The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-04-10
yooK DAn1tNe. wooDsMAN.

LlOu OI ILS NhLnB III Ih6 IIIG LIco Ctdhe
 His Camp on Nicatous Lake Sold to
 New Workers.
 [From the Springfield Republican.l
 A tall, powerful-looking man, with a
 stoop in the shoulders, slight bend in
 the knees and a face with pleasant gray
 eyes and cheeks like winter apples
 that's "Jock" Darling of Nicatons, the
 famous Maine guide. You'd think at
 first he was Texan. He wears light
 slouch hat, his long moustache has a
 kind of cowboy droop on each side, and
 he carries around his store clothes in
 the same spirit of half-hearted conces-
 sion to an effete civilization as our western third cousins. He dropped into
 Springfield early last week on his way down to New York, to visit the various I friends he has here, and later in the l week he stopped again on the way home. He said the front muscles of his legs were as sore as boils from bump ing up stairways and plunl1ing along
 stone pavements, and he wanted to get
 up into the Maine woods again and get
 rested up. He will be back again to | New York in May to attend the sports
 mans congress in Madison Square Gar
 den, and you really ought to go down
 and hear him tell about the Maine
 woods, because there aren't six men
 alive who know so much about them l He has been travelling over the state since the time when he was first able l to drag an old flintlock into the woods
 until now that, in spite of his black l hair, he has a grandson old enough to l be a guide in the woods. During his | life he as killed one thousand moose, some fifteen hundred deer and several
 hundred caribou and bear.
 He was born on a backwoods farm thirty-five miles north of Bangor, and stayed on it only until, at the age of
 seventeen, he was able to take to the | woods. Since then he has lived entire
 ly in them, trapping, lumbering and guiding parties, until probably no man in the state is so familiar with them as he. For many years now he has made bis headquarters at Nicatous Lake In the country northeast of Bangor. But Darling is to be the guardian saint of the waters of Nicatous no longer, for he has already practically closed the sale of his property there to the Nicatous club of New York, and next summer
 proposes to fit away to the head waters
 of the Penobscot and the Aroostook, where the woods are so full of deer and caribou that they would crowd each other out into the lake If the latter weren't entirely occupied by five-pound
 trout impatiently waiting to be discov- cred by some metropolitan explorer with fly rod. It is such wilderness up there that the lakes are put down miles wrong on the map; but Jock has known about it since the time when, thirty-fve years ago, he did most of his hunting there He proposes to build camp on Grand Sabrois Lake with &C., commoda tions for, several tents on the grounds. It is a fairly easy place to get to, because a passable wood road leads out there, and he expects to pre- pare it so that he can take women boarders as well as men. You will have to go well up on the new Aroostook railroad and get off at Crystal, the ride from there to the camp being twenty five miles.
 But Jock" Darling's whole reputa- tion was not obtained as a guide. He is recognized authority on the Maine WOOuS. f1G WdS CnpbGIs Wllh OIib OphNi man, to select the stats's exhibit of game at the Worlds Fair and in the end did all the selecting himself; he writes articles to the sporting papers, and he has something to say about the making of the state game laws, or he knows the reason why. He is a warden himself, but he isn't satisfied with the present arrangement of things. He says the laws up to date have been made by lot of city chaps, who know nothing about 1t, and thinks the present force of wardens are picked out indis- crinainately from "the ruff-scuff of help his language is quite picturesque at times. These wardens go about practi- sing a system of blackmail on unfortu- nate tourists who transgress the letter of the law, and then proceed to break it's spirit into small bits themselves. MT. Darling believes in enforcing the spirit himself. He pounces down on the men who come up to wantonly destroy the game and lets alone the poor man, who takes an occasional meal of veni- son and fish out of season to keep him from starving. But at present 1t Is pretty drivelling law in many respects, he thinks, and he quotes as one in- | stance the trouble he had this winter. | The law allows you to kill game until | the last day of December, but forbids | you to transport it at all out of season. no matter when it was killed. Last | December he had a party out which | killed several caribou and deer and and when they went home, the | first of January, he attempted to get | special permission to ship it to them. | This was not allowed and after he had | lugged the game down on sledges to the | the railroad company dared | not take 1t, so they stored it all away I in barn. If you want ten deer, six caribou and a moose, you will find them up there in that barn near Crystal now. |
 However it seems probable now that a change for the better is at hand. At | the instigation of the Maine Sports mans association the legislature is now | drawing up bill which puts all the regulation of the game interests in the hands of three commissioners, who are | expected to make a radical change in the administration of the laws. The two present commissioners, who have proved themselves inefficient will both