CHAPTER XIII. Camps, Transport, Etc.

CAMPS, TRANSPORT, ETC.

BY CLIVE PHILLIPPS-WOLLEY

It is not possible to devise a camp outfit which would suffice in all climates and under every condition of travel, and for that reason a few notes on the special outfit necessary for each country have been given where requisite.

But, although different climates require different camp equipment, there are many things common to camp life all over the globe, and a brief sketch of the needs and shifts of such a life in temperate, tropical and arctic countries may at any rate serve as a basis upon which to found a plan of campaign in any country.

It must be understood from the outset that these notes are for the hunter and not for the scientific explorer, whose needs are excellently cared for in the Royal Geographical Society’s ‘Hints to Travellers,’ and that the beau-ideal hunter is he who can accomplish most with the least assistance from anyone else. The most perfect outfit is that which, while it contains all things really necessary to success, includes no superfluities, and is in the highest degree portable.

The cost of hiring help in different countries has of course an immense effect upon the nature of the camp equipment employed, and what would be but a beggarly outfit in India where you pay your beaters 3d. per diem would be extravagantly luxurious in British Columbia where you pay your Indians 1½ dollar a day.

But to succeed all the world over in big game shooting, a man should be able not only to find his own game and kill it when found, but to skin it, pack it, pack his own food on his shoulders or his horse’s as the circumstances require, cook his dinner, choose and pitch his camp; in fact, he should be able to do everything which he wants done for himself without aid from anyone else.

It by no means follows that because a man can do these things he will be obliged to do them, but there are times in every hunter’s life at which the almighty dollar fails him, and then it is that the beauty of being able to help himself becomes apparent. It is not a bad plan just for once (say for a single day) to do entirely without extraneous aid. At the end of the day you will probably find that a good many things, from tying a bowline knot to lighting a camp fire, look a good deal simpler than they are.

We will consider then, first, what are the essentials of camp life and camp outfit in countries where the temperature ranges during the shooting season from 80° above to say 10° below zero, a fair sample of which may be found on the mainland of British Columbia.

One of the first maxims I would lay down is, bring with you all the most important items of your outfit, rifles, ammunition, tents, &c., even though the cost of transport be heavy; but, on the other hand, do not load yourself with less important items, such as rugs, blankets, cooking utensils, saddles and smaller things. You can get most of the ordinary necessaries of life in every country you enter, and in nine cases out of ten the native manages to evolve the article best suited to the daily needs of the country he lives in and the life he leads, e.g. the so-called Mexican saddle or the Indian moccasin. There is another thing worth considering, and that is that if you must spend money somewhere upon your outfit, it is as well to spend it where the spending of it may earn you the goodwill and assistance of the people amongst whom you are going to hunt.

The first matter to be considered upon reaching your starting point, the point I mean at which the locomotive leaves you, is the question of transport, a very serious matter to the man who has been ‘dumped’ down for the first time in his life at a frontier station with a huge pile of belongings and not even a friendly porter to carry them under shelter for him.

In North America (indeed, in most countries) the commonest method of transporting freight from one point to another in regions where the railway does not run is by pack animals, for which reason we will treat of ‘packing’ with pack ponies first.

In all the countries known to the writer the cheapest way is to buy your ponies, taking your chances of selling them when you don’t require them any longer. Hiring your animals is an expensive plan, especially in America, where the hire of a pack pony is at least one dollar per diem, whereas his cost would not exceed thirty dollars. Thus even if you gave your ponies away (and you cannot always do much better) at the end of a two months’ trip, you would have saved thirty dollars by purchasing outright. In buying your pack animals don’t leave the purchase of them until the last moment. If you do, there is no one in the world who better understands the art of extracting the highest price from a man who must buy than the ‘untutored savage.’

Choose animals of short cobby build rather than those which are more ‘leggy,’ and in addition to all the ordinary precautions observed in dealing with horse-flesh, take care to examine your purchases to see whether they have ever had sore backs. If you find scars, however well the wound has healed, don’t buy the pony, as backs which have once been sore are extremely apt to break out again at the first opportunity.

You may estimate the number of ponies wanted for your expedition by the weight which you require them to carry, allowing from 150 to 200 lbs. to each pony, and although professional packers will sometimes put as much as 400 lbs. upon a beast on a road, 200 lbs. is a full load for such a creature as the ordinary cayuse on such trails as those which generally lead to game countries.

Having bought your ponies and hired a man as camp cook who can pack and look after the beasts, take precautions against losing your animals. Of course your packer ought to do this, but he won’t. Buy picket pegs and ropes for your saddle-horses, and good leather hobbles for the pack animals, as well as a bell for the leader of the pack train, and see, personally, that for the first few nights, at any rate, every horse is hobbled or picketed, including even your hunter’s horse, in spite of his protestations that ‘that cayuse won’t stray’; and see, too, that one of the horses has the bell on at night. During the day you can take the bell off or silence it by shoving a fir cone into it, or some such simple device, if you hope to see game along the trail; but at night, insist upon the bell and the hobbles being worn, and in this way even if your beasts have only poor feed they won’t stray far, whilst if they do the bell will help you to find them. As I pen these lines I am as sure that some one of my readers will curse his luck for having neglected this advice as I am that death and the taxman will arrive in due season. In passing, I may remark that the man who takes the trouble to silence his pack train’s bell and his packers’ mouths, whilst he rides half a mile ahead of his train when on the march, will secure many a shot which would otherwise never have fallen to his share.

In picketing your horses use a bowline knot, see that the loop made will run easily round the tree to which each horse is tied if you are not using a proper picket, and in any case see that there are no bushes or stumps in his way round which he can get tied up in the night.

Next to your ponies your pack-saddles are the most important part of your equipment, and though you can no doubt pack either with ordinary pack-saddles, or with parfleches (mere leathern envelopes depending from either side of the pony), still the best of all the many contrivances for packing is, to my mind, the aparejo, an arrangement of Mexican origin obtainable for about twenty-five dollars all over America.

With good aparejos, sweat-pads and saddle-blankets of stout material, and a man who knows how to put them all on, there need be no sore backs, and very few halts to rearrange packs during the longest trip in the roughest country.

Be careful, however, to see that your aparejo is long enough for your beast, otherwise you will get him so chafed under the tail as to be unable to work. See, too, that your horses get a rough rub down before being saddled, and that your blankets are ample and well put on. Just as there are many kinds of pack-saddles, so are there many ways of tying on your packs; but one good way is sufficient, and that known as the diamond hitch has been adopted almost unanimously as the best by the men who live by packing. Here I might give directions for the tying of the diamond hitch, but the object of this book is to supply information useful to the hunter, and written instructions in the tying of the diamond hitch would not fall into that category. A man may learn to pack by practical experience and with pack, pony and an expert before him, but I do not believe anyone could learn from printed directions. Should anyone care to try, an excellent series of articles upon the subject, by a thoroughly practical man signing himself ‘Yo,’ may be found in ‘Forest and Stream’ for June 2, 1887, and following numbers. Let your camp man be a practical packer, would be my first advice to anyone meditating a shooting expedition in America. To anyone who had ever made such an expedition such advice would be unnecessary. There should be no difficulty in finding a man who can both pack and (in a rough way) cook. I was going to say that any fool could cook sufficiently well for a hunter’s camp, but the recollection of beans fried without boiling, a vivid memory of some of the abuses of baking powder, and a certain black-currant pudding boiled without basin or pudding-cloths, make me pause.

In addition to the aparejos, sweat-pads, and saddle-blankets before mentioned, all of which go under your packs, you must provide yourself with what are known as manteaux, i.e. squares of stout waterproofed canvas which are thrown over the packs to protect them not only from rain, but also from pointed boughs and such like which would otherwise tear the packs in passing through a timbered country. With these, cinches, sling ropes, halter ropes, and a good supply of spare rope of the kinds known respectively as half-and quarter-inch, the sportsman should be able to transport all he requires through almost any country.

As to the packs themselves, I would recommend that as far as possible everything should be put up in stout canvas bags and labelled. This plan saves infinite trouble in the long run. Some things of course must be carried in tins, and among these should be your matches, which will thus be protected from damp, and will have no chance of making dinner a horror, as the ordinary sulphur matches loose amongst provisions have a habit of doing. Even for matches a stout well-corked bottle is better than the best tin.

Packs are generally arranged as two side packs, and one top pack, and square side packs (in wooden boxes) with blankets, tents, and such like bundles for top pack seem most convenient. Round side packs are apt to shift.

Above all things see that your side packs are about equal in weight and hang about level. The contents of the packs must depend to a great extent upon the tastes and means of the hunter, but for simple men travelling in a difficult country the list of necessaries given below should suffice for two sportsmen, two gillies and a cook during an expedition of two months’ duration.

I have allowed a gillie or hunter to each sportsman, as well as a camp cook between them, although my own experience has been that your greatest happiness and best success begin when you have learned to hunt alone. That two make more noise than one; that your own eyes (not another’s) are the best eyes for you to use; and that a white man with practice is better than any red skin, are articles of faith which will be approved by experience.

However, of this more in another place. The accompanying list of stores, &c., has been based upon the lists of things used by the writer in former expeditions, in none of which (at any rate since 1883) has there been any running short of supplies.

Provisions and other requisites for five men for two months

lbs. Flour 6 sacks = 300 Yeast-powder 18 tins Bacon = 100 Dried apples = 50 Sugar = 50 Beans = 50 Coffee = 12 Tea = 8 (or Cocoa = 12) Pepper = 1 Salt = 30 Onions = 60

Worcester sauce Matches Candles (three dozen composite) Soap Tobacco A small can of oil for rifles Spare rope Two dozen horse-shoes, nails, and a shoeing hammer A few yards of linen for dish cloths Ten pounds of powdered alum for curing skins Two spare deer-skins for patching moccasins; some waxed thread, which must serve your turn until you can get some sinews, to sew your moccasins with A cobbler’s awl and needle File A housewife containing buttons, thread, needles, darning needle, wool, &c. A little ingenuity and abundance of good temper

In this list I have only allowed enough bacon for men who know how to hunt in a country where game is to be had for the hunting. Of course if game is scarce, more supplies might be needed, whilst equally of course, if the country is very difficult and the temptation sufficient, keen men should be able to get along with half a pound of flour and four rashers of bacon per diem, and even this with tea, blankets, rifles, cartridges, &c., will be found quite enough to carry in a mountain country with no one to help you.

I have suggested cocoa as an alternative for tea, for I find that the latter, as it is generally brewed in camp, is intensely indigestible, and is apt to keep even a tired man awake at night. Cocoa, on the other hand, is refreshing, it is almost as effectual a ‘pick-me-up’ as a whisky and soda, and does very well in its place. For men who do not stop to lunch, cakes of chocolate or raisins are recommended, as being very portable and nutritious.

My second list of necessaries consists of kitchen gear, and although it may easily be reduced to a ‘billy,’ a frying-pan, and your fingers if needs must, it is as it stands about as small as is compatible with comfort. Cups, plates, &c., should all be made of what is known as ‘granite iron,’ as this material is very strong, will not crush like tin, and retains heat a long time, an important point when your meals are taken in the open air of an October evening in the mountains.

Kitchen gear

One nine-inch iron pot with a ‘nest’ of three smaller pots inside; these should all be ‘tinned’ or enamelled inside

Two tin milk-pans for kneading dough in

Two coffee-cans or ‘billies’

Two frying-pans to make dampers and fry bacon. Have these made with folding handles

Five soup-plates, five tea-cups (both plates and cups to be made of enamelled iron)

Five knives, five forks, five soup-spoons, five tea-spoons, one meat-knife, a big cooking fork, one small meat saw

Two axes and two spare axe-handles

Almost of more importance than either food or kitchen gear is the sportsman’s ‘sleeping outfit,’ if I may use the jargon of the camp.

The common A tent is the one most used in America, but probably there is nothing better than that known as Whymper’s Alpine tent, made of Willesden canvas, as recommended in ‘Hints to Travellers.’ For extremely rough work I have used a little ‘tente d’abri’ into which we had to crawl on our hands and knees, but which held two men, kept them dry, and weighed with poles, pegs, ropes, and a bag to pack it in, only nineteen pounds.

I am inclined to think that even this weight might be lessened if required. But whatever the tent you use, you should in all cases have a floor to fit it, rather larger than the ground covered by the tent, and made of some stout waterproof material. This floor may be made to attach to the sides of the tent if so desired.

A sleeping bag or blankets must be taken for each person, and if blankets are used, three pairs of four-point Hudson Bay blankets if properly arranged will suffice to keep a man fairly warm, even with the thermometer 10° below zero. But they must be properly arranged, and to do this one pair of blankets should be sewn up at the bottom, along the whole of one side, and halfway up the other side, the other half to be fitted with tapes or buttons. This makes a kind of bag which effectually prevents a man from throwing off his clothes in his sleep, and keeps out those bitter little draughts which otherwise so annoyingly creep in and dispel the soundest slumbers. An inflatable air-cushion is light to pack, and handy either as a pillow or as a seat in camp. The air-cushion makes a better seat than pillow, for which the writer always uses a canvas bag packed with spare clothes, flannels, &c., carried inside the roll of blankets. The sleeping bag made of blankets, with an outside covering of tarpaulin to lace up over the blankets, and with a hood or pillow-case of tarpaulin attached to hold pillow or canvas clothes-bag, is the most convenient outfit of the kind for America. Before leaving the subject of beds, a subject of the utmost moment to the hunter, let me point out that one of the most comfortable and simplest of camp bedsteads may be made thus. Let your manteau measure 6 ft. 6 ins. by 4 ft., and let it be made of the strongest waterproof canvas, two pieces of equal size being sewn together so as to make an endless sack. In this form your manteau will do duty as a cover for the packs by day, and at night you can cut two thin poles about 7 ft. 6 ins. long, pass them lengthwise through this endless sack, take two logs about a foot in diameter and 5 ft. or more in length, and cut notches in them 4 ft. apart; then set one at your feet and one at your head, stretch out your manteau and rest the ends of the poles in the notches, and in ten minutes you will have made yourself a spring mattress above the reach of the damp. If, however, you are content with a brush bed--and the sweet aromatic balsam boughs should be good enough for any man--cut only the smaller boughs and arrange them in rows, the points of each row overlapping and covering the thick and hard butts of the row above. Hemlock makes the best of all bedding, and keeps out damp better than any other brush. It is a good plan before finally arranging your bed to lie down on it, find out where your hip-bone comes, and dig out a hollow for it to fit into. Anyone who has slept upon a hard and absolutely level surface will understand why this is recommended.

Finally, as to clothing, I have ventured to recommend a list of simple necessaries, more as a hint to those preparing for an expedition than as a rule for their guidance. In his choice of clothes, every man will to a certain extent follow his own fancy, but there are some few things essential to health, and others essential to success. For still hunting in timber I consider moccasins, or at any rate tennis shoes, essential. For a tender-footed man tennis shoes with thick red india-rubber soles are the very best of foot-gear. Except that you cannot cling with them as you can with the moccasin, they are nearly as good as the latter, and certainly save your feet as you come down hill, among sharp loose stones, in the dark; but they are hard to repair, and impossible to replace in the woods. Flannel is the best thing to wear next to your skin, and a good supply of dry flannels to put on when you come in at night is of the utmost importance. A pair of ‘rubber shoes’ to slip on in camp is well worth carrying, so that if you are obliged to go out in the snow or slush after you have made yourself comfortable for the night, you need not wet your feet again. Let your clothes be of some neutral tint; my own especial weakness is an Indian hunting-shirt made as plainly as possible of tanned deerskin. The colour of this is excellent; the material is very light and tough, and when you top a ridge to which you have painfully climbed for half an hour, the bitter wind which meets you does not go through a buckskin shirt as easily as it does through tweed or homespun. In wet weather--i.e. in real drenching rain--such a shirt is not as good by any means as tweed, as it then becomes exceedingly cold and unpleasant to wear. A broad belt of webbing (not of leather, for leather cuts you) to contain your cartridges may be used over the shirt, if it has not a great brass fastening in front as most belts have. The object of this fastening I suppose is to reflect the sun’s rays and make a dazzling spot of light on the abdomen of the hunter, about as useful in attracting the attention of every living thing as anything which the ingenuity of the gentlemen who sell ‘sporting goods’ could contrive. Metal buttons, metal watch-chains, uncovered rifle barrels, and even the end of your stalking glass, will reflect the sun’s rays in the same dangerous manner, so that though you may be otherwise unnoticed, the attention of your quarry will be drawn to what appears to him to be a little star amongst the grass on the other side of the ravine. Added to the dangers of their appearance is the danger that if you wear any metal trappings about your person, they may ring against one another terribly loud and clear just at the moment when even the beating of your own heart seems unwarrantably and absurdly noisy. For these reasons avoid metal adornments; keep a loose cover over your rifle barrels, be careful not to catch the sun’s rays with your glass when spying, use a watch-chain of buckskin, and don’t carry a lot of loose change in your trousers pocket.

Attached to your belt will probably be a knife for administering a coup de grâce, and for skinning. If you would not lose it, adopt some such plan for securing it as is suggested by the accompanying woodcut. None of the ordinary spring fastenings are proof against the rough usage of the hills.

If you wear knickerbockers, have them made loose at the knee, so as not to hamper you in your stride up hill, or wear them unfastened at the knee; but though less smart in appearance, ordinary tweed or flannel trousers, with the bottoms tucked into a stout pair of woollen socks, are as workmanlike as anything ever made.

Whatever you do, don’t wear canvas overalls, although you may be strongly advised to do so. I wore a pair once, and in a week they were so ragged that I had to borrow a petticoat in which to return to civilisation, and, moreover, they are not only easily torn, but they emit a strident scraping sound, whenever a twig touches them, which can be heard very far off.

Loose buckskin gloves sound rather luxurious wear for a hunter, but the hardest Siwash wears them; and as your hands have often as rough usage among the rocks as your feet, they are necessary. Below is a list of clothes, &c., for a two months’ trip in temperate climates.

Clothing for two months

Two tweed suits

One buckskin shirt

Two tweed caps

Four flannel shirts

Four pairs of flannel drawers

Six pairs of woollen socks or stockings

Moccasins: the number of these depends entirely upon the nature of the shooting. After ibex, I have worn out a pair in a morning, but for ordinary work a pair of good thick moccasins should last four or five days

Eight handkerchiefs: not white, but some dull colour which will not attract attention from afar, if inadvertently pulled out in sight of game

One pair of short waterproof boots (gum boots)

One waterproof cape, such as is made by Cording; an armless contrivance, very light and portable, used I think by cyclists

Three pairs of blankets, one waterproof sheet, one air-cushion

One belt of webbing for cartridges

One pair of loose buckskin gloves, one pair of woollen mits

One boating sweater

Having now enumerated most of the essential items of a camp outfit, it may be as well to sketch roughly the ordinary routine of a day’s march with pack ponies.

In a well-ordered camp someone should be stirring just as the stars begin to lose their brilliancy and to fade before the coming of day. An early start is most important, as it goes a long way towards ensuring an early camp, and that camp should be made early whilst there is still plenty of daylight is of vital importance to everyone with the expedition. The discomforts of camping in the dark only require to be tried once to be avoided for the future.

Whilst one man lights the fire and gets the breakfast ready, let another go for the horses, and a third put the beds together and make the packs ready. Save time whenever you can, for unavoidable delays are all too frequent with a pack train. A cayuse is not as other horses are. When you have sought animals sorrowing, in the chill dawn, and found them hiding, in a long line one behind another with their heads down, behind a bush no bigger than a respectable cabbage, or have watched your bell-horse roll his bell in the sand, shake himself to see if it will ring, and then trot away contented, you will know more about cayuses, and agree that they are the hardiest, most sure-footed, and ‘meanest’ of all created beings. See then that you get them together early in the day, and have the packs on their backs and ‘all set’ within half an hour of the time at which you finish your breakfast.

When you have the ponies packed, some one of the hunters may ride well ahead, but the man who ‘leads out,’ i.e. guides the pack train, should never ride far ahead. If he does, the pack animals will at once begin to stray. The best pace to travel at is a fairly brisk walk; anything more than this generally disarranges the packs and necessitates halts to rearrange them, or causes sore backs. From fifteen to twenty-five miles a day, according to the character of the country to be ridden through, is an excellent day’s work for pack ponies, and from two to three miles an hour a fair pace to travel at.

Keep your temper in driving pack ponies across a side hill, or along a steep and narrow trail. Pack ponies are as mean as--civilised words won’t express their ‘meanness’--and when a pony knows that he has another between himself and the whip, and that the whip cannot reach him owing to the narrowness of the trail, he will stop and browse. If you press the pony next you to get at the offender, one of them will go head over heels down the slope, and at every bump there will be little puffs, one white, one brown. This means that when that pony reaches the bottom of that hill he may still be alive, but there will be no more cocoa and no more baking powder for that expedition.

Some men remove packs in the middle of the day, and halt for lunch. This I consider a mistake, and a waste of time. An early camp, say at four o’clock, is better both for horses and men.

In choosing your camp consider first these points: water, food, fuel, and shelter from wind and from the sight of such game as may be in the neighbourhood. As to this last point, it is as well not to allow fires to be lighted or wood chopped until a careful survey of the neighbourhood has been made from some adjacent height, especially if the camp has been pitched in the district which you mean to hunt. Not long since my friends and myself had the mortification of seeing the largest band of sheep I ever saw move away while we were stalking them, not because they detected us, but because they could hear the ringing strokes of our men’s axes in the valley below. A camp without feed for the horses is the worst of all camps, and luckily occurs very rarely. If there is any likelihood of such camps being unavoidable, it may be necessary to carry grain for the horses, although many ‘cayuses’ will not at first eat it, and frequently when they do eat it suffer from lampas and other ailments consequent upon a sudden change of diet. Lancing the bars of a horse’s mouth with a sharp penknife will procure relief from lampas, which is probably the commonest complaint amongst pack ponies. In camping in America, beware of camping near burnt timber--that is to say, so near as to be in danger from a falling tree, a constantly recurring risk where huge trunks are burnt almost through, and high winds are common.

Whatever you do, do not camp on old Indian camping grounds. Indians rarely leave anything worth having in a camp, but they do leave things worth avoiding. Again, don’t be tempted to use an old horse-blanket to put over your feet on a very cold night. Men will tell you that the insects which infest animals won’t touch men. I remember one unfortunate party which owned a horse suffering from the third plague of Egypt, and owing to a careless use of one of that horse’s blankets the plague passed on to the horse’s rider. The woodticks which infest the woods in early spring are as omnivorous as the insects before alluded to. When once these creatures have buried their heads in your flesh they should be removed with care. If you leave their heads in, an ugly sore may be the result.

Arrived in camp, let it be your first care to see that the horses are watered, hobbled and turned into the best ‘feed’ in the neighbourhood; see that the packs are secured against rain, and that an ample supply of wood is cut for use during the night. In dealing with Indians don’t do too much for yourself, however competent and willing you may be. The majority of Indians are very apt to encourage a man willing to help himself, by allowing him to do all the work.

Give men and horses a complete rest every Sunday, and utilise part of the day for looking through and taking stock of your stores.

There is still another list of necessaries to be added to those already given, but luckily it is only a very short one. As illness may possibly visit the hunter’s camp, he must be prepared for it, and a few simple remedies for the ills most likely to befall him are worth providing.

Quinine for low fevers, aperient medicine of some kind (podophyllin pills for choice), and an ounce of laudanum in case of diarrhœa or colic, together with a few mustard plaisters, a roll of india-rubber bandaging, and some diachylon plaister for cuts, have always proved a sufficient medical outfit for any party to which I have belonged.

The quinine, if employed as a preventive measure, may be taken in three-grain doses, but in case you are too late to ward fever off double the dose.

Of laudanum twenty drops in water, when in pain or purged, is a fair dose.

But with average luck no big game hunter ever gets ill until he returns to civilisation and high feeding. Then, alas! his troubles begin.