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More "Woodcraft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the beginning of their flight. They plunged deeper into the forest; no one spoke; only the crackling under foot and certain wood sounds broke the stillness. Unfortunately the soil was soft so that their footprints might be followed by any one versed in woodcraft. At times they were forced to skirt unusually thick places, but in spite of these deviations Mr. Heatherbloom was enabled generally to keep to their course by consulting a small compass he had found in the boat. It was essential ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... old books showed the way of it! What meant old poets by their strictures? And when old poets had said their say of it, 230 How taught old painters in their pictures? We must revert to the proper channels, Workings in tapestry, paintings on panels, And gather up woodcraft's authentic traditions: Here was food for our various ambitions, 235 As on each case, exactly stated— To encourage your dog, now, the properest chirrup, Or best prayer to Saint Hubert on mounting your stirrup— We of the household took thought and debated. Blessed was ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... south. When the sun was squarely overhead, pouring down a flood of golden beams, he paused in the shade of a mighty oak, and took food from his belt. He might have eaten there in silence and obscurity, but once more the shiftless one showed a singular lack of caution and woodcraft. He drew together dry sticks, ignited a fire with flint and steel, and cooked deer meat over it. He let the fire burn high, and a thin column of dark smoke rose far up into the blue. Any savage, roaming the wilderness, ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... herdsman left Daniel much time to himself. He spent this time in studying woodcraft. He grew passionately fond of everything belonging to the wilderness; he knew birds and beasts, the trails through the forest and the course of streams as well as any Indian. He set traps of his own making, and brought his captures proudly home at ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... would only upturn, but would spare those whose strength had resisted the attack. Magnificent trees lie rotting upon the ground in thousands upon thousands, untouched since the hour when they fell before the most scientifically applied axe. I never saw a higher example of woodcraft. The trunks of pines two feet in diameter are cut so carefully, that the work of the axe is almost as neat as that of a cross-cut saw. These large trees are divided about four feet from the ground, as that is a convenient height for the woodman, and spare ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... him a certain boyishness that required her womanly care, and even induced her to offer to accompany him to the cross-roads when the time for his departure arrived. With her superior knowledge of woodcraft and the locality, she would have kept him from being lost. I wot not but that she would have protected him from bears or wolves, but chiefly, I think, from the feline fascinations of Mame Robinson and Lucy Rance, who might be lying in wait for this tender young poet. Nor ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... adepts in the art of cookery, and—one of them at least—in woodcraft, it was not long before a large fire was blazing under a convenient fir-tree, and the grey goose soon hissed pleasantly in front of it. They were a quiet and self-contained couple, however, and went about their work in profound silence. Not that they lacked ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... might as well have lain flat under the peeled wand like the others," I thought, and then the reason for its position flashed on me. It was with just a touch of vanity I said to my friend, "A little coueging may be of some use at woodcraft too, if it sharpens Elrigmore's wits enough to read the signs that Barbreck's eagle eye can find nothing in. I could tell the very ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... was his first visit to the colony since he had left it four months before. His companion, Boduoc, was one of the tribesmen, a young man six years his senior. He was related to his mother, and had been his companion in his childish days, teaching him woodcraft, and to throw the javelin and use the sword. Together, before Beric went as hostage, they had wandered through the forest and hunted the wolf and wild boar, and at that time Boduoc had stood in the relation of an elder brother ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... possession of by colossal legs and feet. This singular deformity made him the best hunter in his tribe. He tracked game with a sweep of great beams as tireless as the tread of a modern steamer. The little sense in his head was woodcraft. He thought of nothing ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... surpassed even the seasoned savages in strength and endurance. On the shore of the Georgian Bay, however, his guide at length abandoned him. But Brebeuf had been here in a former year, and his instinctive woodcraft guided him twenty miles through the forest to the palisaded village ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... idle while talking. The canoe was soon made fast, and then they resumed their hunt for the estray. They were not skillful enough in woodcraft to trace the animal through the forest by the means that an Indian would have used, but they were hopeful that by taking a general direction they would soon find her. If she still had the bell tied around her neck, there was no ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... good. We shall find methods of making you talk. You have been among the Indians and you ought to know something about these methods. But first I must lecture you on your lack of woodcraft. It is exceedingly unwise to build a fire in the wilderness and go to sleep beside it, unless there is someone with you to watch. I'm ashamed of you, Monsieur Garay, to have neglected such an elementary lesson. It made your capture easy, so ridiculously easy that it lacked ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the Wandering Jew. The contents—of this sack would have furnished a modern industrial exhibition, provisions cooked and raw, blankets, maple-sugar, tinware, clothing, pork, Indian meal, flour, coffee, tea, &c. Phelps was the ideal guide: he knew every foot of the pathless forest; he knew all woodcraft, all the signs of the weather, or, what is the same thing, how to make a Delphic prediction about it. He was fisherman and hunter, and had been the comrade of sportsmen and explorers; and his enthusiasm for the beauty and sublimity of the region, and for its ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... active and armed tail; and his face would have straightway been transformed into a sort of anguished pincushion, stuck full of piercing, finely barbed quills. He would have paid dear for his ignorance of woodcraft,—perhaps with the loss of an eye, or even with starvation from a quill working through into his gullet. But fortunately for him the ewe understood the peculiarities of porcupines. Just in time she noted his danger, and rudely butted him ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... who escaped unharmed to Fort Littleton. When James was sixteen years of age he served with his brother William on Forbes's campaign, and very likely saw further service during that war. In 1772, when he had attained wide celebrity on the border as an adept in woodcraft, he helped William settle on Ten Mile Creek, a tributary of the Monongahela; and in 1773 he and several other explored Kentucky, returning home by way of Greenbrier River. We have seen (p. 152, note) that he was surveying the site of Harrodsburg in 1774, when warned by Boone and Stoner. Retiring ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... all his consummate woodcraft into play to determine how much time had passed since the party rode over this ground. He figured that it must have been on the previous day, though such conclusion did not fully accord with what was told him by the chieftain Amokeat. ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... with her house building and her hunting, to which was added an occasional spice of excitement contributed by roving lions. To the woodcraft that she had learned from Tarzan, that master of the art, was added a considerable store of practical experience derived from her own past adventures in the jungle and the long months with Obergatz, nor was any day now lacking in some added store of useful knowledge. To these facts was attributable ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and vigour under Foreman Johnston's strict and energetic management. He was admirably suited for his difficult position. His grave, reserved manner rendered impossible that familiarity which is so apt to breed contempt, while his thorough mastery of all the secrets of woodcraft, his great physical strength, and his absolute fearlessness in the face of any peril, combined to make him a fit master for the strangely-assorted half-hundred of men now under his sole control. Frank held him in profound respect, and would have endured almost anything ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... are exquisite in their refinement, and yet robust in their appreciation of some of the rougher phases of woodcraft. "This is a book full of delight. An additional charm lies in Mr. Bull's faithful and graphic illustrations, which in fashion all their own tell the story of the wild life, illuminating and supplementing the pen pictures of ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... Sometimes they took long walks together on the mountains. This was contrary to mountain etiquette, but they were remote even from the rude conventionalities of the life below them. They even went hunting together, and Easter had the joy of a child when she discovered her superiority to Clayton in woodcraft and in the use of a rifle. If he could tell her the names of plants and flowers they found, and how they were akin, she could show him where they grew. If he could teach her a little more about animals and their habits than she already knew, he had ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... is given by Bennet Woodcraft in his Sketch of the Origin and Progress of Steam Navigation, ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... her teens, half the young bloods of the neighbourhood were courting around Uncle Johnnie's house. But none of them ever made any headway, for Uncle Johnnie clung to his one ewe lamb with almost childish dependence, and guarded her with all the wiles of his lifelong woodcraft. ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... same manes?" asked Mickey, who was gradually accumulating a wonderful faith in the woodcraft ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... others, Malachi and the rest with him halted, that Henry and Percival might come up with them, and then, after they had recovered their breath a little, he said, "Now, you see there's a fine lot of deer here, Master Percival, but as you know nothing about woodcraft, and may put us all out, observe what I say to you. The animals are not only cute of hearing and seeing, but they are more cute of smell, and they can scent a man a mile off if the wind blows down to them; so you see it would ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... was half fearful, and therefore some of her inherent woodcraft deserted her, so much so that not noting a tuft of ferns which uprose almost at her heels, she stepped quickly back, stumbled, and Fawkes had his arms ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... behind him; for the fat scout never so much as dreamed that there was such a thing as covering his trail; nor would he have known of any reason for doing anything like this had he been so far up in woodcraft. ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... towards the point where Lachine lay. All that went to make the life of a Company's man possible was there; and there, too, were those with whom I had tented and travelled for three long months,—eaten with them, cared for them, used for them all the woodcraft that I knew. I could not think that it would be a young man's lifetime before I set eyes on that scene again. Never from that day to this have I seen the broad, sweet river where I spent the three ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the touch of romance. When he first found Fenimore Cooper's books, he drank them in as one parched might drink at a spring. He reveled in the tales of courage and heroic deeds, he gloated over records of their trailing and scouting by red man and white; he gloried in their woodcraft, and lived it all in imagination, secretly blaming the writer, a little, for praising without describing it so it could be followed. "Some day," he said, "I shall put it all down for other boys ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... Heaven's blue vault for a canopy, let us forget the petty annoyances which have in a measure marred our first day. Did I say marred? No; not that—for these things should be but object lessons teaching us to profit by them, to perfect ourselves in woodcraft. So let us be ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... last that was said about trailing the Wild Hunter for some time to come, but meanwhile we built a more or less open faced permanent camp and Big Pete initiated me into mysteries of real woodcraft, for it was up to us now to live on the ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... presented it to Wyat. Several large leafy branches being gathered and laid upon the ground, the hart was placed upon them, and Herne commenced breaking him up, as the process of dismembering the deer is termed in the language of woodcraft. His first step was to cut off the animal's head, which he performed by a single blow with ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... in view he crossed over to the Nelson {46} and ascended it until he reached a high clearing on its left bank, near which grew an abundance of white spruce. He brought up a body of men, most of whom now received their first lesson in woodcraft. The pale and flaky-barked aromatic spruce trees were felled and stripped of their branches. Next, the logs were 'snaked' into the open, where the dwellings were to be erected, and hewed into proper shape. These timbers were then deftly fitted together and the four walls of a rude ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... was Old Bill, the hunter, who had done little besides hunting and trapping all his long life; even these did not begin to know the beasts and birds as little Luke knew them. Before the Finding of the Magic Flower, he had thought them marvels of woodcraft and fieldcraft. Now they seemed to him almost blind ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... stall-feeding. Clara sat by listening, and perceived that Will Belton would soon be allowed to do just what he pleased with the place. Her father talked as she had not heard him talk since her poor brother's death, and was quite animated on the subject of woodcraft. 'We don't know much about timber down where I am,' said Will, 'just because ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... the other boat, was also using his knowledge of woodcraft to some purpose. When it happened that the two skiffs came alongside he called out to Elmer, as if to settle some point he ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... might have been made from willow bark "after the manner of the Indians," and describe other means of securing food that they claim men familiar with woodcraft would have resorted to. The preceding chapters show how impracticable it would have been for us to have consumed our small stock of provisions while manufacturing a fish-net from bark; and how we did resort ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... young man was an apt scholar, was now the order of the day. Tiburcio was an artist in woodcraft as well as in his knowledge of the habits of animals and birds. On chilly or disagreeable days they would take out the pack of dogs and beat the thickets for the javeline. It was exciting sport to bring to bay a drove of these animals. ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... was a marvellous piece of woodcraft, if such it may be called, on the part of the pony, that he should have struck the spot so accurately, and yet it is scarcely less marvellous that, had he needed direction, his master was competent to give it, despite the ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... stipulated that they should travel light—with only a pack burro to carry their supplies—and that they should avoid the haunts of the summer resorters, and keep to the more unfrequented trails. The novelist's acquaintance with the country into which they would go, and his experience in woodcraft—gained upon many like expeditions in the lonely wilds he loved—would make a guide unnecessary. It would be a new experience for Aaron King; and, as the novelist talked, he found himself eager as a schoolboy for the trip; while the distant mountains, ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... to know them well. That great copper-ruffed cock was becoming famous up and down the valley. During the Gunner Moon many a one had tried to end his splendid life, just as a worthless wretch of old sought fame by burning the Ephesian wonder of the world. But Redruff was deep in woodcraft. He knew just where to hide, and when to rise on silent wing, and when to squat till overstepped, then rise on thunder wing within a yard to shield himself at once behind some ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... refused to ponder in the present. She was doing it, and the physical act had its fascination. Her ears, attuned to all the sounds of the lonely forest, caught them and arranged them according to her knowledge of woodcraft. ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... that these who walked by faith likewise gathered themselves into great companies, and each company followed some leader. Some of these leaders had the gift of woodcraft, and saw clearly into the very nature of things. But some were only headstrong, and these proved to be but blind leaders ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... and the girl were plainly glad to hurry away, and Geoffrey waited until the sound of their footsteps became scarcely audible before he heeded a faint rustling which indicated that somebody with a knowledge of woodcraft was forcing a passage through the undergrowth. He broke a dry twig at intervals as he walked slowly for a little distance. Then he dropped on hands and knees to cross a strip of open sward at an angle to his previous course, and lay still in the black shadow of a spruce. It was evident that somebody ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... other game, and shared the profits arising from their hunting and trapping. What with the knowledge they thus picked up themselves, and the instruction given them by Peter Piper and others, there were no two boys in Connecticut better versed in woodcraft. ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... Indian youth, whom he had driven from his door when he asked for shelter, and he knew he had been the companion of his boy on the stirring journey from Kentucky to Louisiana. It mattered not that the masterful woodcraft of the dusky friend had saved the life of Otto Relstaub; all that the German remembered was that the valuable horse was lost, and he blamed this Indian for it, as he censured Jack Carleton for the same misfortune. The man, however, said nothing for ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... indispensable. Tom O'Hara turned ranger from pure love for the wild, adventurous life; and, despite the natural defects to which we have referred, possessed accomplishments that rendered him a most valuable ally and companion. He never had met his superior with the rifle, and his knowledge of woodcraft was such that, although he had spent ten years on the border, his slowness of foot had never operated against him; nor once had he been outwitted by the red-men of the woods. Besides this, he had the enviable reputation of being a lucky ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... become a part Of his own life—always he spoke their tongue, He dwelt within their tents—with all his heart He learned their ancient woodcraft, and each art Their race had practised when the ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... to clearing a space for corn and potatoes. In the meantime he maintained his family entirely by his rifle, and I soon found him to be a first-rate huntsman. Under his tutelage I received my first effective lessons in 'woodcraft.' ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... out his knife he fell to work, and while he tied green withes, as if the task were father to the thought, he told her something of a sojourn among the Indians, of whom he had learned much concerning their woodcraft, arts, and superstitions; lengthening the legend till the little canoe was ready for another launch. With her fancy full of war-trails and wampum, Sylvia followed to the river-side, and as they floated back dabbled her stained fingers in the water, comforting their smart with its cool flow till ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... But he knew that, when last he looked, the track of the herd had been straight down the middle of the ever-widening barren. By now he must be a good two miles from the nearest cover; and he knew well enough that, in the bewilderment of the storm, which blunted even such woodcraft as his, and blurred not only his vision, but every other sense as well, he could never find his way. His only hope was to keep to the trail of the caribou. The beasts would either lie down or circle to ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... a few seconds or a minute, depending upon skill and other conditions, a fire was obtained. It is interesting to note how civilized man is often compelled by necessity to adopt the methods of primitive beings. The rubbing of sticks is an emergency measure of the master of woodcraft at the present time, and the production of fire in this manner is the proud accomplishment or ambition of ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... cradled in woodcraft, had heard plainly a man creeping through the underbrush beside us. Fear of the Congo chief and pity for the wretch tore at my heart. Suddenly there loomed in front of us, on the path, a great, naked man. We stood with useless limbs, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... not less, but more authority, and has called in new instructors to carry on the boy's education: real Adirondack guides—old Sam Dunning and one-eyed Enos, the last and laziest of the Saranac Indians. Better men will be discovered for later trips, but none more amusing, and none whose woodcraft seems more wonderful than that of this queerly matched team, as they make the first camp in a pelting rain-storm on the shore of Big Clear Pond. The pitching of the tents is a lesson in architecture, the building of the camp-fire a victory over damp nature, and the ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... semi-civilised peoples. A Mexican peon will not miss his way on the plains or in the mountains—the least indication will serve his recollection of the route, and, indeed, it is not necessary to enlarge upon the aborigine's natural science of woodcraft. Moreover, the peon will carry any delicate object—a theodolite or barometer, or other scientific instrument, for example—with such care over the roughest and most precipitous places that it will never be injured, and where ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... woodsman," she argued, "and also he must suppose that we are more or less familiar with American woodcraft, and fairly well versed in its signs. Yet—he has left no sign that we could understand where a Hun ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... must be borne in mind, however, in recalling the two expeditions. In the former Jack and Otto were the actors, but now the hunters were Jack and Deerfoot, and therein lay all the difference in the world. Well aware of the wonderful woodcraft of the young warrior, his courage and devotion to his friends, the parent had little if any misgivings, when she kissed her boy good-by, and saw him enter the wilderness in the company of the ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... centers around the making and the enjoying of a mountain camp, spiced with the fun of a lively troop of Girl Scouts. The charm of living in the woods, of learning woodcraft of all sorts, of adventuring into the unknown, combine to make a busy and an exciting ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... breech-loading rifle, and insisted on shooting an old-fashioned, muzzle-loading, single-barrel rifle, made by a fellow townsman, Henry Slaughterbach. It was an exceedingly accurate and powerful shooting gun. Chauvin was a thorough hunter, well versed in woodcraft, up in camp equipage and the requirements of men on a two or three ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... Max," remarked Steve; "wish I knew as much as you do about traveling through the woods, and the things a fellow is apt to meet up with there. The more I hear you tell, the more I make up my mind I'm going to take lessons in woodcraft; but I never seem ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... things a boy ought to know. While Mark's knowledge was of books, games, people, and places that seemed to Frank almost like foreign countries, he knew the names of every wild animal, bird, fish, tree, and flower to be found in the surrounding country, and was skilled in all tricks of woodcraft. ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... as the oaks ye cleave, And moved as soon to fear and flight, Men of the glade and forest! leave Your woodcraft for the field of fight. The arms that wield the axe must pour An iron tempest on the foe; His serried ranks shall reel before The arm that lays the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... from the tenderfoot class in the shortest possible space of time. Any scout may do this by being diligent in the pursuit of various lines of woodcraft. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... untrodden woods and leafy aisles, whose floors of moss or bark were undisturbed by human footprint, were a keen delight and novelty. More than this, his quick eye, trained perceptions, and frontier knowledge now stood him in good stead. His intuitive sense of distance, instincts of woodcraft, and his unerring detection of those signs, landmarks, and guideposts of nature, undistinguishable to aught but birds and beasts and some children, were now of the greatest service to his less favored companion. In this part of their strange pilgrimage it was the boy who took ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... proceeded to a picturesque point which jutted into the lake below Chazy Landing, and was sheltered by a grove of trees into which we hauled the Mayeta. Bodfish's woodcraft enabled him to construct a wigwam out of rails and rubber blankets, where we quietly resided until Monday morning. The owner of the point, Mr. Trombly, invited us to dinner on Sunday, and exhibited samples of a ton of maple sugar ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... with my scout hat. It wasn't so black when I got it all cleaned off. It was kind of chocolate color and I knew it must be very old, because cedar turns that color after a long time. You learn that in Woodcraft. It was all made out of one piece and the place where you sit was just hollowed out—about big enough for ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... between the hills, where they had been the other day, but this time no one waited, with breaking heart, behind the rustling screen of leaves. Against the rock, with some simple woodcraft of stones and dry twigs, Alden made a fire, while Edith spread the white cloth that covered Madame's basket and set ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... their lives; indeed, the Wetzels, particularly, knew no other occupation. They had attained a wonderful skill with the rifle; long practice had rendered their senses as acute as those of the fox. Skilled in every variety of woodcraft, with lynx eyes ever on the alert for detecting a trail, or the curling smoke of some camp fire, or the minutest sign of an enemy, these men stole onward through the forest with the cautious but dogged and persistent determination that ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... that I did not proceed without precautions. Youth though I was, I was an old hunter, and had some knowledge of "woodcraft," gathered in deerstalking, and in the pursuit of other game, among my native hills. Moreover, my nine months of New-world life had not all been passed within city walls; and I had already become initiated into many of the mysteries ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... the northwest were not formidable in numbers, but they were terrible in their ferocity, their knowledge of woodcraft, and their cunning strategy. General Harrison says that for a decade prior to the treaty of Greenville, the allied tribes could not at any time have brought into the field over three thousand warriors. This statement is corroborated ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... sight of the church and had turned down the gentian path without meeting any one. He knew enough of woodcraft to break a branch here and turn a stone there to mark his way. The gentians were found, and some had been picked, but Jane answered none of his shouts. He returned the same way until ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... acquainted with the country that he guided us by a short route towards the camping ground, stealing along between the bushes and trees so quietly and rapidly that, with all my knowledge of woodcraft, I had difficulty in following him and keeping close to his heels. At length we saw the reflection of a camp fire, and then we grew more cautious in our movements, frequently stopping for a few minutes to listen if we could hear other sounds besides our footsteps. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... men were children of the sea, superstitious, firm believers in omens, and witchcraft, ready to see the ghosts of the slain, all the more so because they were stained with every crime, then committed so freely under the black flag. He had many advantages, too. He was a master of woodcraft, only their wilderness was ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... face again, crawling forward with extreme caution. Dalton, close behind him, imitated his comrade. The high grass merely rippled as they passed and the anxious Northern officers walking back and forth were not well enough versed in woodcraft to read from any sign that an ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... single outcry in the forest that sounded like the shriek of a creature seized by a carnivore. That was not nearby. He tried to make plans. He felt bitterly self-reproachful that he knew so few of the things that would be useful to a castaway. But he had been a city man all his life. Woodcraft was not only out of his experience—on overcrowded Earth it would ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... true account, and if it was wrong—" Esther didn't answer; she gave Charles the halfpenny; he went out, and in a few minutes came back with the paper in his hand. "Tornado first, Ben Jonson second, Woodcraft third," he read out. "That's a good thing for the guv'nor. There was very few what backed Tornado.... He's ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... pheasants that provided a little modest November sport. And Helbeck, tying the pony to a tree, went up now with Laura to walk round the woods, showing in all his comments and calculations a great deal of shrewd woodcraft and beastcraft, enough to prove at any rate that the Esau of his race—feras consumere nati, to borrow the emendation of Mr. Fielding—had not yet been wholly cast out by the Jacob of a ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was colder by this time and light flurries of snow kept blinding her eyes as she hurried along. However, she had not so forgotten her training in woodcraft as not to recognize signs of Betty's having preceded her along almost the same route; for here and there, where the earth had thawed in the midday warmth, there were impressions of the Princess' shoes. And she even picked up a small crushed handkerchief which had ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World • Margaret Vandercook
... concernment yet unpublished therein. I think I will never read any but the commonest books,—the Bible, Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, and Milton. Then we are impatient of so public a life and planet, and run hither and thither for nooks and secrets. The imagination delights in the woodcraft of Indians, trappers, and bee-hunters. We fancy that we are strangers, and not so intimately domesticated in the planet as the wild man and the wild beast and bird. But the exclusion reaches them also; reaches ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... her pace. Her nerves were steadying. Strangely her control was wonderful. There was no real fear in her—only tension. Now as she ran down the open way her eyes were alert for every landmark, and her woodcraft was sufficiently practised to stand her in good stead. She recognized each feature in the path until she came to the point where she had first entered it In a moment she was battling her way through the thick bush, and the tension she was laboring under took her through ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... and towering head and shoulders above them all stands the mighty figure of Daniel Boone, the most famous of American pioneers. About him cluster legends and tales innumerable, some true, many false; but one thing is certain; for boldness, cunning and knowledge of woodcraft and Indian warfare ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... took the office of guide upon himself, naturally, as the most experienced in woodcraft, and for a mile or two led with confidence; but at length the darkness became intense, and the ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... man was a master of his own especial art, had done most of their work in cities, and when it came to matters of the fields and woods they were not to be trusted. But when David found Roger a little inclined to vaunt his superior woodcraft he set him a ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... only served him in the open, in the breaks in the deep woodlands he must thread. For the rest his woodcraft, even his instinct, must serve him. A general line of direction was in his mind. On that alone he must seriously depend. His difficulties were tremendous. They must have been insurmountable for a man of lesser capacity. But the realization of difficulty was a sense he seemed to lack. It was sufficient ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... as was Jack, he had been thoroughly trained in woodcraft. When beyond sight of the cabins of the straggling settlement, where he made his home, he was as watchful and alert as Daniel Boone or Simon Kenton himself. His penetrating gray eyes not only scanned the sinuous path, ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... expedition, and excelled on those points in which the other was deficient; for he had been ten years in the interior, in the service of the Northwest Company, and valued himself on his knowledge of "woodcraft," and the strategy of Indian trade and Indian warfare. He had a frame seasoned to toils and hardships; a spirit not to be intimidated, and was reputed to be a "remarkable shot;" which of itself was sufficient to give ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... you, sir. If you are a man who has some woodcraft in your make-up, I say yes. It would ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... gathered about him, "but you're all good stuff. You have a chance most Boy Scouts don't get. You were all born in the big North Woods. You have inherited instincts that can't be driven into a boy with teaching. You don't have to be taught trailing, or woodcraft, except maybe for an organized way of handling them. You can open old trails as a good turn to the public. You can patrol the woods, report forest fires, and you can fight forest fires, too, as I hear you have been doing. I hear, ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... arrival of the messenger was worth more than the emerald ring to us at that moment. He had more woodcraft than Kaipi, who had spent most of his time upon the ocean, and his information regarding the direction in which Leith was now heading saved us many ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... the mountain slopes, and had come to a standstill in a place which the boy pretended not to know his way out of. Westover doubted him, for he had found that Jeff liked to give himself credit for woodcraft by discovering an escape from ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... avoid encounter with the inhabitants of the forest. They lit no fires at night, and scarce a word was spoken on the march. Several times they had to take refuge in thickets when they heard the sound of approaching voices, and it needed all their knowledge of woodcraft to maintain their direction steadily towards the north. At last, after six days' journey, they issued out into the open country beyond the forest and ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... Daughters of Rebecca, Knights of Columbus, Knights of Pythias, Ladies of the Maccabees, Loyal Order of Moose, Masonic Orders, Modern Woodmen of America, Royal Neighbors, U. A. O. Druids, Woodmen of the World, Women of Woodcraft. There are four lodge buildings maintained by the Elks, Masons, Odd Fellows and Woodmen of ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... in camp that summer, Dick was Tom Sherwood's only rival for the leadership. Already the Otters had held informal discussions of Dick's and Tom's qualifications, but it was still uncertain which of the two would be elected. Each was popular and had a good record in woodcraft, athletics, and scout games. Another question was: Who would be chosen for leader of the Wolf patrol, in the absence of Hugh Hardin and his ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... in the wooded districts of the country of the cave men, for a boy of nine to go a mile from home alone. There was danger lurking in every rod and rood, and, naturally, such a boy would not be versed in all woodcraft, nor have the necessary strength of arm for a long arboreal journey, swinging himself along beneath the intermingling branches of close-standing trees. So this departure was, for Ab, a venture something out of the common. But he was strong for his age, and traversed rapidly a considerable distance ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... sir," replied the mediciner; "would you have me, who know little save of chamber practice, be as skilful of woodcraft as your noble self, or tell hart from hind, doe from roe, in a glade at midnight? I misdoubted me little when I saw the figure run past us to the smith's habitation in the wynd, habited like a morrice dancer; ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... when suddenly they were greeted with the screeches of eighty Iroquois, [ 1 ] who sprang up from their lurking- places, and showered bullets and arrows upon the advancing French. The emergency called, not for chivalry, but for woodcraft; and Maisonneuve ordered his men to take shelter, like their assailants, behind trees. They stood their ground resolutely for a long time; but the Iroquois pressed them close, three of their number were killed, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... of Atreus, Menelaus, slew Scamandrius, son of Strophius, sportsman keen, In woodcraft skilful; for his practis'd hand Had by Diana's self been taught to slay Each beast of chase the mountain forest holds. But nought avail'd him then the Archer-Queen Diana's counsels, nor his boasted art Of distant aim; for ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... friend, and played with his blond beard and long silken mustache, and took other liberties,—as the helpless are apt to do. And when he had built a fire against a tree, and had shown them other mysteries of woodcraft, their admiration knew no bounds. At the close of two such foolish, idle, happy hours he found himself lying at the feet of the schoolmistress, gazing dreamily in her face as she sat upon the sloping hillside weaving wreaths of laurel and syringa, in very much the same ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... was filled with her house building and her hunting, to which was added an occasional spice of excitement contributed by roving lions. To the woodcraft that she had learned from Tarzan, that master of the art, was added a considerable store of practical experience derived from her own past adventures in the jungle and the long months with Obergatz, nor was any day now lacking in some added store of ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... settlement I, Noel Campbell, was looked upon as a leader simply because my uncle was the most influential Whig in the vicinity, and my particular friend and comrade was Jacob Sitz, son of Peter, a lad who could easily best us all in trials of strength or of woodcraft. ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... farther brought me to the end of all tokens of travel. The track had dwindled to less and less, and now had dropped to the bouldery bed of a canon stream, from which no woodcraft of mine, nor of my good trail-wise horse, could perceive that it made an exit. If the trail continued, it must follow the bed of the stream. At any rate, here was water, the first requisite for a camp; I decided to go on for a while, but to ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... took them down to the lagoon, and made them into amphibians. He taught them more than I ever knew of the habits of fish and the ways of catching them. In the bush it was the same thing. At seven, Tom knew more woodcraft than I ever dreamed existed. At six, Mary went over the Sliding Rock without a quiver, and I have seen strong men balk at that feat. And when Frank had just turned six he could bring up shillings from the bottom ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... story which centers around the making and the enjoying of a mountain camp, spiced with the fun of a lively troop of Girl Scouts. The charm of living in the woods, of learning woodcraft of all sorts, of adventuring into the unknown, combine to make a busy and an exciting summer ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... smoothly in the house on the knoll above the fat fen pastures. Jehan forsook his woodcraft for the work of byre and furrow and sheepfold, and the yield of his lands grew under his wardenship. He brought heavy French cattle to improve the little native breed, and made a garden of fruit trees where once had been only bent and sedge. The thralls wrought cheerfully for him, for he was a kindly ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... noticed more and more what the sun had done that day. Was it nervousness, or fear? Surely he could find the trail, even though it was almost obliterated! But he wished that it had been Mukoki or Wabigoon who had discovered it, either of whom, with the woodcraft instinct born in them, would have gone to it as easily as a fox to the end of a strong trail hidden in autumn leaves. If he did fail—He shuddered, even as he ran, as he thought of the fate that awaited Minnetaki. A few hours before he had been one of the happiest youths in the world. Wabi's ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... us forget the petty annoyances which have in a measure marred our first day. Did I say marred? No; not that—for these things should be but object lessons teaching us to profit by them, to perfect ourselves in woodcraft. So let us be ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... piece of woodcraft, if such it may be called, on the part of the pony, that he should have struck the spot so accurately, and yet it is scarcely less marvellous that, had he needed direction, his master was competent to give it, despite the ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... associated with Mr. Hunt in the expedition, and excelled on those points in which the other was deficient; for he had been ten years in the interior, in the service of the Northwest Company, and valued himself on his knowledge of "woodcraft," and the strategy of Indian trade and Indian warfare. He had a frame seasoned to toils and hardships; a spirit not to be intimidated, and was reputed to be a "remarkable shot;" which of itself was sufficient to give ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... of these is given by Bennet Woodcraft in his Sketch of the Origin and Progress of Steam Navigation, ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... a delightful walk through the woods, Mr. Kavanagh going with us on horseback. Every hill and clump of trees on this large domain he knows, and he led us like a master of woodcraft through all manner of leafy byways to the finest points of view. The Barrow flows past Borris, making pictures at every turn, and the banks on both sides are densely and beautifully wooded. We came in one ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... a great heap of green branches, and strewn them on the ground, laid the hart upon them, on his back, and then bore him to an open space in the wood, where he was broken up by the King, who prided himself upon his skill in all matters of woodcraft. While this office was in course of execution a bowl of wine was poured out for the monarch, which he took, adverting, as he did so, to the common superstition, that if a huntsman should break up a deer without drinking, the venison would putrefy. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... kindness to the children, she had smiled upon him. He was a hunter of no mean repute in that region, and was famous for his skill in following shy and scarce game. He had resolved to bring the principles of his woodcraft to bear upon Mildred, and to make his future approaches so cautiously as not to alarm her in the least; therefore he won the children's favor more thoroughly than ever, but not in an officious way. He found ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... devoted many hours to his young visitor. He told him much about woodcraft, and how Nature protected some of her weakest creatures against their foes by giving them the shape and colour of their surroundings. The little brown twig on the bough before them, he pointed out, was in reality a Caterpillar which Birds would have devoured long since if he ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... have been made from willow bark "after the manner of the Indians," and describe other means of securing food that they claim men familiar with woodcraft would have resorted to. The preceding chapters show how impracticable it would have been for us to have consumed our small stock of provisions while manufacturing a fish-net from bark; and how we did resort to every method at our command of procuring food. Unfortunately we fell upon a year ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... squarely overhead, pouring down a flood of golden beams, he paused in the shade of a mighty oak, and took food from his belt. He might have eaten there in silence and obscurity, but once more the shiftless one showed a singular lack of caution and woodcraft. He drew together dry sticks, ignited a fire with flint and steel, and cooked deer meat over it. He let the fire burn high, and a thin column of dark smoke rose far up into the blue. Any savage, roaming the wilderness, might see it, but the shiftless ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... children of the sea, superstitious, firm believers in omens, and witchcraft, ready to see the ghosts of the slain, all the more so because they were stained with every crime, then committed so freely under the black flag. He had many advantages, too. He was a master of woodcraft, only their wilderness was ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in woodcraft, had heard plainly a man creeping through the underbrush beside us. Fear of the Congo chief and pity for the wretch tore at my heart. Suddenly there loomed in front of us, on the path, a great, naked man. We stood with ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Feather more cautious and skilful. Thoroughly trained in woodcraft, and an adept in all the cunning of his people, he used those gifts with success, and, though he approached close to the party of Sioux which were hurrying away from the vengeance of the white men, they never suspected the fact, ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
... as a duck or a floating leaf, and, after practising various kinds of philosophy, had concluded commonly, by the time I arrived, that he belonged to the ancient sect of Coenobites. There was one older man, an excellent fisher and skilled in all kinds of woodcraft, who was pleased to look upon my house as a building erected for the convenience of fishermen; and I was equally pleased when he sat in my doorway to arrange his lines. Once in a while we sat together on the pond, he at one end of the boat, and I at the other; but not many words passed between ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... him. They carry their own provisions and those for the beast, now and then dismounting to lead the horse over difficult ground, and now and then blazing a tree to help them in their return journey—mute testimony to the cruder senses of the white man to whom woodcraft never becomes instinctive. The fact that this couple possesses a horse presages great changes in New England. Ferries will be established; tolls levied, bridges thrown across the streams which now the horses swim, or cross by having their ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... and perceived that Will Belton would soon be allowed to do just what he pleased with the place. Her father talked as she had not heard him talk since her poor brother's death, and was quite animated on the subject of woodcraft. 'We don't know much about timber down where I am,' said Will, 'just because we've got ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... were courting around Uncle Johnnie's house. But none of them ever made any headway, for Uncle Johnnie clung to his one ewe lamb with almost childish dependence, and guarded her with all the wiles of his lifelong woodcraft. ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... woodcraft. They learned the names and habits of wild animals. They could find their way alone through dense forests; and they could see farther and hear better than ...
— Two Indian Children of Long Ago • Frances Taylor
... beyond all possibility of pursuit. But this adventure taught Crockett that he might not enjoy such good luck the next time. Another Indian might be armed with a rifle, and Crockett, self-confident as he was, could not pretend to be wiser in woodcraft than were ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... his first visit to the colony since he had left it four months before. His companion, Boduoc, was one of the tribesmen, a young man six years his senior. He was related to his mother, and had been his companion in his childish days, teaching him woodcraft, and to throw the javelin and use the sword. Together, before Beric went as hostage, they had wandered through the forest and hunted the wolf and wild boar, and at that time Boduoc had stood in the relation of an elder brother to Beric. That relation ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... it be, Lord," said Lord Richard. Therewith he called to him a squire, and said: "Go thou down into the thorpe, and bring hither Christopher, for that a great lord is here who would set him to do a deed of woodcraft, such as is more than the ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... contents—of this sack would have furnished a modern industrial exhibition, provisions cooked and raw, blankets, maple-sugar, tinware, clothing, pork, Indian meal, flour, coffee, tea, &c. Phelps was the ideal guide: he knew every foot of the pathless forest; he knew all woodcraft, all the signs of the weather, or, what is the same thing, how to make a Delphic prediction about it. He was fisherman and hunter, and had been the comrade of sportsmen and explorers; and his enthusiasm for the beauty and sublimity of the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... ready for us always, at our coming, when we chose to linger by the way. These boatmen were all jolly, good-natured and pleasant people, with a vast deal of practical sense, and a valuable experience in woodcraft, albeit they were rough and unpolished. Their hearts were in the right place, and they commanded our respect always for their kindness and attention to our wants, while they maintained at all times that sturdy independence ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... came to pass that these who walked by faith likewise gathered themselves into great companies, and each company followed some leader. Some of these leaders had the gift of woodcraft, and saw clearly into the very nature of things. But some were only headstrong, and these proved to be but blind leaders of ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... down the drive she discoursed on woodcraft, glancing sharply at the trees. Forestry—she said-like building, and all other pursuits which required, faith and patient industry, was a lost art in this second-hand age. She had made Barbara's grandfather practise it, so that at Catton (her country place) and even at Ravensham, the trees ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... is a good, active, able-bodied boy, possessed of average intelligence and rather more than average zeal. He even had theory of a sort, for he had read various "Boy Campers, or the Trapper's Guide," "How to Camp Out," "The Science of Woodcraft," and other able works. He certainly had ideas enough and confidence enough. I ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... thought to its conclusion, a procedure which, as I afterward discovered, was to cause me anxious moments. "Walden" made him thoughtful, but he caught its purpose and understood its meaning. "Rolf in the Woods" made his eyes bright with the purpose of achievement in woodcraft and a desire (which I suppressed) to stalk and kill a deer. But "Treasure Island" touched some deeper chord in his nature than either of the other books had done. He followed Jim and the Squire and John Silver in the ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... contrary to mountain etiquette, but they were remote even from the rude conventionalities of the life below them. They even went hunting together, and Easter had the joy of a child when she discovered her superiority to Clayton in woodcraft and in the use of a rifle. If he could tell her the names of plants and flowers they found, and how they were akin, she could show him where they grew. If he could teach her a little more about animals and their habits than she already knew, he had always to follow her in the search for ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... convicted, nor even brought to a trial. It had been impossible to catch him and impossible to prove anything against him. At last the head forester, who had a secret reverence for his extraordinary powers of endurance and unrivalled skill in woodcraft, had made terms with him and employed him as a sort of supernumerary upon the government establishment. From that day, Wastei, who would have waged war to the death with all regular foresters, had surrendered at discretion to the kindness shown him, and had given up poaching for ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... from pure love for the wild, adventurous life; and, despite the natural defects to which we have referred, possessed accomplishments that rendered him a most valuable ally and companion. He never had met his superior with the rifle, and his knowledge of woodcraft was such that, although he had spent ten years on the border, his slowness of foot had never operated against him; nor once had he been outwitted by the red-men of the woods. Besides this, he had the enviable reputation ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... in brown?' said Mrs. Bywank doubtfully, as her young charge was arraying herself one morning for the woodcraft. Some rain and some matters of business had delayed the occasion, and it was a good ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... all good stuff. You have a chance most Boy Scouts don't get. You were all born in the big North Woods. You have inherited instincts that can't be driven into a boy with teaching. You don't have to be taught trailing, or woodcraft, except maybe for an organized way of handling them. You can open old trails as a good turn to the public. You can patrol the woods, report forest fires, and you can fight forest fires, too, as I hear you have been doing. I hear, too, that the Municipal Board picked this ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... better than to look upon a tripping herd of deer, even when he could not tickle their ribs with a clothyard shaft. Accordingly, quitting the path, he went peeping this way and that through the underbrush, spying now here and now there, with all the wiles of a master of woodcraft, and of one who had more than once donned a doublet ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... instant shock, she remembered what mission had brought him back, and what was his peril; and he, too, for whom the happiness of the moment had swallowed up other things, came back to a recognition of facts. Dropping into the old woodcraft, he melted out of sight into the shadow, thrusting the girl behind him, and crouched against the fence, throwing the rifle forward, and peering into the shadows. As he stood there, balancing the gun once more in his hands, old instincts began to stir, old battle hunger to rise, and old ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... peon will not miss his way on the plains or in the mountains—the least indication will serve his recollection of the route, and, indeed, it is not necessary to enlarge upon the aborigine's natural science of woodcraft. Moreover, the peon will carry any delicate object—a theodolite or barometer, or other scientific instrument, for example—with such care over the roughest and most precipitous places that it will never be injured, and where in similar situations, the clumsy European or American would inevitably ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... aid of his dog, but in hunting the honey-bee one must be his own dog, and track his game through an element in which it leaves no trail. It is a task for a sharp, quick eye, and may test the resources of the best woodcraft. One autumn, when I devoted much time to this pursuit, as the best means of getting at nature and the open-air exhilaration, my eye became so trained that bees were nearly as easy to it as birds. I saw and heard bees wherever I went. One day, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... him on a plane of intimate equality, and Peter struggled each day to live up a little more to the responsibility of this intimacy and confidence. Instinct, together with human training, taught him woodcraft until in many ways he was more clever than his master. And along with this Jolly Roger slowly but surely impressed upon him the difference between wanton slaughter and ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... of age, a man of giant frame and iron muscles, possessed of great powers of endurance, a master of all the arts of woodcraft, and one of the most skilful riflemen in the Western wilds. Keen on the trail, swift of foot, and valorous in action as were the Indian braves, there was no warrior of the tribe the equal in these particulars of the practised ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... of wood. In the course of a few seconds or a minute, depending upon skill and other conditions, a fire was obtained. It is interesting to note how civilized man is often compelled by necessity to adopt the methods of primitive beings. The rubbing of sticks is an emergency measure of the master of woodcraft at the present time, and the production of fire in this manner is the proud accomplishment or ambition of ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... books showed the way of it! What meant old poets by their strictures? And when old poets had said their say of it, 230 How taught old painters in their pictures? We must revert to the proper channels, Workings in tapestry, paintings on panels, And gather up woodcraft's authentic traditions: Here was food for our various ambitions, As on each case, exactly stated— To encourage your dog, now, the properest chirrup Or best prayer to Saint Hubert on mounting your stirrup— We of the household took thought and debated. Blessed was he whose back ached ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... a wonderful illustration of the popular fallacy in woodcraft that moss is always found on the north side of the trees. Here the moss is mainly on the west. The fact is the moss is generally found on the side from which the rain-storms come, and here they are mainly from the south ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... ourselves that together we made rather a good hunting team. We were fairly well versed in woodcraft and could slip along stealthily. I possessed an Indian sense of direction that had never yet failed me. To be sure we had much to learn about deer stalking. But I had never hunted with any man whose ears were as quick as R.C.'s. ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... fair gentlemen, that here to land are come? All thirteen of body very keen. By him that made me, so fair a band saw I at no time; say what ye seek?" Horn tells his story, and Aylmar likes him, and bids Athelbrus, his steward, teach him woodcraft, and the harp and song, and also ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... with commendable steadiness and vigour under Foreman Johnston's strict and energetic management. He was admirably suited for his difficult position. His grave, reserved manner rendered impossible that familiarity which is so apt to breed contempt, while his thorough mastery of all the secrets of woodcraft, his great physical strength, and his absolute fearlessness in the face of any peril, combined to make him a fit master for the strangely-assorted half-hundred of men now under his sole control. Frank held him in profound respect, and would have endured almost anything ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... many followers, who have produced much pleasant literature on out-door {462} life. But in none of them is there that unique combination of the poet, the naturalist and the mystic which gives his page its wild original flavor. He had the woodcraft of a hunter and the eye of a botanist, but his imagination did not stop short with the fact. The sound of a tree falling in the Maine woods was to him "as though a door had shut somewhere in the damp and shaggy wilderness." ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... use in persisting in the attempt, I gave it up. We could find no other way down to the shore, besides the one up which we had come. Having cleared away some impediments, we had less difficulty in returning than we had found in going upwards. Macco led; indeed, his knowledge of woodcraft in his native country was of great service to us, for I believe without him we should very easily have lost our way, even though we had left the marks of our knives on the creepers as we went up. As we were ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... and this brings us to the greatest of all aids for the procuring of specimens—I mean the shot-gun and rifle. So much of success depends upon being a clever marksman, and also upon having a good general knowledge of woodcraft, that although for instructions in guns and shooting I refer the reader to Col. Hawker, Daniel, Blaine, "Stonehenge," Folkard, Greener, "Wildfowler," and many others, yet a few words on some peculiar, and in some cases well-known, ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... anything unusual at first, as he had not heard the third rifle-shot; but Noah Webster and the half-breed, who were much better accustomed to woodcraft—having had their senses sharpened by dangers which seamen never have to encounter—were alive at once to the ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... who had had long practice in the use of a hatchet when she lived with the Hoovers, cut off a strip of bark on a tree at the meeting point of the two trails, so that it formed a plain and unmistakable guide to anyone who knew anything at all of woodcraft. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... every physical weakness or defect; but deceived, moreover, by the rapid development of frame and sinew, which flattered him into the belief that discipline sufficiently unsparing would harden him into an athlete, he slighted the precautions of a more reasonable woodcraft, tired old foresters with long marches, stopped neither for heat nor for rain, and slept on the earth without blankets." The result was that his intense energy carried him beyond his strength, and while his muscles strengthened and hardened, his sensitive nervous organization ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... reached the grass threw himself almost flat on his face again, crawling forward with extreme caution. Dalton, close behind him, imitated his comrade. The high grass merely rippled as they passed and the anxious Northern officers walking back and forth were not well enough versed in woodcraft to read from any sign that ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Amy continued slowly, "that the mountains might not seem so kind to one who was lost in them—without a gun perhaps. I have heard Will say that a person who had no knowledge of woodcraft would find it almost impossible to recover his path, once he had lost it. And," she added, with a shudder, her eyes fixed steadily on the distant mountain range, "there are wild animals ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... accustomed to the native's skill in woodcraft, as she was, gazed after him, astonished by the magic of his disappearance, and, at first, piqued not a little by his scanty courtesy. Then realizing that the mountaineer was, possibly, quite justified in feeling grave suspicions of the stranger who was with her—of any ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... they should travel light—with only a pack burro to carry their supplies—and that they should avoid the haunts of the summer resorters, and keep to the more unfrequented trails. The novelist's acquaintance with the country into which they would go, and his experience in woodcraft—gained upon many like expeditions in the lonely wilds he loved—would make a guide unnecessary. It would be a new experience for Aaron King; and, as the novelist talked, he found himself eager as ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... animal life of his domain, and the birds and fish. He must have a good working knowledge of rocks, soils, and streams, and of the methods of making roads, trails, and bridges. He should be an expert in woodcraft, able to travel the forest safely and surely by day or by night. It is essential that he should have a knowledge of the theory and the practice of lumbering, and he should know something about lumber markets and the value of lumber, about surveying and map making, and many other matters ...
— The Training of a Forester • Gifford Pinchot
... the son of a French army officer. Besides Canadian French, he could speak the Pottowattomie Indian dialect, and had some knowledge of woodcraft and nature signs. In his calling of fur trader he made friends with the Miamis and their chief, Little Turtle, and when the War of 1812 broke out, offered the services of the tribe to Gen. Hull, as well as his own. The offers were declined, so the flouted Miamis transferred their allegiance ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... him were filled with rebels, and the question was, in which direction should he turn to avoid them? After some hesitation, he determined to go as directly through the woods, toward the river, as possible, and, if discovered, trust to his woodcraft and swiftness of foot to save him. With this determination, he shouldered his rifle and walked rapidly on, taking care, however, to keep a good look-out on all sides, and to make as little noise as possible. All ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... see him crawl through a thimbleberry bush (very quietly so that the cariboo won't hear the noise of the prickles going into him), then through a bee's nest, gently and slowly, so that the cariboo will not take fright when the bees are stinging him. Sheer woodcraft! Yes, mark him. Mark him any way you like. Go up behind him and paint a blue cross on the seat of his pants as he crawls. He'll never notice. He thinks he's a hunting dog. Yet this is the man who laughs at his little son of ten for crawling round under the dining-room table ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... boys?" asked Doris innocently, betraying the fact that she was more interested in the boys than in learning woodcraft. ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... sultry afternoon. Creeping out upon an overhanging branch the anthropoid dropped to the ground within the boma. He approached the sleeper upon padded feet which gave forth no sound, and with an uncanny woodcraft that rustled not a leaf or ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... own men and several of the mountaineers whom I had asked to remain, and together we went to the hidden ravine which I knew. We found the place empty; but there were unmistakable signs that a party of men had been encamped there for several days. Some of our men, who were skilled in woodcraft and in signs generally, agreed that there must have been some twenty of them. As they could not find any trail either coming to or going from the place, they came to the conclusion that they must have come separately from different directions and gathered there, and that they must have departed ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... cooked his breakfast he made a minute examination of the ground beneath the East wall, but the earth was hard, and a broken branch or two might have been caused by his horse. He had no skill in woodcraft, and in the broad day his alarm seemed almost absurd. Some free horse on the range had probably wandered into the vicinity of the cabin, and had made off again on a trot. Nevertheless, he made up his mind not to remain over another night, but to look about ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of difference was found when comparing the molds of each animal, and then Mr. Gilroy had to tell how he did it. Of course, the scouts laughed mirthlessly, for they were thinking of how those Grey Fox boys would jeer at their woodcraft. But Julie now brought out in front, the hand which had ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... was a master of his own especial art, had done most of their work in cities, and when it came to matters of the fields and woods they were not to be trusted. But when David found Roger a little inclined to vaunt his superior woodcraft he set ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... beginning of their flight. They plunged deeper into the forest; no one spoke; only the crackling under foot and certain wood sounds broke the stillness. Unfortunately the soil was soft so that their footprints might be followed by any one versed in woodcraft. At times they were forced to skirt unusually thick places, but in spite of these deviations Mr. Heatherbloom was enabled generally to keep to their course by consulting a small compass he had found in the boat. It was essential to maintain as straight ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the tenderfoot class in the shortest possible space of time. Any scout may do this by being diligent in the pursuit of various lines of woodcraft. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... trees for an acre or two around, preparatory to clearing a space for corn and potatoes. In the meantime he maintained his family entirely by his rifle, and I soon found him to be a first-rate huntsman. Under his tutelage I received my first effective lessons in 'woodcraft.' ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... out to the white rim of horizon. He took her very seriously. "It's the highest profession of all, of course. Let's think. I've begun on it already, oddly enough. And yet, you know, it's not odd. Nothing is after our experiences.... We will teach. Woodcraft, weathercraft, husbandry, beast-craft, sky-craft. I can do that much for them. Lit., hum., Greek, Latin, English, Dante. History, shadowy; geography, practical. Tinkering, carpentering, planting. No mathematics; I can't add two ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... summer camp in the Adirondack woods, and Tom enters heart and soul into the work of making possible to other boys the opportunities in woodcraft and adventure of which he himself has ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... very good thing for him to be so," said Martin. "If I may advise, let the boy come and go. The old man has taken a fancy to him, and will teach him his woodcraft. It's as well to make a ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... woods and leafy aisles, whose floors of moss or bark were undisturbed by human footprint, were a keen delight and novelty. More than this, his quick eye, trained perceptions, and frontier knowledge now stood him in good stead. His intuitive sense of distance, instincts of woodcraft, and his unerring detection of those signs, landmarks, and guideposts of nature, undistinguishable to aught but birds and beasts and some children, were now of the greatest service to his less favored companion. In this part of their strange pilgrimage it was the boy who took the lead. ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... the rising generation, but the incorporating into the nurture of our youth of the things that were the nurture of the Indian youth; that are a large part of the nurture of the Alaskan Indian youth to-day? And the camp-fire clubs and woodcraft associations and the whole trend to the life of the open recognise that the Indian had developed a technique of wilderness life deserving of preservation for its value to the white man. While as for the Esquimaux, the author never sees the extraordinary prevalence ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... beneficial effect on the mind, and the actual pleasure of riding and killing a boar is doubly enhanced by the knowledge that he has been found by the fair and sporting exercise of one's own bump of 'woodcraft.' The sharpness of intellect which we are wont to associate with the detective is nothing more than the result of training that inductive reasoning, which is almost innate in the savage. To the child of the ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... the red men made the words between the fugitives few, and all their movements guarded. They kept glancing to right and left, in front and to the rear, Linna being probably the most active. It was as if she inherited from her parents their surprising woodcraft, and was now calling it into play for the benefit ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... by doing both." There are many, many fine riders in England who will not be denied in crossing a stiff country, and who at the same time are interested in the hounds and in the poetry of sport: men to whom the mysteries of scent and of woodcraft, as well as the breeding and management of hounds, are something more than a mere name: men who in after days recall with pleasure "how in glancing over the pack they have been gratified by the shining coat, the sparkling eye—sure symptoms of fitness for the fight;—how when thrown ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... habits of bird, beast, and Indian. He guides the travellers through the wilderness, and, by his superior knowledge, saves them from the Indian ambush and the pursuing savage. They commit themselves implicitly to his guidance, trust their lives to him. Why? Because they confide in his knowledge of woodcraft and in his fidelity. As regards all matters pertaining to the forest, he is an authority; their teacher if they want information, their guide if they are ignorant of the way, their saviour in imminent peril from savage ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... yet unpublished therein. I think I will never read any but the commonest books,—the Bible, Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, and Milton. Then we are impatient of so public a life and planet, and run hither and thither for nooks and secrets. The imagination delights in the woodcraft of Indians, trappers, and bee-hunters. We fancy that we are strangers, and not so intimately domesticated in the planet as the wild man and the wild beast and bird. But the exclusion reaches them also; reaches the climbing, flying, gliding, feathered ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... but she need have had no such fears. Matlack and Martin cooked and waited with a skill and deftness which would have surprised any one who did not reflect that this was as much their business as hunting or woodcraft. ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... who, as a schoolboy, has read a word of Fenimore Cooper or Ballantyne, nobody who feels the fascination of a good detective story, or who understands a little of the pleasures of woodcraft, could fail to be attracted by these games, or, for that matter, by the playing of ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell
... in less than a week after he unpacked his trunk. But it was very soon discovered by the bright-eyed little gangsters of the best circles that he wasn't going to be an easy one to disable. Naturally when a man has fought 'em off to his age he has learned much of woodcraft and the hunter's cunning wiles, and this one had sure developed timber sense. He beat 'em at their own game for three months by the simple old device of not playing any favourite for one single minute, and very, very seldom getting ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... boys and girls followed, silent as ghosts, their training in woodcraft standing them in good stead. For an instant, they stood in a tense, excited group on shore, Mrs. ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... impression. What do you say, Jerry?" and Frank turned to the chum on whose knowledge of woodcraft he felt ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... about for tracks, but he could find nothing save a confusion of trampled grasses in the close vicinity, and his woodcraft was too meager for the translation ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... rare, particularly in the wooded districts of the country of the cave men, for a boy of nine to go a mile from home alone. There was danger lurking in every rod and rood, and, naturally, such a boy would not be versed in all woodcraft, nor have the necessary strength of arm for a long arboreal journey, swinging himself along beneath the intermingling branches of close-standing trees. So this departure was, for Ab, a venture something out of the common. But he ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... multiplication of slaughter I liked the single best; I had more of the sense of woodcraft with it. When we consider how helpless a partridge is, for instance, before the fierce blow of shot, it does seem fairer that the gunner should have but one chance at the bird. Partridges at least might be kept for single-barrels: ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... about following the Mexicans into the forest, but all of the Texans were expert in woodcraft, and thought they could keep out of an ambuscade as well in the woods ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... were backwoodsmen and hunters by profession, Quackenboss a splendid shot, Le Blanc a regular voyageur, and the others more or less skilled in woodcraft, all were greenhorns in the opinion of the trappers. To be otherwise a man must have starved upon a "sage-prairie"—"run" buffalo by the Yellowstone or Platte—fought "Injun," and shot Indian—have well-nigh lost scalp or ears—spent a winter in ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... Knight laughed exultantly. "Here is a pupil who never brings me shame!" he cried. "Be it lore—of chivalry or heraldry or woodcraft or what you will, I can always turn to Mary. Many a man can she put to ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... will be well. I need a forester, and it is plain that you are a master of woodcraft. Let it be so. Yet I must tell you one thing fairly, and that is, that I am what you would call a heathen. I know that you are a good Christian man, for I saw you sign your holy sign before you ate last night and this morning. Yet I do ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... Littleton. When James was sixteen years of age he served with his brother William on Forbes's campaign, and very likely saw further service during that war. In 1772, when he had attained wide celebrity on the border as an adept in woodcraft, he helped William settle on Ten Mile Creek, a tributary of the Monongahela; and in 1773 he and several other explored Kentucky, returning home by way of Greenbrier River. We have seen (p. 152, note) that he was surveying the site of Harrodsburg in 1774, when warned by Boone and Stoner. Retiring ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... Bardic rules in early Britain enjoined three simple colours: sky blue, the emblem of peace, for the bard and poet; green, for the master of natural history and woodcraft; spotless white (the symbol of holiness), for the ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... shoulders above them all stands the mighty figure of Daniel Boone, the most famous of American pioneers. About him cluster legends and tales innumerable, some true, many false; but one thing is certain; for boldness, cunning and knowledge of woodcraft and Indian warfare he had ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... not know the forest as you do, Colonel de Courcelles, but I have with me masters of woodcraft, Mr. Lennox and Mr. Willet, with whom you're ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... growing, growing, growing. Now he was ten, now twelve, now fourteen—a sturdy young mountaineer, with the sinews of an athlete, and a store of learning, not from books, for he had never known a school, but from the simple teaching of his parents and the unlimited knowledge of woodcraft, of the habits of wild things, of mountain peaks, of plants, of animals, insects and birds, and of the incessant hunt for food that must always be when one lives beyond the pale of ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... greeted their coming. Though no tongue could give them any tidings of the lost one, kind and sympathetic hearts were there for comfort, with willing hands and swift feet for help. Among the latter were several hunters, cunning in woodcraft, who could follow a trail, whether of man or beast, the livelong day; and over ground where nothing might be distinguished by the inexperienced eye but grass or leaves, ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... the meadow. I would not eat supper and I would not work. Finally I called Simon. He was a strange, quiet man, not as strong as the others of the crew, but of use to me for his knowledge of woodcraft. As a boy he had been held captive by the Mohawks, and he was almost as deft of hand and eye ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... had taken my place beside the king, and because his woodcraft was greater than mine, though I was first in that in all our land. And I feared that he would take the land the king offered him, for I longed ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... black hair, and her deep black eyes, she had every characteristic of Caucasian descent. The motherless lad was reared by his grandmother and an uncle in the wilds of Manitoba, where he learned thoroughly, the best of the ancient folk lore, religion and woodcraft of his people. Thirty years of civilization have not dimmed his joy in the life of the wilderness nor caused him to forget his love and sympathy for the primitive people and the animal friends, who were the intimates ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... suddenly into loud life, with galloping of hoofs, crackling of brushwood, and the short, sharp cries of the hunters. Close behind the pack rode a fourrier and a yeoman-pricker, whooping on the laggards and encouraging the leaders, in the shrill half-French jargon which was the language of venery and woodcraft. Alleyne was still gazing after them, listening to the loud "Hyke-a-Bayard! Hyke-a-Pomers! Hyke-a-Lebryt!" with which they called upon their favorite hounds, when a group of horsemen crashed out through the underwood ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in his throat. All the wild blood in him was alive and leaping. He even felt a certain exultation in the situation, one that would have appalled an ordinary scout and stalker, but which drew from him only supreme courage and utmost mastery in woodcraft. He felt within him the supreme certainty that he would succeed, and bending away from the sentinel he resumed ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... I like him; for he has taught me all that I know of woodcraft, and I'm certain that if you and I both leave him he'll be sure to return to the new settlement at the south end of Ontario, and you know what the end of that ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... cleft between the hills, where they had been the other day, but this time no one waited, with breaking heart, behind the rustling screen of leaves. Against the rock, with some simple woodcraft of stones and dry twigs, Alden made a fire, while Edith spread the white cloth that covered Madame's basket and set ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... meat supply from the saddle, as one might say,—but to enjoy the finer savor of seeing deer, you should start out definitely with that object in view. Thus you have opportunity for the display of a certain finer woodcraft. You must know where the objects of your search are likely to be found, and that depends on the time of year, the time of days their age, their sex, a hundred little things. When the bucks carry antlers in the velvet, they ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... served an apprenticeship of twenty years in the wilds, beginning as a mere lad. He himself, when barely fifteen, had felt the call in his blood, and gone out on the trail with Peter Rainy, a devoted Indian of his father's. Peter was still with him, but now as body-servant, and not as instructor in woodcraft. ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... the most thrilling passion of their lives; indeed, the Wetzels, particularly, knew no other occupation. They had attained a wonderful skill with the rifle; long practice had rendered their senses as acute as those of the fox. Skilled in every variety of woodcraft, with lynx eyes ever on the alert for detecting a trail, or the curling smoke of some camp fire, or the minutest sign of an enemy, these men stole onward through the forest with the cautious but dogged and persistent determination that ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... a feature of Champlain's policy that from time to time French youths should spend the winter with the Indians—hunting with them, living in their settlements, exploring their country, and learning their language. Of Frenchmen thus trained to woodcraft during Champlain's lifetime the most notable were Etienne Brule, Nicolas Vignau, Nicolas {98} Marsolet, and Jean Nicolet. Unfortunately the three first did not leave an unclouded record. Brule, after becoming a most accomplished guide, turned traitor and aided the English ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... people, harvested the sap of the maples in spring, and the nut crop of the fall. Later, as we wanted more, we trapped for skins, and collected herbs for the drug stores. This opened to me a field I was peculiarly fitted to enter. I knew woodcraft instinctively, I had the location of every herb, root, bark, and seed that will endure my climate; I had the determination to stick to my job, the right books to assist me, and my mother's invincible will power to uphold ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... blood run faster and fingers twitch on rifle-stock. It came from the gloom of the tamaracks. After it there fell a deeper silence than before, and the owl, like a noiseless snowflake, drifted out over the frozen lake. After a few moments it came again, more faintly than before. One versed in woodcraft would have slunk deeper into the rim of blackness, and listened, and wondered, and watched; for in the sound he would have recognized the wild, half-conquered note of a wounded beast's suffering ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... candles freely and was able but never brilliant in his work that year, owing, as all who knew him agreed, to great modesty and small confidence. He was a kindly, big-hearted fellow, and had wit and a knowledge of animals and of woodcraft that made him excellent company. That schoolboy diary has been of great service to all with a wish to understand him. On a faded leaf in the old book one may read ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... resisted the attack. Magnificent trees lie rotting upon the ground in thousands upon thousands, untouched since the hour when they fell before the most scientifically applied axe. I never saw a higher example of woodcraft. The trunks of pines two feet in diameter are cut so carefully, that the work of the axe is almost as neat as that of a cross-cut saw. These large trees are divided about four feet from the ground, as that is a convenient height for the woodman, and spare his back from ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... one of the unexpected levels on the mountain slopes, and had come to a standstill in a place which the boy pretended not to know his way out of. Westover doubted him, for he had found that Jeff liked to give himself credit for woodcraft by discovering an escape from the depths ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... red men in council made their medicine and learned of their redder gods whether or no they should take the warpath when the sap pulsed the trees into leaf. Even the children at their play acknowledged the red-skinned schoolmaster, for their chief games were a training in his woodcraft and in the use of his weapons. Tomahawk-throwing was a favorite sport because of its gruesome practical purposes. The boys must learn to gauge the tomahawk's revolutions by the distance of the throw so as to bury the blade ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... to break his way through the woods, crossing sharp and deep ravines and watercourses, with no path or landmark to guide him. It was especially difficult for the artillery, and that they got through at all proved that the officers and men were experts in woodcraft. The regiment at Martin's store remained there as an outpost during ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... were ten in number, and were all taken from among the archers. Most of these men had been accustomed to the chase, were skilled in woodcraft, and accustomed to listen to the slightest noises that might tell of the movement of a stag and enable them to judge his position. Sir Eustace, for the present, posted himself in his old position over the gate. Jean Bouvard and Guy were with him, while Long Tom moved round and round the walls ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... but one single outcry in the forest that sounded like the shriek of a creature seized by a carnivore. That was not nearby. He tried to make plans. He felt bitterly self-reproachful that he knew so few of the things that would be useful to a castaway. But he had been a city man all his life. Woodcraft was not only out of his experience—on overcrowded Earth it would have been ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... or the Blind Heart. Beauchampe, [sequel to Charlemont]. Helen Halsey. Castle Dismal. Count Julian. Wigwam and Cabin. Katharine Walton. Golden Christmas. Forayers. Maroon, and other Tales. Utah. Woodcraft. Marie de Berniere. Father Abbott. Scout, [first called Kinsmen.] Charlemont. Cassique of Kiawah. Vasconselos, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... children had become a part Of his own life—always he spoke their tongue, He dwelt within their tents—with all his heart He learned their ancient woodcraft, and each art Their race had practised ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... washing it off with my scout jacket, then I bailed the little dug out part out with my scout hat. It wasn't so black when I got it all cleaned off. It was kind of chocolate color and I knew it must be very old, because cedar turns that color after a long time. You learn that in Woodcraft. It was all made out of one piece and the place where you sit was just hollowed out—about big ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the other; "but borrowing trouble, and then figuring out how you're going to meet it if it comes to you in good earnest, is mighty good woodcraft." ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... and fifteen miles a day for one hundred and twenty days meant a journey of eighteen hundred miles! But they were not dismayed; for by this time they had come to have unlimited confidence in themselves. They were daily becoming more learned in woodcraft, being now able to traverse at least three miles of forest in the time that it had originally taken them to travel one mile; familiarity had caused them to lose completely their original dread of wild animals and noxious reptiles and insects; and as for Indians and Spaniards—well, they believed ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... them were feeling more or less interest in the man who walked with a cane. Perhaps this arose from the fact that of late they had become enthusiastic over everything connected with woodcraft. And the fact that Mr. Henderson was acquainted with a thousand secrets about the interesting things to be discovered in the Great Outdoors appealed ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... forest the Cowardly Lion took the lead. There was no path here for men, but many beasts had made paths of their own which only the eyes of the Lion, practiced in woodcraft, could discern. So he stalked ahead and wound his way in and out, the others following in single file, Glinda being next ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... left lying there in the valley, beside a little brook, where he had killed it. Like a flash, Finn wheeled and gave chase; but the fox disdained even to drop his prize, and, by reason rather of his superior woodcraft, and his knowledge of every leaf and twig in that country-side, than of his fleetness, Reynard was the winner of the long race ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... bravado, she was half fearful, and therefore some of her inherent woodcraft deserted her, so much so that not noting a tuft of ferns which uprose almost at her heels, she stepped quickly back, stumbled, and Fawkes had his arms about ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... if you do, Edward; not because I want the money back, but because then I shall be more easy in my mind about you all, if any thing happens to me. As soon as you are perfect in your woodcraft, I shall take Humphrey in hand, for there is nothing like having two strings to your bow. To-morrow we will not go out: we have meat enough for three weeks or more; and now the frost has set in, it will keep well. You shall practice at a mark with your ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
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