by Gary Lee
With the continuation of early fall-like weather maybe the name of the Shoot Out should be changed to Thunder in the Forge since our temperatures are more similar to spring.
There might even be some black flies hatching.
They are forecasting sixties for the weekend in some places which will be tough on the ski areas that have made snow or have opened for the season.
The elevation is a little higher than most places, but sixty is sixty at any elevation.
My brother says the fog off Lake Champlain has been bad each morning as the temperature of the lake water and air temperature are just right.
The fog is sometimes like rain. The surface temperature of the highways is just cold enough to form ice so the sand trucks are out.
It has been freezing each morning which has kept the ice on my pond, however I did feed the trout one day when there was a little open water.
Be sure to warn your children about going out on the early ice as it changes each day; it certainly isn’t safe to walk on.
Tom Beckingham of Raquette Lake bumped into a cow moose while taking a stroll south of Eighth Lake. He got a couple pictures with his cell phone.
The Inlet hunting group who was hunting along Route 28 toward Raquette Lake may have seen the same moose by the canoe carry to Brown’s Tract Stream.
On Friday (12/4) I saw where a big bull had run down the road in the Plains by Icehouse Pond. It was snowing at the time and the tracks were fresh, so I just missed seeing him.
I also saw tracks and fresh droppings on the trail to Falls Pond during the week.
The road in the Plains is closed to vehicles for the season. It got chewed up by vehicles as the frost went out of the road on many places.
The ruts will hold water and depending what the spring weather brings it could require some extra work before it opens again.
On my last trip out I saw two snowshoe hares that looked like marshmallows on the bare ground.
Neither one stayed still enough for a camera shot but as white as they are they will surely be prey for owls.
Speaking of owls, Sue Kiesel called yesterday to tell me that while her brother was hunting ducks in the Oswego Harbor, a snowy owl picked up one of the ducks that was shot.
There have been several reports of snowys coming south already so it may be another big year to watch them.
It sure looks a lot like Christmas in Old Forge. Main Street looks very nice with all the businesses decorated and lit up at night.
I saw a picture on Facebook of the resident deer eating the fir trees in front of Old Forge Hardware.
First they eat the Hallowen pumpkins and now they’re eating the Christmas trees.
In the nearly fifty years I’ve lived here I’ve tramped around most of these woods. In my travels I’ve found remains of camps long gone.
If you look at the old USGS brown maps you will see little black dots representing camps on the ground when these maps were made.
I’ve checked out most of these spots, but there are many other camps not recorded or that were not there when these maps were made.
I went bottle hunting to many of these locations with Bill Marleau. Some were just hunting camps that were used during the fall and some were lean-tos put up by a favorite pond or lake and used during the summer when “sports,” as they were called, came to catch trout.
As indicated by the leftover bottles we found, most of these folks were drinkers.
One of the camps was the Forbes Camp down off the Rockdam Road. Folks had to walk in as there was no road at the time.
They would cross Limekiln Lake by boat and then go over the mountain across the outlet of White’s Pond about four more miles to get to their camp.
Their favorite drink was Golden Wedding which came in a gold bottle called carnival glass.
At that camp I dug up over 50 of these bottles. Most of them were broken, but I did get one good pint bottle and two quart size ones.
My trail worker at the time, Bob Dicker, made lamps out of the quart bottles…I still have the pint bottle.
The trail past their camp went on to Rockdam where Pop Lucas had a camp on the other side of the river.
Then further along, Alan Carpenter had a camp over by the outlet of Little Indian Lake.
I don’t know if back then these folks paid Gould Paper Company for the use of their land or not.
More hunting camp stories… but that’s another story. See ya.
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P.S. Feeder watchers and woods walkers are needed for the Old Forge Audubon Christmas Count on Saturday, December 19th. Anyone who would like to help can call me at (315) 357-5150.