NOTES ON LOONS. 



109 



into the water and started to run for the 

 shore, dragging the fish after him. The sur- 

 prise seemed to be mutual for Rex did not 

 at first resent this unsportsmanlike method 

 of landing a " rainbow " trout. He soon 

 recovered himself and made a royal resist- 

 ance. 



Then the leader broke and John, turn- 

 ing around, saw the fish floundering in about 

 6 inches of water. Bounding forward the 

 boy threw himself on his stomach in the 

 water, covering the trout; and then he 

 clawed and fought, wildly throwing up mud 

 and grass and water in his frantic endeavor 

 to land the fish. At last he succeeded in 

 getting him safe on the shore, and then he 

 danced and whooped in wild delight. 



Forgetting his rod and bag of fish, John 

 grasped Rex in his arms and started on a 

 run for town. Before he reached the village 

 store he and his capture were the chief at- 

 tractions of the town. 



Various estimates had been made of the 

 weight of the big fish, ranging from 5 to 12 

 pounds. When he was put into the scales 

 he weighed exactly 8 pounds 5 ounces, and 

 measured 25^4 inches. 



The depot agent sent the fish to Denver, 

 where he was mounted and to-day he may be 

 seen in the office window of the Denver and 

 Rio Grande railroad, where he serves to ad- 

 vertise the Chama fishing grounds and to 

 illustrate the strange vicissitudes in the life 

 of a king. 



NOTES ON LOONS. 



J. H. HICKS. 



As I have 5 loons to my credit I will tell 

 a few of my experiences with the great 

 Northern diver. My first close acquaint- 

 ance with him was some years ago when a 

 French Canadian hunter, Francois Ayotte, 

 caught one alive in a net in Lake Muska- 

 longe. Ayotte, failing to sell the bird, de- 

 cided to kill it for its pelt and tried choking. 

 Ten minutes' throat squeezing brought no 

 results. Dislocation of the neck finally killed 

 it. I shot my first loon on Lake Muska- 

 longe, about 80 miles North of Montreal. 



My rifle was one of the long Snider-En- 

 field rifles formerly used by the Canadian 

 militia. Its bore I believe was .577. The 

 cartridges had the old style bullets, fitted 

 with wooden plugs at the point. 



When half way across the lake a loon came 

 within 250 yards, and against the protests of 

 my companion I fired. The loon dived ap- 

 parently simultaneously with the splash of 

 the ball in the water a little beyond him. 

 My companion laughed and rowed on. Be- 

 fore we had gone 100 yards we heard a 

 splashing behind us. and there, a short dis- 

 tance from where he had dived, was the 

 loon. He was dead when we took him in. 

 The bullet had passed through the front of 

 the neck, severing the windpipe, one end of 

 which protruded through the wound as I 

 laid him on the bottom of the boat. He was 

 the largest loon I have ever seen. 



Two birds were together when I got my 

 second loon. My first shot missed, but 

 neither loon dived at the report of the rifle. 

 They sank their bodies below the surface and 

 swam rapidly away with heads out. By the 

 time I was ready for another shot they were 

 300 yards distant, approaching each other 

 and swimming at right angles to me. I 



waited until their heads were apparently 6 

 inches apart and let drive between them. 

 One loon, only, swam away; the other lay, 

 white bosom upward, on the water. The 

 bullet struck the top of its head. My third 

 loon I shot through the neck at a distance 

 of 200 yards. The fourth was killed by a 

 shot that carried away the front part of the 

 head. The fifth was another 250-yard shot 

 through the neck. All 5 loons were killed 

 during the same summer, with the same 

 rifle, and from a skiff. The water was per- 

 fectly calm on each occasion. 



When a boy, I accompanied my brother 

 on a trout-fishing excursion among the 

 Mastigouche lakes, 15 miles North of lake 

 Muskalonge. While crossing Le Deuxieme 

 lac in a small birch bark canoe our guide 

 suddenly ceased paddling, seized his shot 

 gun and fired at a loon not 40 yards ahead 

 of us. She dived, but 2 young loons, her 

 brood, remained on the water and deliber- 

 ately swam up to us. Reaching carefully 

 out I lifted the little creatures into the 

 canoe. They were mere balls of black fluff 

 and of absolutely no appreciable weight. 

 They had probably been hatched that day 

 and had not yet been told to avoid human- 

 ity. We put them back in the water, pad- 

 dled away, and it was funny to see the little 

 fellows sprinting after us until they were 

 called off by the mother. 



I have seen lots of powder and shot 

 wasted firing at loons without a kill, but a 

 man here succeeded in killing with No. 6 

 shot. He was hidden behind a bush and the 

 loon came close to the shore. Last fall I 

 was crossing Lake Muskalonge, hunting 

 ducks, and got within 50 yards of a loon. 

 Several hundred yards ahead were the ducks, 



109 



