Hunting in the Grant

Dart­mouth stu­dents often joke about Bait and Bul­let as part of our rus­tic ap­peal - we're so woodsy that we hunt for our own food. For those of you who've never ac­tu­ally loaded your gun for a week­end trip, I bring you the au­then­tic Bait and Bul­let ex­pe­ri­ence. This past week­end a group of Bait and Bul­let hunters and I set off for the Sec­ond Col­lege Grant in search of deer. We left Fri­day evening, dri­ving through snow that flew at our wind­shield so fast that it looked like we were going into hy­per­space Star-Wars style. We trav­eled past St. Johns­bury into Ver­mont then veered east and north through Milan and Errol, fi­nally ar­riv­ing in Went­worth Lo­ca­tion around 10pm in the deep dark­ness of the far north.

Lor­raine Turner, the gate­keeper of the Grant, waved us through, and our vans bounced along the rugged roads of the Grant. Half of our group stayed in Peaks cabin, close to the en­trance, while a few oth­ers and I jour­neyed on deeper into the Grant to Stod­dard cabin, buried in the moun­tains. We set­tled in and after fir­ing up the wood stove were in bed early, ex­cited for the hunt ahead.

 

Armed and not very dan­ger­ous: Ben Ross­man ’12, Jeff Perkins ’13, Jack Boger ’13, and Zac Ko­ufakis ‘14We rose early and headed south to link up with alumni who were stay­ing at the cen­trally lo­cated Sam’s Cabin. They would hunt Half­moon Moun­tain in the east, while I headed far­ther north to hunt into the hills with Mark Lan­caster, a club ad­viser and S&S of­fi­cer. No one saw any deer, al­though there were sev­eral moose and bear sight­ing. I un­for­tu­nately saw nei­ther al­though I en­joyed, as al­ways, the chance to be alone in the Great North Woods.

 

Mer­rill Brook cabinThat night we gath­ered in Sam’s Cabin with the alumni, most of whom hailed from the ‘50s and ‘60s, and had a won­der­ful evening filled with tales from old Dart­mouth and the days of yore in the Sec­ond Col­lege Grant. On Sun­day my four­some headed up Round Moun­tain to see if we would have any bet­ter luck. We didn’t, but saw some beau­ti­ful vis­tas as we hiked up the old log­ging roads.

 

Ben Ross­man ’12 and Jeff Perkins ’14 look up to­wards Round Moun­tain with Black Moun­tain in the dis­tanceOn the way out, we took some time to pose for a few pic­tures be­fore dri­ving out of the Grant through the north gate, past Hell­gate camp, and into the Atkin­son and Gilman­ton Acad­emy Grant. We hiked up to Finn­son’s Cliff, en­joy­ing the ex­pan­sive vis­tas down through the val­ley be­fore be­gin­ning the long jour­ney back home to Hanover, home­work, and re­al­ity.

View from Finn­son's Cliff