Knapsack, Hatchet, Knives, Tinware, Fishing Tackle, Rods, Ditty-bag
THE clothing, blanket-bag and shelter-cloth are all that need be
described in that line. The next articles that I look after are
knapsack (or pack basket), rod with reel, lines, flies, hooks and all
my fishing gear, pocket-axe, knives and tinware. Firstly, the knapsack;
as you are apt to carry it a great many miles, it is well to have it
right and easy-fitting at the start. Don't be induced to carry a pack
basket. I am aware that it is in high favor all through the Northern
Wilderness and is also much used in other localities where guides and
sportsmen most do congregate. But I do not like it. I admit that it
will carry a loaf of bread, with tea, sugar, etc., without jamming;
that bottles, crockery and other fragile duffle is safer from breakage
than in an oil-cloth knapsack. But it is by no means waterproof in a
rain or a splashing head sea, is more than twice as heavy--always
growing heavier as it gets wetter--and I had rather have bread, tea,
sugar, etc., a little jammed than water-soaked. Also, it may be
remarked that man is a vertebrate animal and ought to respect his
backbone. The loaded pack basket on a heavy carry never fails to get in
on the most vulnerable knob of the human vertebrae. The knapsack sits
easy and does not chafe. The one shown in the engraving is of good
form; and the original--which I have carried for years--is satisfactory
in every respect. It holds over half a bushel, carries blanket-bag,
shelter-tent, hatchet, ditty-bag, tinware, fishing tackle, clothes and
two days' rations. It weighs, empty, just twelve ounces.
The hatchet and knives shown in the engraving will be found to fill
the bill satisfactorily so far as cutlery may be required. Each is good
and useful of its kind, the hatchet especially, being the best model I
have ever found for a "double-barreled" pocket-axe.
And just here let me digress for a little chat on the indispensable
hatchet; for it is the most difficult piece of camp kit to obtain in
perfection of which I have any knowledge. Before I was a dozen years
old I came to realize that a light hatchet was a sine qua non in
woodcraft and I also found it a most difficult thing to get. I tried
shingling hatchets, lathing hatchets and the small hatchets to be found
in country hardware stores, but none of them were satisfactory. I had
quite a number made by blacksmiths who professed skill in making edged
tools and these were the worst of all, being like nothing on the earth
or under it--murderous-looking, clumsy and all too heavy, with no
balance or proportion. I had hunted twelve years before I caught up
with the pocket-axe I was looking for. It was made in Rochester, by a
surgical instrument maker named Bushnell. It cost time and money to get
it. I worked one rainy Saturday fashioning the pattern in wood. Spoiled
a day going to Rochester, waited a day for the blade, paid $3.00 for it
and lost a day coming home. Boat fare $1.00 and expenses $2.00, besides
three days lost time, with another rainy Sunday for making leather
sheath and hickory handle.
My witty friends, always willing to help me out in figuring the cost
of my hunting and fishing gear, made the following business-like
estimate, which they placed where I would be certain to see it the
first thing in the morning. Premising that of the five who assisted in
that little joke, all stronger, bigger fellows than myself, four have
gone "where they never see the sun," I will copy the statement as it
stands today, on paper yellow with age. For I have kept it over forty
years.
Then they raised a horse laugh and the cost of that hatchet became a
standing joke and a slur on my "business ability." What aggravated me
most was, that the rascals were not so far out in their calculation.
And was I so far wrong? That hatchet was my favorite for nearly thirty
years. It has been "upset" twice by skilled workmen; and, if my friend
Bero has not lost it, is still in service.
Would I have gone without it any year for one or two dollars? But I
prefer the double blade. I want one thick, stunt edge for knots, deers'
bones, etc. and a fine, keen edge for cutting clear timber.
A word as to knife, or knives. These are of prime necessity and should
be of the best, both as to shape and temper. The "bowies" and "hunting
knives" usually kept on sale, are thick, clumsy affairs, with a sort of
ridge along the middle of the blade, murderous-looking, but of little
use; rather fitted to adorn a dime novel or the belt of "Billy the
Kid," than the outfit of the hunter. The one shown in the cut is thin
in the blade and handy for skinning, cutting meat, or eating with. The
strong double-bladed pocket knife is the best model I have yet found
and, in connection with the sheath knife, is all sufficient for camp
use. It is not necessary to take table cutlery into the woods. A good
fork may be improvised from a beech or birch stick; and the half of a
fresh-water mussel shell, with a split stick by way of handle, makes an
excellent spoon.
My entire outfit for cooking and eating dishes comprises five pieces
of tinware. This is when stopping in a permanent camp. When cruising
and tramping, I take just two pieces in the knapsack.
I get a skillful tinsmith to make one dish as follows: Six inches on
bottom, 6 3/4 inches on top, side 2 inches high. The bottom is of the
heaviest tin procurable, the sides of lighter tin and seamed to be
watertight without solder. The top simply turned, without wire. The
second dish to be made the same, but small enough to nest in the first
and also to fit into it when inverted as a cover. Two other dishes made
from common pressed tinware, with the tops cut off and turned, also
without wire. They are fitted so that they all nest, taking no more
room than the largest dish alone and each of the three smaller dishes
makes a perfect cover for the next larger. The other piece is a tin
camp-kettle, also of the heaviest tin and seamed watertight. It holds
two quarts and the other dishes nest in it perfectly, so that when
packed the whole takes just as much room as the kettle alone. I should
mention that the strong ears are set below the rim of the kettle and
the bale falls outside, so, as none of the dishes have any handle,
there are no aggravating "stickouts" to wear and abrade. The snug
affair weighs, all told, two pounds. I have met parties in the North
Woods whose one frying pan weighed more--with its handle three feet
long. However did they get through the brush with such a culinary terror?
It is only when I go into a very accessible camp that I take so much
as five pieces of tinware along. I once made a ten days' tramp through
an unbroken wilderness on foot and all the dish I took was a ten-cent
tin; it was enough. I believe I will tell the story of that tramp
before I get through. For I saw more game in the ten days than I ever
saw before or since in a season; and I am told that the whole region is
now a thrifty farming country, with the deer nearly all gone. They were
plenty enough thirty-nine years ago this very month.
I feel more diffidence in speaking of rods than of any other matter
connected with outdoor sports. The number and variety of rods and
makers; the enthusiasm of trout and fly "cranks"; the fact that angling
does not take precedence of all other sports with me, with the
humiliating confession that I am not above bucktail spinners, worms and
sinkers, minnow tails and white grubs--this and these constrain me to
be brief.
But, as I have been a fisher all my life, from my pinhook days to the
present time; as I have run the list pretty well up, from brook minnows
to 100 pound albacores, I may be pardoned for a few remarks on the rod
and the use thereof.
A rod may be a very high-toned, high-priced aesthetic plaything,
costing $50 to $75, or it may be a rod. A serviceable and splendidly
balanced rod can be obtained from first class makers for less money. By
all means let the man of money indulge his fancy for the most costly
rod that can be procured. He might do worse. A practical every day
sportsman whose income is limited will find that a more modest product
will drop his flies on the water quite as attractively to Salmo
fontinalis. My little 8 1/2 foot, 4 1/2 ounce split bamboo which the
editor of Forest and Stream had made for me cost $10.00. I have given
it hard usage and at times large trout have tested it severely, but it
has never failed me. The dimensions of my second rod are 9 1/2 feet
long and 5 ounces in weight. This rod will handle the bucktail spinners
which I use for trout and bass, when other things have failed. I used a
rod of this description for several summers both in Adirondack and
western waters. It had a hand-made reel seat, agate first guide, was
satisfactory in every respect and I could see in balance, action and
appearance no superiority in a rod costing $25.00, which one of my
friends sported. Charles Dudley Warner, who writes charmingly of woods
life, has the following in regard to trout fishing, which is so neatly
humorous that it will bear repeating:
"It is well known that no person who regards his reputation will ever
kill a trout with anything but a fly. It requires some training on the
part of the trout to take to this method. The uncultivated trout in
unfrequented waters prefers the bait; and the rural people, whose sole
object in going a-fishing appears to be to catch fish, indulge them in
their primitive state for the worm. No sportsman, however, will use
anything but a fly except he happens to be alone." Speaking of rods, he
says:
"The rod is a bamboo weighing seven ounces, which has to be spliced
with a winding of silk thread every time it is used. This is a tedious
process; but, by fastening the joints in this way, a uniform spring is
secured in the rod. No one devoted to high art would think of using a
socket joint."
One summer during a seven weeks' tour in the Northern Wilderness, my
only rod was a 7 1/2 foot Henshall. It came to hand with two bait-tips
only; but I added a fly-tip and it made an excellent "general fishing
rod." With it I could handle a large bass or pickerel; it was a capital
bait-rod for brook trout; as fly-rod it has pleased me well enough. It
is likely to go with me again. For reel casting, the 5 1/2 foot rod is
handier. But it is not yet decided which is best and I leave every man
his own opinion. Only, I think one rod enough, but have always had more.
And don't neglect to take what sailors call a "ditty-bag." This may be
a little sack of chamois leather about 4 inches wide by 6 inches in
length. Mine is before me as I write. Emptying the contents, I find it
inventories as follows: A dozen hooks, running in size from small
minnow hooks to large Limericks; four lines of six yards each, varying
from the finest to a size sufficient for a ten-pound fish; three
darning needles and a few common sewing needles; a dozen buttons;
sewing silk; thread and a small ball of strong yarn for darning socks;
sticking salve; a bit of shoemaker's wax; beeswax; sinkers and a very
fine file for sharpening hooks. The ditty-bag weighs, with contents, 2
1/2 ounces; and it goes in a small buckskin bullet pouch, which I wear
almost as constantly as my hat. The pouch has a sheath strongly sewed
on the back side of it, where the light hunting knife is always at
hand, and it also carries a two-ounce vial of fly medicine, a vial of
"pain killer," and two or three gangs of hooks on brass wire snells--of
which, more in another place. I can always go down into that pouch for
a waterproof match safe, strings, compass, bits of linen and scarlet
flannel (for frogging), copper tacks and other light duffle. It is
about as handy a piece of woods-kit as I carry.
I hope no aesthetic devotee of the fly-rod will lay down the book in
disgust when I confess to a weakness for frogging. I admit that it is
not high-toned sport; and yet I have got a good deal of amusement out
of it. The persistence with which a large batrachian will snap at a bit
of red flannel after being several times hooked on the same lure and
the comical way in which he will scuttle off with a quick succession of
short jumps after each release; the cheerful manner in which, after
each bout, he will tune up his deep, bass pipe--ready for another
greedy snap at an ibis fly or red rag is rather funny. And his hind
legs, rolled in meal and nicely browned, are preferable to trout or
venison.