26 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Aug. 2, 188$. 



Mexico denied, Imt the deer that we killed was certainly 

 of that species. Steve and Joe had hunted from Wash- 

 ington Territory to Yucatan, and Bill and I had both 

 killed man}' mule deer, and we all agreed on the question 

 as to which family this one belonged to. 



Saturday was to be our last day, and we concluded 

 to go over into Mexico again and have an antelope hunt. 

 A rancher by the name of Campeni went along with us. 

 He was familiar with the country, and knew where the 

 antelope came to get water. It was several miles and we 

 drove over. Mr. Campeni very kindly offered to stay 

 with the team and see that no wandering Mexican got 

 hold of it. We hunted in pairs. Joe and Bill in one pair, 

 and Steve and myself in the other. Steve and I had 

 climbed up on top of a good sized mountain to see if 

 there were any antelope in sight, when we were sur- 

 prised to see what we thought was a big brown stone 

 house standing on another still higher mountain about 

 two miles away. We had no glasses, and we both be- 

 came so impressed with the idea that it was a house of 

 some sort, that we concluded to visit it and settle the 

 matter. Before we got to it, however, we found it was 

 not a building at all, but simply a huge mass of stone. It 

 was a good representation of a house with doors and win- 

 dows, and big columns or pillars in front. We could not 

 see any game of any kind and returned to the wagon 

 where Joe and Bill soon joined us. We were sitting in 

 the wagon in the shade of a big tree, chatting and laugh- 

 ing, when Joe saw something bob upon a big ridge a few 

 hundred yards away. Eight other somethings came in 

 sight, and there were nine antelope within range of us. 

 We aE opened on them, but working our Winchesters 

 made our spring wagon jump, so we could not get good 

 aim. and we only got one of them. 



We drove nearly to Huachuca on Sunday, and on our 

 way Joe killed another deer. The next day we drove to 

 Joe's ranch, and there we lived on venison until we 

 would have been ashamed to look a live deer in the face. 



Veritas. 



MY LARGEST GRIZZLY. 



BOZEMAN, Mont. — During my annual bear hunt in 

 the spring of 1886 I chanced to camp one night near 

 the thoroughbred horse ranch of Engleman & McRoberts, 

 which is located at the foot of the West Gallatin Mount- 

 ains, twenty- fivp miles southwest of Bozeman. After 

 caring for the horses, pitching tent and putting every- 

 thing in good shape for the night, I concluded to spend 

 the evening with my friends at their ranch. We had a 

 social game of cribbage, in which mine host was done up 

 completely. When the time came for me to go to camp, 

 the snow was falling thick and fast, so I was easily per- 

 suaded to remain where I was until morning, when the 

 sun shone bright and clear upon the fresh snow (which 

 had fallen a foot deep), making the game trails on the 

 mountainsides discernible for miles around. 



With the use of my field glass I discovered that a bear 

 had come off the mountain to my camp very recently, as 

 his trail was fresh, having been made after the snow had 

 stopped falling. Fearing my cayuses had been "taken 

 in'* by the hungry animal, I hastened to the place where 

 they were picketed and found that bruin had come to 

 within 20yds. of my saddle horse, sat down in the snow, 

 watched his vain efforts to break loose, and passed on to 

 my tent. After walking around that a couple of times, 

 he had disappeared into the brush. There is no doubt 

 that he was too modest to break into a house when every 

 one was gone. 



Following his trail down the creek about a mile, cross- 

 ing and recrossing, crawling over down treetops and 

 under logs, with an occasional bunch of snow falling- 

 down the back of my neck, I finally discovered that he 

 had circled and gone back to my friends' horse corral, 

 perhaps with a view of getting a young colt for break- 

 fast: but being driven off by the stallions he had mean- 

 dered up the mountainside to the heavy timber in defi- 

 ance of both hunter and ranchmen. But alas for old 

 bruin, he was " monarch of all he surveyed " by night, 

 while [ claimed the honors of the day. 



When passing the ranch I asked my friend to join me 

 in the chase, which he did willingly until the trail got 

 hot and the snow too derp to ride our horses longer; but 

 when I assured him that we wouldn't have to follow the 

 trail much longer before finding the end of it, he con- 

 cluded to stay with me and see the bear fight. Taking 

 off my suspenders, I tied them around the dog's neck so 

 as to hold him from going abend and eating the bear up 

 before I could get a shot at him. We advanced cautious- 

 ly until we came to a bed the bear had just left, when 

 the dog discovered he had missed Ms calling and went 

 "back to watch the horses until we should come. 



Now everything was clear for us to go on, we being rid 

 of the dog and the wind blowing from the bear toward 

 us. We had not gone many steps when we found another 

 bed (or place where the bear had lain down), and still an- 

 other, each one being fresher than the last. 



Turning to see if my partner in the hunt was as cool 

 and collected as he would be in handling a wild broncho, 

 I saw he had his gun full-cocked and pointed nearly 

 toward me. Seeing this, and knowing that a monster 

 grizzly was on the other side of me, made me wish I was 

 with the dog watching the horse. But here the chase 

 ended, for not ten steps away was the object of our quest. 

 As he raised his head above "the brush a bullet from my 

 .45-75 Winchester caught him in the lower part of the 

 brain, which crazed him, whereupon he struck and bit 

 at everything in reach of him. When he appeared again, 

 within about ten feet of me, I sent another bullet crash- 

 ing through his brain and laid him out forever. Thus 

 ended the career of one of the largest grizzlies ever killed 

 in the Rocky Mountains. The weight of the animal was 

 variously estimated at from 900 to l,400lbs. His skin 

 measured 9ft. 3in. from tip to tip, and is owned by Mr. 

 Jolm E. Burton of Lake Geneva, Wis. Bear Hunter. 



A Dining Caii Line to the Pacific Coast.— The completion of the all rail 

 line between Portland, Ore., and San Francisco gives the Pacific coast trav- 

 eler an opportunity to patronize the famous Dining Car and Yellowstone 

 Park Line, the Northern Pacific Railroad. The sportsman traveling in the 

 West, whether a lover of the rod or gun, naturally seeks this road, pene- 

 trating as it does the lake park region of Minnesota, and running through 

 the valleys of such trout streams as the Yellowstone, Gallatin, Hell Gate, 

 Clark's Fork, Spokane, Yakima and Green Rivers, for a distance of fully 

 1,500 miles, aB well as lying immediately contiguous to the finest hunting 

 grounds in the United States, viz., The Big Horn, Snowy Belt, Bitter Root, 

 Coeur D'Alene and Cascade Mountains. Information in regard to this 

 region can be obtained by addressing Charles S. Pee, General Passenger 

 and Ticket Agent, N. P. R. R., St. Paul, Minn.— Adv. 



"ADIRONDACK ABOMINATIONS." 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



Regarding the article by Mr. John R. Spears on "Adi- 

 rondack Abominations," in your issue of July 19, com- 

 menting on your editorial of the preceding week, let me 

 say a few words. While fully agreeing with Mr. Spears 

 that killing deer out of season by actual residents, for 

 necessary tood, is less culpable than killing them merely 

 for sport or to sell to the near-by summer hotels, still I 

 must emphatically deny that night-hunting in the eastern 

 section of the Adirondacks (Franklin and Clinton counties, 

 etc.,) is done solely by guides at the instigation of "city 

 sportsmen," seduced by promise of a good bonus. There 

 is more than enough of this: for example: A party of 

 four young men and two guides went from Loon Lake 

 hotel to Elbow Ponds, the head waters of the Salmon 

 River, a few nights ago, for the avowed purpose of night- 

 hunting, despite the fact that both sportsmen and guides 

 know perfectly well that they were breaking the law. 



A party of four, one party of three and a party of two 

 have within three weeks repeatedly night-hunted and 

 killed deer on Barnum Pond, near Paul Smith's. In only 

 one instance, the first party, were there city sportsmen, 

 the others consisting wholly of guides and natives. 



Another party, consisting of city sportsmen and "old 

 and reliable guides," had everything prepared last week 

 to leave Paul Smith's hotel and camp at Buck Pond, with 

 the purpose, freely boasted of by the guides, to "fish and 

 night-hunt." Many of the North Woods hotels are re- 

 sponsible for night-hunting by guides and natives; the 

 fact that they buy the game from them for the tables fur- 

 nishing the incentive. 



No man, should he care to break the law, will have any 

 trouble in finding a guide ready to accompany him, and 

 in many instances the guides offer themselves for that 

 service, although knowing it to be illegal. 



But this practice becomes sheer wasteful butchery 

 when ignorant bunglers among the natives go out and 

 maim and kill deer that are left to die in the bushes a 

 few rods from where they are shot; for example, who 

 butchered that fine stag that lies rotting below the out- 

 let of Loon Lake, and whose bloated carcass taints, the 

 air for a long distance? And yet this man and his accom- 

 plice are out nearly every night doing like work. 



Do the "guides" at State Dam on the Salmon River, 

 sixteen miles from Malone, never night-hunt? Ask Abe 

 Lester. Possibly Adam might make some interesting 

 statements. But to specify single instances or special 

 localities is needless: this law-breaking is going on every- 

 where, and is not only not denounced by the guides and 

 hotel men, whose best interests are served by having a 

 close season, but is advocated and participated in by 

 fchetb. 



Now, as to the trout hog, dynamiter, etc. There is 

 scarcely a hotel in the North Woods that does not daily 

 receive, cook and serve at public table trout less than 6tn. 

 long. T 1 1 e pon ds are dynamited for market but by woods- 

 men and guides, or else, and most often — indeed in 90 per 

 cent, of all cases— by railroad hands, who find easy access 

 to blasting materials. Woe to any pond or stream near 

 which a railroad hand camp has existed for a short time. 



Not one man in ten in this country is educated up to 

 the point where he believes in or will practice the course 

 of returning carefully to the water all fish under six 

 inches. They want fish now; they care nothing for the 

 future welfare of the stream or the fishing of those who 

 come after them. No more indeed than those who spear 

 and shoot and net the fish on the spawning beds, fish for 

 them through the ice, &c. The universal motto in this 

 land where a day's catch of trout is by the ten or twenty 

 pound-, "j&pp&s utoi Ic deluge.''' 



It was fondly hoped that the law making railroads, ex- 

 press companies. &c, liable for carrying game out of 

 season, would do 'much to limit the illegal butchery of 

 deer. But the purchase of every carcass by hotel keep- 

 ers in the vicinity keeps the thing going, and natives, 

 guides, " river drivers," rail and wood hands and the 

 like, swarm into the woods every night at this illicit 

 work. 



The usual "sportsman's" method of killing deer up 

 here in the season is bad enough, but is not nearly so 

 fatal, nor does ic so quickly thin out the deer as the night- 

 hunting now going on in every direction. Fancy a "city 

 sportsman," whose guides have sighted a deer in a lake 

 or pond, being rowed up to it, emptying his rifle's maga- 

 zine at it twice at short range (10-20ft,), and then failing 

 to kill it, the guide holding it firmly by the tail to pre- 

 vent its sinking, the sportsman either batters it3 brains 

 out with an oar or placing the muzzle of his rifle at its 

 head, thus ends its poor life. This I have witnessed sev- 

 eral times in all its brutal detail. This, I say, is bad 

 enough, but it is in season and legal, and furthermore is 

 the only way many a " dude sportsman" could possibly 

 kill a deer. And it is a poor sportsman nowadays who 

 can't kill one or more in the season. K. Noo. 



Loon Lake, July 25. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



Yoiu editorial in last week's Forest and Stream, 

 relative to the exterminatian of game in the Adiron- 

 dacks, was so true that I wanted to say to you, "Them's 

 my sentiments." It showed so accurate knowledge of 

 the way it is being done that I could hardly believe it 

 was written anywhere but on the r.pot referred to. 



In this week's paper Mr. John R. Spears refers to it, 

 and appreciates the truthfulness of it, as every one must 

 who is at all familiar with the facts. 



I cannot quite agree with Mr. Spears in thinking the 

 damage done by natives is insignificant, though I think 

 very much of it is instigated by city sportsmen (so called). 



I have known of dynamite being used in trout streams 

 by natives who made no use of the fish they killed, and 

 when there was no apparent reason for their act, except 

 "pure cussedness." But the wholesale destruction of 

 trout is usually done in the interest of some hotel. Three 

 weeks ago I fished a stream I had known of many years, 

 but never tried before and never wish to again, or until 

 the "trout hog" can be kept away from it for a year or 

 two. It was literally alive with trout; I could see in 

 nearly every pool from twenty to fifty and they took the 

 fly eagerly, but out of twenty I had to put back eighteen 

 as they measured 5^in. I saved in an hour's fishing 

 about thirty. 



The next week a young man from the city went out to 

 it with a guide and saved two hundred and sixty in an 

 horn - and a half. 



We passed through a track now owned by the "Adi- 



rondack Reserve," who have done all they could for two 

 years to protect the game on their property. I was glad 

 to see the signs of deer much more numerous than in 

 past seasons. But on returning to my boat, I found a 

 skiff drawn up into the bushes. We recognized the boat 

 as one belonging to a guide who wears the badge of the 

 "Adirondack Reserve," and near the boat a quantity of 

 blood, and every evidence that a deer had been killed by 

 floating. 



Many of the guides about here insist that the six-inch 

 trout law has been repealed, and give as a reason that 

 trout hooked always die, therefore there was no use for 

 the law. I always stay long enough after putting a trout 

 back to be sure if it recovers, and I am certain that not 

 one in a hundred that I remove is any the worse after a 

 few minutes. In fact, unless a trout falls and strikes a 

 stone, I never lose any, and I have been very much 

 surprised to see how much rough handling they will en- 

 dure. 



And in fishing the stream I refer to, I took many small 

 trout that had been caught before and put back or es- 

 caped, many had lost an eye or the lower jaw was torn 

 apart, but they appeared to be just as well and lively as 

 ever. Whether that is the law or not, it will always be 

 a law for me. And if I find any one with trout less than 

 that size I shall enter complaint against them. 



If you have any copy of the law in printed form, I 

 wish you would do me the favor to send some to me. If 

 you have not, if you will print a few I will pay for it, 

 and post them in conspicuous places. I think they should 

 be sent to every post office in the Adirondack region, that 

 no one need plead ignorance. R. M, Shurtleff. 



Keene Valley, N. Y., July 22. 



[We have referred the request for printed copies to 

 the Fish Commission, who advise us that they are now 

 preparing a summary of the law.] 



The Forest and Stream complains that despite the 

 efforts, legislative and otherwise, to protect the Adiron- 

 dack forest and the game therein from vandalism, the 

 work of destruction goes steadily and contemptuously 

 on. All classes, it says, railroad managers, landlords, 

 guides, tourists and sportsmen, pay no attention to the 

 legal restrictions, but do more mischief every year than 

 all the preserving bureaus can replace in a decade. 

 Game is killed in abundance out of season. That paper 

 uses this severe language: 



The trout hog, the deer butcher, the dynamite-cartridge fiend, 

 the night-hunter, the steel-trap deer stalker and the like are in- 

 creasing instead of decreasing. * * * For the game protector 

 or constable to stop a few days hero and a few there, at the best 

 hotels, riding around the country in the daytime and tacking his 

 cards upon stumps is all noneense. The law-breakers don't care 

 a rap for him, andjlaugh at the mention of his name and methods. 

 * * * If those whose business it is would establish some way to 

 banish the trout and deer and timber thieves, some good might 

 come of it; but until the bunghole is stopped up there is nothing 

 short of lunacy in pouring in at the spigot. 



This is a discouraging picture, but it is beyond a doubt 

 substantially correct. The legal acts designed to keep 

 the Adirondacks intact are honest enough, but the diffi- 

 culty lies in their inefficient enforcement. This cannot 

 be accomplished except through the employment of a 

 much larger force of officials inspired in some way to 

 put zeal and thoroughness into the matter of protecting 

 the wilderness. The Adirondacks should be amply de- 

 fended against the destructionists; and it would be done 

 were they in almost any country in Europe. Forestry and 

 game laws there are for use, not ornament. — Troij Times 

 July 25. 



FLIGHT WOODCOCK. 



V\7 HAT has become of the woodcock? As woodcock 

 V T invariably return to the same coverts to breed, 

 year after year, if not killed, it follows that the numer- 

 ous birds found in the coverts in this neighborhood several 

 years ago must have been killed to the south, either going 

 or coming, or in their winter home. Now that the season 

 for woodcock has been changed in most of the northern * 

 States, and those birds are forbidden to be killed before 

 the 1st of August in some States, and the 1st of Septem- 

 ber in other States, we may possibly in the future have 

 this splendid game bud more plentiful again. How 

 pleased all true sportsmen must be that the killing of 

 woodcock has been put a stop to on the 1st and 4th of 

 July. At this season the young birds are only half 

 grown, weak on the wing, and slow in flight, and there- 

 fore easily killed by very inferior shots. Any sportsman 

 having shot an October woodcock, I am sure, would not 

 care for a miserable little soft July bird. Our game laws 

 in Ontario make the open season for woodcock commence 

 on the 15th of August, which is a good thing, and 

 amounts to almost doing away with summer shooting. 



The woodcock in Ontario disappear in August, during 

 the moulting season, and do not appear in any numbers 

 until the latter end of September or first week in October, 

 having made a short migration somewhere, but where 

 that somewhere is I have never been able to discover. 

 When the woodcock have returned, and the night frosts 

 have killed all the nettles, then let the sportsman shoulder 

 his gun and take his brace of spaniels along, they being 

 the dogs of all dogs for woodcock, and repair to the 

 covert, where, if fortunate enough to reside in a district 

 where these birds abound, he will enjoy to my thinking 

 the best of all sports, and if lucky, will carry home with 

 h im a bag of birds the most delicious for the table and 

 the most difficult to shoot of all game birds, a bag of 

 October woodcock. 



When first I came to the country I hunted woodcock 

 with a liver and white English pointer, a splendid dog 

 and very steady; he would stand a bird an hour or more. 

 He hunted the woodcock and I hunted him. The coverts 

 in this locality are very dense and close, being mostly 

 composed of alders and small cedars. It being difficult to 

 see a dog 30ft. away, I find that I can kill twice as many 

 birds by taking advantage of any little open space or 

 cattle track, following the dogs through these dense 

 brakes. My dogs are black, flat-haired field spaniels, and 

 have such good noses and are so well broke that they 

 rarely leave a bird behind them after having gone over 

 the ground. 



Last October I had the luck to light upon a flight of 

 woodcock. Early in the month we had three or four 

 inches of snow, which of course disappeared in a day or 

 two. This snow was the means of starting the birds 

 from the north. I had had the misfortune a few 

 days before this flight took place, in jumping out of 

 my buggy, to fracture one of the bones of the ring 



