284 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



|"MAv 6\ 1886. 



Society to be enrolled among the members of that society. 



This bird-killing question was agitated in Sorosis two 

 months ago, and many availed themselves of the opportu- 

 nity of signing these resolutions. A letter was read from 

 Miss White, an officer of the Atduboh Society, in which 

 she said if no more birds were killed in this country it would 

 take four generations to replace the birds that had been 

 destroyed in the last four years. The ladies condemned the 

 English sparrows as foreign intruders and a nuisance. 



A TAME SQUIRREL. 



" T^T ELPIE," who writes'of pet squirrels, brings to my mind 

 JV. the hours of real enjoyment I have had with the king 

 of all pets, a tame gray squirrel. When a boy, my brother 

 and I caught one about half grown, and after a few weeks' 

 confinement we allowed him to come out of his cage and 

 play in the kitchen, first making sure that all doors and win- 

 dows were made fast. It was not long; before he became 

 quite tame, and would allow us to handle him without show- 

 ing any resentment. As winter approached he discarded his 

 cage altogether, and it was amusing to see him demolish old 

 newspapers to make himself a nest in a large kettle wbich 

 was kept under the sink in a back room. Boy like, I 

 imagined he would sleep cold .there, so after much coaxing 

 my mother consented that I might take him to bed with me, 

 and from early winter till the warm days of April I did not 

 retire for one night without my Curly nestled by my side, 

 warmly tucked under the clothes. If by chance his inclina- 

 tion led him to take a run about the farm house chamber, he 

 never forgot which side of the bed I lay on, and always came 

 creeping under the clothes and remained till I was dressed, 

 and then would perch on my shoulder for me to take him 

 down stairs. 



Then the music would commence. First the dog and cat 

 had to be looked after, and I doubt if ever any poor dumb 

 animals lived in more mortal terror than did that dog and 

 cat. Many were the times I have taken the part of poor 

 Tabby as Curly would be running her in the back room, 

 over the sink, around the big arch and oven, over the big 

 cupboard, till the poor cat would be nearly winded. If, per- 

 chance, poor Major so far forgot himself as to go to sleep by 

 the open ffre, his dreams were always haunted by the spirit 

 of a wicked squirrel, and he would always awake with a 

 yelp, and the shadow of a tail as it flitted* under the table 

 told the cause of his troubled dreams. If we had company 

 Curly did not need any introduction. He would take his 

 stand of observation, and after a thorough inspection his first 

 thought would be to show them what he could do. Talk of 

 the spoiled child of the family, that squirrel was master of 

 that house and yet as gentle as a kitten. No animal lives, I 

 believe, so playful and that shows so much cunning. 



Pumpkin seeds were his weakness. If I wanted him to go 

 to the barn with me, a few seeds closed in my hand furnished 

 an attraction which he could not resist. The old ink peddler 

 who was showing his samples on the kitchen table was sur- 

 prised to hear a crash and to find while his back was turned 

 that his squirrelship had made love to the choicest sample, 

 and only failed of capturing it by it being too heavy for him 

 to carry. 



Of all my pets, of which I have had many, none will ever 

 take the place of that squirrel. As the warm days came, 

 and the snow disappeared, with windows and doors thrown 

 open, he would get lonesome, and would try the wood pile, 

 then the fences, always being careful to see that the coast 

 was clear for a shelter in the house, should danger approach, 

 but he gradually went further till he would be gone an 

 hour, then a half day, then all night, at last he was gone a 

 week, and when he returned he showed that the natural in- 

 stincts of his animal nature was fast developing and it 

 seemed too cruel to confine him again, so we let him go, and 

 it was not until late in September that he came back, per- 

 haps to take up his abode with us again. But the mis- 

 chievous curiosity of a tame crow was more than he could 

 stand and he disappeared again only to be seen thereafter 

 occasionally in the woods. Mtt.t,. 



Eels in Water Pipes. — Editor Forest and Stream: While 

 looking on at the flowing of a street hydrant, corner Broad- 

 way and Walker street, I was much amused by seeing an 

 eel over two feet long make its appearance, and squirm up 

 Broadway in the company of cabs, trucks, etc. It was 

 finally captured by a laborer, who carried it off in triumph. 

 Has this fish attained its growth in our water pipes? If so, 

 how could it manage to exist on our clear, clean Croton ? — 

 Ernest F. Thomas. [Eels have been known to live in 

 water pipes for a long time and to have grown while there. 

 They love to hide and can find food in the dark. — Ed.J 



Tame Buffed Grouse.— Morris, Til., May 1.— I saw a 

 pheasant or ruffed grouse on the 25th of last month at the 

 farm house of S. Hage, in our township, I that has been a 

 frequent visitor in the door yard for the last three years. 

 The bird has become so tame by kind usage that it will take 

 food from the hand and jump up on the lap of a person 

 without any apparent fear. It is not so familial- with a 

 stranger, however. It is without doubt a female, for the 

 black feathers on the neck are wanting. Iu the hot season 

 and when its food is plenty it absents itself for months at a 

 time.— M. H. Ckydeb. 



Spring Notes.— Fairhaven, Vt., April 5.— The season 

 here is very far advanced, being fully three weeks earlier 

 than last year. Robins made their first appearance on the 

 16th of March, about dusk. Crows, ravens, bluebirds and 

 blackbirds are all here, making the barren woods and marsh 

 ring with their notes. Ducks and geese have been going 

 north for over two weeks. Only one duck was shot that I 

 know of and that was a fish duck and had a young sucker 

 over seven inches long in his throat. —Ned. 



It is a Liberal Education. — While I had a lame back I 

 availed myself of my enforced idleness to faithfully read the 

 back numbers of Forest and Stream since Sept. Some- 

 times they accumulate as in this instance, but sooner or later 

 I read them from cover to cover. I am more and more im- 

 pressed with the value of this paper, which I have taken 

 since its first issue. It contains a world of information for 

 the scientist and the layman; its character is of the highest 

 order, making it, aside from being the best paper for the 

 American sportsman that is published on the globe, an ex 

 cellent family paper, as an educator of the young. In fact, 

 f one reads it faithfully ;and understandingly, he or she 

 will receive a liberal education, "Yo" and Nanny are par- 

 ticularly happy in their present series, but one cannot dis- 

 criminate where all are so good.— C. 



§xn(e §xg m[A §nij. 



THE TRAJECTORY TEST. 



'TVHE full report of the Forest and Stre ijt'S trajectory test of hunt- 

 ing rifles has been issued in pamphlet form, with the illustra- 

 tions and the tabular summary, making in all 96 pages. For sale at 

 this office, or sent post-paid. Price 50 cents. 



IN THE WILDS OF ARKANSAS. 



[Extracts from a letter written by a sportsman to a sportsman and 

 here printed for other sportsmen.] 



ON Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 26, a party of sixteen, in- 

 cluding two cooks, boarded the 4 o'clock west-bound 

 train at Elkhart, Ind., bound for Brinkly, Ark. There 

 were two cut-in-two boats, six tents, boxes and barrels of 

 provisions, guns and dogs. And such a lay-out of dogs one 

 does not see a second time- in a lifetime ! Three setters in 

 which setter blood predominated, though mine showed 

 unmistakable signs that some of his ancestors had been 

 badly frightened by a pointer; a half-bred spaniel bitch, a 

 French dog of unnameable breed, two hounds, and a "fice." 

 We arrived in Weiner, Poinsett county, Ark., on the 28th, 

 in time for breakfast. I had been told at Cairo by the agent 

 of the Texas & St. Louis Railroad that the fire had trav- 

 eled over hundreds of miles of prairie and forest, includ- 

 ing: the territory about Weiner ; also that a deputy sheriff 

 had been collecting $12.30 from every man who landed there 

 with a gun, as a license fee for non-resident shooters. 



On arrival I immediately interviewed the constable, who 

 was at the same time the station agent and postmaster, in 

 regard to the license; looked over the law in his book where 

 the page showed unmistakably that he had showed it to 

 several before. He said he could see no way to avoid pay- 

 ing the fee. 



I hired a mule team and lumber wagon, drove fourteen 

 miles across country to Harrisburg, where I met the sheriff, 

 who, in Arkansas, is the collector. He appeared to be a 

 pretty good sort of fellow, listened to my arguments on 

 points of law, then gave me a written statement over his 

 official signature, that in his opinion only those who followed 

 shooting, etc. , for profit, and not those who came in for a 

 few days' sport should be made to pay a license fee. We 

 were never molested. When I got back that night I wrote 

 a long letter explaining the matter to the General Passenger 

 Agent at Texarcana, and simply suggested that should the 

 railroad company see fit to discharge their agent at Weiner, 

 Mr. George Phillips— a native — would fill the bill. When 

 we came away Mr. Phillips was the station agent. 



Sunday we went into two camps about a half mile apart. 

 Quail were to be found in fair numbers, but the dear people 

 who reside on the edge of the prairie had put out strychnia 

 (a native called it ''strike 9") to poison wolves, and as it was 

 put where the quail were, our dogs were in danger of 

 getting it, and so we decided to move camp. K. and C. 

 went to find ducks, as there was no water, consequently 

 no ducks, where we were, while Tom and 1, taking blan- 

 kets and provisions, shouldered our guns and made a break 

 eight miles into the woods, where deer and turkeys were 

 said to be very plenty. We started after dinner following 

 the "blazes" and along toward night arrived at a clearing of 

 perhaps forty acres; there dwelt in primitive style Mr. M. S. 

 Cox, formerly a captain in the Confederate army, an Ala- 

 bamian and jolly good fellow to boot. Adjoining him was 

 Philip Hanes and his sixteen-year-oJd son, who had come 

 from Ohio a year before on a hunt, found good land cheap 

 and had never been back. The two lived in a crude log hut, 

 doing their own work, for the mother was dead. Hanes 

 turned out to be a whole-souled man — one who can be re- 

 lied on, and the best woodsman I have ever met. He can 

 call a sitting turkey off her nest, while the gobblers blush 

 with envy at his beautiful notes, especially when he slaps the 

 ground with his old hat, imitating the noise made by them 

 while fighting. He carries a .45-75 Winchester and doesn't 

 need a rest to shoot it, in fact he is old "Deer Slayer" him- 

 self. 



About this time you are saying, "Why in thunder don't 

 he get down to hunting'?" Well, hold on, I cannot put the 

 top rails on the fence first. 



That night H. steered Tom and me to a place where deer 

 sometimes passed, but they didn't pass then. On our way 

 back to H.'s, Tom, who was a few rods to my right, called 

 out, "Come here, Doc, qi;.ick, and see what I have found." 

 Sure enough, he had found — O, on a stub ten feet from 

 the ground, where he too was looking for deer, and K. 

 was near at hand. They had started for the St. Francis 

 region, but hearing from a reliable source that theie were no 

 ducks there, and that we had gone where game was plenty, 

 concluded to join us. They stopped with Cox, while Tom 

 and I spread our blankets in Hanes's bunk on a pile of millet 

 straw, and slept the sleep of tired hunters. 



Early the next morning, after a brief breakfast, we followed 

 H. three miles N.E., where he perched me on a bent hickory, 

 ten feet from the ground, and Tom about forty rods away, 

 while he, bidding us keep still and look out sharp for 

 deer, loped off into the slough (slew in the vernacular) just 

 to see if there were any turkeys about. Standing on a log 

 in mid air with nothing more exciting than expectation is 

 not calculated to unstring one's nerves very much, and so 

 when, after a half hour's waiting, I heard H.'s Winchester 

 crack, I was all eyes and ears. Soon I saw four big tur- 

 keys flying toward me, but they turned off and lit within 

 rifle ranee, too far away for my open bore shotgun. While 

 I was debating whether to get off my roost and attack the 

 turkeys on their's, Hanes's gun spoke again and another 

 bird came toward me. Hastily changing shells in my right 

 barrel, 5s for solid ball, I caught her away above the tree 

 tops. Not a fatal shot 1 feared, for she lit on the first limb 

 in her way, and whether her teetering motion meant fall or 

 fly 1 didn't wait to inquire, but sent a charge of buck shot 

 which was enough to settle the question, for she fell, not 

 with a "dull, sickening thud," but ker-plump! Hastily 

 loading again, I was just in time for another that flew almost 

 directly over head, but at great height, so that the 5s did not 

 do her up very bad, as she jumped for a run as soon as she 

 struck the ground, about eighty yards away. Again the 

 buckshot went on their mission, and another turkey would 

 pluck no more grasshoppers from the "sweet potato vine." 

 And still those four sat in the tree unmindful of the 

 holocaust of death around them. Sliding carefully 

 down from my perch, I made my way toward them as care- 

 fully as possible; but about then they got word to go on an 

 important business trip across the "slew," and they still live, 

 I presume. I picked up my birds and put them at the root 

 of the hickory and resumed my elevated perch, when Hanea 



appeared with two nice birds, one a gobbler. He was some- 

 what surprised at seeing the fruits of my firing, but not as 

 much as was Tom, who came up then and wanted to know 

 what w r e were wasting ammunition on, He hadn't seen any- 

 thing to shoot at but squirrels. Then H. took us into 

 the slough, where K. and Charley Cox joined us, the 

 latter with a fine gobbler he had shot only a few minutes 

 before. H. placed us in ambush and began "yawping." 

 Yawp answered. Bang! bang! from K.'s gun, and we were 

 all on hand to witness the death of two more, and K. said : 

 ' 'There they are. Killed one with each barrel. Would h ave 

 killed another if I'd had another barrel. Take 'em if you 

 want 'em, Tom. I've no use for them." But "alle samee," 

 he was ready to lie low again while H. called. This time 

 the bird came shyly toward me, and as he presented his 

 breast, I gave him a charge of five's at forty yards, and such 

 a flopping and pounding as he made! A good twenty- 

 pounder with an elegant beard— a noble bird ! This ended 

 the hunt for the turkeys, and no more game came to bag th;it 

 day. But how tired and hungry we were when we got back 

 to camp! I had dined on three little crackers and a few per- 

 simmons, and when Hanes said supper was ready, Tom, K., 

 and I were not long in responding. 



Now about that supper in the log hut. Our . friends say 

 that hunger had so sharpened our appetites that anything 

 would bave relished — allowed. But 1 leave it to you to de- 

 cide if we did not have a good meal. H. skinned the tur- 

 keys, cut out their breasts, sliced them across the grain like 

 steak, rolled them in flour and fried them in butter. I baked 

 buckwheat cakes (Hecker's self-raising flour) and Tom made 

 coffee. A can of nice peaches furnished dessert. There ! 

 What matters it now that we had no snowy linen spreadopon 

 the rough boards that formed our table? That our chairs 

 were made from "shakes" and our coffee cups and plates were 

 tin? What mattered it then? 1 have eaten a Christmas diu- 

 ner at the finest hotel in London, I have dined at your famous 

 Palmer House, I have eaten old-fashioned New England 

 dinners at home — down East; but I had never eaten such a 

 meal before. Even now my mouth waters for the savory 

 viands. 



The next day we sent Charley Cox down to our camp, 

 carrying three turkeys to the boys with word to get a team 

 and join us, which they did the next day. Two tents, twelve 

 feet apart, facing each other, a fly stretched overhead be- 

 tween them and a smaller tent just to west of the fly, formed 

 kitchen, bedroom and hall. Just east of the fly was an 

 enormous white oak stump, against which we built our 

 camp fire. Fuel was abundant and dry, so we did not lack 

 for a cheering fire. Near by was a shed partly filled with 

 corn fodder, on which lay our dogs, a good well of water 

 nearby was a valuable adjunct to our happiness, and when 

 the shades of evening came and supper was over we would 

 'tight our pipes and tell yarns around the camp-fire, or in- 

 dulge in a friendly seven-up till time to retire. For beds 

 we had laid poles on the ground, on these put thin shakes 

 left by the lumbermen, over these cornstalks, then millet 

 straw and topped off with straw ticks ard woolen blankets. 

 Not a bad bed, especially to a fellow who had tramped all 

 day. 



From this time we gave most of our attention to deer which 

 were very plenty. Our shotguns were not just what we 

 needed for them, but we managed to get in one or more 

 nearly every day, while a big wolf and a couple of wildcats 

 came to hand for variety. The tanned and mounted skins of 

 the two cats now adorn the floor of our parlor for rugs and 

 call out many questions regarding the trip. The day the 

 wolf was killed, C. and 1 were still-hunting for deer. C. 

 whispered to me that there was a fawn ahead a hundred 

 yards or so, as he had seen it run, but had been unable to get 

 in a shot owing to the thick black-spice brush. He suggested 

 that we should separate afew rods and keeping a sharp lookout 

 would probably get a shot. S'u, moving noiselesly along we 

 watched. Soon C.'s rifle cracked and with a "Come on 

 Doc, I've got her," he shouldered his gun and started for- 

 ward. Next I heard him say "No I haven't either. There 

 she goes now." But he couldn't get in his work then as the 

 spice was too thick. Where she fell was a big puddle of 

 blood, and at every jump the blood had spurted. We had 

 not over twenty rods to go before we found her— not a fawn, 

 but a big she wolf, too weak to run but sandy enough to show 

 an elegant set of teeth. C. kept her attention to the front 

 with a stick while I slipped around and knocked her in the 

 head with my hatchet. We "toted" her to the nearest 

 smoke, a hickory log on fire, and hung her up, then bla zed a 

 line due south a half mile to a wagon trail, so that we could 

 find her again, then resumed our tramp. 



When night came we had covered twenty-four miles, the 

 natives said, as We had been a mile beyond Prince's Camp, 

 in Craighead county. We saw only one deer, a few turkeys, 

 and lots of signs, but did not raise hair or feathers again. 

 Each one had some particular experience of his own to 

 narrate, and to this day when a group of the boys get to- 

 gether the stories are told over, jokes cracked, and all agree 

 that it was the jolliest experience of our lives. 



You may have noticed in the papers last fall a little article 

 saying that millions of squirrels were crossing the Mississippi 

 River near Memphis, going west. Well, I think we got 

 right among them, though natives say they were no thicker 

 than usual. People here will scarcely credit the stories we 

 tell about them. Any pleasant day four men who will try 

 can kill a barrel full of them— all grays. Beaver and otter 

 are there quite plenty. Bears there were none. 



At the other camp, eight miles from us, quail shoot- 

 ing was quite good. We missed the ducks, as we all enjoy 

 shooting them very much. As the season was an excep- 

 tional one we shall expect them next year in their usual 

 numbers. Already the boys are calculating for next fall. 

 Eby, an old Canadian Dutchman (70 years), is after a Win- 

 chester; going to practice all summer. K. is going to try a 

 rifle, while I am going to fix good sights on my shotgun, 

 believing that I can make good work with it shooting a solid 

 ball, 12 gauge, and the "Kay" buckshot cartridges seem to 

 work fine in it. If I cannot satisfy myself with it, shall get 

 a rifle, for I want deer shooting. There is a charm about it 

 that outweighs all other kinds of sport. I know that quail 

 shooting over a fine-working dog is the true sportsman's de- 

 light; Iknow just how it is to tumble the incoming mallard, 

 the swift-winged teal and the bluebill, but — I want some 

 deer shooting. 



When, finally, we broke camp, loaded our tents, boxes of 

 venison and equipage into a wagon drawn by a yoke of oxen, 

 and started for home, it was like leaving home. Not one, 

 even the cook, but would have been pleased to stay. O, that 

 grand, glorious forest! But there were interests at home 

 demanding our supervision, dear ones awaiting our return, 

 and we had to go. A half-dozen settlers were on hand to 

 bid us good-bye and urge us to return. They were truly 



