more hints on cooking, with some simple receipts—bread, coffee, potatoes, soups, stews, beans, fish, meat, venison
we may live without friends, we may live without books,
but civilized man cannot live without cooks.
t is probably true that nothing connected with out-door life in camp is so badly botched as the cooking. it is not through any lack of the raw material, which may be had of excellent quality in any country village. it is not from lack of intelligence or education, for the men you meet in the woods, as outers or sportsmen, are rather over than under the average in these respects. perhaps it is because it has been dinned into our ears from early childhood, that an appetite, a healthy longing for something good to eat, a tickling of the palate with wholesome, appetizing food, is beneath the attention of an aesthetic, intellectual man. forgetting that the entire man, mental and physical, depends on proper aliment and the healthy assimilation thereof; and that a thin, dyspeptic man can no more keep up in the struggle of life, than the lightning express can make connections, drawn by a worn out locomotive.
i have never been able to get much help from cook-books, or the scores of recipes published in various works on out-door sport. take, for example, frank forester's "fish and fishing." he has more than seventy recipes for cooking fish, over forty of which contain terms or names in french. i dare say they are good—for a first-class hotel. i neither cook nor converse in french, and i have come to know that the plainest [pg 63] cooking is the best, so that it be well done and wholesome. in making up the rations for camping out, the first thing usually attended to is bread. and if this be light, well-made bread, enough may be taken along to last four or five days, and this may be eked out with boston crackers, or the best hard-tack, for a couple or three days more, without the least hardship. also, there are few camps in which some one is not going out to the clearings every few days for mail, small stores, etc., and a supply of bread can be arranged for, with less trouble than it can be made. there are times, however, when this is not feasible, and there are men who prefer warm bread all the time. in this case the usual resort, from maine to alaska, is the universal flapjack. i do not like it; i seldom make it; it is not good. but it may be eaten, with maple syrup or sugar and butter. i prefer a plain water johnnycake, made as follows (supposing your tins are something like those described in chapter ii): put a little more than a pint of water in your kettle and bring it to a sharp boil, adding a small teaspoonful of salt, and two of sugar. stir in slowly enough good corn meal to make a rather stiff mush, let it cook a few minutes, and set it off the fire; then grease your largest tin dish and put the mush in it, smoothing it on top. set the dish on the out-door range described in the previous chapter, with a lively bed of coal beneath—but no blaze. invert the second sized tin over the cake, and cover the dish with bright live coals, that bottom and top may bake evenly, and give it from thirty-five to forty minutes for baking. it makes wholesome, palatable bread, which gains on the taste with use.
those who prefer wheat bread can make a passable article by using the best wheat flour with baking powders, mixing three tablespoonfuls of the powders to a quart of flour. mix and knead thoroughly with warm water to a rather thin dough, and bake as above. use the same proportions for pancake batter. when stopping in a permanent camp with plenty of time to cook, excellent light bread may be made by using dry yeast cakes, though it is not necessary to "set" the sponge as directed on the papers. scrape and dissolve half a cake of the yeast in a gill of warm water, and mix it with the flour. add warm water enough to make it pliable, and not too stiff; set in a warm place until it rises sufficiently, and [pg 64] bake as directed above. it takes several hours to rise.
i am afraid i shall discount my credit on camp cooking when i admit that—if i must use fine flour—i prefer unleavened bread; what my friends irreverently call "club bread." not that it was ever made or endorsed by any club of men that i know of, but because it is baked on a veritable club, sassafras or black birch. this is how to make it: cut a club two feet long and three inches thick at the broadest end; peel or shave off the bark smoothly, and sharpen the smaller end neatly. then stick the sharpened end in the ground near the fire, leaning the broad end toward a bed of live coals, where it will get screeching hot. while it is heating, mix rather more than a half pint of best minnesota flour with enough warm water to make a dough. add a half teaspoonful of salt, and a teaspoonful of sugar, and mould and pull the dough until it becomes lively. now, work it into a ribbon two inches wide and half an inch thick, wind the ribbon spirally around the broad end of the club, stick the latter in front of the fire so that the bread will bake evenly and quickly to a light brown, and turn frequently until done, which will be in about thirty minutes. when done take it from the fire, stand the club firmly upright, and pick the bread off in pieces as you want it to eat. it will keep hot a long time, and one soon becomes fond of it.
coffee
to make perfect coffee, just two ingredients are necessary, and only two. these are water and coffee. it is owing to the bad management of the latter that we drink poor coffee.
mocha is generally considered to be the best type of coffee, with java a close second. it is the fashion at present to mix the two in proportions to suit, some taking two parts java to one of mocha, others reversing these proportions. either way is good, or the mocha is quite as good alone. but there is a better berry than either for the genuine coffee toper. this is the small, dark green berry that comes to market under the generic name of rio, that name covering half a dozen grades of coffee raised in different provinces of brazil, throughout a country extending north and south for more than 1,200 miles. the berry alluded to is produced along the range of high hills to the westward of bahia, [pg 65] and extending north toward the parnahiba. it has never arrested attention as a distinct grade of the article, but it contains more coffee or caffein to the pound than any berry known to commerce. it is the smallest, heaviest and darkest green of any coffee that comes to our market from brazil, and may be known by these traits. i have tested it in the land where it is grown, and also at home, for the past sixteen years, and i place it at the head of the list, with mocha next. either will make perfect coffee, if treated as follows: of the berry, browned and ground, take six heaping tablespoonfuls, and add three pints of cold water; place the kettle over the fire and bring to a sharp boil; set it a little aside where it will bubble and simmer until wanted, and just before pouring, drip in a half gill of cold water to settle it. that is all there is to it. the quantity of berry is about twice as much as usually given in recipes; but if you want coffee, you had better add two spoonfuls than cut off one.
in 1867, and again in 1870, i had occasion to visit the west india islands and brazil. in common with most coffee topers, i had heard much of the super-excellence ascribed to "west india coffee" and "brazilian coffee." i concluded to investigate. i had rooms at the hotel d'europe, para, north brazil. there were six of us, english and american boarders. every morning, before we were out of our hammocks, a barefooted, half naked mina negress came around and served each of us with a small cup of strong, black coffee, and sugar ad libitum. there was not enough of it for a drink; it was rather in the nature of a medicine, and so intended—"to kill the biscos," they said. the coffee was above criticism.
i went, in the dark of a tropical morning, with senhor jo?o, to the coffee factory where they browned the berry, and saw him buy a pound, smoking hot, for which he paid twenty-five cents, or quite as much as it would cost in new york. in ten minutes the coffee was at the hotel, and ground. this is the way they brewed it: a round-bottomed kettle was sitting on the brick range, with a half gallon of boiling water in it. over the kettle a square piece of white flannel was suspended, caught up at the corners like a dip net. in this the coffee was placed, and a small darky put in his time steadily with a soup ladle, dipping the boiling water from the kettle and pouring it on the coffee. there was a [pg 66] constant stream percolating through coffee and cloth, which, in the course of half an hour, became almost black, and clear as brandy. this was "brazilian coffee." as the cups used were very small, and as none but the northerners drank more than one cup, i found that the hotel did not use over two quarts of coffee each morning. it struck me that a pound of fresh rio coffee berry ought to make a half gallon of rather powerful coffee.
on my arrival home—not having any small darky or any convenient arrangement for the dip net—i had a sack made of light, white flannel, holding about one pint. in this i put one-quarter pound of freshly ground berry, with water enough for five large cups. it was boiled thoroughly, and proved just as good as the brazilian article, but too strong for any of the family except the writer. those who have a fancy for clear, strong "brazilian coffee," will see how easily and simply it can be made.
but, on a heavy knapsack-and-rifle tramp among the mountains, or a lone canoe cruise in a strange wilderness, i do not carry coffee. i prefer tea. often, when too utterly tired and beaten for further travel, i have tried coffee, whisky or brandy, and a long experience convinces me that there is nothing so restful and refreshing to an exhausted man as a dish of strong, green tea. to make it as it should be made, bring the water to a high boil, and let it continue to boil for a full minute. set it off the fire and it will cease boiling; put in a handful of tea, and it will instantly boil up again; then set it near the fire, where it will simmer for a few minutes, when it will be ready for use. buy the best green tea you can find, and use it freely on a hard tramp. black, or oolong tea, is excellent in camp. it should be put in the pot with cold water and brought to the boiling point.
potatoes
almost any man can cook potatoes, but few cook them well. most people think them best boiled in their jackets, and to cook them perfectly in this manner is so simple and easy, that the wonder is how any one can fail. a kettle of screeching hot water with a small handful of salt in it, good potatoes of nearly equal size, washed clean and clipped at the ends, these are the requisites. put the potatoes in the boiling water, cover closely, and keep the water at high boiling pitch until you can thrust a sharp sliver through the largest potato. then drain off the water, and set the kettle in a hot place with the lid partly off. take [pg 67] them out only as they are wanted; luke-warm potatoes are not good. they will be found about as good as potatoes can be, when cooked in their jackets. but there is a better way, as thus: select enough for a mess, of smooth, sound tubers; pare them carefully, taking off as little as possible, because the best of the potato lies nearest the skin, and cook as above. when done, pour the water off to the last drop; sprinkle a spoonful of salt and fine cracker crumbs over them; then shake, roll, and rattle them in the kettle until the outsides are white and floury. keep them piping hot until wanted. it is the way to have perfect boiled potatoes.
many outers are fond of roast potatoes in camp; and they mostly spoil them in the roasting, although there is no better place than the camp-fire in which to do it. to cook them aright, scoop out a basinlike depression under the fore-stick, three or four inches deep, and large enough to hold the tubers when laid side by side; fill it with bright, hard-wood coals, and keep up a strong heat for half an hour or more. next, clean out the hollow, place the potatoes in it, and cover them with hot sand or ashes, topped with a heap of glowing coals, and keep up all the heat you like. in about forty minutes commence to try them with a sharpened hard-wood sliver; when this will pass through them they are done, and should be raked out at once. run the sliver through them from end to end, to let the steam escape, and use immediately, as a roast potato quickly becomes soggy and bitter. i will add that, in selecting a supply of potatoes for camp, only the finest and smoothest should be taken.
a man may be a trout-crank, he may have been looking forward for ten weary months to the time when he is to strike the much dreamed of mountain stream, where trout may be taken and eaten without stint. occasionally—not often—his dream is realized. for two or three days he revels in fly-fishing, and eating brook trout. then his enthusiasm begins to subside. he talks less of his favorite flies, and hints that wading hour after hour in ice-water gives him cramps in the calves of his legs. also, he finds that brook trout, eaten for days in succession, pall on the appetite. he hankers for the flesh-pots of the restaurant, and his soul yearns for the bean-pot of home.
luckily, some one has brought a sack of white beans, and the [pg 68] expert—there is always an expert in camp—is deputed to cook them. he accepts the trust, and proceeds to do it. he puts a quart of dry beans and a liberal chunk of pork in a two-quart kettle, covers the mess with water, and brings it to a rapid boil. presently the beans begin to swell and lift the lid of the kettle; their conduct is simply demoniacal. they lift up the lid of the kettle, they tumble out over the rim in a way to provoke a saint, and they have scarcely begun to cook. the expert is not to be beaten. as they rise, he spoons them out and throws them away, until half of the best beans being wasted, the rest settle to business. he fills the kettle with water and watches it for an hour. when bean-skins and scum arise he uses the spoon; and when a ring of greasy salt forms around the rim of the kettle, he carefully scrapes it off, but most of it drops back into the pot. when the beans seem cooked to the point of disintegration, he lifts off the kettle, and announces dinner. it is not a success. the largest beans are granulated rather than cooked, while the mealy portion of them has fallen to the bottom of the kettle, and become scorched thereon, and the smaller beans are too hard to be eatable. the liquid, that should be palatable bean soup, is greasy salt water, and the pork is half raw. the party falls back, hungry and disgusted. even if the mess were well cooked, it is too salt for eating. and why should this be so? why should any sensible man spend years in acquiring an education that shall fit him for the struggle of life, yet refuse to spend a single day in learning how to cook the food that must sustain the life? it is one of the conundrums no one will ever find out.
beans
there is no article of food more easily carried, and none that contains more nourishment to the pound, than the bean. limas are usually preferred, but the large white marrow is just as good. it will pay to select them carefully. keep an eye on grocery stocks, and when you strike a lot of extra large, clean beans, buy twice as many as you need for camp use. spread them on a table, a quart at a time, and separate the largest and best from the others. fully one-half will go to the side of the largest and finest, and these may be put in a muslin bag, and kept till wanted. select the expeditionary pork with equal care, buying nothing but thick, solid, "clear," with a pink tinge. reject that which is white and lardy. with such material, if you cannot lay over boston [pg 69] baked beans, you had better sweep the cook out of camp.
this is how to cook them: put a pound or a little more of clean pork in the kettle, with water enough to cover it. let it boil slowly half an hour. in the meantime, wash and parboil one pint of beans. drain the water from the pork and place the beans around it; add two quarts of water and hang the kettle where it will boil steadily, but not rapidly, for two hours. pare neatly and thinly five or six medium sized potatoes, and allow them from thirty to forty minutes (according to size and variety), in which to cook. they must be pressed down among the beans so as to be entirely covered. if the beans be fresh and fine they will probably fall to pieces before time is up. this, if they are not allowed to scorch, makes them all the better. if a portion of pork be left over, it is excellent sliced very thin when cold, and eaten with bread. the above is a dinner for three or four hungry men.
it is usually the case that some of the party prefer baked beans. to have these in perfection, add one gill of raw beans and a piece of pork three inches square to the foregoing proportions. boil as above, until the beans begin to crack open; then fork out the smaller piece of pork, place it in the center of your largest cooking tin, take beans enough from the kettle to nearly fill the tin, set it over a bright fire on the range, invert the second sized tin for a cover, place live, hard-wood coals on top, and bake precisely as directed for bread—only, when the coals on top become dull and black, brush them off, raise the cover, and take a look. if the beans are getting too dry, add three or four spoonfuls of liquor from the kettle, replace cover and coals, and let them bake until they are of a rich light brown on top. then serve. it is a good dish. if boston can beat it, i don't want to lay up anything for old age.
brown bread and baked beans have a natural connection in the average american mind, and rightly. they supplement each other, even as spring lamb and green peas with our transatlantic cousins. but there is a better recipe for brown bread than is known to the dwellers of the hub—one that has captured first prizes at country fairs, and won the approval of epicures from maine to minnesota; the one that brought honest old greeley down, on his strictures anent "country bread." and here is the recipe; take it for what it is worth, and try it fairly [pg 70] before condemning it. it is for home use: one quart of sweet milk, one quart of sour, two quarts of indian meal and one quart of flour, and a cupful of dark, thin porto rico molasses. use one teaspoonful of soda only. bake in a steady, moderate oven, for four hours. knead thoroughly before baking.
soup is, or should be, a leading food element in every woodland camp. i am sorry to say that nothing is, as a rule, more badly botched, while nothing is more easily or simply cooked as it should be. soup requires time, and a solid basis of the right material. venison is the basis, and the best material is the bloody part of the deer, where the bullet went through. we used to throw this away; we have learned better. cut about four pounds of the bloody meat into convenient pieces, and wipe them as clean as possible with leaves or a damp cloth, but don't wash them. put the meat into a five-quart kettle nearly filled with water, and raise it to a lively boiling pitch. let it boil for two hours. have ready a three-tined fork made from a branch of birch or beech, and with this test the meat from time to time; when it parts readily from the bones, slice in a large onion. pare six large, smooth potatoes, cut five of them into quarters, and drop them into the kettle; scrape the sixth one into the soup for thickening. season with salt and white pepper to taste.
when, by skirmishing with the wooden fork, you can fish up bones with no meat on them, the soup is cooked, and the kettle may be set aside to cool. any hungry sportsman can order the next motion. squirrels—red, black, gray or fox—make nearly as good a soup as venison, and better stew. hares, rabbits, grouse, quail, or any of the smaller game birds, may be used in making soup; but all small game is better in a stew.
stews and fries
to make a stew, proceed for the first two hours precisely as directed for soup; then slice in a couple of good-sized onions and six medium potatoes. when the meat begins to fall from the bones, make a thickening by rubbing three tablespoonfuls of flour and two spoonfuls of melted butter together; thin to the consistency of cream with liquor from the kettle, and drip slowly into the stew, stirring briskly meanwhile. allow all soups and stews to boil two hours before seasoning, and use only the best table salt and white (or black) pepper. season sparingly; it is [pg 71] easier to put salt in than to get it out. cayenne pepper adds zest to a soup or stew, but, as some dislike it, let each man season his plate to his own cheek.
fried squirrels are excellent for a change, but are mostly spoiled by poor cooks, who put tough old he's and tender young squirrels together, treating all alike. to dress and cook them properly, chop off heads, tails and feet with the hatchet; cut the skin on the back crosswise, and, inserting the two middle fingers, pull the skin off in two parts, (head and tail). clean and cut them in halves, leaving two ribs on the hindquarters. put hind and fore quarters into the kettle, and parboil until tender. this will take about twenty minutes for young ones, and twice as long for the old.
when a sharpened sliver will pass easily through the flesh, take the hindquarters from the kettle, drain, and place them in the frying-pan with pork fat hissing hot. fry to a light, rich brown. it is the only proper way to cook squirrels. the forequarters are to be left in the kettle for a stew.
it sometimes happens that pigeons are very plentiful, and the camp is tempted into over-shooting and over-cooking, until every one is thoroughly sick of pigeons. this is all wrong. no party is, or can be, justified in wanton slaughter, just because birds happen to be plentiful; they will soon be scarce enough. pigeons are hardly game, and they are not a first-class bird; but a good deal may be got out of them by the following method: dress them, at the rate of two birds to one man; save the giblets; place in the kettle, and boil until the sliver will easily pierce the breast; fork them out, cut the thick meat from each side of the breast bone, roll slightly in flour, and put the pieces in the pan, frying them in the same way as directed for squirrels. put the remainder of the birds in the kettle for a stew.
quail are good cooked in the same manner, but are better roasted or broiled. to roast them, parboil for fifteen minutes, and in the meantime cut a thin hard-wood stick, eighteen inches long for each bird. sharpen the sticks neatly at both ends; impale the birds on one end and thrust the sticks into the ground near the fire, leaning them so that the heat will strike strongly and evenly. hang a strip of pork between the legs of each bird, and turn frequently until they are a rich brown. when the [pg 72] sharpened sliver will pass easily through the breast they are done.
woodcock are to be plucked, but not drawn. suspend the bird in a bright, clear heat, hang a ribbon of fat pork between the legs, and roast until well done; do not parboil him.
ruffed grouse are excellent roasted in the same manner, but should first be parboiled. mallards, teal, butterballs, all edible ducks, are to be treated the same as grouse. if you are ever lucky enough to feast on a canvas-back roasted as above, you will be apt to borrow a leaf from oliver twist.
venison steak should be pounded to tenderness, pressed and worked into shape with the hunting-knife, and broiled over a bed of clean hard-wood coals. a three-pronged birch fork makes the best broiler. for roast venison, the best portion is the forward part of the saddle. trim off the flanky parts and ends of the ribs; split the backbone lengthwise, that the inner surface may be well exposed; hang it by a strong cord or bark string in a powerful, even heat; lay thin strips of pork along the upper edge, and turn from time to time until done. it had better be left a little rare than overdone. next to the saddle for roasting, comes the shoulder. peel this smoothly from the side, using the hunting knife; trim neatly, and cut off the leg at the knee; gash the thickest part of the flesh, and press shreds of pork into the gashes, with two or three thin slices skewered to the upper part. treat it in the roasting as described above. it is not equal to the saddle when warm, but sliced and eaten cold, is quite as good.
and do not despise the fretful porcupine; he is better than he looks. if you happen on a healthy young specimen when you are needing meat, give him a show before condemning him. shoot him humanely in the head, and dress him. it is easily done; there are no quills on the belly, and the skin peels as freely as a rabbit's. take him to camp, parboil him for thirty minutes, and roast or broil him to a rich brown over a bed of glowing coals. he will need no pork to make him juicy, and you will find him very like spring lamb, only better.
i do not accept the decision that ranks the little gray rabbit as a hare, simply because he has a slit in his lip; at all events i shall call him a rabbit for convenience, to distinguish him from his long-legged cousin, who turns white in winter, never takes to a hole, and can keep ahead of hounds nearly all day, affording a game, musical [pg 73] chase that is seldom out of hearing. he never by any chance has an ounce of fat on him, and is not very good eating. he can, however, be worked into a good stew or a passable soup—provided he has not been feeding on laurel. the rabbit is an animal of different habits, and different attributes. when jumped from his form, he is apt to "dig out" for a hole or the nearest stone heap. sometimes an old one will potter around a thicket, ahead of a slow dog, but his tendency is always to hole. but he affords some sport, and as an article of food, beats the long-legged hare out of sight. he is excellent in stews or soups, while the after half of him, flattened down with the hatchet, parboiled and fried brown in butter or pork fat, is equal to spring chicken.
fish
in the cooking of fish, as of flesh and fowl, the plainest and simplest methods are best; and for anything under two pounds, it is not necessary to go beyond the frying-pan. trout of over a pound should be split down the back, that they may lie well in the pan, and cook evenly. roll well in meal, or a mixture of meal and flour, and fry to a rich brown in pork fat, piping hot. larger fish may just as well be fried, but are also adapted to other methods, and there are people who like fish broiled and buttered, or boiled. to broil a fish, split him on the back and broil him four minutes, flesh side down, turn and broil the other side an equal time. butter and season to taste. to boil, the fish should weigh three pounds or more. clean, and crimp him by gashing the sides deeply with a sharp knife. put him in a kettle of boiling water strongly salted, and boil twenty-five minutes. for each additional pound above three, add five minutes. for gravy, rub together two tablespoonfuls of flour and one of melted butter, add one heaping teaspoonful of evaporated milk, and thin with liquor from the kettle. when done, it should have the consistency of cream. take the fish from the kettle, drain, pour the gravy over it, and eat only with wheat bread or hard-tack, with butter. the simplest is best, healthiest, and most appetizing.
as a rule, on a mountain tramp or a canoe cruise, i do not tote canned goods. i carry my duffle in a light, pliable knapsack, and there is an aggravating antagonism between the uncompromising rims of a fruit-can, [pg 74] and the knobs of my vertebrae, that twenty years of practice have utterly failed to reconcile. and yet, i have found my account in a can of condensed milk, not for tea or coffee, but on bread as a substitute for butter. and i have found a small can of boston baked beans a most helpful lunch, with a nine-mile carry ahead. it was not epicurean, but had staying qualities.
i often have a call to pilot some muscular young friend into the deep forest, and he usually carries a large pack-basket, with a full supply of quart cans of salmon, tomatoes, peaches, etc. as in duty bound, i admonish him kindly, but firmly, on the folly of loading his young shoulders with such effeminate luxuries; often, i fear, hurting his young feelings by brusque advice. but at night, when the camp-fire burns brightly, and he begins to fish out his tins, the heart of the old woodsman relents, and i make amends by allowing him to divide the groceries.
there is a method of cooking usually called "mudding up," which i have found to preserve the flavor and juiciness of ducks, grouse, etc., better than any other method. i described the method in forest and stream more than a year ago, but a brief repetition may not be out of place here. suppose the bird to be cooked is a mallard, or better still, a canvas-back. cut off the head and most part of the neck; cut off the pinions and pull out the tail feathers, make a plastic cake of clay or tenacious earth an inch thick, and large enough to envelop the bird, and cover him with it snugly. dig an oval pit under the fore-stick, large enough to hold him, and fill it with hot coals, keeping up a strong heat. just before turning in for the night, clean out the pit, put in the bird, cover with hot embers and coals, keeping up a brisk fire over it all night. when taken out in the morning you will have an oval, oblong mass of baked clay, with a well roasted bird inside. let the mass cool until it can be handled, break off the clay, and feathers and skin will come with it, leaving the bird clean and skinless. season it as you eat, with salt, pepper, and a squeeze of lemon if you like, nothing else.
condiments
in selecting salt, choose that which has a gritty feel when rubbed between the thumb and finger, and use white pepper rather than black, [pg 75] grinding the berry yourself. procure a common tin pepper-box, and fill it with a mixture of fine salt and cayenne pepper—ten spoonsfuls of the former and one of the latter. have it always where you can lay your hand on it; you will come to use it daily in camp, and if you ever get lost, you will find it of value. fish and game have a flat, flashy taste eaten without salt, and are also unwholesome.
do not carry any of the one hundred and one condiments, sauces, garnishes, etc., laid down in the books. salt, pepper, and lemons fill the bill in that line. lobster-sauce, shrimp-sauce, marjoram, celery, parsley, thyme, anchovies, etc., may be left at the hotels.
it may be expected that a pocket volume on woodcraft should contain a liberal chapter of instruction on hunting. it would be quite useless. hunters, like poets, are born, not made. the art cannot be taught on paper. a few simple hints, however, may not be misplaced. to start aright, have your clothes fitted for hunting. select good cassimere of a sort of dull, no-colored, neutral tint, like a decayed stump, and have coat, pants, and cap made of it. for foot-gear, two pairs of heavy yarn socks, with rubber shoes or buckskin moccasins. in hunting, "silence is gold." go quietly, slowly, and silently. remember that the bright-eyed, sharp-eared woodfolk can see, hear and smell, with a keenness that throws your dull faculties quite in the shade. as you go lumbering and stick-breaking through the woods, you will never know how many of these quietly leave your path to right and left, allowing you to pass, while they glide away, unseen, unknown. it is easily seen that a sharp-sensed, light-bodied denizen of the woods can detect the approach of a heavy, bifurcated, booted animal, a long way ahead, and avoid him accordingly.
but there is an art, little known and practiced, that invariably succeeds in outflanking most wild animals; an art, simple in conception and execution, but requiring patience; a species, so to speak, of high art in forestry—the art of "sitting on a log." i could enlarge on this. i might say that the only writer of any note who has mentioned this phase of woodcraft is mr. charles d. warner; and he only speaks of it in painting the character of that lazy old guide, "old phelps." [pg 76]
sitting on a log includes a deal of patience, with oftentimes cold feet and chattering teeth; but, attended to faithfully and patiently, is quite as successful as chasing a deer all day on tracking snow, while it can be practiced when the leaves are dry, and no other mode of still-hunting offers the ghost of a chance. when a man is moving through the woods, wary, watchful animals are pretty certain to catch sight of him. but let him keep perfectly quiet and the conditions are reversed. i have had my best luck, and killed my best deer, by practically waiting hour after hour on runways. but the time when a hunter could get four or five fair shots in a day by watching a runway has passed away forever. never any more will buffalo be seen in solid masses covering square miles in one pack. the immense bands of elk and droves of deer are things of the past, and "the game must go."
