Oct. 15, 1891.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



2B1 



— ^ — r- 



WITH 



DOGS. 



STILL-HUNTING DEER 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



Since contributing an item to your paper in regard to 

 still-huntin;; deer with bird dogs my attention has been 

 called by Mr. J. H. Mayne Campbell, of Toronto, to a 

 very interestins: article, by Sir Henry Pottinger, in the 

 February last Fortnightly lievieiv, entitled "An Island 

 Deer Forest," Norway. It seems the writer of that article 

 liad no luck in "bagging" a deer and resolved to try an 

 "elk dog," a hound, in still- hunting the red deer, and 

 met with success. He labored under very great disad- 

 vantages in the use of that dog on that occasion, because 

 the dog had to be handled in the leash by a servant. A 

 dog which the sportsman is compelled to handle in that 

 way in still-hunting deer is better than no dog. 



I stated in a previous article that I have for several 

 years been without a dog, yet for two seasons during that 

 time a companion with whom 1 have hunted deer had a 

 good blooded setter, yet the dog was not well broken for 

 deer and had to be led, and would be continually testing 

 the patience of his master by trying to pass the wrong 

 side of a tree, or under a log when the convenience of 

 his master required him to jump over, or by the chain 

 becoming entangled in brush. A led bird dog, according 

 to my experience, is far preferable to a led hound in still- 

 hunting deer. The bird dog will allow himself, when 

 his master becomes vexed at the pertinacity of his dog, 

 in going where according to the judgment of his master 

 he ought not to go, to be jerked bottom side upward, 

 without whimpering, but the hound, according to my ob- 

 servation, will on every trifling chastisement, when led, 

 cry out at the top of his voice. 



Let the sportsman take his intelligent, well-broken bii-d 

 dog with him once when still-hunting deer and he will 

 never regret the experiment. H. L. 



AMONG THE WILDFOWL. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



Your Chicago correspondent, Mr. Hough, under date of 

 Sept. 24, mentions that there is ''something wrong" with 

 sketch No. 3 of the wildfowl series, entitled "Where 

 Ignorance is Bliss." In a few words (with your permis- 

 sion) r propose to explain just what the sketch was 

 intended to convey: 



A duck hunter has set his rig on a se^gy point, and, 

 after a survey of the waters adjacent thereto, seeing 

 nothing either swimming or flying, he concludes (the day 

 being perfectly calm) to take a snooze, hoping for a breeze 

 later on. The sedge gra^s stands straight, scarcely 

 nodding, so still is the air. A catspaw gently plays among 

 the decoys, 'tis just enough to make them head up, and 

 with the catspaw ruffling the water, a wandering canvas- 

 back takes the opportunity to breast it and investigate, 

 while our friend is sleeping. 



From the tone of Mr, Hough's letter I judge he is 

 pleased with these sketches, and I trust that succeeding 

 numbers will meet with commendation from one who is 

 evidently a thorough sportsman, both legally and other- 

 wise. W. TOWNSKND. 



Bay Ridge, N. Y, 



A HoLLY^vooD Incident.— The New York Times tells 

 this little story of an incident at Hollywood Park, Long 

 Branch: "Everything was conducted on a scale of splen- 

 dor and magnificence that bewildered the native Jersey- 

 man, who began to regard Mr. Hoey as a modern Monte 

 Cristo, with an endless som'ce of wealth. His ambition 

 was to establish the most unique place of its kind in 

 America, if not in the world, ana money was not spared 

 to carry out that ambition. Travelers from all parts of 

 the country went to Long Branch to see Hollywood. 

 The proprietor himself was generally seen on Saturday 

 in a suit of the rustiest old clothes and a time-worn hat 

 inspecting his possessions. A small fox-terrier was his 

 faithful companion on these occasions. Very often he 

 was mistaken for one of his own workmen. One morn- 

 ing he caught a sportsman shooting at quail in the woods 

 in the rear of his residence. He pointed to a sign, 'No 

 shooting or trespassing allowed,' and asked the guAner if 

 he had seen it. "Yes,' said the sportsman, 'but old John 

 won't know the difference.' Hoey was dressed in hi's 

 rusty suit. He walked up to the young man and said in 

 an off-hand tone, 'That's a fine gun.' 'Yes, I paid |'43() for 

 it. It is one of the latest. You see it is bammerless.' 

 'I never saw a hammerless gun,' said Mr. Hoey, inno- 

 cently. The sportsman handed him the gun, w'ith the 

 remark, 'Look out, she's loaded!" 'So much the better,' 

 said Hoey, stepping back and pointing it at the sports'- 

 man. 'It will cost $25 more to get it from the Justice of 

 the Peace. So old John won't know the difference, will 

 he? Now git!' And he got." 



A Mexican Sportsman's Club.— ]\rexico City, Oct. S. 

 —A meeting was held yesterday to arrange the prelimi- 

 naries for the organization of a shooting club called the 

 Chapala Shooting Club. The object of the club is to pur- 

 chase grounds for shooting purposes adjacent to Lake 

 Chapala on the Guadala jara branch of the Central Rail- 

 way. The proprietary members are: R. S. Towne, New 

 York; E. C. Brown, San Luis Potosi; E. W. Gould, Jr 

 E. H. Whorf, W. A. Frost, A. C. Michaelis, E. W. Jack- 

 son, Guillermo Landa y E=candon, Charles Sommer, Dan- 

 iel Turner, W. H. Keller. Thomas Braniff. R. M. de Aro- 

 zarena, Geo, D. Barron, E. Harris, H. C. Payne, Mexico; 

 H. A, Vaughn, Guadalajara; S. W. Eevnolds, Boston; H.' 

 C. Pierce, St. Louis; M. S. McCay, E.'V. Sedgwick, San 

 Luis Potosi. Other applications for membership are in 

 hand which will^soon be dealt with. Besides the 35 pro- 

 prietary members, there will be 25 associate members 

 elected. The necessary grounds will be secured forthwith 

 and a club house erected thereon, and boats, etc., will be 

 bought, a committee having already been appointed for 

 the purpose. The lake and district of Chapala aboimd in 

 game, and the members of the club will have excellent 

 sport there. A hunt vfill be organized just as soon as the 

 club house is erected. The principal game will be duck, 

 snipe and geese. ^ 



Long Island Deer Hunting.— The law permits deer 

 hunting on Long Island for the first ten days of October, 

 exclusive of Sundays, but this year hunting was kept up 

 on both Sundays, the 4th and 11th. The number of deer 

 killed can only be conjectured, but it approximated 75. 



Game Peotegtor Kidd.— In summer and winter, 

 fall and spring, says the Newburgh (N. Y.) Journal, 

 Dr. Willett Kidd is a busy man. He conducts a dental 

 business, and at the proper seasons indulges in ice- 

 boating and fishing. Yet as fish and game protector 

 he ia industrious aa well, all the year round. One of the 

 official's latest victims, in contact with the inexorable 

 game laws, is the young son of a well known and wealthy 

 New York wholesale grocer. This young man has re- 

 cently been obliged to pay the full fine imposed for a 

 violation of the law in wantonly shooting pretty song 

 birds. Another of Dr. Kidd's latest cases is that of a 

 prominent official down in Rockland county. That gen^ 

 tleman has settled for an infraction of the law, in catch- 

 ing fish in a net in Orange county. He ought to have 

 known better before the act: he certainly does now. New 

 case No. 3 is that of Wm, Rhiuehart, an Ulster county 

 market man, B.e lives at Rutsonville, but is charged 

 with having transportect certain game birds out of season 

 from Bruynswick. Both places are located out near the 

 town of Shawangunk. Suit has been brought against 

 Mr. Rhinehart in the Supreme Court for the recovery of 

 penalties aggregating |250. 



St. Louis Notes.— This week there was concluded an 

 important deal in the way of a hunting and fishing pre- 

 serve. [Some 10,000 acres of land, taking in eight miles of 

 the Merrimac River, located in Crawford county, has 

 been purchased by a number of St. Louis gentlemen, 

 among whom we note Judge T. R. Partis, James E. 

 Blythe, D. Able, George Bain, W. W. Withnell, George 

 Burnett and J. W. Buel. The price paid for the property 

 was $50,000. It is proposed to spend $50,000 more in 

 making improvements, and a summer hotel is on the pro- 

 grarnme. The property is less than 100 miles from St. 

 Louis, and' contains an abundance of large game. 

 The quail season has opened with many hunters out, who 

 report an abundance of birds. One hunter reports to us 

 having in one day come across three broods of quail too 

 small yet to fly. It seems as if these young birds must 

 be the result of a second hatching, but if not, the opening 

 season should be Nov. 1 instead of Oct. 1.— Abeedebn. 



Pulled the Muzzle.— The Troy Times reports that a 

 Castleton, Vt., boy "went out Sunday to pick up walnuts 

 that had fallen from the trees Saturday night, so as to 

 prevent outside parties getting them. He took a shotgun. 

 While picking the nuts he saw a gray squirrel in a 

 tree. He reached for the gun, which he had laid across 

 a fallen tree, and took hold of it by the muzzle. In lift- 

 ing it the trigger caught on the tree and the gun was dis- 

 charged. The charge of shot entered his left arm, near 

 the jvrist, and ploughed through clear to the elbow, tear- 

 ing the arm almost to pieces and showing the arteries, 

 muscles and bones. He made his way to his grandfather's 

 house, and from there he was taken home, where the 

 doctor attended^ 



"Forest and Streann*' Nursery Rhymes. 



npOM, Tom, a nimrod's son 



Sneaked his father's loaded gnn; 

 Out in the field he found a hare, 

 "Old Betsy" she was fixed for bear. 

 She peeled his nose, she soiled his clothes. 

 But still be smiled for he got there. 



AZTJEO. 



WAtebbury, vt. 



A gun crank bought a gun, 

 For a while he thought it fun 



To "target" the same, 



TUl his shoulder was lame, 

 And of shot he'd used a ton. 



A shooter went out to shoot, 

 The targets wen t oif with a scoot, 

 He "held on," "held ahead," 

 Wasted plenty of lead. 

 And missed 'em all, the unlucky galoot. 



Eph Aye. 



Angling Talks. By George Daivson. Price 50 cents, Fly- 

 Bods mid Fly-Tackle. By H. P. Wells. Price $S.50. Fly- 

 Fisliing and Fly-Making for Trout. By J. H. Kerne. 

 Price $1.50. American Angler's Book. By Thad. Norris. 

 Price $5.50. 



The full texts of the game fish laws of all the States, 

 Territories and British P-rovinces are given In the Book of 

 the Game Laws. 



LEDGE FISHING FOR OUINANICHE. 



^T^O say the oiMuaniche is a landlocked salmon, writes 

 X Ripley Hitchcock in the Christian Union, would 

 seem to relegate him to the rank of his brethren of Lake 

 Sebago and Lake Sunapee and other peaceful waters — an 

 honorable rank, yet inferior to his own. For the ouinaniche, 

 while the naturalists may dismiss him as simply the 

 Salmo salar, variety sebago, is the result of peculiar con- 

 ditions. For him, more than most of ue, life is a struggle. 

 He lives in the rush and roar of torrents, and seeks his 

 food where no weakling may venture unscathed. At the 

 Main Chute of the Saguenay, where the vast volume of 

 white water roars past Lauren tian crags, and at the foot of 

 cataracts on the Mistassini and Peribonca, the ouinaniche 

 is at home. Naturally , he has become possessed of a body 

 like vibrant steel, a tail of incredible size and power, and 

 a dorsal fin which shows above the water as he feeds like 

 a lateen sail. If in all this there lurks the sin of over- em- 

 phasis, it will be pardoned by those who know the joy of 

 finding a fisherman's legend fovmded upon the eternal 

 verities. 



I leave to others the discussion of the migrations of the 

 ouinaniche, his exact habits, and the possibilities of his 

 extinction. My own introduction was under circiuiistances 

 so adverse at first that I seemed on the point of repeating 

 the familiar experience of those who gorge the bait offered 

 to "sportsmen" by the hotel prospectus and railway adver- 

 tisement. I had "outfitted" at Roberval on Lake St. John, 



and, with my two half-breeds, a canoe, two tents, blankets, 

 and a small mountain of supplies, I crossed the lake on 

 an absurd little logging steamer, which finally stopped by 

 the simple process of running aground on the sand-bars 

 a mile off the mouth of the Mistassini. The birch-bark 

 canoe was launched and loaded, and the men bent to their 

 paddles in a heavy rain, which pursued us fitfully at 

 dinner, at our night camp in the 'dripping forest, and at 

 our waking. The men hung back. "Trop mouillee," was 

 Philippe's constant plaint— my stalwart Philippe, with a 

 face more ferocious than that of any Apache renegade 

 whom I have ever seen in Arizona, and a voice like that 

 of a homesick calf. It was simply one of the questions of 

 will and discipline which are apt to be raised in "the 

 bush," and by good men, too, merely to test a new 

 employer and to determine the chances of an easy-going 

 trip. But the issue was met and settled then and there, 

 and late in the afternoon of the second day, despite rain 

 and four long portages, we reached the magnificent fifth 

 falls of the Mistassini and apparent failure. Not a single 

 ouinaniche could be bribed to take my flies. 



It is easy to con=^ole one's self with the familiar "it is not 

 all of fishing to fish" when the fisherman stays his hand 

 from mere satiety; but philosophy is more diflScult for the 

 empty-handed. It was true that the air of that northern 

 solitude was a tonic, and the cataract itself worth the 

 journey from New York. Yet philosophy and the natural 

 man fought hard for the upper hand as I lay on my fra- 

 grant bed of fir boughs, listening to the patter of rain on 

 the tent and the roar of the mighty waterfall close at 

 hand. But in the morning, after more frtiitless endeavor 

 here and there among waves which tossed the canoe like 

 the traditional cockle-shell, we landed on a sharply sloping 

 ledge of Laurentian rocks. There I stood braced in a 

 crevice above the water, but not out of reach of waves 

 which leaped up from a troubled sea, and there in that 

 angry flood , where fly-casting seemed a mockery, I found 

 the ouinaniche. There was a sudden tug down under 

 the surface, and at the answering strike a silvery body 

 flashed four feet high in air, and I heard Louis's whoop 

 and Philippe's shout, "C'est un gros, Monsieur, un grosl" 

 "Un gros" the fish certainly seemed to be, as twenty-five 

 yards of line were taken from the screaming reel in the 

 first rush out into the rapids, were another leap was fol- 

 lowed by a rush straight in, and then a fit of sulks. So 

 themoments crept on, each second vibrant with suspense, 

 while the gallant fish, no w in water, now in air, fought with 

 a courage and tenacity w^hich I have never seen equaled 

 by trout or black bass, nor by a grilse in point of enditr- 

 ance, nor hardly, pound for pound, by a salmon. How 

 long this battle royal lasted it would be hard to say. 

 Philippe measured time by his pipe, and he smoked three. 

 At last I was able to strain the ouinaniche toward the 

 ledge where Philippe clung precariously, and in another 

 instant the fish was in the net, Louis was gripping it 

 through the meshes, and both men were scrambling like 

 cats up the face of the rock to a safer place. There we 

 administered the coup de grace, and I noted the shapely 

 head, the clean-cut body, with the iridescent greenish gill- 

 markings and dark spots on the silvery sides, and I mar- 

 veled at the width of the powerful tail and the size of the 

 dorsal fin. No sportsmen could ask finer game, and no 

 gourmet could take exception to a fish whose flesh is more 

 savory than the trout, and less cloying than the Salmo 

 salar. 



It was olf this same Laurentian ledge that I fought and 

 killed all my ouinaniche during those rare days. They were 

 days of moving experiences with ouinaniche which seemed 

 to spend all their time in air, with others which leaped up 

 on the rock beside me, or fought their way far out into the 

 rapids, or "bored" doggedly at the bottom, while the line 

 vibrated as if at strokes of the powerful tail. And all this 

 time I was at a place which would make the fortune of the 

 summer landlord if it were, unhappily, accessible to "sum- 

 mer visitors," and not so far to the northward that even 

 the outpost cabins of settlers are below, and the only- 

 human beings to the north are a few trappers and the Eski- 

 mos. 



TROUT INJURIES. 



Editor Fofest and Stream: 



May I ask for information? While on rny last outing 

 in Maine I visited Blanchard Pond in the Dead River 

 region, and there enjoyed one evening's fly-fishing such 

 as I have never experienced before or expect to for some 

 time to come. The trout averaged l^lbs. each, and took 

 my silver- doctor and brown-hackle viciously. I have 

 caught speckled trout weighing over 41bs., but never did 

 any give me battle like these of Blanchard Pond. After 

 supper, as we were admiring our gamy beauties, my guide 

 called my attention to several ugly sores on the sides and 

 backs of all my fish and asking me to explain their pres- 

 ence. I could not, and that is what I am about to lay 

 before you. On turning to my diary I find that the pond 

 is a pretty sheet of some five acres in extent, surrounded 

 by heavily wooded hills and supplied by springs. The 

 water is a clear coffee color and very cold. Along its 

 border long-stemmed lilies grow and are its only vegeta- 

 tion. Curiously enough it has no visible outlet, yet this 

 lake rarely rises or lowers its surface, as can be seen by 

 its'i shores. The trout themselves were finely shaped, 

 lithe and ferocious, very, very dark in color, with spots 

 almost black, the upper jaw projecting and terminating 

 in a slight hook similar to the salmon. They were ap- 

 parently in good health except for the sores, and gilfe, 

 which were very pale or faded. We did not eat these 

 fish, fearing they had some blood disorder'. Have you. 

 ever met with a similar case in your experience? and if 

 so, pl6ase state plainly the circumstances, and thereby 

 help to explain, to me, a very interesting case. 



Sedge. 



[Juding from the hooked jaws we believe that the in- 

 juries observed resulted from battles between the males 

 approaching the breeding condition. It is to be noted, 

 however, that leeches cause sores on certain fish, although 

 we have not known this to occur with trout. Another 

 very common cause of injury in the salmon family is the 

 fish louse — a species of lerngean, which fastens itself to 

 the sides, gills and mouth, and causes severe inflamma- 

 tion and ulceration. It has been supposed that the habit 

 of going to sea was acquired through the desire of becom- 

 ing free from these troublesom parasites.] 



A Book Aboui Indxans.— The Forest and Stream will mall 

 free on application a descriptive circular of Mr. Grinnell's book 

 "Pawnee Hero Stories and folk-tales," giving a table of contents 

 and specimen lHustratlons from the volunae.— wldt). 



