I love the old stories...
And now, since John, one of my Blog Readers has sent me some photos of his grandfather, Tom Salmon, I've got one I'd like to share.
One time, Tom Salmon (perhaps the very first white settler in Lake of Bays, certainly the first in the northern part!) was hunting partridge with Mr. H.P. Dwight (for whom the village of Dwight is named.)
Mr. Dwight was the president of the Great North Western Telegraph Company, from Buffalo. With his new, high powered gun, Dwight and Tommy weren't well matched. Tom was using a small, much older gun at the time.
Enter the partridge, sitting in the middle of the dirt road. Up came Dwight's gun, but Tom stopped him.
"You'll blow it all to pieces with that gun."
Dwight replied, "If you shoot at it, you wouldn't hit it." The range being, he felt, too far.
The two of them argued about the merits of each gun, and while they were at it, the partridge, no fool, headed back into the cover of the woods.
This really got Tom going -- they hunted for food in those days, and a partridge in the pot was good eating.
"All right," he said to Dwight, "you go up where that partridge was, and bend over, and I'll show you whether I could have hit it or not!"
Confident in his gun's superior range, Dwight marched up the road to the very spot -- bent over -- and jumped about fifteen feet."
(from the Ruth Martin Papers interview with Harry Salmon)
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