Deer hunting in the Adirondacks was much different around the turn of the last century than it is today.
In the 1880s, for example, this area was largely untracked wilderness. There were only nine families living here, most of them in rough log shelters along the river below what is today called LeBeouf’s Bridge, which leads to Follensby Pond. It was common and even necessary for sportsmen to hire locals familiar with the surroundings, such as members of the Moody family as guides, and to expect that “the best thing a guide could do for a ‘sport’ was to get him in range of something to shoot.”
The guides, for their part, generally employed two methods of hunting to guarantee that expectation. One was “night hunting” or “jacklighting” in which a light was placed on the bow of a guide boat and the hunters would stealthily approach deer feeding in the marshes and along the shore of the waterways. The deer would be fascinated by the light, and once transfixed by curiosity, its eyes reflected like two laser beams. Then the guide would gently rock the boat – a signal for his client to shoot.
There is a story that on one occasion, upon such a signal, the sportsman, excited and confused, jumped out of the boat instead of firing and was promptly returned to camp in disgust by his guide. Still to be seen locally are several vintage boats with a circular hole cut into the bow deck that were used to hold the large reflector that surrounded the torchlight. Also, still in existence are the long-bladed guide boat paddles with their extra thin, knife-sharp edge that allowed the guide to more easily return the paddle for another stroke by feathering the paddle and soundlessly bringing it forward, edge first, parallel to the gunwale without lifting it from the water, which would alert unsuspecting prey.
A second method of hunting was the use of dogs to drive the deer to standers, or watchers, a technique called “hounding.” Both methods were highly effective, so effective that concerns arose that “with the advantages of numerous railroads now penetrating the Adirondacks and the many people becoming interested in hunting, the deer of the state would surely become exterminated.”
In 1899, a law was passed that for a term of years, hounding would be prohibited. In two years time, the deer increased over 50 percent, and the legislature of 1901 enacted a law that would forbid for all time the hounding of deer.
Unfortunately, the law arrived too late to save the life of a local hotelier named William Graves, who drowned while hunting deer with his dog, who turned out to be anything but man’s best friend.
Mr. Graves’ lodge, which he called “Sportsman’s Lodge,” stood on the site of the former women’s infirmary of the American Legion Mountain Camp, which is now a handsome summer home. A rough little wilderness inn was first erected there by a man named Blanchard back around 1860, and it was enlarged by a subsequent owner, Sid Jenkens. Under the ownership of Mr. Graves, it developed into quite a resort, the goal of most of the sportsmen who navigated the Saranac-Racquette-Tupper route, and a jumping-off place for the hardier adventurers who pushed on through to Mud Lake, where as my friend Paul Jamieson once put it, “the last moose was killed many times there.” (Now Lows Lake, much greater in size since A.A. Low built his two dams.) Successive owners included, “Tish” McClure and Alembert Corey, son of Jesse Corey, founder of one of the earliest hotels in the region – Rustic Lodge on Upper Saranac.
In 1894, when the Graves place was being operated by John Hatch as the Tupper Lake House, it was destroyed by fire.
The details of Mr. Graves’ death, as reported by the Plattsburgh Republican and reprinted in the Tupper Lake Free Press are as follows:
“Mr. William W. Graves, proprietor of the “Sportsman’s Lodge,” was at Horseshoe Pond with his son, watching for deer. A large buck being driven in, Mr. Graves attempted to drive it near the shore so that his son might shoot it.
“Mr. Graves had the deer by the tail, and was pounding him on the head with an oar when suddenly he turned and swam under the boat, capsizing it. The boat, being old and leaky, he could not right it, but thought he could get ashore by taking hold of the dog’s tail and being towed, but the dog, instead of swimming, would turn and get on Mr. G’s shoulders. He then tried to swim ashore, but could not reach it. The water was very cold and he was quite worn out from his tussle with the deer.
“When near the shore he told his little son he could swim no further, and bade him good-bye, telling him to bid his mother and little sisters the same, and sank to the bottom. The water where he sank is not over 10 or 12 feet deep, and very clear. His little son could see his face when he was sinking until near the bottom. Mr. Graves will be sadly missed by the sporting fraternity.”
Afterward:
Two years later in October, Verplank Calvin, superintendent of the state-authorized
topographical survey of the Adirondacks would row down the outlet of
Horseshoe Lake, enter the Bog River and row up that river to Lows Lake,
then called Mud Lake (no dams at that time). He would then carry to
and row across Graves Pond to the foot of the already named Graves
Mountain. Unlike today, this was true wilderness “by every definition
of the time, untamed and unmoderated.” In August of that year, an assistant
had placed a reflective signaling device Calvin called a stanhelio.
These were reflective sheets of tin that caught the sun. On a clear
day, they could be seen as far as 60 miles away and helped in triangulation
and barometric altitude computations.
Once on the summit, Calvin then drilled holes in the rock to hold the legs of his surveying instrument (called a transit theodolite) and cemented in a copper bolt below the plumb line of the transit. This was done on only the most important summit stations and would serve to aid future surveyors in centering their instruments. Graves Mountain was the 15th station thus established, and the drilled holes and bolt number 15 can still be found today on the southwest corner of its rocky summit.
Note: Graves Mountain is today the property of Bishop Paul Moore, who has a summer home on Lake Marion on what is known as the Otterbrook Tract, Doug Crary caretaker. The title to 7,573 acres of this tract was acquired by New York State in 1991 with certain rights reserved to Otterbrook, some of which will expire in December of 2005.