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FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Oct. 26, 1895. 



ing the profits to be derived from the preservation of 

 game and the fact that agricultural interests will not 

 thereby suffer, but will rather benefit by the destruction 

 of insects, etc. 



It would be possible to fill columns with arguments in 

 favor of such legislation as I have indicated, but I have 

 already exceeded the limits of such a communication as 

 this, and in conclusion will only point out that not only is 

 it unnecessary to carry into effect the policy here sug- 

 gested by unpopular laws, but many of the inconven- 

 iences which arise from the preservation of game in 

 England would not be felt here, because of the enor- 

 mously greater extent of the country, and still more 

 because land is in general occupied and worked by the 

 owner and not leased to tenant farmers. 



"Sport," properly so called, would be within the reach 

 of all, and farmers would be anxious to sell shooting 

 privileges to city men who could afford to pay a good 

 price, and then save one-half the present cost of a trip to 

 the distant localities where alone game is now to be 

 found; and that this would not be a mere artificial con- 

 dition, only to be kept up by stringent laws, is insured by 

 the fact that game and the profit to be derived from it 

 would be in the hands of one of the most hard-working 

 and least wealthy classes of the community, and not as in 

 England, where all game is controlled by the wealthy and 

 aristocratic. 



As a signature, permit me to append the name of this 

 province, for every word of this letter applies with equal 

 force to Ontario. 



BOSTON AND MAINE. 



Boston, Oct. 18.— Some of the deer shooters are return- 

 ing, and considerable luck is reported. Wm. H. Coggin 

 and S. Matherson, Jr. , have returned from their camp in 

 Maine, and they had good success. They were accom- 

 panied by Mr. W, H. Doane, of somewhere near Bangor, 

 an owner in the camp. Mr, Coggin and Mr. Matherson 

 brought home a couple of deer. They hunted fairly and 

 got their game by watching at the runways and near the 

 water. The weather was very windy a good part of the 

 time; decidedly against still-hunting. Besides the leaves 

 were falling and ready to make a good deal of sound at 

 every footfall. But they stuck to the hunt for several 

 days, getting one or two days that were still. On one of 

 these days Mr. Coggin made a splendid shot at a doe on the 

 jump, she having been alarmed by sight or sound of some 

 hunters a short distance away. He had the good fortune 

 to strike her in exactly the right spot. On dressing her 

 off, it was found that the bullet had passed directly 

 through the heart. The hunter is very proud of this 

 achievement, and justly too. Partridge shooting they 

 found to be very satisfactory indeed. They were able to 

 get all they wanted for camp use without very severe 

 hunting. 



The most successful hunting party of the season thus 

 far returned from the Maine woods on Tuesday. Mr. D. 

 J. Flanders, general passenger and ticket agent of the 

 Boston & Maine Railroad, was the head of the party, with 

 his brother, J. A. Flanders, New England agent for the 

 Clyde Line of steamers; Phin. Sprague, of Maiden, and 

 Dr. Libby, of Boston. They were in camp for two weeks 

 about thirty miles from Blame, Aroostook county, and had 

 for guides Arthur Winslow, Arthur Whitcomb, J. M. Yiles 

 and A. N. Jones. The first day out Mr. D. J. Flanders 

 shot a buck caribou with a beautiful set of antlers. The 

 weather was all that could be asked for during the camp- 

 ing out. They got a plenty of small game, and brought 

 home with them four caribou and one deer. Partridges, 

 Mr. Flanders says, they shot till they were tired. This 

 meant enough for camp use. 



Mr. D. J. Flanders thinks that his party has found the 

 ideal hunting spot. He is charmed with the Maine woods 

 and game. In his opinion there are a good many caribou 

 left in that vicinity. He was put on to the locality 

 through the courtesy of his friend Mr. Cram, General 

 Manager of the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad. The 

 guides were of the best. Mr. Cram told them that the 

 party desired a location alone, meaning one not overrun 

 by other hunters. The guides took the order literally and 

 furnished the party with a new log camp and a big field 

 bed, while their own quarters were a little distance away. 

 Among the caribou taken was one female with horns. 

 The head is now being mounted at Bangor, and when it 

 arrives I shall obtain a photo for reproduction. The 

 guides were a good deal surprised when they found the 

 female with horns equal to those of a two-year-old buck. 

 One of them remarked that "The other caribous all 

 probably called her a woman suffragist." 



It seems that General Manager Cram is alive to the fish 

 and game interests of Maine. He is aware that the very 

 life of the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad is linked with the 

 protection of nsh and game along its line. He was in 

 company with one of the guides last summer, not very 

 far in the woods, when they came to a dead deer, from 

 which the poachers had cut nothing but some steaks. A 

 little further on they found the carcass of a fine caribou 

 festering in the sun. Only a few steaks had been cut 

 from this noble game. The hunters evidently dared not 

 attempt to bring it out to the settlement. Some of the 

 best guides tell him that they are goirg to decline guiding 

 for illegal hunting, and that they shall try hereafter to 

 prevent shooting out of season. They begin to see that 

 the preservation of the game is of great consequence to 

 them. Mr. Cram is trying to impress them with the idea 

 that a live moose or caribou in the woods is likely to 

 bring them several jobs of guiding, while a dead one is 

 done forever, and illegally killed makes the guide himself 

 liable to fine and imprisonment. Mr. Cram believes that 

 the guides are beginning to watch each other. 



In the Boston dry goods trade many sportsmen are 

 much saddened by the untimely drowning of Kenneth M. 

 Taylor, a salesman of the house of Bradford, Thomas & 

 Co. With his guide, Michael Collins, Mr. Taylor was out 

 on Moosehead Lake, near Kineo, on Monday, when the 

 canoe was overturned, it is supposed, and both were 

 drowned. Mr. Taylor was 27 years of age, a Harvard 

 (1890) graduate. His trip to Moosehead waB for a brief 

 vacation and considerable hunting was to be done. He 

 had long counted on the trip. Collins is said to have 

 been one of the most trustworthy guidt s in the Moosehead 

 region, and one that will be greatly missed by the many 

 sportsmen he has worktd for during the increasing 

 popularity of that part of the country for fishing and 

 shooting. 



That partridges have been very plenty in Maine one 

 would not question could he see the number of boxes of 



these birds being opened almost every day in the Boston 

 markets. Already there is a glut and prices are off. The 

 law against shipping them out of that State is evidently 

 being sadly evaded. Marketmen frankly admit that they 

 are getting ten times as many partridges from New 

 Hampshire (?) as last year. As for Maine, they stop there. 

 But many of these boxes come from the Portland and 

 Bangor steamers, and hence could not come from New 

 Hampshire unless first shipped to Maine or picked up off 

 shore on the ocean, and in the night time at that. 



Coot shooting offshore has been better since the big storm 

 of Sunday last. The wind blew a gale, and shooting on 

 that day was next to an impossibility. At Scituate thirty 

 or forty gunners were out nearly all day in the rain. The 

 coot were flying, but the sea ran so high that not a bird 

 could be got. Mr. A. Irvin McLauthlin, with a friend, 

 drove through the rain to Scituate, over twenty miles, to 

 attend a "coot supper or stew." They describe the storm 

 as most remarkable all along the shore, with many birds 

 flying. They drove back to Boston in the evening, with 

 the rain falling in torrents. Shooting they did not try. 

 The rain was enough. 



Mr. George T. Freeman was at Anisquam over the 

 storm. He used a number of plates in his camera and 

 probably has some magnificent pictures of the waves. 

 He had some very good shooting on Monday, after the 

 storm had subsided. Coot and other ducks were flying 

 in good numbers. 



Oct. 19. — In a single issue of a Maine daily paper that I 

 read to-day there were accounts of over twenty deer 

 taken by citizens of that State, besides a number by Boston 

 and New York hunters and sportsmen from other States. 

 A gentleman who has just returned remarked that fully 

 two-thirds of these deer are shot by the guides. They 

 are employed by the sportsman, and the deer taken be- 

 long to him, and nothing is to be said. The average 

 city sport does not like tramping; it is too hard work; 

 so he stays in camp and sends out his guide. Some 

 of them even employ more than one guide, with special 

 rewards offered for success. My friend believes that 

 he is sure whereof he speaks, for he has it from 

 some of the best guides in the vicinity of Bangor, who 

 have told him how it is done. One fellow, an English- 

 man, hunting at a camp in the Moosehead region, Jiept 

 his guide out all the time after deer, while he lay in camp. 

 Every time the guide approached the camp he was in 

 danger of being shot, only the fellow could not hit the 

 bigness of a barn door a few feet away. But he was liable 

 to blaza away into the empty woods, declaring that he 

 was shooting at a "blawsted buck." Finally the guide had 

 to take refuge behind a tree, into which the Englishman 

 put a couple of bullets out of a whole magazine full that 

 be fired in that direction. The guide, who is a quiet and 

 good-natured fellow till thoroughly aroused, then told the 

 make-believe hunter that if he fired that rifle in his direc- 

 tion again he would give him such a thrashing as he never 

 dreamed of, besides deserting him in the woods. There 

 is really great danger in the woods when such fools are 

 out. 



Mr. George Lanphier and his party have captuved a 

 couple of moose. I shall get an account of his hunting for 

 the Forest and Stream next week. To-day it can only be 

 said that he has good luck almost always. Special. 



FROM A MOOSILAUKE POINT OF VIEW. 



The Moosilauke Union Fish and Game League send us 

 their club book, which has this bit of Moosilaukian 

 philosophizing on game and fish and the relations to them 

 of the men who go out with gun and rod, in season or 

 out of season : 



"It has long been evident to those who have given the 

 matter any thought, that unless some method could be 

 found for securing the better protection of our fish and 

 game, the day was not far distant when good sport with 

 the rod and gun would be a thing of the past. This 

 would mean not alone personal deprivation to those who 

 look to our crystal trout streams, our numerous lakes and 

 noble forests for needed rest and recreation, but serious 

 loss to the State at large, and particularly to that large 

 portion of its population whose income is largely or 

 entirely derived ironi our summer guests and visiting 

 sportsmen. It is estimated that over $8,000,000 are left 

 annually by these visitors to our mountain and summer 

 resorts. To a great many of them, good fishing and 

 hunting are attractions of paramount importance; hence 

 we cannot afford to look on quietly at the wanton de- 

 struction of so important a source of revenue, so valuable 

 a property of the commonwealth. 



"The fish and game laws already enacted, if properly ob- 

 served, are adequate not alone for preserving the fish and 

 game we have, but for so increasing the same as to make 

 our State, in a few years, but little less than a sportsmen's 

 paradise. The difficulty, however, lies in impressing 

 upon a majority of our citizens the importance of enforc- 

 ing these laws. There is no better way to accomplish 

 this than for those interested to organize local fish and 

 game leagues, thereby securing the co-operation of all or 

 as niany as possible of the people in a community. 

 Without hearty co-operation, very little good work of a 

 public nature can be accomplished. Realizing this, a 

 number of the citizens of Haverhill, Warren, Piermont, 

 Orford and neighboring towns met at Haverhill last 

 autumn, and organized the Moosilauke Union Fish and 

 Game League. These towns contain many of the best 

 trout streams in the State, as well as numerous spring-fed 

 ponds and heavily timbered forests, and as a result of the 

 protection and efforts of the league will be able in a 

 short time to offer as fine fishing and hunting as can be 

 found anywhere in New England. 



"About 150.000 young fish, including brook trout, lake 

 trout, land-locked or fresh-water salmon, or rainbow 

 trout, have been placed in the streams and ponds of the 

 section covered by the league this season, and it is ex- 

 pected that another year a much larger quantity will be 

 distributed. It is also the purpose of the league to intro- 

 duce, from time to time, such new fish and game as may 

 be thought advisable. 



"It is a mistaken idea to suppose that the efforts of a 

 fish and game league are for the benefit of any particu- 

 lar class, or that its members shall be allowed any special 

 privileges denied to others. By reference to the constitu- 

 tion and by-laws, it will be seen that every member 

 promises on his word of honor to carefully observe the 

 laws. This is the fundamental principle of all similar 

 leagues, and a violation by a member of the league will 

 be prosecuted as thoroughly as that of a non-member. A 



large number of the members of our league neither hunt 

 nor fish, but understanding the object of the organization, 

 are anxious to give it their support. 



"All who are interested in the success of this work> 

 whether residents of the State or visitors, are cordially 

 invited to join our league, and lend us the benefit of their 

 influence, if Unable to do more." 



We have also received the programme and rules for the 

 Moosilauke's first annual side-hunt, which follow i 



1. All members of the league, and all who join prior to Oct. 23, are 

 cordially invited to take pare in this hunt and the supper following. 



2. The hunt will commence at 12:01 A. M., and close at 11.59 P. M., 

 Wednesday, Oct. 23. No game killed before or after that date will be 

 counted iu the competition tor the prizes. 



3. All game must be delivered to the nearest member of the follow- 

 ing committee before noon of the 24th; Dr. E. C. Chase. Orford; E. E. 

 Grimes, Piermont; C. J. Ayer, Pike Station; G. H. L. Head, Warren; 

 Dr. O. D. EaBtman, Woodsville. 



4. All skins of value, also all game not needed for the supper, will be 

 returned to the owner, after being counted. 



5. A member unable to hunt can send a substitute into the field by 

 furnishing a satisfactory excuse to the committee. 



6. Any member violating these rules or practising fraud in any 

 manner will be recommended for expulsion from the league, by the 

 committee, and his score not entered. 



Those members winning the five highest scores will be awarded the 

 following prizes: 

 First, double-barrel, breechloading shotgun, value $20. 

 Second, breechloading rifle or a single-barrel shotgun, value $15. 

 Third, jointed fish-rod, value 85. 

 Fourth, hunter's knife, value $2. 

 Fifth, brierwood pipe, value SI. 



The following score will be used in counting all game killed in ac- 

 cordance with these rules and the fish and game laws. No difference 

 will be made where dogs are used. 



Bear... 1000 Gray squirrel 60 



Deer £00 Mink 50 



Fox 200 Duck 50 



Coon 200 Blue heron 50 



Fisher cat (lynx) 200 Muskrat 25 



Partridge 75 Skunk 10 



Woodcock 75 Red squirrel 5 



Rabbit , 75 Chipmunk 1 



Fresh-water fish, per pound, dressed weight. (Except perch.) 



Any game killed not found in the above list will be scored by the 

 committee. 



PIKE COUNTY DEER COUNTRY. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



Frank A. Cutting in Forest and Stream of Oct. 12 

 issues a friendly challenge for any one to beat his record 

 of two deer in three days on a journey of about 750 miles. 

 We will accept his challenge, not in a spirit of rivalry, 

 but to convince, if possible, the local readers of Forest 

 and Stream that large game may be had within a much 

 more reasonable distance of New York city, at little loss 

 of time, and at nominal expense. To many sportsmen 

 cost is quite a consideration, and not all of them can 

 easily afford a trip to Maine or the Adirondacks. Mr. 

 Cutting does not inform us as to the cost of his trip, but 

 it is safe to assume from his description of the trip and 

 the distance and modes of travel that his venison was an 

 expensive luxury, although we do not wish to be inferred 

 as suggesting that the meat was any important element of 

 the sport or pleasures of his outing. 



I regret that the instance 1 am about to relate was so 

 spontaneous in the inception and execution that we were 

 deprived of all the pleasures of anticipation, which are in 

 many cases, in deer hunting, the only mental satisfaction 

 realized. I am therefore unable (unless by imagination 

 and fiction) to add interest and zest to the plain statement 

 of facts by leading the reader over the route and making 

 him in imagination one of the party, as so neatly done by 

 Mr. Cutting. 



Last fall, near the close of the season, I met my hunt- 

 ing companion in the evening and suggested, as we had 

 been having rather indifferent success during the earlier 

 season (having killed but one deer), that we make a final 

 effort the following morning. It was decided at onco that 

 " the two of us" set out in the morning at our usual time, 5 

 o'clock, and our destination was unanimously agreed upon. 



Agreeably to arrangements we left* our own homes at 

 the appointed time, and after an hour's walk separated 

 for business. The first drive — with us always short ones — 

 a deer was started, but avoided us, only giving me a sight 

 of it on an opposite ridge some half mile away. Our dog 

 was soon back, however — for be it remembered, we have 

 no use for a "stayer," and will have no "hanging" hounds 

 in our woods if we can prevent it — and we were soon 

 again on trail. Presently two white flags were in the air, 

 and by judicious maneuvering I had them coming my 

 way before they had been fifteen minutes on foot. Two 

 reports within five seconds, and the two fine specimens lay 

 dead in their tracks without a struggle. By 1 o'clock 

 they were hung up and dressed. A walk of six miles 

 brought my companion to town for a conveyance to carry 

 in the bag, and that night we slept in our respective beds 

 at home, well satisfied with our wind up of the hunting 

 season of 1894. 



This is not the first time a member of our little party of 

 from two to four — we do not favor large parties, and will 

 not help to make them — has killed his two as quickly as 

 he could swing from one to the other; and during the fall 

 of 1892 one of our party killed his two and reloaded his 

 breechloader in time to wound the third (which was sub- 

 sequently found dead), that had been driven to him in one 

 batch. The same fall ("92) I killed two in one day, but not 

 at the same time, and our party are not at all astonished 

 at getting two in a day's hunt. 



Our record for '92 was seven deer in about ten days' 

 hunting; '93, five in about two weeks. Our lack of success 

 last season was mainly due to the fact that our favorite 

 grounds, most accessible to our homes, had been almost 

 entirely burned over, and the deer had sought more 

 distant and unburnt shelter. This season our woods are 

 in fine shape both for shack and shelter, and exploring 

 trips have revealed quite plentiful signs. The weather, 

 however, has been so hot and excessively dry and the 

 leaves so thick that we have not given them a trial yet, 

 but anticipate during the season to have some "more 

 fun." 



These successes of the past and anticipations for the 

 future are not credited to the distant, expensive hunting 

 regions of Maine and the Adirondacks, but are realized 

 within one hundred miles of New York city and within 

 six miles of direct rail by unsurpassed wagon road, in 

 little Pike county, Pa. Instead of days" and nights of 

 travel, and the loss of time and expenses incident thereto, 

 the sportsman can leave his city business (in New York 

 we mean and not Boston) at three or four o'clock in the 

 afternoon and be on a runway by daylight the next 

 morning, with fair prospects of having a deer to carry 

 bacU to his home in New York the same night. All 

 things considered, will Mr. Cutting submit to the inevi- 

 table? Piko. 



