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FORESlT AND STREAM. 



[Dec. 15, 1892. 



ALLEGHANY HUNTING GROUNDS. 



Clearfield, Pa., Dec, 5.— From the dearth of news 

 from our neck of woods one would scarcely know by 

 reading Forest and Stream that some of the finest 

 hunting territory that lies out of doors east of the Mis- 

 sissippi is to be found in central Pennsylvania. The 

 Alleghany Mountains, with their spurs, foothills and 

 adjacent ridges, make up a vast and almost unbroken 

 wilderness, covering large portions of the counties of 

 Blair, Cameron, Centre, Clearfield, Clinton, Elk and 

 Huntingdon, which is the natural home of the Virginia 

 deer, the black bear, the wildcat, the fox, the raccoon, 

 the white and the gray rabbit, the gray, the black and 

 the red squirrel, the wild turkey and the ruffed grouse. 

 I do not wish to be understood that all these animals 

 may be found in any one section, but they are here and 

 fair hunting of any of them may be reached in a day's 

 travel from any of the localities named. It is not only 

 trne that these animals are here in quantities and num- 

 bers to make fair sport, but if properly protected by 

 wise legislation, and the Herbiv )ra and the Rhodentia do 

 not become carnivorous, as a certain dealer in ferrets 

 would have us believe they will, and eat each other, 

 they are here to stay. 



The day for lumbering, a business that once employed 

 so many men in many of the counties named, has prac- 

 tically gone by. Thousands of square miles of forest that 

 once covered the slopes and foothills of our mountains 

 have been stripped of their pine, hemlock and oak, the 

 "forest primeval," once the home of the bear, the panther 

 and the deer of our fathers, and for central Pennsylvania 

 the log camp and the log driver are things of the past. 

 The camps of the hardy log men, built on the head- 

 waters of every stream in the mountains, have rotted 

 down, the log slides have fallen to pieces, the quaking asp, 

 the fire cherry, the birch and the blackberry nave hidden 

 them from view, and the busy scenes of twenty years 

 ago are now visited by the bear, the deer, the fox and the 

 rabbit, and the owl and the porcupine have made their 

 home amid the ruins. 



While many of our best hunting grounds have heen 

 destroyed by the lumbermen, and farms have been 

 cleared and railroads and towns have been built where 

 we once hunted deer and other game, and while many 

 of our trout stream? are dried up and are forever de- 

 stroyed as the home of the brook trout because the ad- 

 jacent forest that furnished a shade for the streams and 

 a reservoir to supply them with water is gone, yet there 

 is a brighter side to the picture, and lots of encourage- 

 ment for the true sportsman. 



There are thousands upon thousands of acres of land in 

 this section that forms the great mountain region above 

 named that will forever remain a wilderness. Same of 

 this land has been stripped of virgin forest, but the rough, 

 barren and rocky character of the soil offers no induce- 

 ments to any one to clear it, and over these vast stretches 

 nature is asserting her claims, and a second-growth forest 

 is fast taking the place of the timber that once covered 

 it. Indeed some of our very bast hunting grounds are 

 now to be found in the log jobs abandoned years ago and 

 allowed to go back to a state of nature, and some of our 

 very hast trout fishing may now be found along our 

 mountain streams that for twenty years have known no 

 log drives or sawmills and will never know them again. 

 Then, again, there is a vast territory, generally mountain 

 land, that never produced any timber save scrub oak, 

 jack pine, red brush, laurel and rhododendron, that, 

 owing to the character of its soil and the absence of any 

 minerals in paying quantities, will never be cleared. 



As a result of the above conditions our game and fish 

 supply is growing more abundant. For many years deer, 

 bear, rabbits, squirrels and grouse have not been so plen- 

 tiful as during the fall and winter of 1892, and it can only 

 be accounted for by the fact that the natural home of 

 these animals has been enlarged, their range extended, 

 and that they now find a refuge in the lands from which 

 they were once driven. 



While nature has thus done much to protect and per- 

 petuate our game and fish supply, and our game animals 

 have shown a disposition to take care of themselves, we 

 believe in encouraging them and giving them a chance. 

 To this end the sportsmen of Pennsylvania owe it to 

 themselves that a more adequate protection is afforded 

 our game animals. 



The deer season, now extending from Oat. 1 to Dec. 15, 

 should, we think, be limited to one month, and let that 

 month be November, so that some snow may be had for 

 still-hunting, and the la w against hounding deer should 

 be rigidly enforced, We suggest the shortening of the 

 open season in order that the nefarious practice of mar- 

 ket-hunting may be broken up. There are hundreds of 

 men to-day scattered over our mountains who have not 

 one drop of a true sportsman's blood in their veins, who 

 hunt deer during the whole of the open season for the 

 money there is in it, Many of these men are without any 

 occupation whatever, and, too lazy to work, they hunt 

 for a living. Many of them are too mean to eat any of 

 their game because they can buy other meat cheaper 

 at the butcher's, and are satisfied with a taste of liver and 

 heart as their share of the deer they kill. If the open 

 season were limited to one month, hundreds of deer now 

 killed by these pot-hunters and shipped to Eastern mar- 

 kets would be saved and the supply thus increased. 

 Again, our open seasons for different kinds of game 

 should be made more uniform. As the law now stands 

 the open season for wooricock begins in July, for squirrels 

 Sept. 1, for grouse and deer Oct. 1, for wild turkeys Oct. 

 15, and for quail and rabbits Nov. 1. This gives the pot- 

 hunter an excuse for going into the woods to hunt one 

 kind of game that may be in season and at the same time 

 to kill a dozen other kinds out of season. 



But Pennsylvania fish and game laws wiU never be en- 

 forced until it is made the duty of some one to see that 

 they are enforced. In other words there should be a law 

 authorizing the appointment of wardens who will do their 

 duty and be paid for their services. Like violators of our 

 J iquor laws, violators of our game laws are seldom pun- 

 ished uriless somebody wants to get square with some 

 other fellow, and courts and juries seldom look with 

 favor upon prosecutions inspired by a spirit of wrangle 

 The game supply of Pennsylvania is part of the great 



commonwealth, the property of a great State, amply able 

 to take care of it and protect it for the benefit of the peo- 

 ple. We have seen the buffalo forever disappear from the 

 plains of the great West, and many other large game ani- 

 mals are fast following in their footsteps. Let the people 

 of Pennsylvania take warning by the fate of these ani- 

 mals. Let her game protection associations move in the 

 matter, and let her Legislature pass laws that will pre- 

 serve to us and our successors this rich inheritance so fast 

 passing away in other States. F. Y. H, 



CHAT AND COMMENT BY "PODGERS." 



San Francisco, Nov. 33.— I have ju3t finished reading 

 my last Forest and Stream and have been, as usual, 

 much interested in it contents, and no little amused at 

 the views on the question of panthers that have run 

 through the last several numbers. If the panthers don't 

 scream it is a wonder, for they have had such an over- 

 hauling as to cause them to yell to be let alone. 



Snakes have had their day and the subject exhausted. 

 Now come the panthers, with minks in the succession; 

 and "that reminds me" to get in a little story myself on 

 minks early in the day. 



Djwn at the Jekyl Island Club, Georgia, we were 

 greatly bothered with them and our chicken department 

 suffered from their incursions. One day a little rascal 

 ran into the woodpile, but being driven out ran for the 

 chicken yard, with Peter our cook in full pursuit. On 

 the way the little marauder encountered a hen, which 

 he stopped long enough to kill by one dash at her throat. 

 It was the work of an instant. Dropping her he ran on, 

 and just outside the gate he met another hen, which he 

 also Killed in the same manner— and escaped. 



Whether he wanted to show his contempt for us or 

 could not resist the temptation to do a little business in 

 his line, as he ran, I couldn't say, but we were out two 

 hens and not in a mink. 



The shooting hereaway has been very good since the 

 season opened, Sept. 1. Large bags have been made of 

 mallards, sprigs and teal. The clubs owning preserves 

 have had exceptionally good sport, averaging as high as 

 75 birds to the gun per day. Toe ducks came early and 

 have continued to be plentiful to date. 



Quail shooting has also been very fair and so continues. 

 Canvasbacks do not get along until February, when the 

 flight will commence and the market will be plentifully 

 supplied at from $1 to f 1.50 per brace. In old times we 

 seldom paid over 75 cents a pair and of tener 50. 



So much of the shooting grounds and marshes has been 

 leased to clubs that the market-shooters and pot-hunters 

 have a poorer show for the previous slaughter indulged 

 in. In consequence of the preserves for club shooting 

 the game has btcome more plentiful: but it is a little 

 rough on the Sunday Frenchman and hoodlum with a 

 gun, who now must go to a greater distance or be content 

 with mud hens — which, by the way, are not such bad 

 eating; the market-hunters prefer them to ducks, using 

 however only the breast and discarding the balance. 



Fishing in the bay has not been worth mention, there 

 having been no run of grilse, or aa people persist in call- 

 ing them, "salmon trout"— a fish that in all my experi- 

 ence I have never seen, and in my opinion does not exist. 

 A salmon is a salmon and a trout a trout. A grilse is 

 simply a young salmon, and there you have the category. 



The name "trout" is given to moi'e vai-ietiea of fish than 

 one has fingers and toes. In many places black bass are 

 so called, weakfish also, and in Kern River, in one of our 

 back counties, there is a great lubberly, coarse, gar-like 

 fish that they call trout, and by which term and a big 

 yarn in a local paper about the big trout in that river, I 

 was induced to spend ten hours by rail and $10 to reach 

 the stream, and the sime to return— on the strength of 

 the editorial lie about "our big trout." Imagine my dis- 

 gust on being shown one of the fish on my arrival that a 

 seedy individual was trying to exchange at a saloon for 

 a cup of what both cheers and inebriates— very bad 

 whiskey. 



As I wrote you, 1 found my favorite salmon fishing in- 

 vaded by the seining for canneries and ruined, but some 

 friends who journeyed to Eel River, too rapid a stream 

 for seining, had good sport, and i;had a notion to 

 write to several expectant friends to come out, as con- 

 templated, but never having taken in Eel River in my 

 ramblings I did not like to risk it, for as everybody knows, 

 when you send word to a friend to come to your ground, 

 if the fish don't bite you are held personally accountable 

 and duly blamed for the failure. Hence I am ever chary 

 about saying come, for it is a well established experience 

 that if you do the fish and birds take that especial occa- 

 sion to be scarcer than men who have lost anything on 

 election bets. Speaking of which, it is one of the current 

 things in nature that you hear of great winnings by 

 Brown, Jones and Robinson on the election, and not a 

 word of any one who has lost anything. 



There are two varieties of fish now abundant on this 

 coast, for which we are greatly indebted to the Fish Com- 

 missioners—shad and striped bass, neither of which fishes 

 existed here until planted; and now we have the largest, 

 finest and most toothsome shad: and striped 1 ass are on 

 the slabs of every dealer. It is a treat to see the great 

 big fellows awaiting sale. It carries one back to the 

 rocks off Newport. West Islands, Pasque Islands and 

 Chituate; and we involuntarily remark, "Welcome little 

 stranger," although they are generally big ones. Striped 

 bass fishing has now become one of our institutions, and 

 we all say God bless the Fish Commissioners for our shad 

 and striped bass. As said the old writer quoted by Wal- 

 ton, of the strawberry, "Doubtless God could have made 

 a better berry, but doubtless God never did;" so as to shad 

 and bass; He might, but he hasn't made better fish yet. 



I see that in a paragraph in a New York paper, giving 

 a description of an electric launch built for Mr. Astor, it 

 is described as the fi.rst electric launch built in the 

 United States, which is simply untrue, as electric 

 launches have been in use here for more than a year 

 past. I was on board and had a sail in one not a month 

 since, and she had been in use more than a year. The 

 average range of a New York reporter's vision and 

 knowledge does not seem to get beyond New York. He 

 knows very little of the world beyond. 

 ^ I see in a communication by your Jady correspondent 

 'Manon" an inquiry as to what has become of "Podgers " 

 She will be surjirised perhaps to learn that that very 

 humble individual is within two hours' ride by rail of her 

 fair sSelf , aad should ehe ever visit San Francisco and 



intimate her desire to see him he will be happy ta p§y 

 his respects. • 

 i I see that your amateur photograph contributors are 

 j "doing noble" in their responses to your invitation to 

 compete for prizes, although I am not certain whether 

 your cuts of the shooting club men enter into competi- 

 tion or not. There is always something amusiner to me 

 in a cut of a shooting team and their dogs. The men 

 look so conscious of being taken, throwing out their 

 chests and wearing an expression of unutterable possibil- 

 ities in the individual when his turn comes to shoot, 

 while their dogs, poor things, are not posted and told to 

 look pleasant, but wear tired and mournful expressions, 

 taking little stock in the proceedings. It is not fair to 

 the dog thus to run away with all the honors and not 

 give them a chance to look pretty and intelligent, I am 

 a friend of the dog; take his side always, and hence ob- 

 ject to his being made a secondary figure in the proces- 

 sion. Podgers. 



THAT SHEET-IRON STOVE. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



Mr. Dulog's mention of a sheetiron stove, in his intfir- 

 esting letter which appeared in your issue of Nov. 10, 

 brings to my mind a little bit of experience I had with 

 just such a stove— bottomless, telescope pipe and all. 



Several years ago I received an invitation to accompany 

 a party of sportsmen on a trip into the mountains of Brit- 

 ish Columbia, and, as I was off duty at the time, I 

 accepted it with pleasure. But when I met the party at 

 the steamboat landing and inspected their outfit, I con- 

 fess that my courage went down in my boots. There 

 were few things outside the requirements of a modern 

 hotel that were not in the lot, which included this par- 

 ticular kind of sheet-iron stove so accurately described by 

 Mr. Dulog. As I was a stranger to the party, I felt a 

 little reluctant in having anything to say aa to what 

 should or should not go. Besides, they had brought the 

 stuff' with them across the continent, and from the way 

 they gave their orders to the packers I felt satisfied they 

 were going to pack it into the mountains if it took all the 

 horses east of the Cascades to do it. So I lit my pipe and 

 silently watched the work of arranging the packs. 



We had a hundred and thirty miles of mountain trail to 

 cover, and the train consisted of twenty odd packs— a 

 pretty big outfit for a party of four men. When the last 

 cinch was tightened I moved across and inspected the 

 animal that carried the stove. He was a sleepy- looking 

 pinto, worn out and poor in flesh, with nothing else pecu- 

 liar about him except that he had a Roman nose, and in 

 my experience a horse with a Roman nose will stand 

 watching. 



However, things went along quite smoothly for the 

 first few days, and I had just about made up my mind 

 that probably I didn't know much about mountain travel 

 after all, when on the morning of the third day the thing 

 happened that I was looking for. As luck willed, it was 

 in a level part of the country where the trail led through 

 a grassy park of scattered pines. As was usually the 

 case the pinto with the stove was lagging away behind, 

 and looking as if he was trying to find some convenient 

 hole in which to bury himself and end his miserv, 

 when suddenly something went wrong in the bowels of 

 the sheet-iron stove. Whether it was a lid that had got 

 loose or the pipe had got out of focus will never be 

 known, but in an instant the whole appearance of that 

 sleepy -looking bag of bones was changed. lie threw up 

 his head and listened just long enough to satisfy himself 

 that the infernal racket came from something in his 

 pack, then he stretched himself out about 2 ft. beyond his 

 usual length, and started for the front at a rate of speed 

 that seemed to burn the wind. When he struck the 

 train with this noise of a dozen kettledrums coming 

 from his back, every animal in the band started, and for 

 four miles the trail was strewn with the scattered wreck 

 of the JiO odd packp. Flour, sugar, bacon, beans and 

 other camp equipment marked plainly the route taken 

 by that fleeing band, and the day was spent in retrieving 

 what was worth of our belongings. The stove was 

 picked up in a somewhat battered condition, but not so 

 badly damaged, I was sorry to see, as to compel us to 

 abandon it. A photographic outfit was tendered useless 

 for the trip, and a bear trap was found up in the limbs 

 of a pine where it had evidently landed from a parting 

 kick from the brute that packed it. 



But aside from this accident, my experience with this 

 stove is that I found it about as cultus* a piece of furni- 

 ture as ever a man packed into the mountains, and when 

 the pipe once gets a jam or two, which will certainly be 

 the case on a long trip, an ordinary camper can make bis 

 fire and cook his grub in about the time that it takes to 

 get the pipe in shape. With all due respect for Mr, 

 Dulog, whom I know to he an old campaigner and a 

 thoroughly experienced hand in everything pertaining 

 to camp life in the mountains, I prefer to stick to the old- 

 fashioned cam !)• fire. John Fannin. 



* Chinook jargon tor worthless or ba'l. 



Lumbermen Lost in the Woods. 



Fish River Falls, Aroostook County, Me., Nov. HO.— 

 We occasionally read ;of "tenderfeet," and even experi- 

 enced hunters getting lost in the woods, but here is an 

 account of a party of five lumbermen who were lost re- 

 cently at the head of Fish River, Arrostook county Me 

 Friday, Nov. 25. Henry Day, boss of the crew, started 

 for camp after sunset from the end of a line he had 

 spotted for a road. He thought to take a short cut, but 

 at midnight pulled up and realized he was lost. Having 

 no matches he worked till daylight chopping dry cedars 

 to keep warm. He started as soon as he could Pee on his 

 back track, easy to follow on the light snow. The crew 

 at the camp were alarmed at the boss's not returning, 

 and next morning a search party of four started on the 

 trail and met up with the lost one running like a deer 

 and almost as wild. After eating the lunch sent out by 

 the cook, they decided to lay their course to camp by a 

 short cut, but night overtook them still a lost tribe in the 

 wilderness; but the relief party brought matches, so that 

 a good fire made their lot endurable, Suuda7 morning 

 all agreed that the longest way around was the nearest 

 road to camp, so they retraced their| steps and reached 

 camp late in the afternoon. Pine Tree 



