Senior With a Sideline

WHERE is Turner Center, Maine? ... Why Turner Center is about seven miles from Buckville . . . thought almost everyone knew that.

Or take that time when he was bringing a party of men to one of his cabins. It was a snug camp, "bear proofed" and well stocked with provisions. He dropped his pack and unlocked the door. As he turned to pick up the pack, a large black bear, trailing soot, flour, and bits of cotton and wool burst out of the door, through the astonished group, and disappeared into the woods. The bear had scented the food, burrowed under a wall and came up beneath the stove, which he pushed over to gain entrance. Trapped in the cabin, he ate what was left of a barrel of flour and about half of a mattress. By the time that door swung open the bear was lean and mean and if the guide had walked right in as he unlocked the door he might not be around to receive a Dartmouth diploma this June.

Dort Bigg '53 has the alert, quiet eyes of the hunter and the gunwale-wide shoulders of a woodsman. He got his first deer at eleven and has shot one every year since. Dort was a Maine guide at 16 and shooting a deer each year is part of his business. ("Who wants to go with a guide who can't get himself a deer?") Dort sets out for Maine almost every weekend to guide parties of hunters and fishermen to help pay his college bills.

Like any English major, he has a lot of books in his room at home but in Dort's room there are also more than fifty firearms within reach. His family— Dort has two sisters and a brothercalls his room "the arsenal." Two of the guns are never loaned to customers. That old L. C. Smith with the 32-inch barrels and a 38-55 Winchester have helped to establish his reputation. Ask about that shotgun and he will take it down from its rack, "track" in a wide arc and, with a fine, slow smile, tell how it can reach out and drop cripples when a party of duck hunters has given up firing. The heavy bullet of the 38-55 is especially effective in Maine's dense woods where it carries through brush with little deflection. ("If you do miss with a 38-55, you can pick up a cord of wood anyway.")

Press him a little and he may tell you about eight-pound bass and the four and five-pound trout he has caught. And what about that picture over on the desk? Well, a couple of years ago when a fire hazard closed the Maine woods, Dort decided to have a crack at deep sea fishing. On his first try he landed a 760-pound tuna—that kind of luck comes in handy even when you know where the big ones are.

When the Dartmouth Players produced "The Merchant of Venice" this winter, the program didn't say that the Prince of Morocco, resplendent in black and white turban, was a registered Maine guide, Dort enjoys chess and has played in several international tournaments with Canada. He likes wrestling; his tremendous forearms (developed by milking cows) serve him in good stead as a grappler. However, his fine physique once led him into a worse spot than when he was charged by an enraged bull moose or shot at by a buckhappy hunter. One time, when he was posing for an art class in Carpenter Hall, seven or eight of his buddies slipped into the back of the room to observe "the man" at work. Reports are that his blush was magnificent—visible from head to toe.

Next year Dort will enter law school. He hopes to practice law in Maine, close to some trout streams with duck hunting nearby—not far from good deer trails and where a young lawyer might set a trapline.

Where is Turner Center, Maine? Thought almost everyone knew. Turner Center is where Dort Bigg lives.

DORT BIGG '52, Maine guide par excellence, is also a Dartmouth senior and English major.