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FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Nov. 2, 1895. 



LUCK WITH MAINE BIG GAME. 



Boston, Oct. 26.— It really seems that quite every man 

 who has gone into the Maine woods this fall for the 

 expressed purpose of getting a moose has succeeded in his 

 object. Better still, most of them have been large 

 animals. Another party of New England sportsmen have 

 just returned to their homes after a most successful trip, 

 the main facts of which it gives me pleasure to send to 

 Forest and Stream. The names of the shooters are F. 

 H. Kimball, Bath, Me. ; Jas. Kirkaldy, Woonsocket, R. I. ; 

 Tenny White, Woonsocket, and John M, Kimball, Slaters- 

 ville, R. I. Their glory was obtained in the Moosehead 

 country, not far from Lily Bay. Mr. Kirkaldy, whose 

 experience with game has been confined mostly to shoot- 

 ing foxes in Scotland, and who was extremely skeptical 

 regarding the prevalence of moose in Maine, had his 

 skepticism blown to the winds almost as soon as he was 

 able to get into his shooting togs and get on the warpath. 

 While walking along with his guide the latter said, "There 

 are some moose tracks not a half hour old, shall we follow 

 them up?" Agreeing to this they started after the forest 

 monarch, and in a very short time came in full sight of 

 the animal only 20yds. away. The big fellow had no 

 idea of retreating, and while his hair was bristling up 

 with anger Mr, Kirkaldy fired a shot which cut his jugu- 

 lar vein. The animal fell almost instantly and nearly 

 every drop of blood in his body poured out of the wound. 

 The delight and pleasure of the fortunate shooter was 

 simply beyond description, and he has now gone to the 

 other extreme and is convinced that a bull moose lurks 

 behind every windfall, and can be dispatched with the 

 trouble of pulling the trigger. 



The experience of Mr. F. H. Kimball, of the same 

 party, was even more thrilling. This gentleman, with a 

 young Indian guide, had started out late in the afternoon, 

 intending if necessary to stay out all night in a deter- 

 mined effort to get a shot at a moose. The Indian was an 

 expert caller, and Mr. Kimball relied on his skill to bring 

 the much coveted game within easy shooting distance. 

 While going up Tussel Lagoon in a canoe about dusk in 

 the evening they heard a great splashing in the water 

 some distance ahead of them. The Indian whispered 

 "Moose!" and bent to the paddle with renewed energy, 

 sending the canoe along swiftly and noiselessly. The 

 wind was in the right direction, and in a few moments a 

 sight met their vision such as few men have the good for- 

 tune to see in these modern days. There stood two great 

 bull moose, as big as houses (as Mr. Kimball described 

 them), and a large calf, all splashing around in the water 

 and having a great time. The distance was about 60yds. , 

 and it took but a second for Mr. Kimball to send a .38-56 

 bullet into the largest of the three. The other two were 

 off like the wind, but the fatal bullet had done its work 

 well with one of them. The lead went clean through the 

 animal, sticking in the skin on the opposite side. Mr. 

 Kimball cut it out and has it now in his possession, and a 

 very much flattened and distorted piece of lead it is. 



As an experiment the guide afterward began calling, 

 and they could hear the calf answer time and again a 

 long distance off in the woods. The journey back to 

 camp was a sort of triumphal march, and Mr. Kimball 

 took care to send word of their luck to their friends of 

 the Night-hawk Club on Sugar Island in Moosehead Lake. 

 Word came back in due time that their health and good 

 luck were toasted in the proper form, but a frank admis- 

 sion was made that an unusual silence prevailed while the 

 custom was being carried out. How could it be otherwise 

 when some of the club members have been seeking moose 

 meat for untold years without success. 



Stories regarding tbo fine sporting qualities of that part 

 of Maine lying in the extreme northwestern portion, and 

 reached by the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad, have occa- 

 sionally reached me from residents of Caribou and Presque 

 Isle. A vast territory is lying out of doors up there 

 around the upper waters of the St. John and the many 

 outlying lakes and streams, a large part of which is still 

 untouched by the lumberman's axe. Superb fishing and 

 shooting can be had for the seeking according to these 

 statements, and the wonder is that more sportsmen do 

 not go there. The trouble probably lies in the fact that it 

 takes considerable time to get in and out. Two Boston 

 sportsmen have made the trip this fall, and the story they 

 tell since returning seems to confirm those previously 

 heard. William Wallace and H. L. Hall are the two 

 men. They went to Island Falls on the B. & A. and 

 there obtained a team and wagon, on which was loaded a 

 canoe and several camping utensils. An eighty-two-mile 

 drive was then taken to the place where they must leave 

 their horses and plunge into the woods. Their destination 

 was the St. Froid Lake, and thinking they could save 

 time they decided on the advice of a French farmer to go 

 through the woods to the thoroughfare or stream connect- 

 ing Portage and St. Froid lakes, intending to canoe it 

 down to the lake itself. On reaching the stream they 

 found the water too low to float them down, and realized 

 they were in a tight predicament. They were two and 

 one-half miles from the lake, and it became a question of 

 going way back through the woods or carrying their boat 

 and equipment down to deep water. They had no guide, 

 and realized if they decided on the latter plan they would 

 be obliged to wade the stream almost the entire distance, 

 as the bank was impassable with thick growth. With 

 great courage they tackled the stream, and floundered 

 about in the ice-cold water until a place was reached 

 where they could launch the canoe and paddle down to 

 the place selected for camping, where they finally ar- 

 rived, cold, wet, and of course very hungry. A good tent 

 taken with them provided their camp, and a stay of two 

 weeks was made on the shores of the lake, the time being 

 given wholly to hunting. Mr. Wallace killed a bull 

 moose and two deer, and Mr. Hall one caribou. Besides 

 the big game they killed many partridges, the birds being 

 very plentiful, and also had good black duck shooting. 

 Some few days before they entered camp a couple of 

 lumbermen, while driving along a tote road in the woods, 

 were suddenly confronted by an immense bull moose, 

 which for a time declined to move out of the path, and 

 seemed half inclined to attack the horses. Of course they 

 had no gun, and were obliged to await his pleasure. This 

 incident made it appear that the animals are not hunted 

 much in thiB virgin region, and the evidence of Messrs. 

 Hall and Wallace add further weight to that theory. 



Another bad miss scored, and two disappointed sports- 

 men down on their luck, are the conditions surrounding 

 the return to Boston of H. F. Morse and Judge Bolster. 

 The two gentlemen were tramping through a swampy 



stretch of woods and at the same time both saw a great 

 bull moose, with a magnificent pair of horns, looking 

 straight at them but a short distance ahead. Both men 

 instantly fired and Mr. Moose made off in a hurry with- 

 out shedding a drop of his precious blood or stopping to 

 nod good-by. Congratulations that they had not shot 

 each other were next in order, and the balance of their 

 walk was spent in silent meditation of what might have 

 been. They have been in the Aroostook region for two 

 weeks, got one buck deer, and but for this mortal shock 

 to their confidence would have gone on record as having 

 made an ideal trip. 



H. S. Fisher and wife, of Boston, have been spending 

 a week or more in that fine region back of the Katahdin 

 Iron Works, in Maine. Houston Pond Camps was their 

 stopping place, and not the least of their pleasure was 

 obtained in viewing the enchanting scenery surrounding 

 their pleasant home. The substantial rewards of the trip 

 came in the shape of a 2001b. buck deer and a doe, killed 

 a few days after their arrival. They returned to Boston 

 more than pleased. Hackle. 



CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 



Song and Game Birds in the South. 



Chicago, 111., Oct. 18.— Mr. Benj. C. Miles, of Browns- 

 ville, Tenn., a devoted lover of all birds and a close 

 student of their ways, writes entertainingly in regard to 

 the loss of bird life in last winter's storm, being moved 

 thereto by the comment of Mr. F. F. Merrill, of Milwau- 

 kee, on the disappearance of the bluebirds from that neigh- 

 borhood this year. Mr. Miles says that he positively 

 knows where there was one nest the past spring, and saw 

 two or three other couples at different times. "I suppose 

 during the February cold spell," he says, "I noticed not 

 less than a hundred frozen birds, and among these was 

 only one bluebird. I had hoped from that fact they would 

 get through all right, but fear now that is not the case. 

 A friend of mine, a close observer of birds, tells me he has 

 not seen one this summer. 



"While coon hunting in the woods during the cold 

 weather in February I got lost from my crowd, and 

 stopped near a dry snag and built a fire. In stripping a 

 piece of dry stuff from the snag I exposed the cosy retreat 

 of several blues, whereupon I transferred my fire, and 

 taking a string tied the bark in place again and put in the 

 hole a piece of the facing of my coat, which had been 

 torn in the chase. In May I hunted up the snag and 

 found that a bird had nested and hatched a brood, and 

 suppose it was one of my former camp mates, as the piece 

 of cloth was the foundation for the nest. 



"Our visiting birds have nearly all left us, and they will 

 be truly missed. Many of the birds, which I think nest 

 further North usually, stopped with us this year, and 

 while I sincerely sympathize with my Northern brother in 

 his loss, I am so wholly human that I bid them come 

 again and stay. Lately a friend, whose acquaintance I 

 formed through your columns, presented me a copy of 

 Chapman's "Birds of Eastern North America," and I wish 

 to go on record as saying that the book is a treasure to 

 any lover of the feathered tribe who, like myself, is igno- 

 rant of bird nature, but still alive to its beauty and value, 

 and from this Western limit of the subject of which he 

 treats I would waft him a blessing from a lowlier member 

 of the brotherhood of bird lovers. 



"Our Bob Whites this year present a curious feature, in 

 that many bevies are fully grown, while others are just 

 hatched apparently, notable to fly. I saw such a bevy 

 this evening. Of those large enough to shoot there are a 

 goodly number, and after getting through with them we 

 will look after the small ones, but have concluded we will 

 have to leave them over for another year. 



"Several of our sportsmen have killed turkeys in the 

 past two weeks, and they are more plentiful than for sev- 

 eral years past — the result of the constant agitation for 

 better game protection which our people have kept up for 

 a few years past, and in which Forest and Stream has 

 so ably assisted." 



Bears and Fur in the North. 



M. P. Dunham, a Madison county, Montana, guide 

 whose home is at Lyon, writes that he is just back from a 

 hunt with a man who took a ,22 rifle and a kodak, and 

 shot — with the kodak only — thirty-seven elk and two 

 deer, and was pleased with his luck. 



It is Dunham who has previously Bpoken of unscientific 

 bears, and he adds in regard to the "pine nut" bear: 



"I have killed a great many bear here in the mountains, 

 but I have never got one that would answer to this de- 

 scription. I have killed two kinds of black bear here, one 

 the common mountain black bear and the other a much 

 smaller bear, with a large white spot on the breast. In 

 some cases the whole breast was white. This last spring 

 I killed a large bear that at a distance looked like a black 

 bear, but on getting up to it I found it to be a dark gray; 

 not a silver-tip, but gray — one white hair to about ten or 

 twelve black ones. I sold the hide to Gottschalck, of 

 Bozeman, who also called it a 'gray bear.' I have also 

 shot brown and cinnamon bear that had climbed a tree. 

 I saw a brown bear come down a tree this summer, and 

 he must have climbed up to be able to come down." 



I wish to guard Mr. Dunham against the unscientific 

 habit of jumping at conclusions. It is by no means 

 scientifically certain that, because the bear was seen 

 climbing down the tree, it had ever climbed up the tree. 

 Even had Mr. Dunham seen the bear climbing up the tree 

 it could not be accepted as fact, since Mr. Dunham is not 

 a scientist. As Mr. Dunham has submitted so poor a case, 

 all we can consider scientifically proved is that the bear 

 he saw coming down the tree had been born up the tree 

 at an earlier day and had never come down before, and 

 that it was not a brown bear he saw at all, but a black 

 bear. I really must deprecate such unscientific habits of 

 observation, and must ask the mountain men not to see 

 gray bears, brown bears or cinnamon bears, but to con- 

 fine their observations to two sorts, the black and the 

 grizzly. 



In Mr. Horton's fur store at St. Paul there is a mounted 

 bear said to be the largest in the United States. It was 

 mounted, I believe, by William Hart, of New York, and 

 is larger than the monster bear shown by Mr. Hart at the 

 Sportsmen's Exposition. Both these bears came from 

 Alaska, and are the same "brown bears" mentioned by 

 Schwatka and other Alaskan travelers. They are not the 

 color of the grizzly, but are of a solid brown color. The 

 St. Paul bear is said to be between 10 and lift, in length. 

 (We had no way of measuring it, as it is mounted stand- 



ing on its hindlegs.) Somebody most unscientifically 

 stretched that bear hide, for we are asked to believe that the 

 grizzly does not really weigh over 6001bs. on the scales, and 

 it seems sure that this monBter would have weighed more 

 than twice that, unless it was a pneumatic bear. More- 

 over, at the feet of the big bear are two mounted cub 

 bears (not known to have belonged to the big one) which 

 are brown except for a plain white collar, expanding to a 

 white patch on the throat. What business have they with 

 that white collar? Do they lose it as they grow older? 

 The brown color of this big bear is not the cinnamon 

 color of the Rocky Mountain cinnamon bear. It is the 

 color which, I am told, is found uniform among these big 

 Alaska bears. And yet, from Alaska come jet black bear 

 skins nearly twice as large as the average Wisconsin or 

 Michigan black bear. Who shall tell us of all these bears? 

 Has science got it all up her revered sleeve? To me it 

 rather seems this way: science classifies, but nature does 

 not; and nature saw it first. E. Hough. 



909 Security Building, Chicago. 



COMMISSIONER ROOSEVELT'S RECORD. 



New York, Oct. 22.— Editor Forest and Stream; Mr. 

 A. L. Trude, of Chicago, has recently given to the public 

 several statements about myself which contain such reck- 

 less falsehoods that I at first thought Mr. Trude himself 

 must be an invention of some of the newspapers. I am 

 informed, however, that he is a real person. 



One of his statements contains a long account of my 

 shooting a trapped bear. The other contains a long 

 account of an alleged hunt which I made after white 

 goats, in which I failed to hit any of the goats and finally 

 shot at a dead one which a guide had thoughtfully pre- 

 pared. He also stated that my elk hunting consisted in 

 driving females and young elk into ravines and slaughter- 

 ing them. He gives as his authority two guides named 

 Ed Marion and Beaver. 



I never shot a trapped bear in my life; I never but once 

 saw a bear in a trap; I never was out with any guides 

 named Beaver or Ed Marion, or any similar name, and, 

 as far as I know, I never saw them; I certainly never 

 fired a shot in their presence. With one exception, all of 

 the goats I have ever killed were shot while out with 

 John Willis, now a prominent business man of Thompson 

 Falls, Montana. I believe the editor of the Forest and 

 Stream has had correspondence with Willis, and some of 

 Willis's letters have been published in the Forest and 

 Stream. Any one by writing to him can find out for 

 himself the exact truth of my accounts of my goat hunt- 

 ing, as published in my two books. It happens that I 

 have killed every white goat at which I ever fired, 

 although some of them took several bullets, and one I did 

 not get until the following day. 



Some of my bear hunting has been done with Willis, 

 some with William Merrifield, of Medora, N. D., who was 

 at the time on my ranch, and some with Hank Griffen, 

 who is dead. Three bears I shot when I was alone. As i 

 for Bhooting elk cows and calves, in all my twelve years' 

 hunting in the West put together I have killed but five, 

 and these were when we were in need of meat. The most 

 successful elk hunt I ever made was in 1891, south of the 

 Yellowstone National Park. I was with old Tazewell 

 Woody, whose address is at Mammoth Hot Springs. 

 Your correspondent Mr. Hough has in your paper already 

 given Woody's account of what I did on this trip. Mr. 

 R. H. M. Ferguson, now an A. D. C. at Government House, 

 Ottawa, Can., was with me on this trip, and would doubt- 

 less answer any letters sent to him in reference to it. A 

 full account of the trip is published in my book "The i 

 Wilderness Hunter." 



I challenge Mr. Trude to give the date and place where 

 a single one of the incidents which he recites occurred. 

 They are all false from beginning to end, in every par- 

 ticular. Whether he has invented this falsehood himself, 

 or whether he has been imposed upon by a couple of 

 scoundrels whom I never saw, and has recklessly repeated ! 

 their lies, I do not care. In either case he is equally to 

 blame. A liar is sufficiently contemptible, but a liar who | 

 slanders others in wantonness is even worse. 



Mr. Trude is unfit for membership in any club or asso- 

 ciation of gentlemen, and is unfit for the acquaintance of 

 any man of honor. Theodore Roosevelt. 



A SURE-ENOUGH POINTER. 



Monroe, Mich.— Editor Forest and Stream: Seeing 

 others in your interesting journal giving their experi- 

 ences causes me to give you an account of an afternoon 

 in the field the present week. I became possessed of a 

 young dog last winter too late to give him any field ex- 

 perience, and wishing to see how he would behave I took 

 him out for a run. He had been tried a little before I got 

 him, and being largely Laverack, inherited the same 

 traits of character as nearly every Laverack had that I 

 have had anything to do with, viz., a total disregard of 

 orders and a determination to go where they pleased and 

 select their own route. As we were not quite united in 

 our opinions and I knew the country best, I wished to see 

 if the few misunderstandings we were having lately i 

 about the use of the whistle as a signal for turning (not 

 for going away; he knew how to do that thoroughly) 

 were to be continued. 



On reaching a large field of wheat stubble I cast him 

 off. After finding the length of it and 'turning at the 

 fence (I was much pleased at this unusual occurrence for 

 him), and coming quartering back handsomely with 

 head high in the air, he drew up to a fine point, which, 

 although only a lark, was quite gratifying to me. After 

 beating out another field or two and a piece of woodland, 

 I came out to the Lake Erie marshes and some prairie 

 land. He was going well and wide, and again throwing 

 his head high, roading and drawing, came bold on to a 

 crippled duck. He seemed to be of the opinion that he 

 could capture it, but as its wings were not totally disabled 

 I advised him to let it go, an advice he rather reluctantly 

 heeded. On again. He had moved a short distance only 

 when he made a most stylish point. On my going in 

 front of him out hopped a pretty green frog. I was now 

 nearing a spot I knew snipe always to inhabit, and my 

 hopes ran high, as I had a gun along. When he carefully 

 drew to a point I walked up and was rewarded by a shot 

 and a bird. He retrieved it nicely, and wheeling into the 

 wind, instantly trailed another, which he had also the 

 pleasure of retrieving. His price was now rising rapidly. 

 But the supply of birds had run out. At the next low 

 spot he again pointed handsomely, when a brace of birde 



