The Sun

4 Remarkable Day's Hunt
Killing Five in Three Days and Starting as Many More.

Kerry's Creek, Pa., Dec. 11.—George Davidson and Harry McBride of New York and William Shimer of Jersey City, closed the hunting season in this part of northeastern Pennsylvania yesterday in splendid style. They went into the woods on Monday, in charge of the well-known local hunter, Capt. Joe Nelson. Besides this party the woods fairly bristled with the guns of other hunters. Capt. Joe chose the best hunting region around the headwaters of Little Kettle. The first day George Davidson shot a spike buck. The party also put up a large doe, and wounded it. The doe ran it to a spot where another party of hunters were driving for deer, and one of them shot it. And, disregarding the law of the woods, tried to divide it with the original starters of the game, although they had a double claim in having wounded it first as well as started it.

On Tuesday they started a turkey, and pursued it a slow walk cautiously but steadily until William Shimer killed it. The doe was a natural curiosity. Although dead, a horn three inches in length, and in velvet, projected from its left side of its head. Only one other case of this kind is remembered by old hunters here.

Yesterday Capt. Nelson again set the dogs free, after placing his guests on favorite runways. The day's sport was grand. Harry McBride had a chance for his first shot, and drew bead on a big buck that came bounding along at fair shooting distance. Harry's first barrel sent a charge into the deer's fore shoulder, but the buck kept right on up the run. As he was disappearing over the hill, he received the contents of the second barrel in his vitals. The deer was found dead in the bush a hundred yards from the spot where he was shot the second time.

Davidson and Shimer were stationed further down the creek, and the big-horn buck soon took their direction. Capt. Joe got the first shot at it, and it turned, wounded, and ran for the bed of the creek. A dozen white pines quarter of a mile further down stream, on its way Davidson and Shimer both got a shot at it, and both hit it. The slant revealed the blood in the creek, closely followed by the dogs, it plunged in the stream, with the dogs after it. They came up with it in the middle of the creek, near the spot where an old bark and basket maker, hearing the tumult made by the deer and the dogs in the water, seized his axe and ran, plunged in the creek and joined in the fight, and when the hunters came up to see the basket maker, dog, and deer all mixed up together in the water. The man had cut the deer's throat with his axe, and all came to it, its skin being disputed by the hunters on the shots, he proceeded to drag the carcass, which was now dead, out on the ground on his back of the creek. The three hunters pursued him, swam across, and overhauled the old hermit before he reached the house, with his booty. They were obliged to handle him roughly before they could obtain possession of the deer. One of the men then gave him $5 for his trouble, which appeased his wrath.

The two bucks were killed before noon, and if the visiting sportsmen had not been compelled to leave in order to reach the railroad station by 4 o'clock they might have secured two others, as two were started on the way in. The three days' hunt was one of the most exciting and successful ever enjoyed in the Pennsylvania woods.