Goff, who possessed a good pack of dogs to hunt “lions” and “cats” in
Colorado. The “cats” referred to are bobcats, not the Canada lynx with
which they are sometimes confounded. The winter was unusually free from
snowfalls, and the ground being very dry, it made hunting difficult,
because the dogs could hardly follow the scent.
My first destination was a ranch on Strawberry Creek belonging to the
guide, about twelve miles from Meeker. Here for several days we engaged
in a fruitless hunt, until one morning a fresh fall of snow covered the
ground, when our efforts were rewarded by the dogs striking a couple
of cat trails; these we followed a short distance, with the whole pack
tearing away ahead of us in full cry. The dogs followed the trail to
a great pile of massive rocks, which towered a hundred feet above our
heads, and there became bewildered. What had become of the stealthy
bobcats? The guide and myself climbed the rocks to search for them.
Looking down from the summit I saw one of them lying in front of a cave
surveying the dogs, which were silently and swiftly nosing around below
it. It was easy enough to shoot the cat where it was, but as it rested
on the ledge of a rock of some breadth, it was a grave question whether
it might not die there where it would be practically inaccessible, and
we would have all our pains for nothing.
To drive the cat from its position into a better one was more than a
doubtful possibility, as it was likely to run back into the cave. So I
took a chance and fired. Like a crash of lightning above their heads,
the excited dogs heard the report and knew that “there was something
doing.” The wounded cat gave a sudden leap into space and fell among
them. If there is any question about a “cat having nine lives,” it
seems that the dogs were bound to be on the safe side, for they mauled
the remains until I began to fear that the fur might be damaged before
I could come to the rescue. Through a fatal curiosity, the other cat
peeped over the precipice, and paid for its rashness with its hide,
which I added to my collection. The job of skinning the cats I turned
over to the guide.
The big dogs sat around in sullen dignity, particularly avoiding any
familiarity with smaller dogs and with each other. Each one seemed
to consider himself the hero of the occasion. I have had occasion to
observe that the pack would work and fight well together, but after the
fray they seemed to be intensely jealous of each other.
Several of the dogs interested me considerably. One of them was called
“Old Jim,” a big black-and-tan foxhound, with a deep bass voice which
would swell the chorus when the pack was in full cry and sometimes
almost drown it. Old Jim would occasionally provoke the not over
angelic temper of the guide by leading the whole pack after a coyote.
On one occasion he had distinguished himself by whipping a coyote, and
whenever one of these “sassy” prairie wolves would show itself, he
could not resist the temptation of giving chase, leading the whole pack
after him.
Any one acquainted with Western hunting knows how useless it is for
dogs to attempt to outrun a coyote. The coyotes would frequently come
close to the pack, if there was no man nearby, as though to provoke a
chase for our special annoyance. The dogs, however, would never run the
coyotes’ trail; they were broken of that.
Another interesting acquaintance was a dog called Turk, a cross-breed,
but a very strong and stubborn fighter, all seamed with scars. Turk
kept near the guide, and did not run with the pack except when there
was something in view. He was a good-natured dog ordinarily, but an
ugly customer in a scrap.
There was another dog called Boxer which had a very keen scent; long
before the rest could discover a trail one could hear Boxer’s knowing
yelps, which would gradually develop into a chorus, as one by one the
other dogs would detect the scent as it became warmer. Boxer had more
judgment than any other dog in the pack, and was very good in puzzling
out a broken trail.
We spent several days longer at the ranch on Strawberry Creek. While
there the guide purchased a broken-down horse to feed to the dogs. It
is not a particularly easy matter to keep twenty-one dogs supplied
with food. When the horse was led out for execution the dogs became
intensely excited and seemed to know “what was up.” The moment the
animal was shot, and almost before it fell to the ground, the whole
pack of dogs, big and small, was tearing eagerly at the carcass. No
doubt the habit of attacking wild animals as soon as they have been
shot developed their naturally savage dispositions.
At the suggestion of the guide, we decided to go to a ranch near the
Bear River Cañon, two days’ journey from our present location. When we
arrived at the ranch, after a long day’s ride on horseback, we found
the ranchman’s wife keeping house; her husband had left for several
days. She seemed in no condition to entertain us on account of a bad
headache, but kindly offered to do whatever she could. We volunteered
to help her out with her domestic duties. First of all I prescribed for
her headache; the medicine went down the wrong way, which caused her to
vomit, after which she declared she felt better. My professional pride
did not permit me to enlighten her as to the unexpected result of my
prescription. I say professional pride, because I went by the nickname
of the Doctor on account of an emergency case I carried with me.
I made myself useful in doing most of the chores usual on such
occasions, while the guide held the baby, which howled incessantly. The
expression on his face while performing this duty was as angelic as
I have seen it when Old Jim would lead the whole pack off on a chase
after a coyote against his impotent protest. When the meal was served,
two other children turned up, one a little girl nine years old, who
was censured for not taking care of the baby; the other a boy of about
eleven, who was particularly good, according to his mother’s account
of him. Our first day’s experience with these interesting children
caused us to reverse the parental opinion. When we returned from our
hunt the evening of the following day, the guide missed his lasso;
the good little boy had tried to lasso a cat which was selecting some
delicacies from a tin can, the cat took a sudden leap to escape the
lasso, and in doing so shoved its head into the can and cinched the
lasso round its body; cat, can and lasso disappeared in the sage brush
and were never found.
The country around Bear River Cañon is very rough and picturesque. The
cañon is steep and cuts a great gorge in the mountain, and is very
difficult to cross. In one place we were headed off by the precipice,
which must have been fully a thousand feet in depth; I rolled a
stone off the edge, and its descent seemed to take a considerable
time. A shower of broken fragments and dust, followed a second or
two afterward by a dull crash which reverberated through the cañon,
announced the termination of its fall.
The dogs finally succeeded in jumping a lion, running right upon him.
From a distance I could see the chase along the side of a mountain
until it turned in the direction of the cañon. The lion did not seem
to be going very fast while covering the ground by long leaps, which
he appeared to do without much effort; but when I looked at the pack,
which did not seem to be gaining on him, they were straining every
nerve, and looked as if they were “going it for all they were worth.”
No doubt the easy gait of the lion made his speed deceptive. The lion
took refuge upon a ledge of the precipice some fifteen feet below the
crest. When we arrived at the spot the dogs were raising an awful
din in their impotent frenzy, as they looked down upon the smiling
countenance of the lion, which was displaying all his teeth. It was
thought inadvisable to shoot the lion on the ledge where he was,
because there was a good chance of his dying in an inaccessible spot,
so we dropped stones on him, hoping to drive him out of that place and
compel him to run to the top of the precipice and take refuge in a tree.
For some time the lion savagely snapped at the stones, much to our
diversion. In their eagerness to see the lion the dogs crowded one
another near the edge of the precipice, and occasionally crowded me.
As I leaned over to drop a stone on the lion’s tail a big dog planted
his forefeet on my shoulders. Perhaps he did this to get a better
view, or it may have been because he was not able to say “down in
front,” that he adopted this method of giving me a gentle hint that
I was obstructing his view. The action was not pleasant to me. I did
not relish the idea of being shoved over the precipice and dashed to
pieces below, with the possible alternative of landing on the ledge
where the lion was located. Our efforts at last resulted in causing
the tormented beast to seek refuge elsewhere. After abandoning the
ledge he ran upon the top of the precipice and came so close to me that
I could have touched him--but I didn’t. A little foxhound ventured too
close and his impertinence was rewarded by a snap from the lion which
grazed the dog’s head and slit his ear in twain. Instead of taking to a
tree, as we had vainly hoped, the lion discovered a way of getting down
upon another ledge of the precipice, more inaccessible than the first,
and became concealed from view. It became evident that we were taking
too many chances, so the guide and myself found a way, very steep and
rough, below the lion’s last resort, where it was just possible to see,
several hundred feet away, the head and neck of the animal. I took
careful aim and fired. The bullet went a little higher than I intended,
breaking the lower jaw. I wished to preserve the skull entire for a
mount; but the character of the wound inflicted made this impossible.
In spite of the injury received the tawny form glided along the almost
perpendicular side of the precipice, picking out here and there a foot
rest to aid in its ascent. I fired another shot, which struck behind
the shoulder, but did not stop the animal from reaching the top of
the precipice, where the dogs soon discovered him. I was not too late
to see some of the fight. In the scrimmage the lion got Turk’s head
partly in his mouth, and for a moment I felt alarmed on account of the
dog. Fortunately, the lion’s lower jaw refused to work, and Turk got
off with light punishment--merely a scalp wound, from which the blood
flowed freely.
I began to arrange my camera, intending to take a snap-shot of
the melee, but the shade of the trees made the light bad for an
instantaneous photograph, the only one that could be taken of a moving
scene; the guide, seeing my dilemma, caught hold of the lion’s tail,
while still fighting the dogs, and dragged the tangled bunch a few
yards down the side of the hill into the sunlight. When this was done
the lion was dead, and I was not able to accomplish my purpose. As I
surveyed my first lion trophy I could not help admiring the game fight
it had put up against hopeless odds. There could be no skepticism
respecting the execution of its terrible teeth, for not a few wounds
were inflicted on the dogs. The beast must have weighed 170 to 180
pounds, and its skin was in fine condition; but, unfortunately, the
skull was ruined.
After hard hunting for about a week, the dogs took up a fresh scent,
and in a short time they treed a small lion which the guide called a
“kitten,” because it was not full grown. The branches of the tree were
quite close together and near the ground. One of the dogs managed to
climb a considerable way up the tree by the aid of the easy support
the branches afforded, and was in some peril. The report of my rifle
helped to swell the chorus of the dogs, which only abated when their
jaws were employed to a better purpose on the struggling “kitten.” The
poor beast which had climbed the tree remained a disappointed spectator
of the fight, being unable to take part. Afterward I helped him down
from his ridiculous although somewhat dangerous position.
On a number of occasions the dogs have climbed trees for a considerable
distance above the ground. The piñon trees, where the lions frequently
take refuge, are supplied with branches which begin to sprout near the
base, rendering the feat easier of accomplishment, but nevertheless
it is a remarkable sight to see a dog up a tree, sometimes furnishing
an unwilling subject for a camera. Any one wishing to obtain some
impression of how a dog would look in such an attitude can have his
curiosity satisfied by examining the photographs of wild animals in
Mr. Wallihan’s remarkable book, where snap-shots were taken of some of
the dogs which were in the pack I hunted with.
[Illustration: HITTING THE TRAIL.]
We had barely skinned the “kitten,” when at some distance we heard
the pack baying another animal. We rode as rapidly as possible in
the direction we heard the noise. We soon arrived at the edge of the
valley, which lay some five or six hundred feet below. The baying broke
upon our hearing with great distinctness. The country beneath was free
from big timber, being dotted profusely with piñon trees and smaller
growth, with here and there great pillars of red sandstone fashioned
into mushroom shapes by the erosion of the elements through countless
ages. In the clear, bright sunshine every object stood out with great
distinctness, producing a curious and beautiful effect.
It was an attractive sight to watch the pack as it swiftly coursed
about in the valley. It finally disappeared around the base of the
mountain. We took a short cut across the spur of the mountain and
soon caught the steady baying of the dogs, and I knew that something
was treed or cornered. On the side of a steep slope, which extended
hundreds of feet down to the valley, stood a piñon tree with a
fine, large lion perched in its branches--a more beautiful pose for
a photograph I could hardly imagine. The light was good and the
surroundings all that could be desired to produce the proper effect.
The guide suggested a doubt in regard to the lion’s remaining in his
present position very long, and that one of us should cover him with
a rifle while the other used the camera. My love of sport is not so
platonic that I could readily forego the deadly part of the pastime for
the æsthetic. So I held the rifle carefully pointed at a vital spot,
and after a little space the animal quivered, as though just about in
the act of taking a spring out of the tree, which, had he effected,
would have sent him down the slope at a speed that would have distanced
the dogs; once at large in the rough country which spread through the
valley, he would have given us another long and fatiguing chase, with
a good chance of losing him. Before the trembling limbs could launch
into space a bullet pierced his heart and he tumbled from his perch and
rolled nearly a hundred feet down the mountain side, where his further
descent was arrested by the dogs in no gentle fashion. The struggle
with the lion was brief. The guide and myself had more of a struggle
with the dogs in driving them away from the carcass.
I was disappointed to learn that the guide had not succeeded in getting
a photo. If I could have had a snap-shot with the camera at the lion
close by, while in the act of springing, with satisfactory results, I
would have had something of more value than the animal’s skin.
I added a few more trophies to my collection before finishing my
hunt for that season. My experience, however, had convinced me that
the best reminiscences of a hunting trip are good photographs of wild
animals in their natural state. The ease with which trophies can often
be secured, so far as the question of skill is concerned, has somewhat
taken the keen edge off of my desire to kill. Securing a good trophy is
quite as often a question of time and patience as skill. Coolness is
also required, for frequently easy shots are missed through being over
anxious.
DUCK SHOOTING IN CALCASIEU PARISH.
A few years ago, before a great industry had been developed in the
vicinity of Sulphur City, La., the natural conditions in that locality
were favorable to the increase of migratory game. The ground was low
and marshy, but generally quite flat; forests of resinous pine spread
over a considerable portion of the country. In some places the trees
grew to immense size, their massive trunks ascending for seventy-five
or eighty feet without a branch. The soil in such localities being
free from underbrush and covered with thick layers of pine needles,
yielded pleasantly under the step like a soft plush carpet. Currents
of air caressing the treetops imparted the sound of the surf beating
the shore at a distance. Stretches of open prairie covered with tall
grass furnished feeding spots for large flocks of ducks and geese. When
the attention was not too much absorbed with larger game, one might
frequently hear the jacksnipe emit its peculiar whistle as it shaped a
zigzag course in its flight. Other game was in less abundance.
I engaged an old “red bone” to act as my guide. Legrand--the name by
which I will introduce the new acquaintance--was really a Creole,
but was said to have a cross of Indian blood, just enough to enable
him to detect signs which escape the common eye. A faithful,
quiet, uncomplaining man, but an excellent hunter according to his
lights, Legrand had no liking for the new-fangled notions of modern
sportsmen. He could crawl through the brush or long grass with all the
stealthiness of a cat, every sense alert, and in spite of wet, cold
or any kind of discomfort would doggedly stick to his task until his
game was secured. To this old-fashioned hunter every cartridge must
represent something. He was not satisfied with “punching holes in the
air.” A story is told of Legrand upon which I would not care to stake
my reputation for veracity, although somewhat characteristic of the man.
A ranchman living in that locality noticed a small bunch of teal that
were in the habit of using in a pond not far from his dwelling. He
requested Legrand to try his luck with them the next morning, when they
could be easily found. Legrand, however, was short of ammunition, so
the ranchman gave him a shell which he jokingly remarked was enough for
a good shot, and he expected him to come back with the whole bunch,
numbering six. On the ensuing day Legrand departed before sunrise, but
returned to breakfast empty handed. “No ducks, Legrand?” He shook his
head; “No ducks.” The next morning the result was the same. “No ducks,
Legrand?” “No ducks.”
The third morning a shot was heard. Legrand returned with three
beautiful blue-winged teal hanging from each shoulder.
“Legrand, how did you manage to have so much luck all of a sudden, when
you were not able to get anything the two preceding mornings?”
“To-day,” he replied, “was the first time I could get them lined up so
that I could bag them all at one shot.”
It was my good fortune to make another interesting acquaintance in a
somewhat singular way. One afternoon, when shooting on the edge of a
marsh close by the house where I was sojourning, I became conscious
of someone near at hand. Turning around I discovered an elderly man
of dignified bearing, whose round ruddy face, ornamented with a long
white flowing beard, rested upon broad shoulders and sturdy frame.
The expression of his countenance was mild and kindly, possessing a
reflective cast, which was somewhat accentuated by a habit of slowly
stroking his beard. Much impressed, I regarded him with a feeling of
reverence. Had I been present at a revival meeting, the pose and genial
appearance would have suited the occasion, silence having been secured
by the exhortation, “Let us pray.” I broke the magic spell by politely
asking the new arrival whether he was a sportsman and fond of shooting.
“Can I shoot? By----” (a blue streak a yard long imparted all necessary
emphasis). “Young man, before my eyes went back on me, old Uncle Dave
could hit any living creature.”
After a brief conversation my new acquaintance cordially invited me to
visit him, and also extended the privilege of occupying his lodge at
a place called Sabine Pass, about twenty miles away. This is not the
noted Sabine Pass in Texas, but merely a local name. All reports seemed
to confirm the reputation of Sabine Pass, so I concluded to fit out an
expedition. I chartered a prairie schooner and secured two horses which
the guide said he could get for nothing. I was willing, however, to
pay for what I got, but was put off with some dignity. The old saying,
“Never look a gift horse in the mouth” seems somewhat in point, so I
will be sparing of comments. It was a very safe team, but not much at
annihilating space. A young man was engaged as cook. There was no other
addition to the party, save an old one-eyed dog.
A long, wearisome day’s travel brought us to a sheet of water which
surrounded the lodge. This resulted from the great quantity of moisture
that had accumulated from heavy rainfalls. The cook rode ahead,
exploring the way. The team tremulously negotiated the pass, but were
soon in difficulties. One of them falling down in about four feet of
water energetically strove to rise. Legrand, jumping into the icy
water, began to fix the harness, which was no easy task. It was too
dark to do anything, so the horses were uncoupled from the schooner and
driven ashore. I mounted one horse behind the cook. The animal became
refractory and varied the monotonous experience of the day by bucking
for a brief space. Finally the shipwrecked crew were able to leave the
schooner in safety, with a few things absolutely necessary, but by no
means with all that were desired.
The bright glow of a fire in the open hearth of the lodge dispelled
the gloom and discomfort of our surroundings, but Legrand was chilled
to the bone and looked peaked and miserable. My sympathy was excited,
and I prescribed a liberal dose from my flask which immediately revived
him. Fortunately we had taken the precaution to cover the contents of
the wagon, which otherwise would have suffered on account of the rain
that fell during the night. Our meagre repast finished, it was not a
great while before one after another dozed off into fitful slumber. One
blanket covered the forms of three men, and in place of under bedding
and spring mattress we had the board floor. The steady pour of the
rain resounded continually upon the roof, while the snap of the pine
fagots mingled with the hiss of drops of water falling on the burning
embers. It is not easy for three persons to sleep under one blanket
resting upon a hard surface. The disposition to change position became
a fixed habit with all three, but invariably the one who attempted it
met with unreasonable objections and muttered protests from the other
two. If one turned over all three had to follow suit. It seemed to
be a case where the minority ruled, while the majority swore at the
minority. The one-eyed dog, becoming restless from the cold when the
fire went out, repeatedly attempted to find a place for himself under
the blanket, but discovered that a triple alliance had been formed to
eliminate him completely. Finally he offered to compromise by lying
down on the outside of the blanket above our prostrate forms, but this
accommodation was likewise unfeelingly rejected. During that awful
night every man’s hand appeared to be against his neighbor and all
three united against the dog.
I was at length awakened from a semi-conscious condition by Legrand,
who was about to light a fire.
“What is the matter, Legrand?” I inquired. “Are you getting cold?”
“It’s time to get up.”
“What time is it?”
“About 4 o’clock.”
How he knew I could not guess, but I was only too ready to accept
any excuse that would rescue me from almost the worst night I ever
experienced. It was pitch dark, but the rain had ceased, and the noise
of game stirring outside betokened the coming dawn. A dense fog hung
over the prairie and when light began to make an impression it was like
illuminating an opaque substance. It was impossible to distinguish
anything over six yards away. Having removed everything from the
schooner the problem of dragging it to dry land did not concern us.