The Best Hunting Stories Ever Told

by Jay Cassell

  “A father, a mother, and their five children. See this little marker with the lamb? She was the first, she died at birth.” Just like my daughter, she thought; just like my own baby. “And next to that,” the memory voice of her husband continued through the past, “three, all in a row. Two boys and a girl, ages two, three, and five. All within a week. It was smallpox. The epidemic took the whole village.” She thought, Oh my God. I lost just one child. How did that mother survive? Then she saw the fifth stone and remembered the mother hadn’t. “Within a year,” her husband’s voice trailed, “the mother . . . they say she died from grief.” And the sixth? The sixth tombstone was the last child, a son, killed in the First World War. Just turned eighteen. The last stone, the seventh. It was less tarnished by years than the others, dated six years after the soldier boy’s. The father’s. He was helpless. There was nothing he could do but watch each of his loved ones die. They say he finally went mad from grief. . . .

  Helpless . . .

  She didn’t know how much time had passed, how long she sat pondering over the fate of the poor farmer and his family, how long she mourned for them, for herself. Her pup was asleep at her feet, and the autumn air was now cold with damp, the sky dark. This was a good place to leave her grief, she thought. Let it go, get on with it, find the road. But she felt the weight of her soul heavy upon her as she stood up to go.

  She left the cemetery through the stone posts, squeezing past a sapling that had grown smack between them. How tremendous, she thought, as she realized it was a Gilead tree. She picked a leaf and rubbed it on her hand, aching for some balm to heal the wound within.

  And ahead was the road. After that she knew her way. Her pace quickened as each step brought her closer to familiar ground. It’s time to get on with it, she thought. Not to sorrow. She had blessings to enjoy, far more blessings than sorrows.

  And then, with utter disbelief, she saw them. Ahead of her on the road were three grouse, dancing up and down and beating their wings all for joy, dusting the dry dirt road with their tails. Even the pup paused to look at the pageant. The birds continued to whirl and flutter, and the shiver of gold and red and orange leaves accompanied them like delicate music. All she could do was watch in wonderment.

  The cover of night was gently descending upon the forest when, from a distance, there shone a light. Headlights. “Mom? Mom!” voices cried. “Are you all right?” Her sons raced toward her, scattering the grouse, which then pirouetted high into the air like fireworks and disappeared into the woods. Not far behind was her husband.

  “Yes . . . I’m here. . . . I’m all right!” she cried as she ran to her family. Each step felt lighter. Each step carried her closer to the shelter of her loved ones. Each step took her farther and farther from the burden she left behind. For she had finally unlocked the compartment in her soul and gently, lovingly, laid her sorrow to rest in the holiness of the woods.

  This episode is out of timing with the rest of this book. From cover to cover, The Hardscrabble Chronicles accounts for a mere two of the thirty years I’ve lived here. “Lost ” happened to me about fifteen years ago.

  Losing a child is hope dashed. The loss of hope, no matter how great or for what reason—whether for a brief time or for a period that lingers, festers, and disintegrates into blackness—is a cruel and heavy burden. I carried mine to Tinkhamtown where unexpectedly, a light filtered through the forest, and through my grief, and illuminated the dark place in my heart.

  Loss is part of living. The Whys are seldom understood, often never known, but we can profit from loss. I was lost. I had lost faith. But in a single unplanned moment, I found it once again—or perhaps it found me. The rediscovery of faith is an act of grace.

  Remember, in your own journey you don’t have to look for a tranquil place like Tinkhamtown. Just search for the tranquil place in your heart. It’s there, if you look hard enough.

  You’ll know when you find it.

  Finding Your Way in the Woods

  NELSON BRYANT

  Although being lost in the woods is, at best, an unpleasant experience, thousands of deer hunters contrive to do it every year.

  Death by exposure sometimes results, but the usual outcome is spending a cold, miserable night in the forest. There is also the embarrassment of possibly being the object of an organized search, a thing that would bother some men more than the physical discomfort.

  All this could be avoided by carrying a map of the area and a compass, or, if the topography of the region to be hunted is committed to memory, the compass alone.

  Anyone who spends a lot of time in a big forest sooner or later will become confused as to his whereabouts.

  The first thing to do when you suddenly are aware that you don’t know which direction to take to return to your car or camp is: sit down, think and compose yourself. You should realize that if you’ve been hunting properly—not moving too fast—you cannot be more than a few miles from your starting places; you haven’t entered some strange never-never land.

  If you have a map, or if you study the map of the region you are hunting, you should have a good idea, within a mile or so, of where you are. All other clues lacking, you can simply use your compass to backtrack to your start. Implicit in this is that you know, on the map, the point from which you began and the general direction of your travels.

  If the sun is out, or if there are mountains or hills you can see and use as reference points, there is really no need for a compass. The same is true when the night is clear and the stars are visible. Every woodsman should, at the very least, be able to locate the North Star.

  Sometimes, however, a bright, clear day becomes dark, snow begins to fall, or mist fills the woods, and you have nothing, except your compass, to go by.

  Each of us has a sense of direction, and with most people it is thoroughly unreliable.

  When you first realize that you don’t know where you are and sit down to think it over, you will, after a while, often have a strong feeling about which way you should go to get out of the woods.

  Checking that feeling against your compass, you will usually find that you are way off the mark.

  This has happened to me several times, and I always marvel at the distinct act of will that is required for me to believe the instrument, not myself. I have even, in extreme cases, felt that there were magnetic rocks nearby pulling the compass needle awry. Always, however, the compass was correct.

  Your compass should be of good quality, waterproof and liquid-dampened.

  The only maps worth using are the topographic variety, available from both private and government sources.

  If you study such maps carefully, you will eventually reach a point where you can actually envision the contours of the land.

  If you are completely turned around, following a brook downstream will often lead you to civilization. This doesn’t work all the time. To put it another way, the stream on one side of a mountain may lead you to a community in short order while one on the other side may take you deeper into the wilderness. You should, from your topographic map, know the direction in which streams drain if you are using them as a guide.

  Following a brook can be a tough job. I once lost my way in the mist on a New Hampshire mountain and elected to use a stream. I was encumbered by a heavy pack, and the brook’s boulder-strewn, twisting and often precipitous course down the mountain was a considerable challenge.

  There may come a time when you are still deep in the woods at dark. If the walking is good and you are sure of where you are going, you might as well keep moving. If, however, you are on some rugged mountainside or deep in a blowdown where night travel is dangerous, the best thing to do is gather plenty of wood and light a fire.

  If you are with other men in a deer camp, they won’t start worrying about you—if you fail to appear—until after sundown.

  Three shots, closely spaced, are regarded as a universal signal of distress, but don’t touch them off until well after dark or they’ll be mist
aken for those fired at a deer.

  Usually, and this should be arranged beforehand with the others, it is expected—if one of the party is missing—that the men at camp will fire three shots when it is truly dark.

  If you hear those shots, respond with three of your own.

  Thereafter, as the searchers start moving toward you, they will occasionally fire a single shot. Respond with one of your own.

  Failing to hear their original three shots—or if you don’t have a hunting party—the only thing you can do is fire groups of three at one-hour intervals after dark and hope for a response. (All this shooting presupposes that you have a full box of twenty cartridges with you.)

  Some deer hunters, and I am one of them, bring along a small pack which contains a few packets of dried soup and tea or coffee, chocolate bars, a little bag of nuts and dried fruit, rope, a small hatchet and a canteen cup in which to heat water. It usually isn’t necessary to carry water because streams, lakes and ponds are common in deer country, and if there is snow it can be melted for this purpose.

  This little kit, which weighs only a few pounds, will help making a night in the woods more comfortable, and there will also be times when a cup of hot soup at midday is most welcome.

  The pack should be draped with fluorescent orange so that some other hunter won’t mistake it for a portion of a deer. An extra hunting vest of this color is ideal for this purpose.

  The average hunter really doesn’t need to achieve pinpoint accuracy in his woods navigation, but there are orienteering groups one may join, if they appeal to you. (Orienteering involves traveling as rapidly as possible from checkpoint to checkpoint through the woods.)

  To return directly—assuming no impassable terrain is in the way—to one’s point of entry into the woods requires keeping track of the distance traveled and the various changes of direction that were made. It is nearly impossible to do this and simultaneously hunt deer successfully. The best one can do is make an accurate guess.

  Rather than striving to arrive at one’s precise starting point, it is sometimes better to make a planned error. If, for example, one leaves his car on a road that runs east and west for several miles and then hunts to the south, one might simply head north near the end of the day. The difficulty with this is that when the road is reached one usually doesn’t know whether the car is to the left or right. It is much better, on the return trip, to consciously veer ten or 15 degrees east or west of north. Then, upon reaching the road, there is no doubt about which way to go.

  Although precise navigation isn’t needed by most woodsmen, it can offer both a challenge and a reward. A trout fisherman who wants to visit a little pond five miles deep in the woods will, unless there is a trail to it, have to become truly proficient with map and compass. If the pond is, for example, only a quarter of a mile long, he hasn’t much room for error.

  For this, a specially designed compass—the orienteering models by Silva are excellent—is needed. The ordinary wrist, or watch-pocket-size instrument won’t do.

  There are government topographic maps available for most of the United States, and they may be obtained in many sporting goods stores and bookstores.

  Acknowledgments

  This book could not have been put together without the help of many, many people. Listing them all is probably impossible, but I’ll give it a try.

  I’d like to thank some of the many people who helped me assemble the stories within. My dear friend Tom McIntyre not only made suggestions of books to excerpt, but also gave me a very insightful piece on what killing really means.

  Lamar Underwood, the most voracious reader of outdoor literature that I know, made many valuable suggestions on what I might consider excerpting. While I was unable to obtain some of them, I was able to assemble many of Lamar’s recommended chapters.

  Nick Lyons, with whom I had the great pleasure of working at the old Lyons Press, lent me many hard-to-find books from his library, with his thoughts on what might be appropriate for this book.

  My friend, book author and screenwriter Terry Mort, was also instrumental in suggesting a number of excerpts for this book, including those by Anthony Trollope.

  Laurie Morrow was helpful in getting permission for me to use the Corey Ford pieces, plus she helped track down and get some other, difficult-to-obtain excerpts.

  Phil Caputo, Dave Petzal, Rick Bass, Tom McGuane, Bob Butz. . . . I thank all the authors whose names appear on the table of contents.

  Amy Berkley, Field & Stream’s photography editor, helped me find some crucial illustrations and photos for the book, some of them literally minutes before press time. Thank you Amy!

  I also want to thank Steve Corcoran and Abigail Gehring of Skyhorse Publishing for all their hard work on this project. Without them, this book would never have come into existence.

  Finally, I want to thank John Rice, who provided so many fine illustrations for this book.

  1 No naturalist ever described the way vultures gather with more scientific accuracy than Longfellow:

  “Never stoops the soaring vulture

  On his quarry in the desert,

  On the sick or wounded bison,

  But another vulture, watching

  From his high aërial lookout,

  Sees the downward plunge, and follows;

  And a third pursues the second,

  Coming from the invisible ether,

  First a speck, and then a vulture,

  Till the air is dark with pinions.”

  2 (I may mention that poison was tried, but without effect. The poisoned carcases of transport animals which had died from the bite of the tsetse fly were placed in likely spots, but the wily man-eaters would not touch them, and much preferred live men to dead donkeys.)