I found 4 books written by Presque Isle High School students in the 1980's that told stories of people, places and events in Aroostook County.  Below is a story by Ron Roope about his hunting memories.  Enjoy.

Hunting Memories  By Ron Roope

“Every year after we got the work done in the fall, we’d get ready and go hunting. We’d go for two weeks. We’d go in a high wagon and put our provisions in right along with us to last all that time. We’d take our dry beans and pork. We’d make bean hole beans right in the ground.”

Tressa McPherson, a resident of Presque Isle, has shared a great interest in hunting over the years with her husband Charles. In a recent visit with Mrs. McPherson, I asked her a few questions about some of their trips and experiences during the 1930’s.

After completing" their fall work, the McPherson would get together with some of their friends and family, and they would l go up to what is now the Northern Maine Woods and stray two weeks. I asked what their camps were like and she replied, “Tents. And we’d just go out and get some boughs. It was really nice. But at night it would get really cold—so that water would be frozen in the dipper of the water bucket. But we were just as warm as could be.”

They would cook over open fires. Beans, pancakes, bread, vegetables, and deer meat were among the foods cooked. “We would take a great big burlap bag full of vegetables. We used most of the vegetables in rabbit stems pr soups. We cooked our deermeat and other foods every way possible.” They would take enough food to last for about two weeks. “But usually we’d stay until the food was all gone.”

Deer were much more plentiful and easy to come by fifty years ago. The limit was two deer per season. The season was a month long. Usually they got their deer during the two week trip. At the game inspection station, the inspectors would always go over the deer thoroughly. “They couldn’t imagine maybe the deer were shot at night. Of course they weren’t, but they were skeptical.”

“One year we thought we were going to do something different. We went up to Squa Pan Lake and were going to camp way down the lake so they, the men, got somebody to take them in on horses. They took all of their provisions including beds and a cook stove. They were in two boats headed down the lake when the wind came up. It got too much for them. It almost swamped their boats. They have to throw their things overboard or drown. So over went all the heavy things. They saved the food but that’s all. Us women folk had gone in with someone else. We waited and waited a finally we could hear someone hollering. They have swam to shore and walked down the opposite side of the lake. We had to go get someone with boats to go and get them. Needless to say, we didn’t go down there to hunt.”

The McPhersons also did some fishing at Debuly Lake, and usually caught a fair amount of fish. They would set up their tents and camp for a while. Mrs. McPherson recalled one fishing expedition to which a friend brought a new tent.

“He took the tent up and set it up. That night we had a big thunderstorm. I can’t recall a storm any bigger than that. Anyway the tent wasn’t treated. Water passed right through it. We were like drowned rats. We had an extra canvas that we covered the other with. It was terrible.

Hunting trips have changed considerably in the last fifty years. Nowadays, people take campers and motorhomes rather than horse drawn wagons and tents into the woods. After explaining some of the changes, Mrs. McPherson concluded that she, like many others, would like to experience hunting trips the way they used to be."