HUNTING AND FISHING

One looks for sport at a resort and it was not lacking. Mrs. Sheldon tells the following: "Having suffered so severely from fleas and being told that they bred on hogs, I announced that I should shoot the next hog that came near the store. No one paid any attention to my threat, no one thought I could hit one, if I did try. One Sunday, my husband and the saw mill man and I had been for a drive. They stopped to put the horse in the barn and I went on up to our rooms over the store. Suddenly I saw an immense razorback coming down the road toward the store and I ran in and got my pistol from the upper porch I fired at him. The two men came upstairs at about one jump, thinking probably I had killed myself but I calmly told them I had shot a hog. The saw mill man was terribly upset and said it would mean endless trouble for us, if found out, and something must be done quickly. So they ran for a shovel and one took a pitch fork and they turned the poor beast in the other direction and by prodding him with the pitch fork walked him about two blocks before he dropped dead. They buried him good and deep where he fell. There were no houses yet, no neighbors and the affair was never known." I found in Life in Florida, June 29, 1889, this fish story. (Life in Florida was a newspaper published in Lake Helen in 1889 and '90 by J. C. and F. D. Coon.) "Mrs. Kornig caught a bass in Lake Helen the other day which weighed sixteen and one half pounds. She was in a row boat only a few feet from the shore. The water was shallow, and when she was about to haul her game into the boat the hook broke and quick as a flash the plucky woman sprang from the boat into the water and rolled the monster ashore." Two of my cousins vouch for this one. A guest at the hotel baited a hook with a bream and left it in the lake in the lily pads all night. Next morning, a cat fish swam up and swallowed the bait. He was followed by a bass who grabbed him. The horns of the cat fish held the bass, which when pulled up, was found to weigh eighteen pounds. It furnished the folks at the Harlan with an excellent dinner, as well as food for talk for many days. Mr. B. H. Wright relates this adventure: "My son-in-law, N. J. Shepard, had shot a three-foot 'gator close by our boat house and came up to the house for the key and oars to go out after it. My daughter Ethel, his wife, went back to the boat with us. The 'gator was floating and was apparently dead so Mr. Shepard ran a bar under him and flipped him into the boat near the back seat where his wife was sitting. To our surprise the 'gator set about with his tail at a great rate and made for the girl. She quickly climbed upon the seat and set up an awful yelling. Finally, the 'gator arranged himself under the seat. The boat was backed up to the shore and I helped Ethel out and ran to the barn for something to tie the 'gator with and returned with a piece of heavy wire in which a noose was made and by the aid of an oar this was worked over the animal's head and one fore arm. Thus we drew him forth. His hide was removed by Mr. Russell and he was stuffed. His gatorship now adorns the Cleveland Museum of Natural History along with all the rest of the big collection of plants, shells, minerals, fossils and eggs which my father and myself had brought together from all parts of the world."

Excerpt from, The Story of DeLand and Lake Helen, Florida.

Written by, Helen Parce DeLand.