They 'Haint Any
Jack Howard's reflections on wildlife conservation and outdoor life in Maine
Jack Howard (1875-1971) was a noted outdoorsman who made countless expeditions in the woods of northern Maine and New Brunswick to fish, hunt, canoe, and to photograph his experiences. He ultimately came to feel that there was more sport in “hunting with a camera” than a rifle, and became ever more concerned about conservation. From 1915 onward he spoke regularly to groups ranging from sportsmen’s clubs to policy makers. He delivered the following remarks to an unidentified group of Massachusetts sportsmen during World War II, sometime after March 1943.1
They haint any, well, I say they haint any, yes, there's a few,
but they haint what they used to be.
That was a pet saying of my old friend and guide from down Meddybemps way in Maine in the good old days when deer were deer but not as dear as they are nowadays.
I have a copy of the Maine game laws dated 1888 and at that time the legal limit was three deer, one moose and two caribou. Commissioners at that time were E.M. Stillwell, Bangor; H.O. Stanley, Dixfield; and B.W. Counce, Thomaston (of Sea and Shore Fisheries).
Using as an argument that the Indians hunted and fished all the time and the game and fish increased, the present residents of our three Northern [New England] states seem to think that they will continue to do the same. But keeping in mind that the methods and equipment used by the Indians and the early settlers were far from the type now in use, this argument will not hold water, especially now that we have meat rationing and very little meat at that.2
There is no question but what there are plenty of deer in the big woods but what about the moose and caribou that were so plentiful in those good old days?
Without the help of the state stocking system, the game fish of New England would be extinct, and while the deer still hold out, it is not due to the slaughter by the out-of-state sportsmen, who support and pay for most of the protection and stocking, but rather to the all-the-year round shooting by the natives and owners of fishing and hunting camps. The rationing of meat will not affect many of these as they hardly know what a real market looks like.
Even in the old days the illegal killing of game animals, with dogs, jack lights and snares—these methods do not hold a candle to the modern sportsman (?) with his high powered rifles, auto headlights and the ability of getting over the ground in a few hours that it took days with the old canoe. He manages to start from home Friday or any other day, get his game and be back at the office in a day of so. He gets his game all right but he misses the reward of a real trip in the woods and the thrill that goes with a week or two spent in a canoe or a tent out in God's country and the remembrance of such a trip, which I guarantee will stick in his mind the rest of his days.
The busy office or business man who takes these short dashes into and out of the big sticks is exactly the man who really needs and should get the rest and recreation that comes with the old fashioned vacation spent in a canoe and not in an automobile.
I certainly thank my lucky stars that I had the privilege of going into the northern woods many years ago when guides actually did some of the hard work and were glad to get a few dollars a day for doing it and did not expect a bonus if anybody got his deer and would be satisfied with his just share of the drinks and cigars. Like every thing else it is probably the sportsmen who have spoiled those happy arrangements. A two weeks’ trip at that time was a very reasonable vacation but I am afraid that only the defence workers could afford to try it now.
Don’t get me all wrong, there are good guides as well as many very good people who live north of us, but human nature is the same whether it is dealing with ration coupons or hunting and fishing, if you’ve got the money today you can get about anything you want. But do you have the real fun that you are looking for if you do these things the modern way? Possibly if you did not ever do things the other way you do not know what I am talking about. Anyway I hope that some day before you give up these trips that you will try out one of the kind I am talking about, if you can bribe a guide to work that hard.
I will never forget one trip I took with a friend of mine. He was six feet two and I am about five feet four, which is not so good when you are carrying a deer on a pole between you. This was before you had to be under the jurisdiction of a registered guide. We took what was then considered the hardest canoe trip in Maine, the old Allagash trip, and that was before they had five ton trucks to carry your duffle around the some fifteen carries on that trip at that time.
We had the old Hubbard's map of Northern Maine,3 which showed this section as some lumberman remembered it and we did not know where we were most of the time. Ripogenus dam was not built then4 and Ripogenus Gorge was a carry of several miles, through beautiful country, which you could not appreciate with a water logged canoe on your raw shoulders. Keep in mind this was some years ago and we saw a great deal of game, deer, moose and, yes, caribou, to say nothing of the smaller animals which to me are the most interesting part of this kind of country—mink, beaver, muskrat, wild cats and the very abundant porcupines, squirrels, etc. Oh, if moving cameras were then available I would never have had to work the rest of my life with the pictures we could have taken at that time.
In those days, when another hunting party showed up on the lake or pond you were camping on, you would get the same feeling that must have been in the hearts of the old Indians when the white man began to encroach on his domain. As you lay in your sleeping bag and listened to the white water rushing down some bed of rocks and looked up into the heavens at the moon and stars and watched the sun rise and set, a feeling would crop up in your system that was the feelings that the Indian must have felt regarding religion, those were the things he knew and worshiped, what could be any greater than nature in the rough, as he saw it and lived with it.
The Indian killed only for the food or shelter he needed, never for the boast of the head and horns of some beautiful animal on the walls of some den at home, his was the life of the natural man and as soon as the civilised edition of this man arrived and taught the Indian how to live eat and drink as we do, then he started on the downgrade of the toboggan of life. The same thing has happened in the Arctic where the white man has taught the natives how to live our way, with the result that his his teeth, eyesight and hearing has begun to depreciate.
Don't get me wrong, I am not one of those old foggies who cannot see any good in the present day civilisation, but you must admit that from the true sportsman's viewpoint those old days had many things which will never be seen again, and experiences that the present generation cannot appreciate.
The men who made their living in the woods as well as those who went into the woods for a real vacation were much different than those of the present day, both were really interested in the great out of doors and a satisfied sportsman in those days was just as necessary for the guide‘s reputation as it is today.
Don't think that everybody in the old days lived up to the game laws, no indeed, I had one experience years ago that goes to show how wrong such an idea can be.
We worked days getting our equipment, consisting of two horses hitched to a homemade buckboard with a two wheel trailer on behind carrying our canoe and all the grub and other articles of the usual camping and hunting outfit, into a small lake up in Washington County.
We no sooner got to the selected spot, got our camp all fixed up and were ready for our hunting when we discovered that there was another party at the other end of the lake consisting of six sportsmen, five guides and a pack of dogs.
We were visited by two of the guides from this party who tried to make a deal with us so that we would pay them for any deer shot by us that were driven into the lake by their dogs. Having the law on our side we refused to sign up with them on these terms, and were told that most of the sportsmen in their party were heavy drinkers, had never seen a deer outside of park, and were going to shoot at anything they saw moving on the shore. I really think they meant it, as it was proven one day when someone fired a high powered rifle shot into a bunch of us on the shore.
They started to do their stuff and we had the thrill of seeing how deer are dogged and driven into the lake. There are several advantages to this method, according to their head guide, who said that you were not shooting at something in the woods that you were not sure was a deer; you usually got bucks; and he added that if a deer was willing to run as far as you could carry him in two days, he was damn glad to have him do. Meaning by this, that the deer are driven out into the lake, shot on the shore, put into a canoe and taken back to camp, without lugging him on your back several miles. Maybe, but the legal minds do not agree, so such tactics are out.
About the third night under the above conditions, a young native ran into our camp in the middle of the night to warn this other party as well as ourselves, if we needed it, that wardens were on their way in. The next morning when the wardens arrived, this outlaw bunch had left during the early hours and nothing was found in their camp outside of a dog chain, but as they could not prove that it belonged to anybody, they had to go back without their men.
This party with their dogs drove over ten buck deer into that lake in a few days, and hunt as we could after they went, we could not scare up a single one.
This same gang used to kill them in the winter time in their yards and out on the snow and probably this is one reason why there are no caribou in Maine today, as I have been told that when a bunch of caribou are out on the ice trying to get water, if one of them is shot the herd scatters, but soon comes back and it was possible to get practically the entire herd by this method.
I don't know by actual experience how they do it nowadays, but from what I have heard, that higher education, religion and what have you has not changed things greatly. But I do think that we have much better game protection now than in those old days when they used to say that a game-warden then was a game-hog or poacher who had gotten too old to get his share so reformed and tried to stop others from doing it.
A game warden was not very anxious to go after some of the law breakers then and I guess they leave some of them alone even today. I don't blame them much řrom some of the stories you hear in the big woods.
Under present meat rationing, I expect that many more game animals are being killed illegally now than at any time since they made the game laws. In a way you can't blame the people who live in the wilderness, they figure these things belong to them the same as the Indians did and they are going to get their share. If they will only leave enough for breeding purposes so that after the war some of us poor people can pay for our licenses, get some gas and help them mow them down, that's all we real hunters ask.
I still say that there's a few, but they ‘haint what they used to be.
—Jack Howard
John Brooks “Jack” Howard documented his journeys into the « big woods » in hundred of photographs. Many of these photographs are being digitised and can be viewed on the Maine Memory Network, the statewide Maine digital museum of the Maine Historical Society.
Rationing of food was implemented in the United States in May 1942, starting with sugar; rationing of meat began in March 1943, suggesting that the story was written between March 1943 and the end of World War II. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_States.
Hubbard, Lucius L. Map of northern Maine: specially adapted to the uses of lumbermen and sportsmen. Cambridge, Mass.: Lucius L. Hubbard, 1899. Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/2010592713/.
Ripogenus Dam was completed at the upstream end of the Gorge in 1916.
Very entertaining, John, with a nice turn of phrase.
I like this one especially ... ' he started on the downgrade of the toboggan of life'
Happy New Year to you and yours
Ursula