THE MAN walked up to the convenience store counter just as I did. He hobbled a bit, and I thought, instinctively, "former distance runner" because that's what I am, and I hobble in the same way.

He wore brush-hunting trousers, and a hunting vest, and an orange bandana around his neck, and his bright eyes above crimson cheeks hinted at many years outdoors. "Aren't you John Harrigan?" he asked, sticking out a hand. "Guilty," is my standard reply, and we were soon engaged in rapid-fire visiting, for a time impeding all commerce. We moved outside into the sun, glorious color all around.

Dennis, he was, from Tuftonboro. "One of the ones without the 'ugh'," I said, part of my never-ending rant about the towns that went so gently into that not so good night during a fit of modernization several decades ago and gave up their historic names -- Tuftonborough, Hillsborough, and worst of all, Wolfeborough.

Of course I have no business being critical, because I don't live there. But still, one has to wonder. Was it to save money by reducing the number of brass letters needed for the fronts of post offices?

He was headed, on this second day of bird season, for the Jesse Young Road in Pittsburg. "Been there more than once or twice myself," I said, remembering great hunts there with the likes of David Cook and Bing Judd, the latter with whom I found what we were sure was a wolf den.

I always ask about a dog. Yes, he had a dog, a beagle, and an old one at that. "Probably his last hunt," he said. "Well, spoil him rotten," I replied.

He'd particularly relished a column, he said, on the last of the woodland caribou, seen disappearing into the fog at the end of First Lake around about 1905. Bill Aldrich was the ancient, gaunt man I'd heard the story from in the early 1970s. On the spot I did an impression of his voice, flat and monotone in the old-time way, using the verb "be" instead of "is."

He liked the one about there being no out-house at my camp. "The Indians would just grab a tree," he said, demonstrating on the outside corner of the store. "And they didn't need watches, either," he added, referring to my diatribes against any time-keepers whatsoever at camp. I shot out my wrist to reveal no watch, and he did the same.

The next question, after the dog, was whether he was staying in some camp.

No, it was a day-trip for him, which is quite a haul, Tuftonborough to Pittsburg and back, and so for two reasons I felt bad after I left him, sorry that I couldn't go with him to hunt and keep trading stories, and sorry that I couldn't take this old hunter, actually not all that much older than I am, into camp.

John Harrigan's column appears weekly in the Sunday News. His address is Box 39, Colebrook, N.H. 03576. E-mail him at hooligan@ncia.net.