204 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



I'Apeil 9, 1885. 



pheasant family into this country, I would advise the impor- 

 tation only of species of the genus Phananus or true pheas- 

 ant. There are quite a large number of these; all birds of 

 beautiful plumage, some of exceptional splendor. They are 

 game in the full sense of the term, and most excellent as 

 an article of food. Other genera, such as Grossoptilon, 

 eared pheasants, Lophophoni s, momils, Ceriornis, horn pheas- 

 ants, and Pucrasia, Koklas pheasants, would also be desir- 

 able acquisitions to our list of game birds, but they are diffi- 

 cult to obtain, and their importation would demand a con- 

 siderable outlay of money. They are mountain-loving birds, 

 and would doubtless do well among the high ranges of our 

 country. Before they are introduced, however, our legisla- 

 tors will have to be converted to the necessity of providing 

 meansfor their protection, f'orthe poacher and the pot-hunter, 

 the game exterminators of civilized lands, would soon bring 

 to nought all efforts for the successful acclimatization and 

 increase of these beautiful birds, unless effective laws and 

 also means for their stringent enforcement were provided 

 for the pheasant's safety, as well as for the lawbreakers 

 punishment. Sagamore. 



WHY DOES THE PRAIRIE DOG BURROW? 



THE prairie-dog question is liable to become very pro- 

 found if followed to its depths. A writer in Forest 

 a.vd Stream of March 19, from the classic .grounds of Cam- 

 bridge, Mass., questions the proposition that prairie dogs 

 burrow for water. If they do not burrow for water what, 

 do they burrow for? They do not burrow for fun nor food 

 nor for warmth, for these exist in great sufficiency on top of 

 the ground. 



The inhospifalily of a prairie dog town is not inviting for 

 extended observations, and it must be admitted that no man, 

 animal, bird, insect or reptile can live without water; so the 

 question remains, where do Ihe prairie dogs get their fluid? 

 Their towns are generally remote from open water— so much 

 so that no other animal lives in the vicinity; not even the 

 prairie wolf, whose powers of locomotion are far superior to 

 the prairie dog. The owls can fly to water, and the rattle- 

 snakes can exist upon the juice of the prairie dog. 



The moisture in the grass on the prairie dog plateaus is 

 meager and insufficient. I did not positively assert that 

 there were wells at the bottom of prairie towns, but believe 

 it entirely probable. The only way to ^nd out is to bore 

 and see. Man, even the most scientific, has never been mis- 

 led by following nature, and whenever railroad engineers 

 have followed the buffalo they have found the best trail; the 

 unerring sight of the bee hunter follows the sweet-laden 

 messenger to honey, and the best watermill sites are at beaver 

 dams. The true mission of science is to unravel the wonder- 

 ful arcana of nature and make it plain to the common under- 

 standing. It will not_ do to stop and say that what we do 

 not know does not exist. I have not had the advantage of 

 reading Dr. White's article on "Artesian Wells on the Great 

 Plains," published in the Worth American Review for August, 

 1882, but have suffered the misery of visiting the abortive 

 attempt of Captain (now Major-General) Pope to bore for 

 water under Government instructions on the Llano Estacado 

 near the Pecos River in Texas, but found no prairie dog- 

 towns in that vicinity — and no water. 



When old Senator Benton was advocating the Pacific Rail- 

 road many years ago, he said, "Follow the buffalo, "and now 

 for those seeking water on the arid table lands of the West, 

 it may as well be said "follow the prairie dog." 



The question of artesian wells in the far West is of great 

 consequence to the Government, and if the little ]irairie dog 

 has opened the way he should have credit for it. "Geological 

 conditions ' are all very fine in a scientific point of view, but 

 it is a well known fact that our most scientific army officers 

 explored California and found no gold, and that the scientific 

 geologists adjusted their instruments on Mt. Davidson twenty 

 years before the practical minors discovered the Comstock 

 lode; and did not like the "geological formations." 



In prospecting nature I "go more" on the hee, the bison, 

 the beaver and the prairie dog than the opinion of all the 

 scientificos in the United States; with great respect to them. 



You may safely diir for water where the cottonwood 

 grows, and are sure to find it in five miles of where the dove 

 coos; but whether it can be found at the bottom of a prairie 

 dog town, or not, cannot be solved by science, but by 

 practical experience. 



If the hardy pioneers who have made Western America 

 what it is had waited for geological conditions, geometrical 

 computations, and astronomical calculations, they would 

 have been still hugging the Atlantic seaboard. 



When science takes the common people by the hand and 

 leads them in the ways of prosperity and power, it will be 

 worshipped as the mariner worships the North star. 



Nogalbs, Arizona. C. D. P. 



Editor- Forest and Stream: 



Seeing in your paper several articles on "Prairie Dog 

 Wells," I thought I would write to you about a prairie dog 

 which was kept for a number of years in the museum of this 

 city. I saw it frequently and the curator told me that he 

 never could get it to touch water, though he frequently 

 offered it. This case, and the position of prairie dog towns, 

 lead me to think the dogs do not drink water. H, J, R. 



Salt Lake City, Utah, March 25. 



White Egrets est Orleans County, N. Y. — About a 

 year a&Q a party residing in Orleans county informed my 

 son that on Thanksgiving Day, 1883, two white cranes 

 (egrets) were killed near East Carlton, in the Tonawanda 

 Swamp. I wrote to the party asking the particulars of the 

 capture, but never received an answer. I also wrote to Mr. 

 G. H. Headley, taxidermist, of Medina, but he had never 

 seen nor heard anything of them. I questioned a number of 

 parties residing in the county, but received no additional 

 information, and began to think that there was nothing in 

 the report. About two weeks ago I wrote to Mr. Frank E. 

 Lattin, of Gaines, publisher of the Young OologiM. Tie knew 

 nothing about them but would make inquiries. Under date 

 of March 25, he writes: "I am pleased to inform you that 

 it is a fact in regard to the two white egrets being killed in 

 Carlton— not only two but three. Two were killed one day 

 and the third a few days afterward. One was knocked over 

 with a club or stick. They were killed by a Mr. Ford ; he 

 had them mounted and now has them in his possession. You 

 will probably hear more about the egrets scon. I am going 

 to see them." Mr. J. H, Langille, in his "Our Birds in 

 their Haunts," makes no mention of ever seeing this species 

 in Orleans county, although he resided lor a number of years 

 in the vicinity of Tonawanda Swamp, and as I thought it 

 an unusual occurrence for these birds to be found so far north 

 and so late in the season (December), I have taken the trouble 

 to get at the particulars.— J, L. Davison (Lockport, N. Y.). 



A Female Mountain Sheep.— Editor Forest and Stream: 

 Having lived long in the West, taken many of its haphaz- 

 ard chances and inixed in and with all classes and condi- 

 tions of lire, 1 seldom read the Forest and Stream, but 

 some event of the past is recalled. I think then that I will 

 jot it down for the benefit of fellow craftsmen, but I seldom 

 or never do. The intention is good, but the convenient sea- 

 sou seems never to arrive. To-night, however, I go to you 

 for an opinion, and am consequently compelled to bestir my- 

 self a little. A few days since a Mexican brought in a couple 

 of mountain sheep (at least they were whatl always regarded 

 as such): the buck was a fine hefty fellow, and would "weigh 

 with entrails out probably 200 pounds, of which 50 pounds 

 could safely be taken up in head and horns. The female, 

 whose head gear 1 send you, was smaller. The horns, instead 

 of being massive and curling, are light and point backward, 

 which led to the statement that the "animal was an ibex and 

 not a sheep. To settle the dispute 1 send the horns to you to 

 pass judgment upon the character of their former wearer. I 

 have seen goats killed in the mountains above Tubac, but 

 they were goats in the full sense of th<? word, offshoots, I 

 presume, of some Sonora stock. They are not to my know- 

 ledge found in either the Tucson or Santa Catalina ranges 

 where the mountain sheep abound, or at least may be said to 

 be pretty plentiful. These were killed in the Catalinas. — 

 Adios (Tucson, Arizona, March 18, 1885). [The horns are 

 those of a mountain sheep without doubt, but they are the 

 largest pair of female sheep horns that we have ever seen. 

 But from our correspondent's statement that the animal was 

 a female, we should "have been inclined to regard the horns 

 as those of a young buck, perhaps a yearling. Probably the 

 animal which bore them was quite an old one.l 



Where Did It Come From?— Editor Forest and Stream: 

 On March 17 a male prairie chicken (Chipidonia cupido) was 

 shot on the Virginia side of the Potomac, near Washington, 

 by Mr. Alex. Skinner, a watchman of the National Museum. 

 The specimen was brought to the Smithsonian immedialely 

 after it was killed, and has been mounted for the exhibition 

 collection. It was in perfect feather, and showed no posi- 

 tive indication of having recently been in captivity, although 

 on the inner edge of each wing, near the bend, was a tumid, 

 somewhat inflamed callosity, and the tail feathers appeared 

 somewhat worn and soiled at the ends. Since it is desirable 

 to know whether the specimen in question was one that had 

 recently been introduced from the West and turned out, or 

 whether it is one of a lot, or their descendants, brought some 

 years ago to some part of Maryland or Virginia, I send you 

 this note in the hope that possibly some reader of Forest 

 and Stream may be able to throw light on ths question.— 

 R. Ridgway (U. S. National Museum, Washington, D. C, 

 April 6). 



Spring Notes. — Saturday spring, Sunday winter, with 

 snow drifting deep and a gale from the northeast. We have, 

 indeed, an uncertain climate. There were bluebirds, red- 

 winged blackbirds, purple finches, song sparrows and the 

 little gray Junco hyemalis here Saturday; and "Homo's" notes 

 of Miipe made us think that if the weather held we possibly 

 might see one by Fast Day, which comes this week. We 

 cannot sing with the poet of the "beautiful snow." No, not 

 now, for our thoughts are of other things ; toward coming 

 visitors from warmer climes. One Richardson's and one 

 hawk owl were recently taken near herp, but the big white 

 ones are very scarce. The creeks are clearing of ice and the 

 ducks will get in and put some meat on their bones. — X. Y. 

 Z. (Salem, Mass., March iiO). 



%wt[* B%8 nt \& % n *\> 



1 



BATTERY-SHOOTING. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



For twenty years or more I shot ducks on Sandusky Bay, 

 and am therefore qualified to speak of what the shooting 

 used to be as compared with the shooting of the present day. 

 In those days, before the advent of batteries or even of 

 decoys, there' was no better place out of doors for ducks 

 than that bay, with its bordering marshes and tributary 

 streams. The upper marsh was almost too far away for 

 most of us to go to, and consequently the lower marsh was 

 our hunting ground. When we went below Pipe Creek, 

 and when we went for open-water ducks we struck for Fish- 

 er's Cove, Old Ned's Cove, and so on. up to the Four Big 

 Trees on Cedar Point. Our boat houses were situated on the 

 banks of Pipe Creek, about half a mile from its mouth 

 where it opened out into the Cove in the neighborhood of 

 Big Island Point. From thence we could get down to the 

 marsh in any weather, a thing greatly to be desired, for, as a 

 general thine-, the stormier the day the better for ducks. 

 Starting early in the morning, we almost invariably got 

 shooting all the way down the creek. The water was always 

 perfectly black with mud hens, with a goodly sprinkling of 

 ducks, and the great flock would open out on either side for 

 us to pass through and close in behind us at a few rods' dis- 

 tance, the ducks, of course, taking flight before their less 

 cautious companions, the mud hens. If the wind was too 

 strong from the eastward, and the sea too heavy in the open 

 cove after passing Big Island, we struck across the sniping 

 o-round and so into Pond Lily Channel, down Black Chan- 

 nel, through Plum Brook, into the Graham Pond Holes. 



This chain of ponds in the midst of the great marsh was 

 the favorite feeding place of ducks, and countless thousands 

 were constantly flying from one pond to the other, affording 

 the best possible shooting to any one who had shoved his 

 hunting skiff into the narrow strip of cane grass or flags 

 which separated the ponds one from the other. It awakens 

 the old thrill now when I think back to the hundreds of 

 times I have been thus hidden, and I can almost see in im- 

 agination the long lines of bluebills with their black necks 

 and white breasts, skimming along about three feet above 

 the water, until, with sudden rush, they rise over the bunch 

 of cane grass and again resume the level of their way on the 

 other side. In those days I used to see them in my dreams 

 at nio-ht after banging away at the reality all day. To those 

 who did not care to go so far down, the pomts and channels 

 up along the creek afforded good shooting, and the constant 

 fusilade sounded almost like the Fourth of July at times. 

 In good storm v weather there was good shooting for every- 

 body and plenty of it, and if a duck hunter cot no ducks it 

 was his fault, for you could certainly find that his powder 

 flask was empty. _ VJ , 



I well recollect the first decoys I ever saw used. Old 

 Uncle Jim Paul, with McKinster and J. D. Bourne (the 

 three of them in a row boat) had shoved into the cane grass 

 off Ned's Point and set their decoys out in the open water, J 



so that the countless flocks of ducks coming down the bay 

 could see them. Those decoys were primitive enough, I 

 assure you; mere chunks of white cedar, sharp at one end, 

 with a chuckle head stuck on to the blunt end, painted with 

 lead color and black, with a dab of white paint on each side 

 for the wing coverts, but the way the ducks came down to 

 them was a caution, and it is needless to add that with those 

 three men shooting, the number of dead ducks in the water 

 was wonderful to see. They soon had imitators, and in a 

 year or two, every man who owned a boat and gun had also 

 his flock of decoys, and no one would think of going down 

 for ducks without at least a few decoys to throw out in front 

 of his hiding place or blind. In those days the whole lower 

 cove was set full of ducks. 



From Sunken Island and Ned's Point down to Black 

 Channel and over to Big Island Point and up Pike Creek 

 the great flock rode night and day. Disturbed by the sand 

 scows after the night had set in, the distant roar of this 

 flock, as they took flight or fluttered along the water, could 

 be heard from the lower part of the city, miles away. They 

 could not be driven away by any number of hunters, boats, 

 guns, or other appliances then in use, and year after year 

 saw no diminution in their seemingly inexhaustible numbers. 



Finally, in an evil hour, came the batteries, and from that 

 hour the preeminence of Sandusky Bay as a shooting ground 

 was gone. Year by year the numbers of batteries increased, 

 and in less than five years there was no shootingfor any one 

 outside of a sinkbox. What twenty-five years of shooting, 

 by men and boys, from points and boats, had failed to do, 

 these batteries did in less than five years. The feed is just 

 the same to-day as it was then, but the great flock is a thing 

 of the past. You may paddle from the Draw Bridge down 

 to Black Channel and not see a duck, where, in those days, 

 were millions of them. There is no open water shooting 

 around the creek, except, as I said before, from batteries, 

 and there is no use going down the channel to the Pond 

 Holes, for there are no ducks there. One would naturally 

 suppose that being so disturbed in the open water the ducks 

 would go down there, where the batteries never come, but 

 this not the case as we shall see further on. Now to see how 

 this battery business does actually work, let us take our 

 position on Sunken Island, from whence we can see both 

 up the bay and down toward the mouth of Black Channel. 

 Out about a quarter of a mile is a flock of perhaps a hundred 

 ducks, which, to a practiced eye, reveal themselves to be 

 decoys. Apparently among them, but in reality a little to 

 one side, is something which looks as much like a piece of 

 board or a rail in the water as anything. That is a battery 

 and you can just see a portion of the man's hat near 

 one end of the innocent-looking Tail. Away off beyond 

 is the tender whose sharp "m-ii-a-r-k" we hear coining 

 across the intervening space. Down goes the head 

 and the flock of decoys are alone upon the water. Coming 

 down the bay is a great flock of redheads. They catch sight 

 of the flock on the open feeding grounds, set their wings, 

 and with whistling rush swoop down among them. Scarcely 

 does the ft-msTi of the advance guard, as they slide into the 

 water, reach our ears, when up rises a man in their very 

 midst. Bang! bang! bang! bang! and all is tumult and con- 

 fusion. The terrified flock goes up, up, up out of rifle 

 shot, and bewildered by this onslaught, which they cannot 

 account for or understand, their only thought is to get away 

 from there entirely, and get away they do. Crossing over 

 Cedar Point at a safe altitude, they fly for hours without 

 again attempting to alight. 



This accounts for there being no ducks in the marsh or 

 down in the pond holes. A duck's common sense tells him 

 to give a point or bunch of grass a wide berth, and even if 

 shot at from one of these points he will go down in open 

 water to the first flock he sees feeding. But when, in fan- 

 cied secuiity, he goes down to a flock of hundreds of his 

 kind, out in open water, with no cane grass or other cover 

 within half a mile, and is shot at by a man getting up out of 

 the water within ten feet of him, he is a scared duck if not a 

 dead one; and if he has a little time to spare, if he doesn't 

 get entirely out of the country before he stops it is not his 

 fault. The great feeding flock no longer exists in the open 

 water, because there is no chance for the nucleus of such a 

 flock to form. Each flock is terrified in turn as it arrives, 

 and the ducks are prevented from becoming wonted to the 

 feeding around, although the feed is the same as of old, when 

 miles of water were covered with ducks with more coming 

 all the time. As I said before, there is no shooting for any 

 one outside of a battery. My friend and old hunting chum, 

 Hauser, went down three days last fall and each time brought 

 home and took out at night the same two shells he put into 

 his gun in the morning when he started before daylight. 

 When he can't get ducks, there's no use for any one else to 

 try, for a better shot never sat in a boat. 



In the upper bay, where the Winons' club house is, the 

 club have enforced the law against battery-shooting with a 

 result as stated by "Sagamore;" but in the lower bay or 

 cove, the law is not enforced, with results as hereinbefore 

 stated. Some of the battery men say: "Oh, well, there are 

 so many shooters and so many cussed boys pounding away 

 at the ducks all the time, that's what's the matter." Yes, 

 but for twenty years there have been just as many shooters, 

 and the "cussed boys" with their three-dollar singlebarreled 

 shotguns or old muskets, have been just as thick and just as 

 omnipresent as now. Indeed, I think there was more shoot- 

 ing then than now, for then there used to be the unfailing 

 evening flight, and one could hear a perfect cannonading 

 down there from sundown to dark and after dark. Now you 

 can't hear a gun, for there is no evening flight; that, too, is 

 a thing of the past. With all that shooting, year after year, 

 the ducks continued to come in undiminished numbers until 

 the advent of the batteries, since which evil day the shooting 

 has been ruined. . 



Pardon me for this rather extended statement of facts, but 

 I think that it proves beyond all doubt the statement made 

 by your correspondent "Sagamore," to wit, "That wherever 

 batteries are systematically used, a diminution, if not the 

 entire disappearance of wildfowl is sure to take place. 



J. J. B. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



1 have read with much interest the articles on battery- 

 shooting in your valued paper, and although living right 

 where they are used, and have been for a long time, I did 

 not intend to have anything to say on the subject, but since 

 "X " has taken a hand, and "two against one is not fair," 

 I must say that I think "Sinkboat" is on the right side. My 

 experience, like that of "Sinkboat," is only confiued to one 

 place or locality, viz., the headwaters of the Chesapeake 

 Bay, or more properly speaking,. Susquehanna Flats. 



In your issue of March 12, "P3agaaore"says, "batteries, if 

 persisted in, are certain to drive tht fowl away from their 



