May 11, 1883.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



287 



\mr\t §n§ ui\d guy. 



JIM CROW ON A RUNWAY. 



THE new feature which I have noticed in recent numbers 

 of the Forest am> Stream, under the expressive cap- 

 tion of "Easy Beading Lessons for Little. Readers," strikes 

 me as exceedingly appropriate and wonderfully suggestive 

 to every old devotee of the rod and gun, whose experience 

 no doubt finds in these brief stories awakened and pungent 

 memories. The lesson of the tired sentinel who kindled a 

 fire on his runway, under the genial warmth of which he 

 dropped to sleep, was so faithful a photograph of a little in- 

 cident occurring near the city of Ogdensburg, N. Y., in 

 years gone by, that on reading it I could not suppress a. guf- 

 faw "all living alone." My memory ran in this wise: 



A now prominent member of the tot. Lawrence County, N. 

 Y., Game Club was then regarded as an excellent shot with 

 the rifle; and his love for deer shooting was always fresh 

 and ready for a tilt. Swan and I were to put in the hounds 

 and faithfully beat up all the ground between the city proper 

 and the Eel Weir rapids of the Oswegatchie River, which 

 was an old and favorite haunt for deer in the memory of the 

 oldest inhabitants. When started by dogs the deer invaria- 

 bly struck a bee-line for the Depeyster swamp, to reach 

 which they had to cross the Barnet road, across which ran a 

 narrow belt of woods which three men could .guard with 

 fatal effect. Here repaired our heroic rifle shot, who for 

 brevity we will call "Joe." He was in the center, with a 

 subaltern on either side to watch and wait. The day was a 

 cold and bitter one of November, and in that latitude, 44 

 degrees north, there was a persistent reach of icy fingers for 

 human vitality. 



A zig-zag route taken by Swan and myself was soon re- 

 warded by a long whoop from our favorite ranger, soon 

 duplicated by the other dogs, which in a few moments grew 

 in earnestness, suggesting that the spoor was f feSh and ap- 

 petizing. And away they went till the voices died in the 

 distance, when we paused to hear the welcome crack of rifles 

 at the Bamet road. After waiting and wondering what was 

 up, we were surprised to hear our dogs giving lip in our 

 rear, which signified that the old buck had been baffled at 

 the road, and had taken a detour for a new attempt. Now, 

 thought we, the old buck will run the gauntlet sure and come 

 to grief. On they went, deer and dogs, and again the voices 

 died away in the' distance, and again we lent a listening ear 

 for the crack of Joe's trusty gaining-twist rifle, duplicated 

 by a f usilade from his subalterns. Nary a crack. 



In this dilemma we determined to follow the trail and see 

 why the deer had twice avoided crossing the Barnet road, 

 and when we had reached within twenty rods of the high- 

 way, we came to where the old buck had paused to make 

 sure of his surroundings, and had shot off in a tangent twice 

 in succession. Of course we saw at once that our game was 

 up, and on reaching the road were sharply interrogated by 

 Joe why we had not started a deer, "for I know very well 

 there are deer in those woods." 



Of course it was our turn to speak above a whisper. "You 

 stupid jackass! Twice we have driven a magnificent buck 

 in sight of you, and you have frightened him from his fav- 

 orite runway." 



"Nonsense!" reiterated Joe; but with eyes snapping with 

 anger, we bid him "come with us but a step and we will 

 convince you." 



Just here occurred a solution of the mystery, for both sub- 

 alterns affirmed that Joe stood in the middle of the road 

 most of the time cutting pigeon wings and jumping Jim 

 Crow to keep his feet from freezing. 



Moral: Always lie low for black ducks, and never attempt 

 to fascinate an old, way -wise buck with a clog-dance, if your 

 appetite craves a hot, well-buttered tenderloin of venison for 

 supper. This, Mr, Editor, is "an o'er true tale." H. 



N. B. — We, i. e., the Mankato Pur Company, have laid 

 out two large timber wolves and one wild cat the'past winter, 

 besides scaring several other wolves within an inch of their 

 lives. Our State bounty on the wolf is $10; on the wildcat 

 nihil — although the latter is as sneaking a poacher on our 

 coveted game as the former is on our farmer's sheepfolds. 

 One of our wolves was a she one and had whelps sufficiently 

 developed for identification, but not for the bounty. What 

 a pity! and yet what real cause for congratulation. H. 



Mankato, Minnesota. 



SELLING SNOW BUNTINGS FOR REED 

 BIRDS. 



WHILE in New York city, a few days since, I observed 

 a game vender on Broadway, near Twenty -second 

 street, with an immense quantity of plucked birds of some 

 sort strung in dozens, offering them to passers-by. Not 

 knowing the species of small bird he had, without a closer 

 examination, as all the feathers were off of them excepting 

 those, of the head and tail, and noticing that they were very 

 fat, your correspondent, put on the air of an uninitiated one, 

 that he might more readily satisfy his curiosity as to their 

 kind, and accosted the "game hawker" as follows: "What 

 sort of birds are those you are selling, my man ?" "Reed 

 birds, sir," he replied, naming the price. "Why, how is 

 that?" said I, "do you have reed birds in New York?" "Oh, 

 yes, we often have them for sale ; they came from Philadel- 

 phia." By this time I had examined the birds, and found 

 them to be snow buntings. "Are you right sure they are 

 reed birds?" 1 asked. "Yes, I am sure; they came from 

 Philadelphia this morning, and I have just sold Purcell, be- 

 low here, twenty dozen." I then opened on him, and told 

 him whom ne was trying to fool, and showed him very plainly 

 that reed birds at this time of year (May 1) had not reached 

 Pennsylvania or New York from the south, and when they 

 did arrive they would not be in the plumage they appear in 

 in September, when they are known as the reed bird. I 

 made use of very plain language before I left the man, and 

 told him the sale of such birds as he had in the spring of the 

 year would not be allowed in Philadelphia even in autumn. 

 I have since heard that a very large quantity of these "reed 

 birds" were shipped to New York last week from the north, 

 and learned that families were buying them as reed birds. 

 The sale of these, if I am not mistaken, is in direct violation 

 of your New York law, and I must say I was astonished to 

 see them vended so openly on your most frequented thorough- 

 fare. We . Philadelpluans do not claim to have stopped en- 

 tirely the illegitimate sale of game or harmless birds, but our 

 boldest "ha wker" would not have dared to display such a 

 string of "reed birds" on the street in Philadelphia, and I 

 can say he would not have gone many blocks without having 

 been arrested. 

 Of what tee are game protective associations or game laws 



if such open violations are allowed? So long as leading 

 restaurants make it an object for pot-hunters to kill game out 

 season and to procure for them birds they can pal in off to 

 their customers as "reed birds," we may look for a continu- 

 ance of a violation of the law. It should be made a finable 

 offence for such to be found either on the bill of fare of any 

 hotel or restaurant, or if obtainable sm/j «/sa, to be in like 

 manner subject to penalty. This furnishing on the sly of 

 out of season game was tried in Philadelphia by restaurateurs, 

 but unfortunately for the latter on three or four occasions it 

 was placed before a paid detectice of the Philadelphia 

 Sportsman's Club, and the proper fine was demanded and 

 paid. Two or three cases of this kind in your city would 

 have a very salutary effect. Can it not be done? 



In about a week we may begin to look for the flight of 

 warblers to pass through our latitude. With the warblers 

 will swarm the specimen collector, canegun in hand. In the 

 pocket of each, with his cotton and plaster of Paris, will 

 always be found a printed copy of our game law, in which 

 he will show you he is allowed to slaughter for scientific 

 purposes. Millinery is a science, you know. Just now all 

 kinds of little birds are in demand for that science. Property 

 owners who arc to be pestered by this horde should know 

 there is a trespass law they can take advantage of, providing 

 they will post their orchards, groves and fields. Homo. 



I "big bags" their battle cry, whether got^by fair 

 1 foul. Would thev "run into a flock of a dozen 



THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR. 



Editor Forest and Stream : 



Thump! thump! umph! umph! umph! um-um — r-r-r-r — 

 Who the dickens is thumping my headboard in imitation of 

 the drumming of the ruffed grouse? Or did I dream it, as I 

 so often dream in the season of making a snapshot on a 

 rushing brown streak, and jerking my gun into position 

 awake suddenly to find it all a dream, and my bedfellow 

 earnestly requesting me to hand back a few of those bed- 

 clothes if I have got through performing with them? Com- 

 plying with this reasonable, request I am once more sinking 

 to sleep, when thump, thump, vibrates on my ear as sensibly 

 as though produced in the room, instead of coming fifty 

 good rods through brush, window and curtain. This time 

 I arise in bed in time to catch the roll, and at once recognize 

 the return of one of my old favorites to the position where 

 he has held his court for several seasons, and near whose 

 throne one or more faithful consorts have usually produced 

 a fine brood of young. 



Drum away, old fellow ; nothing shall harm you if I can 

 prevent it. More than once have I lowered the death-deal- 

 ing tubes as I recognized your long, strong pinions and light 

 ashen hue flashing forth fiom the covert before the steady 

 point of my faithful canine friends. 



By the way, can any of our naturalists tell us whether it 

 is owing to any peculiar formation of structure that such 

 powerful reverberations arc produced in drumming? It 

 seems hardly possible that mere inflation of the lungs should 

 produce a sound so different from the flapping of the wings 

 of the domestic cock. Then there is the peculiar far-away 

 ventriloqual sound, so deceiving to the novice as to location, 

 wdiich the bird makes when nearly approached while drum- 

 ming. 



Pray excuse me, Mr. Editor and brethren, if I "smole" an 

 audible smile as I perused your issue of April 20th, and 

 recalled in memory the varied and conflicting creeds of 

 honor expressed by our ' 'settin' " brethren, and finally wound 

 up with our friend "Nessmuk's" ingenious tale, narrating 

 his brief experience in grouse wing-shooting, wherein ex- 

 periencing great difficulty in accomplishing much more than 

 to "make the feathers fly, " and those generally attached to 

 the birds, he virtuously abandoned the sport on account of 

 the cruelty (to whom?) attending it, and substituted therefor 

 the beneficent and painless sport of hunting deer, interlarding 

 this pleasantry by playing a huge pickerel "for two mortal 

 hours" with no* expectation of capturing him with such 

 tackle when hooking him, but simply because he "felt in the 

 humor for a racket," as he naively remarks. Would not the 

 pot-fisherman with his stout rig have exercised more 

 "humanity in the killing?" Or does the flying deer never 

 receive a fatal wound and yet escape the hounds in difficult 

 following, causing the "bright-eyed beautiful animal to hide 

 away in thickets panting away its innocent life in fever and 

 distress, while its murderer is breathing at ease." 



Shall those that enjoy the beautiful display of graceful 

 motion and intelligence, exhibited by the finely trained 

 pointer dog far more than the mere" act of killing be de- 

 prived of this pleasure, and the deer-shooter be allowed to 

 "listen to the music of the dogs" while waiting foi his 

 terror-stricken flying victim to present an uncertain shot? 

 Verily, consistency, thou art a jewel. 



In fact, in the matter of painless killing, the much de- 

 spised snarer far outranks us all, yet we hardly expect to see 

 the present generation beat their guns, dogs and fishing 

 tackle into plough shares, and adopt the snare and net, and 

 mayhap a huge bottle of chloroform for the furtherance of 

 this glorious scheme. So the .snarer is a myth, is he? The 

 well-known preponderance in numbers of snared grouse in 

 our large markets for the last fifteen years should effectually 

 silence this assertion. 



We have got to learn that the grouse generally disappeared 

 in a single season, though short local migrations are common 

 to the. species. That they have slowly but surely "faded" for 

 many seasons past, is no secret to the observant sportsman of 

 thickly settled regions. The constant persecution and 

 slaughter of past years has wrought such decimation and 

 demoralization in their ranks that the present probable mi- 

 gration of the survivors to regions more remote from civil- 

 ization is only a natural consequence. Is it better to sagely 

 allude to the disturbing causes as a mysterious dispensation 

 than to make some rational endeavor to prevent the exter- 

 mination of what little game is left us? 



Perhaps our friend has "remembered to forget" that the 

 men that have habitually shot ruffed grouse over pointing 

 dogs have imtil very recently been about as scarce as the 

 men that invariably" use a rifle for them, and be credits the 

 best wingshots with lulling only three birds per day where 

 they are plenty, whereas the pot-hunters that have "sneaked 

 through the brush and slaughtered them with the "big -bored 

 shotgun," sitting on tree or ground, with tree-ers or without, 

 have been numbered by legions, and their big bags and 

 boast of far outdoing the wingshot have been published 

 throughout the land these twenty years. Admitting that per- 

 haps there is no more pot-hunting among the resident rural 

 population than formerly, have our friends failed to notice 

 the hordes that with shotguns, tree-ers and snares, have 

 poured forth from every little village created by the railroads 

 that are intersecting the country in every direction? Are 

 they generally wingshots or rifle-shooting head-smashers? 

 Not much "if the court knows itself." Meat is their watch- 



word and 

 means or i 



grouse and clipping off only o couple of heads leave the 

 balance within easy reach" — to breed in peace? Who has 

 claimed that the man that clips the heads off grouse with a 

 rifle was a pot-huutcr? Not I, certainly, as i only thus 

 style those that, scorning all fair play, "murder this noble 

 game in positions that give it uo chance to escape the 

 dastardly act. Though, perhaps, "Ncssmuk" and myself can 

 only agree to disagree on some points, he has only my best 

 wishes, and if the species of pot-hunter that he describes are 

 the only kind that he ever encountered, heaven grant that 

 he may never suffer contact with the genuine animal. 



Ruffed Grouse. 



A8HF1KLD, Mass. 



OUTRAGE ON THE INNOCENTS. 



I WANT to curse and ban. I want to use all the short, 

 ugly, Saxon swear words from Cedric the Saxon, to 

 Horker'and Sigel. I want to exhaust the list of objurgations 

 and bitter anathemas on the brutal heads of the featherless 

 pigeon owls — begging the owls' pardon — who are netting and 

 Slaughtering the parent birds on the "roost" about the head 

 of Indian Run, twenty-five miles west of Wellsboro. It is 

 the same old criminal trick of heartless brutality that has 

 pained and disgusted every humane sportsman and lover of 

 nature for the past fifty years. Only in this instance the war 

 of extermination is carried on with devilish skill and a dead- 

 hness that beats the old time modes of Chopping clown trees, 

 shooting, and smoking with sulphur. On at least four occa- 

 sions during the last thirty years, the pigeons have been 

 driven from their nesting before the nests were fairly finished 

 by the greedy, noisy onslaught of all the hoodlums who could 

 beg, buy or borrow a five dollar shotgun. 



They order it more wisely now. Before an egg was laid, 

 there were two hundred' salt-beds and nets ready for 

 slaughter. But the roost was rather protected until the in- 

 cubation was progressing; then the murder commenced. 

 Three hundred nets are daily spread in a pigeon roost only 

 three miles long by about half a mile in width. The gun's 

 keep up a constant fusilade, and there is a continuous fight 

 going on between gunners and netters. The latter cannot 

 get the birds "down" on their salt-beds when they are scared 

 by shooting, and the gunners make it a point to shoot with 

 an eye to the foibng of netters. 



The most common ruse is for a gunner to make believe 

 game constable, and take a netter in custody, or vice, versa. 

 But this game only worked for a day or two, when it began 

 to end in fisticuffs (the more the better). 



The roost is four miles above Ansley's, on Big Pine Creek, 

 and twenty-five miles from Wellsboro. We sent our game 

 constable to the spot, but it happens that the roost does not 

 extend into Tioga county, and there is no Potter county 

 officer to act. 



The pigeon-hawks seem liKely to have it all their own way. 

 A few of us, who would give money, time and muscle to the 

 cause of hxunanity and fair play to the birds, are not only 

 utterly powerless) but we are looked on as pariahs and out- 

 casts if we attempt to enforce the law, and our houses, and 

 even our lives are hardly safe. 



Something like this might reasonably be expected from 

 the ignorant fellow born in the backwoods and having it 

 ingrained in his whole being that anything wild, wearing 

 fur, fin, or feather, rightfully belongs to him who can catch 

 or kill. 



Is he without reasonable excuse? 



What of the "gentlemen sportsmen," the leading men 

 among those who go to conventions to devise ways and 

 means for the protection of game ; the ' 'true sportsmen" who, 

 being in convention, turn their attention to a pigeon tourna- 

 ment trap-shooting? And all the leading sporting papers 

 give careful reports of the hits and misses of the shooters. 

 Oh, miserere/ 



These poor, dazed, half-crippled things are taken from 

 their young, transported by rail hundreds or thousands of 

 miles, stuck into a modern "trap," and, as the poor thing 

 gets weakly and doubtfully on his wings, a double storm of 

 leaden hail cuts him down, or misses, or wounds him unto 

 death. 



It is true, perhaps, that a ten-year-old boy could chase tho 

 bird at "twenty yards rise" and cut him down with a bean- 

 pole; but no matter. 



Is it not a convention of "leading sportsmen?" 



It is, no matter what an old graybeard of the woods may 

 think or say, perhaps. 



But, ' 'gentlemen sportsmen, " suppose you for once attend 

 to business. Instead of encouraging these brutes by buying 

 their birds at remunerative prices, leave your ten-bores at 

 home and recommend a law something like this: 



Section 1. It shall be unlawful for any individual, com- 

 pany, or corporation to kill or take alive any wild pigeon, or 

 have the same in possession, save only in the months of Sep- 

 tember, October and November. For each pigeon so killed, 

 taken, or had in possession contrary to law, a fine of ten 

 dollars shall be enforced, the fine to be paid over, on collec- 

 tion, to the informer whose information has led to convic- 

 tion. 



Sec 2. In case the culprit is unable to pay his fine, he 

 shall expiate the same by incarceration in the county jail at 

 the rate of one dollar per day. And it shall be the duty of 

 any sheriff, deputy sheriff, or constable to go to any nesting 

 or pigeon roast, when called on, and arrest and handcuff any 

 offenders whom he may detect acting in violation of section 

 one of this act, and also to seize and confiscate all guns, nets, 

 or other engines of destruction which he may find within 

 one mile of the nearest nest of the wild pigeon aforesaid, 



Sec. 3. It shall be unlawful to use any wild pigeon at a 

 so-colled pigeon tournament, trap-shooting match, or any 

 meeting where live birds are Shot at on the wing. And it, 

 shal] be the duty of any of the. officers above named to attend 

 such meetings, and arrest any and all who attend such meet- 

 ings with evident intent to participate in the proceedings. 

 Also, he shall seize guns, birds, traps and any and all of the 

 furniture and fixings that he can find within 150 yards bounds 

 of the trap used in the tournament. 



This is very imperfect, but it, would help. 



There is no humane word that can be said in defence of 

 slaughtering the innocent wood-folk in the breeding season. 



Postscript, May 2. — Our game constable has ju- 

 turned from the nesting in Potter counts'. Having no 

 authority in that county, the best he could do w as to note 

 and report. Here are his words: "The nests are placed more 

 thickly on the trees than I have seen them in previous nest- 

 ings, but the roost is not extensive — three and oue-half miles 

 by one-half mile. The nets, netters and salt-beds number 

 500 and more, with others constantly coming in. One pack- 

 age of ninety nets came in just as I left. No; they are not 



