I have seen the Chief trailing a bear in light tracking snow and before he had gone very far he told me the bear was a large male and that he was in no great hurry or had no special place to go to because the tracks wandered hither and yon, which indicated that he was probably looking for food. That proved to be true for later on we came across several logs that he had clawed in search of grubs.
When an animal is running for its life its tracks are deep and clean cut, but when the beast is taking its time the prints are more likely to be blurred or shallow, and without sharp edges. Talking of bears, the Chief said you could tell a young one by sharp claw marks, while the claws of an old-timer, worn by much traveling, have rounded points.
Studying the tracks of a big dog wolf one day he explained that the animal was moving very slowly and had stopped once in a while to listen and pick up a scent, for the snow in some of the footprints was faintly glazed, showing that the animal had stood still long enough for the warmth of his foot to melt the snow which quickly froze when he moved on.
When as a youngster I began trailing game with the Chief he made sure that I understood that wild animals depend on scent, sound, and sight to protect themselves against their enemies. The hunter, therefore, tries to keep down wind from his game, moves very quietly and guards his movements. Ever watch a cat stalking a squirrel, creeping ahead when his quarry was not looking, freezing when it turned its head or showed signs of alarm? That’s the way the Chief gets close to a moose or bear. If the hunter is standing as motionless as a rock when the animal looks his way it may not recognize him for what he is, especially if he is in timbered country. But let him so much as twist his head or move a hand and the wild creature will see it.
Chief Tibeash likes to show how good a woodsman he is and at times I have found it hard to pick him out in the forest. Once I discovered him not twenty yards away, chuckling to himself because he had been coming up on me for several minutes, freezing in his tracks when I looked his way, silently hurrying on when I turned my eyes in another direction. “Good thing,” he said, “you are not a moose or you would be my meat.”
I recall the days when the Chief taught me how to call moose. After I had practiced with him for a while I went out one fall evening alone without a gun for a little calling on my own hook. I wandered down to a point on the east shore of Snow Goose Lake and let loose with my birch bark horn, rolling it toward the ground and raising it high just the way the Chief does. It was a quiet evening and after listening for a while I gave some more calls, ending up with a few mooselike grunts. When moose answer a call they may come tearing through the bush without thought of caution, but once in a while they steal up as quietly as a cat. That is just what happened to me. Not fifty yards away a big bull suddenly appeared on the shore. He saw me about the same instant that I caught sight of him, and I could see he was mad. It was my good luck to be standing near a big spruce with limbs that came down pretty low, and it didn’t take more than a jump and ten gasps to get twenty feet up that tree. The moose hung around for a while, snorting and pawing the ground, and then he went away. Then I started home like a snowshoe rabbit with a fox on his trail. It took me a week to begin to feel proud that I could call a moose.
A big bull suddenly appeared on the shore
If you called the Chief superstitious he would be angry, yet he and many other hunters and trappers have certain beliefs about hunting and fishing that have been handed down from generation to generation. One afternoon early this fall when the old man and I were sitting talking I noticed that he was listening to something else, and then all of a sudden he got up and went out the door very quietly. I had some meat on the stove so I didn’t follow him for a few minutes and when I went out he was standing under a tree looking up and talking his head off in Cree. It took me a minute to see that he was addressing several bluebirds which were then moving down on their way south. Every few seconds he would stop and listen, and finally I heard one of the birds chirp and then another. At that the Chief turned back to the cabin with an air of great satisfaction. The Indians in these parts believe that if you talk to the bluebirds before you start on a hunting trip and they answer, the hunting will be good, but if they make no reply then you can expect no game.
Aside from banking the cabin I have had a lot of other chores to keep me busy this fall. One of them was to build a new stage for my canoe at the back of the cabin where I store it under birch bark when the ice makes on the lake. I have also replaced the stay wires on my chimney pipe, for the fingers of the winter gales are strong and searching, and checked over the roof and tarred some of the seams. A good tar paper roof is hard to beat if you keep it tight.
Inside I have set up my old barrel stove which with the cookstove keeps me as warm as I please all winter. That kind of heater, which some call a drum stove, gives off a lot of heat and I get an extra supply by using a long pipe that runs down the middle of the cabin and then across to the chimney. You would be surprised the amount of heat a long pipe will throw off instead of pulling it all up the flue. When it comes to making a hot fire it is hard to beat tamarack, which is sometimes called larch or hackmatack. To my mind it is better than white birch and equal to yellow birch for a lasting fire, and a good deal hotter than either. The fact is that it is so hot it is apt to burn out the stove irons. You cannot find any better wood for foundation posts or fencing, since tamarack resists decay so well it lasts for years. A mighty useful tree in all ways.
During the summer the pipe lengths, greased with bacon fat to keep off rust, hang by wires from the roof, so the mice and squirrels can’t get at them. Once the critters make the jump from a rafter and skid off the greasy pipe they decide there are easier ways of getting their victuals. While I was putting up the pipe I found some of the chinking was loose between the logs high up on the east wall, so I yanked off the saplings that hold it in place and tucked in plenty of clay and then dry sphagnum moss.
Now that the nights are getting colder I have packed in the storage bin I built under the cabin floor all the provisions that would be damaged by freezing. The first one I made was a failure because it was built of boards and the mice got in, so I got myself an old oil drum from the abandoned mine, burned it out to clear away all smell of oil, and then painted it with tar on the outside so it wouldn’t rust. I set the drum in a box four feet square with a foot of sphagnum moss on the bottom and plenty of dry moss around the sides so that it is well insulated and if any mouse gets in there he will have to bring along a hacksaw. The lid is a piece of sheet iron and I reach into the box through a trap door in the floor. Potatoes and any other vegetables that I happen to get, as well as canned goods, keep perfectly in this little store bin. If I leave the cabin for a trip I have a heavy pad of sphagnum moss in an old bag that I put on top for insulation. When I am home the little amount of heat that leaks through the floor keeps it at just about the right temperature.
Another little job was to paint my weather vane which is the shape of a big pike. I relined the hole which fits over the nail on top of the pole with a small piece of metal tubing so that it will turn easily in the slightest breeze. I always enjoy watching the weather vane to keep track of wind direction. You can make weather vanes in all sorts of shapes, such as flying geese, arrows, guns, or a canoe with a man in the stern. Once after I had visited an old sea captain down on the coast I copied one he had made in the shape of a whale. It is easy to whittle one out, and to make sure that the vane minds the wind, put a metal washer under it so that it won’t rub on the top of the pole.
Mice have been troubling me lately. The critters got into my flour sack and I had to work fast, for once they break into your grub they send out word to all their friends and relatives to come on in and share alike. The way I stopped that was to make a water trap. All you need is a large can or pail and a sliver of wood which should be light and thin, about ten inches long and an inch wide. Find the place were it just balances on the rim of the pail and cut a small notch just back of that so the
end outside the pail will be the heaviest. Then lean a piece of firewood against the pail so the critters can climb up. Balance the sliver of wood on the rim after tying a small piece of bacon on the end over the pail. It should then be set with the notch on the rim so that when your mouse walks out to get the bait the stick drops down and he slides into the pail. You can put water in it or leave it empty if you like, for most mice can’t climb out of a pail. However, be sure your stick is short enough so he cannot use it for a ladder and climb out if it falls in too. If you have balanced your sliver of wood just right it will swing back into catching position after it dumps each mouse. And, by the way, rub a piece of bacon on the stove wood and out along the trigger strip so the mice will follow the trail to the bait.
I must tell you about something interesting I tried after reading a story about South American Indians and how they use blowguns for hunting. I didn’t think much more about it until the Chief and I were poking around the old deserted mine when we went over after my oil drum. In what was left of the blacksmith shop I found a piece of quarter-inch brass pipe about four feet long. Well, that put an idea into my head so I took it home and started in making slender little arrows to see if I could make a blowpipe. For the arrows I used slivers of spruce with a small nail in the head to give them weight and a sharp point, and on the other end I wrapped a little strip of cloth until it was large enough to fit easily into the bore of the pipe. The idea of the cloth, which should be loosely wound, is that when you blow the air expands the end and makes a good seal to let your breath drive the arrow with force. I tried it out and the thing worked.
The arrows of the South American Indians range from twelve to twenty inches long and the shafts are very slender, some being no thicker than a match. They feather them with some kind of vegetable wool or even soft bark wound in a cone form just as I wound the cloth. The blowguns are from seven to nearly twelve feet long and some of them are lined with a bore made of a smooth reed. I have even heard that some of the Indians wind the shafts of their arrows with bark in spiral form to start the arrow rotating just as the rifling in a gun makes a bullet turn. Don’t think this is any toy, for those fellows down there can shoot accurately up to seventy yards. They even rig sights on their blowguns.
What I want to do when I get around to it is to make one of wood like the native guns. My brass blowpipe throws an arrow fifty feet and drives the point into a pine like nobody’s business. The way the Chief watched me made me pretty certain he will be doing the same. He always likes to try out something new.
We have had good hunting this fall and the Chief has a fine white-tailed buck hanging in the lean-to back of his cabin. Hank and I will also have venison before long to keep us going for some time. Once it gets cold and the meat freezes you can keep it all winter if you want to, and the longer it hangs the better venison tastes.
For waterfowl shooting we go down to Snow Goose Lake and I can tell you it is a beautiful sight to glide through the narrows and come out on the lake, blue against the gold and crimson forest, with an Indian summer haze to blend the colors. The air now is apt to be sharp even at midday, strong with the scent of dead leaves and swamp grass. Just as we came into open water we saw a bull moose standing on a little point that juts out from the tamarack swamp. He was one of the biggest we have seen for a long time and his antlers must have had a spread of at least sixty inches. I don’t believe there is anything so downright impressive as a moose in the open where you get a better idea of the size of the animal than when you come on him in heavy woods. He watched us for a minute and with a snort that sent jets of vapor from his nostrils he went off with that peculiar trot which takes a moose over the ground much faster than you realize.
The Chief’s favorite duck shooting ground is in the shallows where the wild rice and the water grass grow, and at one place where the water is only a few inches deep he will step out and twist a bunch of grass into the rough shape of a duck for a decoy. You wouldn’t think those tufts of grass would bring in the ducks, but they do.
The geese have been coming over strong lately, great flocks of them flying in wedge formation, and the Chief has spent a good deal of time down on Snow Goose laying in a supply of them as well as ducks which he smokes and puts away in a cool place for good eating later on.
This is the crazy season when some of the partridges seem to be out of their minds, flying wildly by day and even by night. Often they crash into trees or limbs, and even houses. What makes them lose all their cunning no one seems to know, but many a time I have seen them in spells of madness when they seemed to lose all fear of their natural enemies.
On one of our hunts we stopped on the way home and Hank brought in five partridges to make a fine Sunday meal for us. While he was working up the slope of a low ridge looking for birds he caught sight of a big black bear busy on a rotten log in search of grubs. The place was strewn with blowdowns and the trees, crossed this way and that at all angles, made some of the worst jackpots he had ever seen, so Hank couldn’t get close enough for a shot. Fat and well-fed for his winter sleep, he was, Hank said, and his fur was thick and purple-black. You can tell a lot about the health of an animal by the condition of the fur and when it is rich in color and shining you can be pretty sure the critter is in good health.
The way we like our grouse is to skin, clean, and bake them. I put the whole bird in a pan and lay very thin strips of bacon across the breast. In that way you baste the meat while it is cooking and it comes out moist and sweet. All you need then is salt and pepper and some hot biscuits. With ducks it is little different and Hank is certain he can cook them better than anybody else. A duck, he will tell you, must be picked, singed and then drawn and washed. Then you wipe it dry and tie the legs together, turning in the neck close to the breast. After that you season with salt and roast for about twenty-five minutes. The next step—and it is important—is to put a tablespoonful of cold water inside the duck, which keeps the juices from hardening. Anyone will tell you that a little currant or beach plum jelly to eat with the duck makes it perfect. Of course, as Hank says, there are plenty of fancy stuffings and basting with wine and such like, but if what you want is the taste of duck, that is the way to get it.
On the way home the day we got the partridges we struck back into the woods to look over a little brook that we had not visited for two years. The place was so changed we hardly knew it, for the beavers had been busy and instead of a brook we found a good-sized pond held by as fine a dam as you could find. The beavers are busy now getting in their Winter food supply and all about back from the pond on higher ground the young poplars have been neatly cut and dragged to the water. While we were watching, a beaver came out on the far end of the pond and started swimming down with a newly cut length of sapling. The instant he saw us there was a quick, hard splash and only the widening rings on the water showed where he had been. It is not often you see them by day, for they do most of their work after dark.
With young Tripper to take his place in harness this winter, I have made myself a new sled which is a little different from the kind we usually have up here. Instead of runners made of split ash, I used two old hickory skis that a fellow left here a year ago. My idea is that the extra width of the skis will keep the sled from sinking as deep into the snow as it does with the narrower runners. The skies are a shade heavier than the regular runners, but I allowed for that by lightening up on the rest of the sled so it weighs just about the same as the old one. The new sled is just six feet long, which is small, but plenty for two dogs. I never believe in overloading them.
Old Wolf loves a sled and all the time I was building the new one he was nosing around inspecting my work and trying to show me he liked it. When I got out the harness to make sure it was in good order he just about went wild. That’s the kind of sled dog you like to have.
Tripper has been doing fine in his training. The harness I use has a round collar made of moose hide and filled tight with pieces of old blanket, wrapped around heavy wire
to stiffen it. The collar has a strap on each side to snap onto the traces, and one on top fastened to the cinch strap. Now Tripper steps right along behind Wolf and pulls his share like a good one. He has learned to stop when I shout “Whoa,” and puts his shoulder to the load when I give the command, “Mush!” One thing you have to remember is not to overwork a young dog. At first you carry no load on the sled and you have to be careful not to let it run up on the dog and hurt him. Patience and more patience and firm kindness is the secret of training a dog, or any animal for that matter. You want him to love his work and good sled dogs do.
The beavers are busy getting in their winter food supply
After a training trip I always give the young dog a little piece of meat as a reward, but that is only during schooling. Experienced sled dogs work best when they are fed at the end of the day, but when a puppy is young he needs food three times a day. If you want a good sled dog don’t make a pet of him. You can be good friends, but a dog that is a pet is almost sure to be spoiled and does not obey as he ought to. You must earn a dog’s respect and he has to know who is master.
Cache Lake Country Page 19
