What follows are a selection of short installments that appeared in the December 10,1914, edition of the MAINE WOODS newspaper published in Phillips. Enjoy these tidbits from the region’s past and be sure to make some great Rangeley history of your own!
(Contemporary commentary in Italics).
FLY ROD’S NOTEBOOK
St. Anthony’s Cottage, Phillips, Me.
It does not seem as if the Christmas days were almost with us, for the rain has taken all our snow except here and there a patch, and the wagons and automobiles are on the streets. A letter from a friend in Oquossoc this evening said, “Our snow has all gone, but the rain was greatly needed as the water in the lakes has not been so low for years. The hunting has been great and I send you the list of game shipped from the Oquossoc Station since my last, which is as follows and was from November 15 to December 1. It is surely a good hunting story, 52 bucks and 43 does! Of this almost 100 deer, all but 7 were shipped to the homes of Maine hunters.
(Crosby was Maine’s 1st registered guide, and promoted Maine’s outdoor sports at shows in metropolitan areas up and down the Eastern seaboard. She wrote the popular column “Fly Rod’s Notebook”, which would go on to be published in papers across the country).
(And the following short articles appeared on Page 6 beginning with the proper way to prepare raccoon)
More coons have been killed this, fall than in former seasons. The trouble with the coon is that so few cooks know how to prepare the possum for the oven. Every particle of the fat ought to be removed and then the coon should be parboiled before being stuffed with plenty of onions in the dressing. Then you will have a coon worth the eating. With the fat left on, or but partially removed, no one but an Esquimaux can eat him.
(Esquimaux is the original French word for Eskimo and although some coon hunters I have known swear that properly prepared raccoon ‘is delicious’, it shall remain untried by this diner).
The following figures regarding the bull moose lately shot in Chesterville by Everett Wells have been given out. It weighed alive about 1000 pounds. It measured 3 feet. 7 inches between the antlers and had seven points on one side and six points on the other. Length from end of nose to the hoof on the hind leg was 14 feet.
(THAT is a monster of a moose)!
BALD MOUNTAIN CAMPS BURNING
Just as we go to press this Friday at 2:30 a telephone message was received by us stating that Bald Mountain Camps were on fire. Report says the main camp, dining room and kitchen are destroyed and undoubtedly the other camps will go. This fact will be learned with great regret by the many friends and patrons of Bald Mt. Camps.
(But as we know, rebuild they did. Many of the old cabins did survive the blaze and to this day BMC remains one of the finest camps in Maine).
Two large caribou passed through Banger last week from New Brunswick, together with a couple of New Brunswick moose. They were shot by Massachusetts men. Caribou are not seen here as often as formerly.
(In fact, the last known siting of a caribou in Maine had occurred some six years earlier. Overhunting combined with the loss of old growth forests across the state, which were necessary to provide lichens for the caribou, also contributed to the decline of the species. The last native caribou was sighted on the saddle of Mt. Katahdin in 1908. It is of note that Fly Rod Crosby is credited with shooting the last legally harvested caribou in Maine in 1898. To learn more about the region’s iconic outdoor history be sure to visit the Outdoor Heritage Museum in Oquossoc when it reopens next spring).
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