Canadian Wilds Part 6

We were now going to try still-shooting them. Before night sets in about sundown each fine evening in the fall the beavers leave their lodge, first, to eat the young willows along the sh.o.r.e, and after satisfying their hunger to patch the dam, plaster their houses and cut young trees to store up for their next winter's food!

They come to the surface on leaving the lodge, and unless something frightens them swim on the surface in and out along the borders of the lake until they see a favorable spot to go ash.o.r.e; and here they set to nibbling the bark of young birch or popular, and if the hunter is careful he may be shot at close range.

As I said before, talking while hunting beaver is forbidden; and the hunter conveys his wishes to the steersman by signs, thus: To draw his attention he oscillates the canoe slightly; to move the canoe ahead the motion of paddling made by throwing the opening hand inboard; to alter the course of the canoe is done by signing with the hand either to the right or to the left, as desired; to stop the canoe's headway when getting too close to the game is done by gentle downward patting of the hand, etc.

Being already versed in this dumb language, we shoved away and took up a position near the lodge, but to the leeward of it, and waited.

The sun having already gone down behind the forest, on the other side of the lake, we had not long to wait until a beaver broke water and swam away in a direction from us. Wa-sa-Kejic shook his head, as much as to say, "We will go after that fellow later on." The first was followed quickly by a second, a third and a fourth! Then, after waiting for fully fifteen minutes and no other appearing, Wa-sa-Kejic made signs to go ahead; this we did slowly, without taking the sharp-bladed paddle from the water.

Presently we heard a noise as if a pig were supping up from a trough.

This was one of the beavers crunching up young twigs in the water.

The canoe was edged slowly toward the land, with Wa-sa-Kejic on the alert, both dogheads full-c.o.c.ked and ready for action. Presently the downward motion of the hand was given, the gun brought deliberately up to the shoulder, and the next instant the explosion, followed almost as one shot by the second barrel! A thick smoke hung between us and the sh.o.r.e, but we could hear kicking and splashing of the water; that told the shot was true. The beaver had ceased to struggle by the time we reached the sh.o.r.e. "But for what was the other shot?"

I asked Wa-sa-Kejic.

"For that," he answered, pointing to another beaver stone, dead on the bank; and then he laughed, for there was no necessity of keeping quiet any longer, for the shots had frightened any other beaver in the vicinity.

"We may as well go to camp now," continued Wa-sa-Kejic, "and we will see our traps in the morning."

From the fact of our having come ash.o.r.e late, and perhaps more because of the hearty supper we made off of roast beaver, we did not awake until the sun was high. We immediately partook of a hasty breakfast of tea Gallette and pork and went to see the traps.

"Fortunate?" Well, yes! We found one in each trap; and returned during the afternoon to the post. The Indian gave me the meat of two beavers for myself.

He left his traps set to visit at some future time, because there were several animals yet in the lake. Describing the mode of killing beaver would not be complete unless we explained that of "trenching."

This method of killing them is largely practiced by the Indians after the lakes and rivers are frozen over. I cannot do better than to describe a small lake that Wa-sa-Kejic and I went to trench in December. This beaver lodge I had found the very last day of open water, for that night the wind turned round north and froze up everything! As it was close to the post, and I had found it, I simply made a bargain with Wa-sa-Kejic to do the trenching for a pound of tea. In those days tea was tea in the remote interior, and meant many a cheering cup to the Indian.

Wa-sa-Kejic whistled his dogs after him when we left camp in the morning. The lake lay in the hollow of a mountain of considerable height, and could be compared to an inch of water in the bottom of a teacup. Before we were half down the precipitous sides we saw the dogs nosing around the sh.o.r.e, scenting for the beavers in their "washes" or breathing holes. Wa-sa-Kejic, when he cast his eye around the small body of water, said, "This is an easy lake, and the beaver will soon all be dead."

He now produced an ordinary socket chisel of 1 1/2 in. point, and in a few minutes had this handled with a young tamarak about 6 ft. long.

We each carried an axe, and the first order I got was to cut some dry sticks that stood at the discharge, each stick to be about 4 ft.

long. These, as fast as cut, the Indian drove across the creek, after he had cut a trench in the thin ice from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e. This was to prevent the beaver from going down the creek.

The next thing was to break open the lodge from the top. This was done to scare the beavers out into the lake and make them resort to the washes. The beaver washes have their entrances under water, and go up sometimes a considerable distance from the sh.o.r.e, terminating generally under the roots of a tree. The beavers flee from wash to wash, as the hunter finds them out, and as each wash is discovered by the dogs (which scent the beavers through the frozen surface) the hunter stakes up the entrance to prevent them from returning.

Beaver washes vary in number according to the formation of the lake, from two to three up to twenty. The practiced eye of the hunter tells him at once if the lake has few or many. And this is why Wa-sa-Kejic said we would soon kill the beaver. At last the three dogs remained pointing and listening about 12 ft from the sh.o.r.e under a spruce of considerable size. The Indian set to work to stake up the entrance, which he did as fast as I could furnish the sticks.

On the sh.o.r.e of this barricade he cleared away the ice and snow, making an opening about the size of a barrel head, and then he paused, and pointing to the water, said, "See that! That's the beaver breathing!" This was shown by the water's surface gently rising and falling.

He now took off his coat, and baring his right arm up to the shoulder he gave me the ice chisel and told me to pierce the ground where the dogs were pointing. I had hardly given a blow or two before I saw Wa-sa-Kejic stoop over the hole and plunge his naked arm into the water. Instantly it was withdrawn, and a big fat beaver, securely seized by the tail, was struggling in his grasp. A blow of his axe on the spine finished him in quick order, and this was repeated from time to time as I continued to enlarge the hole where the beavers were huddled together under the roots.

We got six out of this wash, and two out of another, which const.i.tuted all that were in the lake. Two each made a very good load for us going home, and the next day I sent a man with a flat sled to bring home the remaining four.

The three princ.i.p.al modes of killing beavers are by shooting, trapping, trenching.

As a haunt and home of the muskrat, I venture to say that c.u.mberland, on the Saskatchewan, is the banner producing post on this continent.

For miles and miles about this trading place there are immense gra.s.sy marshes, cut up and intersected by waterways and lagoons in every direction. From a hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand musquash skins was the usual returns from the post a few years ago. Three times during the year the hunters made their harvest, first in October, when the little animals were busy making their funny little cone mud houses and cutting bunches of long gra.s.s for their winter's food.

At that time the Indian would set his bunch of No. 1 steel traps before sundown and then lay off in his canoe at a short distance from the sh.o.r.e in some pond and shoot at those swimming past until it became too dusk to fire. Then he would make to some place to dry ground, haul up his canoe, make a fire and have his supper. When his after-meal pipe was finished he would silently shove his canoe into the water and make his first visit. When setting his traps he would take the precaution to place on the end of the pole that the chain was fastened to, a piece of paper, a bunch of gra.s.s or a piece of birch bark. This enabled him to find his traps in the dark, as the sign would show on the sky line as he paddled slowly along sitting low down in his canoe. The looking at his traps and resetting of them would take him an hour or two, then he would come back to his fire place, throw the rats he had caught in a pile, replenish the fire and stretch out for another smoke. About ten o'clock he would make another visit and on his return make a lasting fire, roll himself in his Hudson's Bay blanket and sleep till morning.

Often two visits were made in the morning, one just at the screech of day, and the last one after he had had his breakfast. Traps were taken up at this first visit to be set in some other locality that afternoon, and the hunter would paddle away for his lodge, where he would sleep all the forenoon while his wife and children were skinning and stretching the pelts. The next and every night would be spent in the same way until the ice took, and then another mode of sport I wish to describe would take place.

Ice in one night on these shallow waters was sufficiently strong to support the weight of one man. Armed with a long barbed spear a couple of feet in length, lashed to a stout pole, a bag on his back to put the rats in, and sometimes followed by a boy at a distance, the Indian, with his bright steel skates firmly buckled on, would glide down and in and out these skate lanes looking for rat houses.

Practice and experience taught him to get over the ice in the least noisy way. Instead of striking out one foot after the other, he skated as the people of Holland do by a motion of the hips. It is not a graceful way, but it is easy on the skater of long distances on new glare ice. Sliding, as it were, down to one of the mud cones with spear firmly grasped, he would drive it down into the center, and very rarely missed transfixing one and at times two of the highly perfumed little animals.

The interior of a rat house is a saucer-like hollow in the center, just a little above the level of the water. From the edge of this there may be three or four slideways into deep water. At the least alarm the rats tumble down these in a minute and only return when all danger is past. When the inhabitants of a single house number eight, ten or twelve and they huddle together for warmth, they are often one on top of another, and thus the spear pa.s.ses thru two at one thrust.

The yet unfrozen mud is torn away and the spear with the rats lifted out, dispatched and placed in the bag, and the hunter bears down to another house and so on thru the day. When the bag becomes too heavy it is emptied out on the ice and the hunt continued. Towards night the Indian retraces his road and picks up the piles he left earlier in the day. His leather bag is converted into a sled, the ends of his long waisted sash are tied to the bag, and with the loop over his shoulder he strikes out a road straight for his camp, well pleased with his day's sport and himself. Knowledge of the architecture of the musquash's house (for they are all modeled in the same way) enables a bush man to know just where the little family are huddled.

There is yet another way numbers are killed just after the ice takes, and before the mud houses become too hard frozen; that is to skate down on them shot gun in hand and fire right into the cone of mud.

The effect is not known till the earth is pulled away. The shot being fired at such close range there is, not unfrequently, three or four dead rats. One can not help to moralize how cruel it is for man to destroy at a moment the labors of long nights of these industrious little animals, and cause the remaining one to patch up the break at a season when it can never be as good and warm as when the work is done during open weather.

The hunter therefore sets his traps, so as to keep them employed, but he kills the greater number with his gun. A very small charge of powder and shot is required, and if the hunter keeps perfectly quiet in his canoe, and is below the wind, he can call the rat to within ten feet of his gun. I have pushed by canoe out from the sh.o.r.e of a small lake and called, just about sundown, and have counted no fewer than six rats coming from as many different directions. One waits till they get so close that they sheer off, and then fire sideways at the head.

CHAPTER XII.

INDIAN MODE OF HUNTING LYNX AND MARTEN.

Snaring is the princ.i.p.al way in which the lynxes are killed by the North American Indians. After a heavy fall of snow, however, if an Indian crosses a fresh lynx track, he immediately gives chase, even if he has only his belt axe.

The hunter only follows very fresh tracks, and in a short time comes up with the big cat. As soon as the animal knows it is pursued, it either climbs a tree or crouches under some thick shrub. If the hunter finds it up a tree, he sets to work at once to cut down the tree (that is if he has no gun). As soon as the tree totters he makes his way in the direction which it is to fall. The lynx clings to the tree until near the ground, and then springs clear. While he is floundering in the snow, the Indian bravely runs in and knocks him with his axe. Of course, if he has his gun, he simply shoots the cat and it tumbles dead to the foot of the tree. The feat of running down a lynx and shooting him with a bow and arrow is what all Indian youths aim to accomplish; they are then considered hunters.

Lynxes are always found in greatest numbers where their natural food supply is most plentiful. They feed usually on rabbits and partridges, and these are to be found in young growth of such trees as pitch pine, birch and poplar.

The Indian also, when he is dependent on rabbits, lives on the border of such a country, and has long lines of snares which he visits two or three times a week. Along this snare road at certain distances he has his lynx snares, which are nothing different from those set for rabbits, except being much larger. Yes, there is another difference: Instead of the snare being tied to a tossing pole, it is simply tied to a stout birch stick, 3 or 4 feet long by about 2 inches in diameter. The extreme ends of this are lodged on two forked sticks, and the snare hanging down in the middle is then set, tied to small dry twigs on each side to keep it in position.

At the back of the snare, at about 2 or 3 feet, the head and stuffed skin of a rabbit is fixed under some brush. The skin is filled with moss, or pine brush, and is fixed so as to look as much as possible like a live rabbit in its form. The head being to the skin gives it the natural shape and smell, and the lynx, walking leisurely along the snowshoe track, notices the game and makes a spring for it through the snare. In his headlong bound he carries snare and cross stick along with him, and as soon as he feels the cord tightening about his neck he not infrequently becomes his own executioner by getting his forefeet on the stick and pulling backwards as hard as he can. The more he struggles, the madder he gets, and pulls the harder to free himself, but this is, on the contrary, only making matters worse. The loop of the noose gets matted into the soft, thick hair of the throat, and there is no "slack" after that; in a few moments the great cat is dead.

Sometimes the lynx carries the cross stick in his mouth and climbs a tree. This is invariably the last tree he ever climbs, because once up the tree he lets the stick drop and it hangs down, generally on the opposite side of the limb from that on which the lynx is. As the cat goes down the tree on one side, the cross stick goes up toward the limb on the other and gets fixed in the crotch. As soon as the cord tightens about his neck he tries the harder to get down, and is consequently hanging himself.

Lynxes are very stupid. They will even put their foot into an open and exposed steel trap; and the better-off Indians often use small No. 1 traps instead of snares. This, however is only done latterly, and by the very well-off Indians. As a rule Indians only have traps for beaver, otter, fox and bear.

Lynxes are very rarely seen in summer, keeping close to the thickest bush. In any case, the skin is then of no value, and they are far from being "a thing of beauty," with nothing but a bare skin.

In the prime state they are largely used on the continent as linings, and each skin is worth about $4.

There are three kinds or qualities of martens recognized by the trappers.

First.--The pine marten that is found in the country covered by soft woods, such as pine, spruce, white fir and birch. This is the most numerous and consequently the skins are of least value. They are of yellowish brown color on the back and orange on the throat, changing down to pale yellow or white on the belly.

Second.--The rock marten; this is found in a country with stunted growth of spruce timber, a very mountainous district, the chief features of which are great crevices and boulders. Some of the skins of this variety are of great beauty, being dark on back, and throat and sides of gray or stone color.

The third kind, which is the scarcest, and consequently of most value, is the marten found in the black spruce country, or swamps of northern Labrador. The fur of this variety is of a deep brown color throughout the pelt, and at times the tips of the hairs on the rump are silver gray or golden brown. The latter are very rare, and such skins have been sold in the London fur market for L5 a piece! They are also much larger than the other kinds, the skins of the male often being from 24 to 30 inches long, exclusive of the tail.

The proper and most successful time for hunting is in the latter days of November and the whole month of December. They are hunted again in March, but by that time the sun has bleached out the color of the hair, which causes a depreciation in value.