Deer Hunt material ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/mi/mifiles.htm ************************************************ The following was contributed by: Ronald J. Sortor enchantedforest@centuryinter.net Deer Hunt material.....Part TWO -------------------------- A tremendous uproar awoke me at the moment when for the hundredth time my rifle has exasperated me. It was Mr. B., shouting, Breakfast! breakfast Turn out for breakfast The captain's up and waiting! It was half-past four, and everybody woke up at the summons, as indeed unavoidable. There was a scratching of matches and a discordant chorus of those sounds which people make when they are forcibly awakened and made to get up in the cold, unusual morning. Down-stairs there was a prodigious sizzling and sputtering going on, and the light through the chink in the floor betrayed Mrs. Bamfield and her frying-pans and coffee-pot, all in full blast. Somebody projected his head through an immature window into the outer air and brought it in again to remark that it rained. A second observation made it rain and snow, and rain and snow it was, - a light, steady fall of both. We were all down-stairs in a few minutes and outside making a rudimentary toilet with ice-water and a bar of soap. Breakfast was ready, - plenty of rashers of bacon, fried and boiled potatoes, fried onions, bread and butter, and coffee, hot and strong. These were speedily disposed of. Coats were buttoned up, rubber blankets and ammunition belts slung over shoulders, cartridge magazines filled, hatchets stuck into belts, rifles shouldered, and out we allied into the darkness through which the faintest glimmer of gray was just showing in the east. Half an hour or so later, by the time we had gotten to our runways, the dogs would be put out. Off we trudged over the wet, packed sand of the tote-road, the gray dawn breaking dismally through the wilderness. Leaving the road, we struck into the pines, and a walk of a mile through the thick sweet- fern, which drenched one to the waist, brought us to the edge of the cedar swamp by the river. The narrow belt of low bottomland on each side of the river is called Cedar Swamp. It is a jungle through which it is extremely difficult to progress, and in which one may very readily lose one's bearings. Great cedars grow in it up to the water's edge and as thickly as they can well stand. Among the lie fallen trees in every stage of decay, heaped one upon another in inextricable and hopeless ruin and confusion. There are leaning cedars that have partly toppled over , and rested against their stouter fellows, and there are cedars that seem to have fallen and only partly risen again. Their trunks run for several feet along the ground and then stretch up toward the light, in a vain effort to become erect once more. These trunks and all the fallen giants are covered with a thick carpet of the softest moss; everything, in fact, is covered with it, and here and there it opens, and down in the rich mold is a glimpse of a bright little, wine-colored, trickling stream stealing in and out among the cedar roots and losing itself in miniature tunnels and caverns on its was to the river outside. One's foot-fall is noiseless, except when a branch beneath the moss breaks, and the sunlight struggles but feebly down through the trunks and dense foliage above. Sometimes the walking is treacherous, and the giant forms that lie about are hollow mockeries and deceptions beneath their pretty wrapping of green. Standing upon one of these and whether to adventure a leap or more circumspectly climb to my next vantage point, I executed a sudden disappearance, much after the fashion of a harlequin in a pantomime. A hole opened beneath my feet and I shot through that hollow shell into the swamp beneath, leaving my broad- brimmed hat to cover the aperture by which I made my exit. After a couple of hundred yards of climb, carl and tumble through one of these swamps, my companion took his place under the shelter of the cedars and indicated mine at a little distance up the river. It was one of the best of our runways, - a long stretch of open bank, where the cedar swamp did not reach the river's edge. I got there, took my stand, and indulged in expectation. The exertion of getting through the swamp had warmed me uncomfortably, but I soon ceased to regard that as an objection. The place was exposed; there was not shelter; the cold wind and the driving snow and rain had it all their own way with me. My hands became numb, and the metal of my rifle stung them. I did not put on my heavy gloves, lest a deer should come and they should proved an awkward impediment. I stood my rifle against a tree, stuck them in my pockets, and watched the river, while my teeth chattered line miniature castanets. The wind howled down through the trees, and clouds of yellow and russet leaves cane sailing into the river and hurried away upon its surface. It was undeniable, miserably cold. But hark! I seized my rifle. Yes, there it was, sure enough, the bay of a dog in the distance! I forgot the cold. Nearer it came, and nearer and nearer, and each moment I thought would bring the deer crashing through the thickets into the river. Nearer and nearer the dogs came, until their deep bays resounded and echoed through the forest as if they were in a great hall. But no deer appeared, and the dogs held their course, on, down, parallel with the river. Better luck next time, I said to myself, somewhat disconsolately: but I was disappointed. Presently the sharp, ringing crack of a rifle rang out and reverberated across the forest; another and another followed, and as I began to get cold again, I tried to console myself by meditating on the luck of the other people. I stamped my feet; I did the London cabman's exercise with my hands and arms; I drew beads on all manner of objects; but steadfastly I watched the river, and steadfastly I listened for the dogs. The snow and rain abated, and the hours went by; and stiff and chilled was I when; at half-past twelve, young Curtis's canoe came poling up the river to pick up deer if and had been shot above and had lodged in the drift-wood, instead of floating down to his watching place, three miles below. The dogs were all in, he said, and the doctor had shot a big buck and a fawn. At camp the doctor was the center of an animated circle. He was most unreasonably composed, as I thought, and told us, with his German equanimity, how Jack and Pedro had run in a large buck which immediately swam down the middle of the river. He fired from his place on the side of a bluff and missed. At the second shot he succeeded in hitting the deer in the neck just below the mastoid something or other. As if this was not sufficient, there presently appeared and crossed the river a very pretty fawn, whose young hopes were promptly blighted. They said it was not always that the first day yielded even one deer, and it was an excellent augury. During the afternoon, Curtis brought both deer up to camp and dressed them. The buck was finely antlered, and was estimated to weigh over two hundred pounds. The next day I was appointed to the same runway, and I took my stand and, acting on the advice of others, built a brave little fire. Deer being driven into the river or swimming down it pay no attention to a small fire, and the making of it and the keeping it alive furnished excellent occupation. Indeed, there is something quite fascinating about building a fire in the woods, and it is quite inexplicable what a deep concern all the little details of its combustion create in even really thoughtful minds. My fire burned cheerily and blew lots of sharp smoke into my eyes, with the aid of the fitful wind; but I was not called upon to shoot any deer. I din not even hear the dogs, and at two o'clock I went home to camp persuaded that I had not yet learned to appreciate our style of hunting. Our captain had a handsome young buck and was in a wholly comfortable frame of mind. We had a larded saddle of venison during the afternoon for dinner. It was flanked by a dish of steaming bacon and cabbage, and quantities of mealy potatoes and fried onions. The fragrance that filled the air of the cabin surpassed the most delicate vapors that ever escaped from one of Delmonico's covers and we fell upon the table with appetites like that of the gifted ostrich. The air of the Sable would be worth any amount of money in New York. The next day I passed in meditative fashion on my runway. I was not disturbed by an deer but Mr. M. and Mr. B. each scored one. The next evening, one of the dogs, foot-sore and worn out, remained in the woods. His master and one other sallied out into the inky darkness to look for him at points near which they deemed it probable he would have lain down. They took a lantern, without which it would have been impossible to walk, and after a fruitless search, extending to a distance of three miles or so, turned back. Suddenly they heard light footfalls in the tote-road, and with two or three beautiful bounds, a young doe alighted within the circle illuminated by the lantern, approached it in wide-eyed wonder and almost touched it with her nose. A young spike-horn buck followed her and both stared at the light, their nostrils dilated and quivering, and every limb trembling with mingled excitement and fear. There was an exclamation that could not be suppressed, a vain effort to shoot, and the deer were gone like a flash into the darkness. It was curious to hear both gentlemen, on returning to camp, protesting that to have shot deer under such circumstances would have been wholly unsportsmanlike. It was my sixth day, when a dozen deer were hanging in the barn and I, quite guiltless of the death of even one of them, had gone to the river. The hours passed tediously up to noon, when I heard a splash and saw a deer take the water 300 yards or so above me. She was a large doe, and came down the middle of the river swimming rapidly, and looking anxiously from side to side. I felt unutterable things, and just as she got abreast of me I brought up my Winchester and fired. She sank, coming up again some distance down, and floating quietly away out of my sight around the bend. This performance produced a sense of pleasant inflation. All my fears were dispelled and I felt a keen desire for the presence of others to whom to impart the agreeable fact. It was one of those things about which one always feels as if he could not, unaided, sufficiently gloat upon it. At half-past twelve, the canoe came around the bend, and I prepared to be indifferent, as should become a person who could shoot deer every day if only he were so minded. Strange, I thought, that the legs don not project over the side of the canoe, and how is it that - At this moment the canoe gave a lurch, and I saw young Curtis's coat with painful distinctness lying in the bottom of it, nothing else. I immediately inferred that he had missed the deer among some drift-logs as he came up. He protested he had not, but agreed to go back and search. I went with him and just a few yards around the bend we found in the oozy bank tracks which indicated that the animal had fallen to its knees in leaving the water, and up the bank to the top a trail marked with blood. The remarks of Mr. Curtis, though fluent and vigorous, were inadequate to the occasion. I was in a condition of unbounded exasperation. For a little distance through the grass and the bushes the marks could be seen plainly enough, but there they disappeared and that was the last I saw of my deer. The captain put two dogs on the trail that afternoon, but the wounded animal had probably died in some dense thicket, for they soon returned without having run and great distance. Four fine deer were killed the next day, without any participation upon my part, and in the evening some of us with lanterns went down to the river to secure one that had lodged somewhere in the drift-wood. We found it by the light of the birch- bark, our backwoodsman would pick out here and there a large white birch and apply a match to the curling ringlets of bark at the foot of its trunk. In a minute the whole stem of the tree was in a roaring blaze that lit up the river bank all round about and made the great cedars look like skeletons. Each birch was a brilliant spectacle, while it burned in a crackling, sparkling column of flame, sending showers of sparks through the forest and then dying out in an angry red, and a cloud of murky smoke. Our deer was found, dressed, and hung up on a dead cedar, out of the reach of predatory animals, and we went home to camp by the light of our lanterns. Next morning I was at my place, still unsubdued and hopeful. I heard a shot fired on the river below me; I heard the baying of dogs and listened to it as it died away in the direction of some other runway. But I watched steadily. And as I watched I saw the brush about some cedar roots open, and out there sprang into the shallow water a noble buck. He was a stalwart, thickset fellow, his legs were short and compact, his fur was dark in its winter hue, and his antlers glistened above his head. He bore himself proudly as he stood in the water and turned to listen for the bay of the dogs he had outrun. I hesitated a moment, doubtful if I should let him get into the stream and swim down, or shoot at him as he stood. I chose the later, aimed quietly and confidently, and fired. He pitched forward; the current seized him, and he floated down with it and past me, dead. In eight minutes, by my watch, Mr. M's Jack came to the bank, at the spot where the buck come in and howled grievously over the lost scent. He was worn out and battered, and he came to me gladly when I called him. I had brought some luncheon down with me that morning, and I must confess that I was weak enough to give Jack every bit of it. That afternoon when I reached camp, I found that I was the last to come in, and that my buck had already been seen and his size noted. I was received with acclamations, and a proposition to gird me, as a measure for affected precaution, with the hoops of a flour-barrel, was made and partly carried into execution. There were sung, moreover, sundry snatches of the forester's chorus from As You Like It: What shall he have that killed the deer? Of the AuSable as a navigable river, I am pained to state that I cannot speak in a way calculated to allure people thither for the purpose of sailing upon it. Three of us were induced by our backwoodsman to embark upon a raft and make a run of fifteen miles to Thompson's. We did so, and failed to acquire upon the journey any marked prejudice in favor of that particular form of navigation. Cedars growing at the water's edge have their roots more or less undermined, and some of them fall gradually outward over the river, their branches hanging in the current and becoming denuded of their foliage or dying. The trunk or stem of the tree is in some cases parallel with the water's surface, and in others it dips below it or inclines gradually upward from it. These trees have been named , with a nice sense of the fitness of terms, sweepers. We found them such. Our raft was guided by poles, one aft and the other forward. A vigorous use of these might have had something to do with determining the course of the craft, but one was dropped and another broken, and she forthwith proceeded to work her sweet will of us. She seemed possessed of a mischievous intelligence, and if an obstruction came into view, made directly for it. There was generally room for her to pass beneath a sweeper. which she always did; but it was different with the passengers, who, with a couple of unhappy dogs, were rasped for one end to her to the other, sometimes into the water, and sometimes only half into it, but always holding on to the logs with grim desperation. It was only by a united effort the runaway was ultimately turned into the fence, so to speak, and held there long enough for us to jump off. When the day arrived for breaking up camp, we had hung up in our barn twenty-three deer, my buck being accorded the place of honor at the head of the line. Our dogs were in, looking, it is true, rather the worse for wear, but all there, which is something unusual at the end of a hunt in this part of the country. The fact is, the natives discourage hunting with dogs, if not, indeed, all hunting in which they themselves do not participate. They place meat which contains strychnine on the deer- paths and also, when occasion offers, shoot the dogs. A party of gentlemen from Bay City came into our neighborhood, a few days later than we did. They contemplated a three-weeks' hunt, but during the first three days had two dogs shot and three poisoned. They were discouraged, and left their leader, Colonel Fitzhugh, offering three hundred dollars reward to any one who should afford him a few minutes conversation with the individual that had done the mischief. Colonel Fitzhugh is a gentleman with whom a conversation of the kind would be preferable for being conducted vicariously. Some years ago a party of Ohio people lost their dogs the same way, and unluckily for the active toxicologist, they found out who he was. When I passed that way he had rebuilt his barns and various out-buildings, and it was thought that until the region commanded the services of a reliable insurance company he would abstain from the use of strychnine. The immunity our party enjoyed had been gained somewhat as an ancient proprietary right, they have hunted there for so many years. Besides, they had in various ways rendered themselves popular with the natives; no visitor ever left the camp hungry - or thirsty, ant the Herr Doctor's periodicity was a matter of importance to a widely spread, if not numerous , community. they saved up fractures of six months' standing for him, and events of a more strictly domestic nature seemed to happen adventitiously during his hunting sojourn. We brought out our venison safely and in good condition, - a ton and a half of it or thereabouts. At Detroit we went our ways, ending an expedition which had in it, luckily, no mishaps to mar it, but plenty of wholesome recreation to make one's recollection of it wholly pleasant. NOTE: Camp Erwin has not been positively identified. However, it was in the Curtisville area and was probably located on either Wilber of Smith Creeks.