As some of you know, I've been beating the bush in Maine for a year. Last year I may have had an encounter in the fabled Moosebutt.
I've been reading 'Tall Trees, Tough Men' by Robert Pike to absorb early flavor for the Maine forest - which is huge. (Also read Thoreau's travels in the 'Maine Woods') TTTM is a history of logging in the NE with focus on Maine. Interesting to find that, way back, the English Crown grabbed the NE forests making it illegal to cut white pine for any other purpose but masts for the English fleet. Really ticked off the loggers, and may have precipitated the revolution all by itself. Very interesting book written in an old time anecdote fashion.
Considering there were loggers hitting the virgin deep woods from the 1700s onward, when there were not many people there, these 'pioneers' could have been participants in oodles of virgin BF-type encounters. But the loggers were tuff characters, and admitting to such sightings would have rendered them butt to endless humor.
The only passage that I've found is on p95 in the chapter entitled: 'The Logging Camp and its Diversions'. In explaining how men occupied their (very minimal) down time, Pike mentions that they told stories:
'For the greenhorns, the old-timers invented gruesome tales of the hodag, the side-hill elk, the high-behind, the Dungarven-whooper, the Maine guyanousa, and the lethal tree-squeak. Stories of this last horrible monster were brought out especially on stormy nights, when the mysterious noises made by the bare branches of the hardwoods wrestling protestingly with one another rendered his reality audible.'
That's the list, and I'm looking further at these names.
Comment anyone???
Full Version: Maine Woods - Tall Trees, Tuough Men
QUOTE(Dogfoot @ Jul 3 2009, 06:38 PM) 
As some of you know, I've been beating the bush in Maine for a year. Last year I may have had an encounter in the fabled Moosebutt.
I've been reading 'Tall Trees, Tough Men' by Robert Pike to absorb early flavor for the Maine forest - which is huge. (Also read Thoreau's travels in the 'Maine Woods') TTTM is a history of logging in the NE with focus on Maine. Interesting to find that, way back, the English Crown grabbed the NE forests making it illegal to cut white pine for any other purpose but masts for the English fleet. Really ticked off the loggers, and may have precipitated the revolution all by itself. Very interesting book written in an old time anecdote fashion.
Considering there were loggers hitting the virgin deep woods from the 1700s onward, when there were not many people there, these 'pioneers' could have been participants in oodles of virgin BF-type encounters. But the loggers were tuff characters, and admitting to such sightings would have rendered them butt to endless humor.
The only passage that I've found is on p95 in the chapter entitled: 'The Logging Camp and its Diversions'. In explaining how men occupied their (very minimal) down time, Pike mentions that they told stories:
'For the greenhorns, the old-timers invented gruesome tales of the hodag, the side-hill elk, the high-behind, the Dungarven-whooper, the Maine guyanousa, and the lethal tree-squeak. Stories of this last horrible monster were brought out especially on stormy nights, when the mysterious noises made by the bare branches of the hardwoods wrestling protestingly with one another rendered his reality audible.'
That's the list, and I'm looking further at these names.
Comment anyone???
I've been reading 'Tall Trees, Tough Men' by Robert Pike to absorb early flavor for the Maine forest - which is huge. (Also read Thoreau's travels in the 'Maine Woods') TTTM is a history of logging in the NE with focus on Maine. Interesting to find that, way back, the English Crown grabbed the NE forests making it illegal to cut white pine for any other purpose but masts for the English fleet. Really ticked off the loggers, and may have precipitated the revolution all by itself. Very interesting book written in an old time anecdote fashion.
Considering there were loggers hitting the virgin deep woods from the 1700s onward, when there were not many people there, these 'pioneers' could have been participants in oodles of virgin BF-type encounters. But the loggers were tuff characters, and admitting to such sightings would have rendered them butt to endless humor.
The only passage that I've found is on p95 in the chapter entitled: 'The Logging Camp and its Diversions'. In explaining how men occupied their (very minimal) down time, Pike mentions that they told stories:
'For the greenhorns, the old-timers invented gruesome tales of the hodag, the side-hill elk, the high-behind, the Dungarven-whooper, the Maine guyanousa, and the lethal tree-squeak. Stories of this last horrible monster were brought out especially on stormy nights, when the mysterious noises made by the bare branches of the hardwoods wrestling protestingly with one another rendered his reality audible.'
That's the list, and I'm looking further at these names.
Comment anyone???
just that paooma and wood devils are their local names up there far as I know. That and wet skine or slippryskin
The story of Pamola (close to paooma), name of the S peak of Ktaadn, as told in 'Katahdin' by Neff , for example, is loaded with BF imagery.
Side-hill elk's got me shakin' in my boots, let alone the "tree-squeak", but the high-behind has got to have an illustration provided by somebody like Ty on this
forum !
forum !
You can't forget the Agropelter! 
This is one "Lumberjack Monster" that I have always liked.
Could be an explanation for woodland debris hitting the lumberjacks when there was no one around to throw it. Or perhaps it was just the product of an over-active imagination, one that was recalling the stories told around the fire the previous night.
Small sasquatch in a tree? There are many reports of them tossing sticks and such at people. Who knows.
From the website:
[*typos]
This is one "Lumberjack Monster" that I have always liked.
Could be an explanation for woodland debris hitting the lumberjacks when there was no one around to throw it. Or perhaps it was just the product of an over-active imagination, one that was recalling the stories told around the fire the previous night.
Small sasquatch in a tree? There are many reports of them tossing sticks and such at people. Who knows.
From the website:
QUOTE
In lumberjack folklore, the Agropelter is a 3 foot tall hominid similar in appearance to a chimpanzee, but more slender and wiry in body. Said to live in the forested areas of the Northern United States and Canada, making there home in dead trees and resenting any intrusion into there domain. Agropelters were said to be very crafty and known to make them selves a nuisance to those who would get to close.
[*typos]
Well, I believe the wendigo legend comes from Maine. I've not read alot about it, but the little I did read, it didn't seem to be anything related to Sas. A shape-shifter if I remember correctly.
stop it your scaring me!
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