Woodsmen's Weekend

In Orono, Me., college boys from Dartmouth, Middlebury, McGill and the University of Maine turned their backs on baseball, track, golf and tennis last week to test their manly muscle with axes, saws, paddles, casting rods and peaveys (for logrolling). It was the seventh annual Woodsmen's Weekend, and it was designed to leave any modern Paul Bunyan hot and panting.

The Woodsmen's Weekend was invented by Ross McKenney, veteran Maine guide and adviser to the Dartmouth Outing Club. Leather-lunged Guide McKenney, 61, onetime (and maybe still) champion moose caller of the U.S..-- figures that woods-manship is a better sport than conventional college athletics: "It gives a man self-confidence. When he sleeps out and cooks his own meals, he learns not to be confused when he runs into a problem." In Tall Timber. The first day's competition began with fly and bait casting for accuracy and distance. Dartmouth's powerful Noel ("Chad") Day, a New York Negro, heaved his bait plug more than 180 ft., longest (by 30 ft.) of the day.

Then the competitors tackled the tall timber, and the University of Maine's woodsmen took over the scoring leadership.

Two of them sawed through a 9 1/2in.

balsam fir log in less than ten seconds, then with ropes twitched the 16-ft. length of timber across a 100-ft. course in a total time of 34.1 seconds for a new meet record. Records began falling as fast as the timber. With Maine coeds shouting "Go! Go!" from the sidelines, Maine's lumberjacks set another record with cross-cut saws, still another in the log-chopping contest: three full cuts in 53.7 seconds.

For spectators, the most exciting event was the logrolling, which was substituted this year for fire-building (scoffs Moose Caller McKenney: "Any campfire girl can build a bonfire"). Woodsmen's logrolling is a relay event with two men handling the needle-sharp peaveys, wrestling a quarter-ton log over a soft. course. Despite Chad Day's prodigious logrolling for Dartmouth, Maine won again.

In the Lake. The final event of the day was the 600-yd. packboard relay race, with a 50-lb. sack of sand strapped to the pack-board. With Day anchoring and charging down the football field like an express train, Dartmouth won in record time (2:20.0), but Maine still held the overall team lead.

Ross McKenney's Dartmouth boys-- "the best team I ever had"--made a comeback on the final day in the canoe races.

The last event was a one-man canoe portage, a splashy spree in which a good many of the contestants got soaked. Still full of high spirits after the two-day grind, the wettest ones wound up by throwing judges, officials, girl timekeepers and handy bystanders into the lake. In the nip & tuck finish, Dartmouth beat Maine, 1,148.7 to 1,107.4. Canada's McGill, which picked up a team only one day before the contest, wound up dead last and received a standard collegiate trophy: an empty beer can.

* McKenney was hauled down out of the woods in 1912 to help open Teddy Roosevelt's third-term campaign by sounding the call of the bull moose from the Chicago convention platform.

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