Oct. «, 1889.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



208 



MICHIGAN WILD TURKEYS. 



TTARTFORD, Mich.— Editor Forest and ' Stream: There 

 XI are still some wild turkeys left in Michigan. A few 

 miles west of Bay City they are found along the line of 

 the Pere Marquette Railroad: again on the line of the 

 Michigan Central Railroad, where one may get off at 

 Fair] and or Decatur; or take the narrow gauge at Law- 

 ton as far as Paw Paw, and then go north and west four 

 or five miles. There are some fine broods of turkeys in 

 this neighborhood, and lots of grouse. Nor are they con- 

 fined to these especial localities, for every few days one 

 hears of a flock of turkeys having been put up some 

 where. 



I don't go much afield nowadays, but eight years ago 

 last fall I took my trusty 12-gauge Parker with a supply 

 of am munition and started off, telling my wife that we 

 would have wild turkey for Christmas. I drove five 

 miles southwest from Hartford into Berrien county, put 

 the horse in a barn, and learning from ray host that tur- 

 keys were in the habit of coming into his back field. I 

 started in that direction, taking cartridges loaded with 

 3£drs. powder and l|oz. No. 3 shot. I soon found tracks 

 in a cornfield that had been harvested, and my dog, 

 which was part pointer and the rest, as my boy says, 

 "just dog," only waited my command to track them to 

 cover. In a few minutes he raised his voice to let me 

 know he had found, and guided by the sound I soon 

 reached a tamarac marsh, and open swamp with high 

 grass, and scarcely had I got fifty yards into this latter 

 before up went an old I ironze gobbler scarce fifty yards 

 in front of me. I dropped him, and before the smoke 

 had cleared aw ly up went a hen, which the next minute 

 lay kicking in the grass. 



I tied their heads together and started for my horse, 

 and by the time I reached the barn I estimated the weight 

 of that pair of turkeys at lOOlbs., or thereabouts; the 

 steelyard made them only 311b.-., but there was ample for 

 Christmas. S. C. 



The Ship Harbor Tragedy — A correspondent sends 

 us the testimony of the moose hunter who recently shot 

 a man by mistake for a moose near Ship Harbor," N. S 

 [He said: "Win. Tayloi and myself stayed at a cauip at 

 Gold L.ike dialings oti Thinsd iy night. In the morning 

 we camp to Grassy Lake Ridge, a di-tance of one mile, 

 Wm. Taylor called for moose by a tree about two rods 

 off the road, and I sat down at a tree about chn e rods 

 from him at the same side of the road. I heard a cow 

 moose answer Taylor to the northwest, in a swamp. Tay- 

 lor called again and I heard her answer to the west of us, 

 coming down toward the road. In about fifteen minutes 

 I heard the same call, I supposed, on the road. When I 

 heard her on the road I rose to my feet, and could see the 

 opening of the road through the small bushes. On ac- 

 count of these bushes I could not see the bed of the road. 

 I was confident it was a small cow moose, and on that 

 account was watching the opening on the road, expecting 

 to see the cow moose come up. I had taken my eyes off 

 the opening for a few seconds, and when I looked back I 

 saw what I took to be a moose coming toward me, but 

 could not see it distinctly on account of the small trees 

 standing close by me. I raised my gun to my shoulder. 

 I had taken sight and then taking my eye off it for a 

 second or two. and moved my head to the left a few 

 inches and saw what I felt certain at the time was a 

 moose's head and ears, and I could see what I felt certain 

 was the top of the shoulder. She appeared then to be 

 turned with her shoulder toward me. I put my eye back 

 to the gun and fired instantly, and could see that some- 

 thing fell. The first sound I heard I thought was the 

 groaning of a moose that had fallen, when I heard a man 

 exclaim, 'You have shot a man.' I exclaimed, 'My God, 

 I have shot a man,' and fell to the ground, I rose as 30on 

 as I could and proceeded toward them, when I saw the 

 men lying on the ground and I fell again, and was not 

 able to go up to them for some time." 



Ths Law of Field Sports: A Summary of Law Affecting 

 American Sportsmen. By George Putnam Smith, of the New 

 York Bar. Contents: Equipment, Does, Trespass, Property in 

 Game, Game Laws, Fish and Game Clubs. Appendix: Abstracts 

 of the Game and Fish Laws of all the States and Territories. A 

 most useful book for every one who uses rod or gun. Price $1. 

 Forest and Stream Publishing Co.— Adv. 



titer 



CLUB PRESERVES. 



TWENTY odd years ago the Rev. Adirondack Murray 

 marshaled his admiring hosts and led them through 

 Swamps and midgets into the finest umbrays of the North 

 "Woods. Justly may he claim precedence as the apostle 

 who first imbued the intelligent masses with a love for 

 angling and its associate charms. The passing generation 

 are not likely to forget the furore then created. The 

 movement developed new industries, opened new lines of 

 traffic, stimulated inventions, and compelled an aban- 

 doned region to pan out gold where it refused, to yield 

 due tribute in iron. It introduced the parasol and sar- 

 dine box into sequestered precincts sacred to the presence 

 of Audubon and John Lodd, and it festooned the limbs 

 which overarched their sinuous streams with glistening 

 lines of silkworm gut, which vied with the filmy handi- 

 work of spiders spun in the mid-summer noontide, indica- 

 tive like brokers' wires of the amount of business trans- 

 acted and of close connection with distant tackle shops 

 and tourists' outfitters. But, like John the Baptist, who 

 came crying in the wilderness, Murray was but the 

 forerunner or harbinger of the great impulse which was 

 to come later. In those flush days, which now seem 

 ancient, the speckled trout was the superlative quest of 

 the most ambitious neophyte who went afishing. All 

 were content with this ne plus ultra; with its grateful 

 environment, the freedom of the waters, the homeliness 

 of the log walled inns, and the immunity from the 

 straight- jacket of the autocrats of fashion. Until about 

 five years ago the Adirondack region remained a happy 

 Arcadia, where all its population were wood nymphs 

 together, untrammeled by forms and unrestricted by 

 lineal metes and bounds. Here was the kindergarten of 

 our rudimental beginning, where the alphabet of angling 

 was diffidently spelled beside the lakes and streams. 

 Stilted science had not invaded its penetralea to give old 

 things new names, nor had the familiar brook trout 

 entered its protest against the nomenclature of the gods. 



And the troutis doomed! Its cultivated, pampered and 

 over-fed substitute may live, but the wild trout has had 

 its day in all accessible regions. With the increase of 

 intellectual light and scientific development his name has 

 not only been changed, but his very entity has been 

 transmogrified into a pale and sickly semblance of his 

 former self. Protection, like a high tariff, is working out 

 his ruin. Fenced in and corraled, coddled and appro- 

 priated by the rich, with the vulgar multitude persistently 

 kept aloof, only the barons of a soi-disant nobility will be 

 privileged to enjoy him while a lingering remnant re- 

 mains, and then he will pass forever into the realms of 

 apotheosis, where it is to be hoped he will abide a3 a 

 pleasant memory, and become a conspicuous shiner 

 among the constellations of angel fish which bespangle 

 the piscatorial heavens. 



During the last ten years or so the bass, the salmon, and 

 latterly the winninish have superseded his excellency, 

 and now the bolder and hardier classes of anglers habit- 

 ually seek Canadian waters for superlative sport. There, 

 in that wild elysium, whose impetuous and restive 

 streams outvie the favorite rivers of Scotland, which a 

 few American enthusiasts were wont to frequent as long 

 as fifty years ago, they indulge their favorite propensity 

 with an ardor as fervent as the dash of the fish they 

 tempt and contend with, for no fish that swims is the 

 peer of the salmon, and no angling experience or pastime 

 carries with it the exciting episodes, aspects and vicissi- 

 tudes of salmon fishing. But even now, these privileges 

 •can be enjoyed only under tense restrictions. All fishing 

 privileges are subject to an official fee,- and all good 

 rivers are leased by the Government, and those who 

 would fish must pay dearly for the sport. Well may our 

 miscellaneous populace who love an outing in the woods, 

 view with alarm the encroachments of wealthy indi- 

 viduals and clubs of gilded sportsmen who are so rapidly 

 acquiring exclusive possession of all the choice fishing 

 waters of this country, and not of ours only, but those of 

 Canada, shutting out the public as trespassers, and gain- 

 ing no personal compensation to justify the hardship im- 

 posed upon their fellows save the comforting vain glory 

 which attends the consciousness of unlimited possession 

 and the power which money brings. 



Memory recalls in vain that halcyon period when the 

 world's width was a public domain; when all of our in- 

 terior streams were virgin ; when our forests were un- 

 >c red by the swampers' axe, and no logging roads 

 threaded the sequestered penetralia; when to the birch 

 canoe alone there was an open sesame. Many are the 

 mid-summer weeks which I have passed alone on these 

 changeful rivers. But when my old stamping grounds 

 became occupied in course of time, I hied me to new 

 fields without more regret than the camper usually casts 

 at the smouldering embers of last night's fire when he 

 breaks up to go. But now, whither shall I flee? Last 

 July I went into the wilds of Canada, two hundred miles 

 back of the river St. Lawrence, and but a little distant 

 from the western confines of Labrador, and there I found 

 the river lessee and the clubs before me! A railroad led 

 up to the casting grounds, and steamboats plowed their 

 way to the camps. This was the luxury of ease, but for 

 the ordinary vacation rambler it involved only a privi- 

 lege to see, and not to participate in the sport. Five 

 dollars per day was the least exorbitant of the charges 

 for fishing, and reasonable enough, too, for the moss- 

 backs or backwoodsmen of the old days could not have 

 furnished shelter, canoes, grub, guides and transporta- 

 tion at anything like such minimum cost, for what he 

 saved in cash he would have to furnish in hardship and 

 expense of time. Only a bold and hardy explorer of the 

 old school, like Lanman or Ruxton, would now volun- 

 tarily exchange the convenience and comfort of the new 

 for the crucial regime of the old days. We who protest 

 against the occupation of the fishing grounds will not in- 

 veigh against the lessee who sub-lets rod privileges. 

 Indeed, he is the only foil which stands between us and 

 absolute prohibition of our pastime. Likewise those who 

 travel over the stock ranges of Texas do not object to 

 the small rancher who occupies the land and charges us 

 on passing what he supplies us with. It is the wire 

 fences we object to, which compel us to drive twenty 

 miles around in order to accomplish less than one. So 

 when we go to the Adirondack^ or to the Laurentian 

 water-shed and find vast tracts utterly without a human 

 tenant, but legally closed to all but their owners, who 

 have absolute title by purchase and whose right is un- 

 questioned, we are apt to vehemently protest and to ask 

 Cui bono? Who profits by the protection? Does it 

 profit the owner, or the fish, or the country? The latter 

 gains, to be sure, in proportion as the proprietors spend 

 money and introduce improvements and invite settlers — 

 settlers to settle anywhere except on their territory. But 

 as it happens the lessee soon tires of his prerogatives; the 

 game proves not worth the candle, and he moodily 

 vacates the premises after two or three seasons. But 

 the title stands and the notice to trespassers continues to 

 stare each would-be angler in the face. If the angler 

 enters he does so under danger of any penalty, however 

 heavy, which the decree of a prejudiced court may im- 

 pose on him. The chances, however, are in favor of the 

 trespasser not being discovered or informed upon, if he 

 is prudent, but there is a risk, and inasmuch as there is 

 no pecuniary incentive for professional poachers to ply 

 their calling in these out of the way places, the domain 

 is generally left unmolested; for such gentlemen as visit 

 the wilds for pleasure usually seek out those limits 

 which are not tabooed. And thus vast areas of the best 

 selected territory are kept under the ban of entry and 

 occupation by the fiat of selfish monopolists who differ 

 from viceroys only in name. This is a few removes from 

 the position of Henry George. Between the two ex- 

 tremes we might hope to discover the happy medium, 

 but in a republic the only intervention possible seems to be 

 by Government's reserving and appropriating for pub- 

 lic use, subject to regulations, all such wilderness tracts 

 as are useless for other purposes, the chance discovery of 

 minerals and ores being the only condition of excep- 

 tion. 



I have read with much interest the multiplying com- 

 plaints of a disbarred and distressed public, and they 

 come not too soon, if your readers believe the state- 

 ments to be exaggerated, let me enumerate here. The 

 evil is not confined to the Adirondacks; it is all over. 

 Besides several tracts of thirty to fifty thousand acres in 

 the North Woods, not to mention lots of minor tracts, 

 we have the 72,000 acres of the Megantic Club in the 

 Dead River region of Maine and the eastern townships of 



Canada; 50,000 acres in the Cheat Mountain country, 

 West Virginia; 18,000 acres of the Blooming Grove Park 

 Association in Pike county, Pa. ; the ten-mile tract of the 

 Rising Sun Park in Illinois; the Arden Park in West- 

 chester, N. Y. ; the great game preserve in the pine lands 

 of New Jersey; the big preserve in the Cheyenne Valley, 

 Kansas, and others which I have no memoranda of at 

 present. In Canada it is even worse. There are no less 

 than fifteen fishing clubs, composed of residents of Can- 

 ada and the United States, with an aggregate member- 

 ship of perhaps 200 souls, besides individual owners, 

 which have leased or purchased large areas of forest in- 

 closing scores of lakes. The Stadacona Club, of Quebec, 

 covers an area of forty or fifty miles. The Laurentides, 

 of Quebec, covers a group of large lakes on the Myguick 

 and Batiscan. The Metabetchouan Club, of which U. S. 

 Senator O. H. Piatt is president, is located twenty -two 

 miles north of Lake Edward (which is seventy-seven 

 miles from Quebec) and fifty-five south of Roberval. the 

 interval covering fifty-five miles. The Springfield (Mass.) 

 Club, E. S. Brewer president, occupies the lower Meta- 

 betchouan River, and a Philadelphia club twenty-eight 

 miles of the upper stream. The Paradise Club of 

 New Yorkers, of which Judge Henry A. Gildersleeve 

 is president, is located at the lower end of Lake 

 Edward. The fishing privileges of Lake Edward en haut 

 and Lake Kiskisink are owned by the Lake St. John 

 Railway Company. Messrs. A. B. Scott, W. H. Griffith, 

 Harry Poole and Messrs. T wombly and J. C. Eno are lessees 

 of all the winninish pools at the "Grand Discharge, or out- 

 let of Lake St. John. Nazarre Tuscotte controls both 

 banks of the river Au Sable. Mr. R. L. Ogden, of New 

 York, controls large fishing privileges. The Jeanotte 

 and Batiscan rivers have both been in large part appro- 

 priated. Indeed the choice waters of the accessible parts 

 of this far off land have all been thus early pre-empted by 

 the pioneers of sport. This statement would seem in- 

 credible, but it can be verified officially. One thing in 

 advantage of Canada: Its government usually retains its 

 fee to the land. It leases, but does not sell, and the 

 leases are not for long periods. The United States might 

 do well to follow the example, though, with a plethoric 

 treasury, it might despise the small revenues which the 

 Dominion is glad to receive. In the case of clubs, where 

 the privileges of domain are shared by many individu- 

 als, or by families, as in the case of Blooming Grove 

 Park, whose membership is 200, the objections raised are 

 not serious, but where great territories, equal to European 

 duchies in extent, are held by individuals, unoccupied 

 and totally unused except for a single fortnight each 

 year, it is a case of selfish appropriation such as the 

 author of the "Dog in the Manger" never dreamed of. 

 I am glad to see these abuses agitated by the press, 

 though I do not perceive, as yet, what great good will 

 come of it. Charles Hallock. 



SHOOTING THE FOUR-EYED FISH. 



MANY years ago, while tramping along the Trinidad 

 side of the Gulf of Paria, in company with a friend, 

 we came to a long, sandy beach some miles north of the 

 celebrated Pitch Lake, and there for the first time I saw 

 schools of fishes, apparently about ten inches long, coming 

 up with the advancing waves upon the beach, remaining 

 there for a second or two after the tide had retreated and 

 then suddenly turning around and scuttling back. These 

 strange movements excited my curiosity, and being un- 

 able to capture them in any other way, I took my gun, 

 which I fortunately had with me, and fired at an incom- 

 ing school, killing three of them. Upon taking these up 

 I immediately recognized in them a species of the remark- 

 able four-eyed fish (Anableps tetrophthalmus), previously 

 only known as an inhabitant of the coast of Guiana. 



Evidently, then, this development of the so-called four- 

 eyes has relation to this peculiarity of habits, but as my 

 stay was necessarily limited, I could not enter upon an 

 extensive investigation at the time as to what was the 

 exact reason of the habit, whether in search of the minute 

 crustaceans that are to be found upon the beach, or for 

 some other reason. The species of Anableps is peculiar 

 to tropical America. There are three well-defined 

 species, two occurring along the northern coast of South 

 America and extending to Trinidad, and one living along 

 the western coast of Central America. They are mem- 

 bers of the family of Cyprinodonis, of which the common 

 killifishes of the United States are well known repre- 

 sentatives, and are the largest of the family, attaining a 

 length of 10 to 12in. The eyes are unique in that each 

 one is divided into two parts by a horizontal, dark colored 

 band of the conjunctiva, while the pupil is completely 

 divided by a pair of lobes projecting from each side of 

 the iris. The orbits are extended upward above the 

 level of the head, so as to at once attract attention on 

 account of their prominence. 



The f our-eyed fish of the Pacific was one of the earliest 

 species described by me, and was named Anableps doiri 

 in honor of Capt. Dow, a famous collector. Immediately 

 after the description some of its peculiarities were noted 

 and published in the "Proceedings of the Academy of 

 Natural Sciences" for Feb. 12, 1861, page 21. "Dr. Le 

 Conte stated in regard to the species of Anableps described 

 in the Proceedings of last month, by Mr. Gill, as A. dowi, 

 that he had seen it in great abundance, not only in the 

 Bay of La Union, San Salvador, but in all the streams 

 emptying into the Gulf of Fonseca, and also in the small 

 tributaries of the Rio Lempa, as far as the town of Ver- 

 tud, a great distance from the ocean. The method of 

 swimming is very peculiar; the fishes are seen in groups 

 on the surface of the water, with their eyes projecting. 

 They are easily alarmed and very active. They are known 

 to the natives under the name of cuatro-oxos, in allusion 

 to the transverse black band which divides the iri3." 



Theo. Gill. 



Vermont Bass.— The famous Back Bay region at the 

 head of Lake Champlain has not been able to retain its 

 great piscatorial reputation this year, owing to the ex- 

 ceedingly wet season. The waters were too high to 

 enable anglers to pick out their accustomed fishing beds, 

 and more than all else, the many rains filled the lakes 

 and streams so full with fresh and tasty tidbits that the 

 sensible fish disdained the substitutes offered, no matter 

 how temptingly, by the zealous Ikes. The writer visited 

 a small lake famous for its big bass, about six miles from 

 St. Albans, and secured one fish of 4-}lbs., which was the 

 only bass of over a pound weight caught there by any one 

 during the three days of his sojourn. That is a fair ex- 

 ample of the season. — W. H. R, 



