawas in the early morning.  We had two wagons, one of which
carried nine of use, the other, Curtis's had the heavier baggage in it,
and was accompanied by the remaining  three on foot.  The had the option
of getting into the wagon by turns, if tired, but they were all good
walkers.  We had twenty-five miles to make to  Thompson's,  where we
were to halt for the night, and on the following day proceed leisurely
to Camp Erwin, six miles further.  

As we left Tawas it rained, according to our nautical prophet of the 
previous evening, and it continued to rain during the entire day.  
There is nothing particular exhilarating in driving in a drenching rain, 
even when it is done under particularly favorable auspices.  

There was some novelty for one, to be sure, in the
great wastes of scrub-oak, the groups of stout Norway pines, the
glistening white birch, the maples, the spruce-pines and the beeches; in
the impenetrable jungles of tangled undergrowth and in the iteration and
re-iteration of landscapes with no landmark or peculiarity whereby one
might distinguish one from the other.  

All this was in one sense a novelty, inasmuch as one might 
never have seen anything like it before, but the enjoyment of it, 
were it  really susceptible of being enjoyed, was marred by the 
steadiness with which the cold rain beat on our faces; extinguishing
cigars 
and making pipes a doubtful blessing; drenching everything 
exposed to it, and imparting the peculiar chill to which mind and body 
are alike liable under such conditions.  

One of our party, a veritable Mark Tapley, who was sure to  come out 
strong  under the most discouraging conditions, whistled fugitive 
airs in a resolute way; but they got damp and degenerated into 
funeral measures, suggesting that possibly the Dead March in  
Saul  was originally conceived in a spirit of inferior vivacity or
sprightly 
insincerity and becoming wet has been recognized as a thing of merit, 
and had therefore been permanently saturated for use on occasions of
public grief.  

Another dispiriting element was the road of which a large part was what
is 
known as corduroy,  from some obscure resemblance, which does not 
exist, between its structure and a certain well-known fabric affected
by  
horsey gentlemen.  The jolting we got over this was painful to a degree 
which it is disagreeable to recall.  It jarred every bone in one's 
body, and embittered the whole aspect of life.  It alternated with a 
series of diabolical mud-holes, into which we dived, and rocked, and
swayed, 
and splashed interminably.  Bunyan's Slough of  Despond is all very well
in
its way, but the possibilities of figurative description of that kind
are as a closed book to one who has never ridden on a corduroy road in a
wagon with inferior springs.  

At last we emerged on a higher plateau of sand, and left the marsh 
behind us for good.  The rain had become milder and tolerable evil,
compared 
to the swamp road.  All was sand, but the wet made it  pack  beneath the 
horses' feet and the wheels, and we went over it at an excellent pace.  
Around us was the Michigan forest in all its wonderful variety of growth 
and richness, and in all its dreary monotony and desolation.

Grass there was in tufts, and thin and poor. Thick gray lichens and
starving 
mosses strove to cover up the thankless sand, but nothing seemed to 
prosper in it but the trees for which it held mysterious sustenance, 
where their deep roots could reach it.  But even they made an unlovely
forest. 
 
The great fires that sweep across this region leave hideous scars 
behind them.  One sees for miles and miles the sandy plain covered with  
the charred trucks of fallen forest. Great lofty pines, whose stems are 
blackened from the roots as high as the fire reached, huge distorted 
and disfigured, stand gloomily above their moldering brethren, their 
white skeletons extending their dead and broken arms, in mute testimony
of 
lost grace and beauty.  

Nothing could be more desolate than these  burnings,  as they are
called.  
They present an aspect of such utter hopeless dreariness, and such
complete
and painful solitude as one might imagine to exist only within the
frozen circle of the Arctic.

        The rain continued to wet us until we began to get on good terms
with
it, as if we were Alaskans or Aleuts and rather liked it.  Besides, we
got stirred up over the deer tracks in the sand.  They were very
numerous and fresh, and one of two rifles were loaded in hopes of a shot
at one  on the wing.   None came in sight however, and the undergrowth
and scrub-oaks effectually kept them from our view.


     At half-past one o'clock, after a few premonitory symptoms in the
shape
of fences, of which the purpose was obscure, since they hedged in
nothing  and looked as it the had only been put up for fun or practice,
we came suddenly to the edge of a basin or depression in the plateau
over which we had been driving, and there beneath us, lay Thompson's.
 
Here in the midst of the wilderness was a prosperous, healthy-looking
farm, actually yielding vegetables and cereals, and having about it all
manner of horses, cows, pigs, hay- stacks, barns, dogs to bark,
pumpkins, and all the other established characteristics of a
well-regulated farm.  We rattled down the declivity to the house and met
with a hearty welcome, most of the party having known Thompson for
years.  He is a bluff, hearty backwoodsman, whom years of uninterrupted
prosperity have made rich.  He owns thousands of acres of timberland,
and his house is known far and wide as the best hotel in Michigan.  

Mrs. Thompson is not exactly a backwoodswoman; indeed she is quite much
of a
surprise to one as it the place itself.  She is an excellent lady, and
her refining influence has been felt in a very marked degree in the wild
region.  She can shoot, though.  Indeed, she handles a rifle with the
greatest coolness and skill, - thinks nothing of knocking over a deer,
and confesses to aspirations in the direction of bear.  Mr. Thompson's
welcome in the course of an hour took a practical form, when we all sat
down to a magnificent roast of venison, broiled chickens, and most
delicious vegetables, for it seems that when one  does get a bit of
Michigan land which will consent to be cultivated, it turns out to be
remarkably good land indeed.  There were great glass pitchers of
excellent milk upon the table, similar pitchers of real cream, and
everything neatly served.  The tablecloth was fine and of snowy
whiteness, the napkins (this in the heart of a Michigan wilderness!)
ditto, and everything just as it should be, and just as one would least
expect it.

        Thompson's hands came in the evening, - Canadians for the most
part,
and talking an inexplicable jargon called French.  Re-enforced by a few
lumbermen and trappers, they filled the big, dimly lighted room which
would be ordinarily called the bar-room, but which, having no bar, owing
to Mrs. Thompson's way of inculcating temperance principles, cannot so
be called.  They were noisy, well-behaved, and good- humored,  and they
crowded around the stove, and bedewed it pleasantly and copiously with
infusion of Virginia plug.  

There was a great deal of talk about lumber;
how many feet of such and such and one expected to  get out;  where such
and such camps were about to be located; the prospect of sufficient snow
to move the heavy lumber-sleighs, and a variety of topics that had more
or less sawdust in their composition.  They spoke with loud, individual
self-assertion, and there was a curious touch of defiance in every
sentence that involved a direct preposition.  

This quality of their speech, coupled with a degree of profanity 
which was simply startling in its originality, its redundancy, and its 
obscurity of purpose, made a stranger feel as if a fight might occur at
any moment.  
But there is no danger of anything  of the kind.  They live it this
atmosphere 
of exploitation and brag, with entire amicability and good nature, 
and only fight when the camps break up and the men are paid off.  
Then they congregate at the lake settlements and elsewhere, and get
frightfully
drunk for weeks, and shoot and stab with a liberality and self-
abnegation that suggest that they ought to have a literature built of
them like that which a kind and artistic hand has so deftly erected for
the favored miner of the Pacific slope.

        A curious effect which this native windiness produces upon the
stranger
who comes to hunt is, that after a week of it he finds himself impelled
to the conclusion that he has shot the only small deer there are in the
state.  We could not meet  a man in the country all about that had ever
seen a small deer.  The word, fawn, from desuetude, will be dropped from
their language.  It was always  the blankest biggest buck! blank me! 
or  the blank, lankest blank of a blank of a blank doe! running  like
blank and blankation for the blank river!   That was all we could ever
get; and when perchance one of these identical, peculiarly qualified
animals happened to be shot, the speaker stood wholly unabashed and
unconscious in the presence of his refutation.  It must be in the
climate.

        We left Thompson's hospitable place the next morning after an
early
breakfast.  Curtis and his team carried all our traps, and after a tramp
of two hours or so over the wet sand and through the desolate 
burnings,  we arrived at Camp Erwin.  It is a deserted logging camp. 
The building on the left in the little sketch I have made is a rickety
old barn; that behind it is a blacksmith's shop, and the remaining house
is that in which we had our quarters.  

It contains, on the upper floor, one large and finely ventilated
apartment; 
and below, the kitchen, dining and  living  room and two small
bedrooms.  
One of these was occupied by Mr. and Mrs. William Bamfield, the latter
of 
whom had engaged to cook for our party, while the former, a stalwart and
extraordinarily powerful backwoodsman, chopper and blacksmith, 
assisted,  and made himself indispensable by his general handiness and
utility, his readiness to do anything and everything, his good-humor and
his entire novelty. Recurring to my sketch again; the stream in the
foreground flows a mile away into the AuSable (pronounced up here
Sawble, the Au, too being generally dropped), and around the house, as
far as one may see, is the everlasting  burning.   In summer all is dry,
yellow sand; in winter, a mantle of snow sometimes covers it charitably,
and conceals some of the blackness and deformity of the dead pines.

        The first day in camp was devoted to unpacking our traps and
provisions, filling our ticks with straw, disposing handily of our
various knickknacks, overhauling the rifles, and wasting ammunition
under excuse of getting one's hand in.  My share being accomplished at
noon, some of us started down to take a look at the AuSable River.
 
After a walk of fifteen minutes or so, we came out of the forest
abruptly on the edge of a high sand bluff, and there it lay about one
hundred and fifty feet below us.  It came around a short bend above; it
swept around in front of us, and below us it wound around a third.  

Its waters were the color of dark brown sherry, and its current was
silent,
swift and powerful.  Beyond, the bank was low, and the forest stretched
back over successions of slightly rising plateaus to the horizon.  Here
and there one could see the scars of the fires, and a sinuous track of
the darkest foliage revealed the tortuous course of the AuSable...Save
that the river gains in volume as it travels, its scenery throughout
almost its entire length does not very.  It is a succession of
interminable twists and turns past high or low bluffs of sand, long
reaches of  cedar-swamp,  and  sweepers  innumerable.  

This singular river is one that knows neither droughts nor freshest,
which is 
always cold, but never freezes, and which will always preserve its
wildness and
its desolation, since , in the future, the wilderness through which it
flows will be even wilder and more desolate than it is now.

        The first evening in camp, around the council-lamp, was spent in
discussing the prospects of the morrow, in shooting over again all the
deer that had been shot upon previous occasions, in comparing the target
shooting of the day, and in the assignment by the captain of each man to
his position on the river.  Curtis [a guide] and two of our party were
to  put out the dogs,  and the rest were to be stationed at the
different runways.  This explains the method of hunting.  

The river [AuSable] for a certain number of miles was divided into
runways or
points at which deer, when hard pressed by the dogs, would probably take
to the water and afford a chance for a shot.  The dogs, twelve in
number, were divided among those who were to have charge of them for the
day, and they took them in various directions into the forest.  

When a fresh and promising track was discovered, a dog was let loose
upon it,
or perhaps two dogs, and the deer, after a run of greater or less
duration, took to the river in order to elude pursuit.  If it went in a
guarded runway, it stood an excellent chance of being shot; but, of
course, a large majority of the deer driven in entered the river above
or below, or crossed it shortly after reaching it.

        A tick filled with straw and laid upon the floor makes an
excellent
bed, and sportsmen's consciences are always good, for they sleep with
exceeding  soundness.  The ventilation of the apartment was generous to
the extreme.  The roof was tight, but all around were the open chinks
between the logs, and through these the stars could be seen by anyone
that had nothing better to do than look at them.  Up through the middle
of the floor and out through a big hole at the ridge-pole went the
stove-pipe, always hot enough to worry an insurance man, and an
excellent spot to hang wet clothes.  Elsewhere it was as cold as
charity, and I supplemented my blankets with my heavy frieze ulster, and
went asleep to dream of giant bucks and a rifle that wouldn't go off. 

        The Michigan forests abound in a variety of game, but the
animals that
are valued for their fur have been thinned out by trappers, who, in
turn, have disappeared to newer hunting- fields.  One still finds the
beaver, marten, fisher, lynx and others.  Bears are quite numerous, and
there are plenty of wolves.  Rabbits and  Arctic hares and ruffed grouse
exist in great numbers.  The elk has almost wholly disappeared from the
peninsula, but I heard that some were occasionally found in the extreme
northern portion, and I saw a magnificent pair of antlers, having a
spread of nearly six feet, which a half-breed had found imbedded in the
truck of a cedar-tree.  The skin of the head and greater portion of the
skull were attached, the remainder having been torn away and scattered
by wolves.  

The deer of the region is the Cervus virginianus, or common
deer of America, which is distributed over such a large area of our
continent.  It probably attains its greatest weight in Michigan.  I
learned from credible sources of bucks which weighed over two hundred
and fifty pounds.  Judge  John Dean Caton, in his admirable work on the
deer and antelope of America,  speaks of having killed a buck in
Wisconsin that was estimated to weigh two hundred and fifty pounds, and
adds that the largest common deer of which he had any authentic account
was killed in Michigan and weighed, dressed two hundred and forty-six
pounds.  Of the deer killed in our party, there were no less than three
that weighed over two hundred and twenty-five pounds.  

It is the most beautiful of the cervidae, and in its graceful carriage,
its 
exquisite agility, and the delicacy and symmetry of its form, on other
animal
approaches it.  It varies somewhat, of course; but the buck with the
shorter legs, the rounded and compact body, the tapering nose and the
well-erected, open antlers is the proudest and handsomest animal of the
forest.  The eye of the deer is large, and has the softest and most
tender of expressions.  The marked convexity of the ball, the deep, calm
and gentle radiance of the iris, and the length of the shadow- line from
the larmier to the posterior angle of the lids make up the more obvious
anatomy of this amiability.  

In the rutting season, which occurs during the earlier part of the
winter, 
the bucks discard their gentleness in a great measure and fight in the 
fiercest way.  It is doubtful if they ever kill or seriously injure each
other, 
formidable as their antlers are when they have sharpened and polished 
them by persistently rubbing against the bark of young trees.
   
They charge each other, head down, and meet with a crash, 
and then stand or walk round and round in a circle
with interlocked antlers swaying to and fro and moodily watching each
other's every movement.  They continue at this sort of thing for hours,
and superior prowess is more a matter of endurance and pertinacity than
anything else.  It would seem that the buck that holds out the longer
completely wears out and exhausts his antagonist, who then withdraws and
leaves him victor, - Mr. Darwin holds that in the stronger and more
favored males carrying off the females and begetting  offspring
possessed, by heredity and otherwise, of the same characteristics, we
find an explanation of the origin of species.  

The argument finds a strong illustration in the case of the deer, 
and backwoodsmen any that the younger and weaker males go unmated 
and are constantly being pursued and driven about by the stronger older
bucks.  
Some of the combats between the bucks result in mutual disaster when 
the antlers interlock and they are unable to withdraw from each other.  
They probably could if they made the effort
at once, but they butt and push each other, and each so studiously
avoids giving the other an opening that both are too exhausted to make
the effort at separation, and there they remain until the wolves arrive
on the scene and close the drama.  

Our backwoodsman had recently found two bleached skulls with antlers 
fast in each other's embrace, mutely telling a dark tale of love,
jealousy, 
and a wedding unavoidably postponed.  

The fawns, betraying by their spots a former characteristic
of their species, are timid, pretty little things.  They do not seem to
have the instinct which leads the adult animal to the water when
pursued, and consequently when a dog gets on the scent of a fawn, he
will hunt it bootlessly for hours, to the great annoyance of his
master.  A young fawn, just born, knows no fear of man.  If picked up,
fondled a few minutes and carried a little distance, it will, when put
down, follow one just as it would its mother.

-------------------------end of part one---------------