366 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[May 11, 1895. 
dogs, for no hounding is allowed in St. Lawrence county. 
The preserve is not inclosed in any way: all game can 
come and go as they please, and as no dogs are allowed 
on the preserve, game is protected and the deer are in- 
creasing very fast, the whole of the territory being 
natural feeding ground for them. I have concluded to 
allow no does or fawns killed at any time, and I think 
that this should become a State law for a few years, as 
well as a club regulation. 
I cannot state as to the number and kind of game, but 
should estimate that there are between 100 and 200 deer 
at the present time, and there will be a great many more 
in the near future. Only six deer were killed on the pre- 
serve during this entire season. Last year there were 
probably about fifteen killed, but previous to this time I 
think some years as many as fifty have been killed, and 
only a small part of the meat has been preserved, most of 
the deer having been killed out of season. 
As to other game, there are a good many beaver and 
otter on the property and other fur-bearing animals. 
Bear are quite plenty, and one was killed by the keeper. 
Partridge are also quite numerous. 
There are about fifteen miles of trout bronks in this 
preserve, all of which abound in speckled trout. Only a 
small number of fish were caught this season, as I wish 
to increase both the size and number. The people in the 
vicinity have in former years been in the habit of going 
in and taking them out, salted, in butter tubs, and differ- 
ent ones have boasted of 500 or 600 fish caught in one 
day. As parties would usually stop a week camping you 
can estimate the quantity that a party would catch dur- 
ing a week's trip. They have also been in the habit of 
taking trout in nets and with dynamite from Trout Lake. 
The people now think that it is a hardship to be de- 
prived of this hunting and fishing, but how long would 
there be any fish or game if such acts were allowed to 
continue? 
Our party this season killed no deer or partridge or 
caught any fish except for actual use while in camp. 
Whether I continue to hold this preserve alone or whether 
I put it into a club, the hunting and fishing will be closely 
restricted, and no one will be allowed to break any of the 
State laws or kill any deer or catch any fish except as per 
the preserve regulations. 
Up to the present time I have made no attempt to put 
any imported game on the property. My object in mak- 
ing this preserve was not to restrict other people's rights, 
but to protect the game of the State and at the same time 
protect my own property from trespassers and from liabil- 
ity of fire, for I found that my camp was continually 
broken open by these people and my boats and provisions 
destroyed, and I could get no clew as to who committed 
the acts, but since making a preserve of the property I 
have had very little trouble, and the deer, instead of being 
as wild as formerly, have become so plenty and tame that 
we are continually seeing them in the woods and around 
the ponds when we are in camp. 
One of my ponds and part of my preserve is located in 
Franklin county, where hounding is allowed, but I have 
made a rule that no hounding shall be allowed or dogs 
brought on to the property. 
I think it would be a good idea for your paper to agitate 
the question of hounding in the. Adirondacks. It is al- 
lowed in part of the counties, and not in others. The 
objection is not only in the number of deer that are killed 
in front of the dogs, but also those that are not driven to 
water but are so exhausted that they die. I would also 
call your attention to the fact that the State of New York 
does not furnish a sufficient number of wardens to pro- 
tect the game, and if there had not been a move made by 
private parties in protecting the game of the Adirondacks 
in the last few years, there would be very little game 
there now. The increase is almost wholly due to the pro- 
tection afforded the game by private parties. 
Frank A. Cutting. 
Iff ^porfstiiMi %mmt* 
IN THE NORTHWEST. 
If some of Forest and Stream's readers and hunting 
enthusiasts could drop into northern Minnesota wilds they 
would think themselves in paradise. Though the district 
is dismal and uninviting as to scenery, the game and fish- 
ing there would more than offset the surroundings. I 
never imagined this section good for anything except 
tamarack swamps and Chippewa Indians; but at Cloquet, 
Minn., the ice was just breaking up and the banks ot the 
Cloquet and St. Louis rivers were lined with fishermen 
armed with spears, who were taking goodly numbers of 
pickerel and pike — and good big fellows they were- 
On the train coming west to Aitkin I met a Mr. Norton, 
who lives at Cromwell, the town on the Northern Pacific 
which was wiped out of existence in ten minutes by the 
awful timber fire cyclone which laid in waste such a vast 
tretch of pine country last fall. I asked this gentleman 
f there was any game in the vicinity of Cromwell, and 
his answer was a puzzle: "There used to be before the 
fire." When asked if he noticed any game, running ahead 
of the fire, he told me that at the time he did not take 
particular notice, but afterward remembered that he saw 
lots of small game — rabbits, squirrels and wolves — passing 
by his farm a short time before the smoke of the cyclone 
was noticed. A couple of deer ran across a plowed lot ten 
rods from the railway depot, and on the Kettle River, six 
miles north, wolves, bears, lynx and deer were mingled 
in great numbers. Speaking of fishing in Tamarack Lake, 
Mr. Norton said that bass, pickerel, pike, croppies and 
muscallonge were plentiful, and the bait mostly used was 
angle dogs — or worms, as he afterward explained. 
But at Aitkin I struck a genuine Izaak Walton in George 
W. Lott, the postmaster, and from him learned that I was 
in the center of a bear den. If Mr. Bobo, of Bobo Station, 
Miss., had his pack of dogs here he'd be in it on bear and 
no canebrake to impede his way. One hundred and nine- 
teen bears were killed in two weeks within a radius of 12 
miles of Aitkin, one huge fellow being slain 10 rods from 
the courthouse. Mr. Lott, so far as I have been able to 
learn, wears the belt for the largest black bass caught yet 
in Minnesota. I send Forest and Stream a photograph 
of this rare finny king. It weighed 81bs. loz. when taken 
from the water, though Mr. Lott has placed its weight at 
7^1bs. when weighed in presence of witnesses, sealed, 
gigned and sworn to. 
At this place \ also saw curiosity tlie deer family, 
It was nothing less than a yearling fawn pure white m 
color, of unusual height and proportions, which was 
killed by a Chippewa Indian and sold to Mr. Foley for $12, 
and is now valued at $100 or more. Mounted animals and 
heads are plentiful at Aitkin and Brainard. At the latter 
place one saloon has its walls embellished with four huge 
moose and 11 deer heads, the value of which are respect- 
ively $50 and $15 each, but not for sale. 
There is some trout fishing at North Branch, Mmn., on 
the St. Paul & Duluth Railway. Fish are being taken m 
spite of Minnesota's rigid 'game law and alert wardens. 
A stream there six miles from town, if able to talk, could 
"give away" some of North Branch's most prominent 
citizens who are poaching trout regularly. During the 
forest fires nine bears were killed within the limits of St. 
Cloud in one day. At Royalton, a few miles north, thirty 
or more were gathered in a radius of fifteen miles. This 
information I gathered from reliable sources; so, Mr. Bobo, 
jump aboard the cars, get Hough at Chicago and let him 
come to Minnesota and consummate his desire — a bear. 
Coming into Wisconsin a week ago, I got out of the 
bear country, but fell bead over heels into trout brooks. 
At Rice Lake, Wis., I met Mr. M. P. Barry of the "Blue- 
berry route," as it is familiarly known. Mr. Barry years 
ago was with the Smithsonian Institute and has made a 
collection of every beast, bird, reptile and mineral curios- 
ity of this State for the institute. He told me about 
getting an albino hawk and a pair of albino quail. Rice 
Lake, after which this place is named, is a body of water 
half a mile wide and three miles long abounding in bass, 
muscallonge and pike, some few other fish. Plenty of trout 
streams hereabouts. In 1894, they were stocked with 
80,000 fry; this year 60,000 have been placed in streams 
within a radius of three to twelve miles. Plenty of fish 
are now being taken, one gentleman showing me a 2^- 
pounder of the rainbow variety and a lot of the speckled 
tribe. The season has just opened and everybody has 
gone out to-day to fish. The game and fish laws are 
good, black bass, green bass, Oswego bass, well-eyed pike, 
pickerel and muscallonge being protected during March, 
April and May. Few flies are used here, angle worms 
being the favorite bait. I am now headed for the Supe- 
rior region and will probably pick up something there. 
THE SUNNY SOUTH— XII. 
Round Rockport Way In Texas. 
Chicago, 111., April 17.— As I pen these last lines on my 
little typewriter machine it is spring in Illinois, and there 
is a drift of laziness in the air as though caught from the 
languid airs of the South. The wildfowl have come up 
from their southern sojournings, and have departed for 
the further north. Perhaps some of those very ducks and 
geese which our industrious party tried so hard to murder 
down in Texas have fanned their way over the home of 
Col. Bill Peabody and his friends in Cincinnati, or over 
the abode of the celebrated dogman of Milwaukee, or 
across the smoky burg of Chicago. In the whistle of their 
wings I hear the sound we heard far down in the sunny 
South, and it being, as aforesaid, spring, and laziness 
being permitted to the sons of men. I can shut my eyes 
and see the whole panorama of our pleasant voyaging in 
the land by the sea of ease and restfulness. 
The last days of our trip were to be spent at Rockport, 
and our car was run down there from Sinton, we holding 
Mr. George Fulton close prisoner aboard, and also for part 
of the time his brother, Mr. Jas. C. Fulton, whose home is 
at Rockport. Arrived at the latter village, our party scat- 
tered in the usual fashion on individual quest of pleasure, 
the major part being safe of discovery near the oyster 
houses, in pursuit of the innocent and uncloying fowl of 
the close-kept secrets. One party took the boat Novice 
and sailed one day down to the beautiful channel known 
as the Aransas Pass, the fishing grounds for the tarpon. 
We did no fishing, but took it all out in lying on deck and 
just living. The next morning after that we sustained a 
great loss in the personnel of our party, Mr. Guessaz being 
called home by telegram from his partner in San Antonio 
on business matters. This was a damper on the fun, but 
by this time we were beginning to try to let go of the 
South, and were talking about having to get back to work 
ourselves. Nevertheless, we determined to take one more 
run up the coast to try for some canvasback, and accord- 
ingly pulled out for Hines's Bay. forty-five miles distant, 
early as possible the next day. I will not weary by a long 
story of that part of our wanderings, for really we were a 
bit disappointed here, finding that the fresh water of the 
Guadalupe River, whose presence nourishes the wild cel- 
ery that makes this a great feeding ground some years, 
had this year been so limited in its extent by the dryness 
of the season that the feed had all died down. We saw 
some few canvasback, it is true, and we bagged about a 
dozen and a half in our one-night stand there; but we 
found no snipe shooting, as we hoped, and were not con- 
tent to stop for the duck shooting. 
Oysters While You Wait. 
It was about noon of our first day at Hinos's Bay that 
we spread our sail for the homeward flight. The wind 
was baffling and uncertain, and we found much difficulty 
in making our way through the many reefs and shoals of 
these shallow waters, which for 20 miles hardly average 
4ft. in depth except along the narrow channels, and 
where the best of pilot knowledge is a necessity. At 
length, in spite of the best efforts of the Bludworth boys, 
we struck a reef, going well aground. Edging along this 
bar after we got back from the contact, we learned by 
the grating on our keel that we were on an oyster reef— 
indeed, nearly all the reefs of that locality are oyster 
reefs. At this discovery a great shout went up from the 
Northern men, and at once the anchor was dropped and 
we went to dredging for oysters in the limited way made 
possible by tools such as a boat hook and a hoe. At length 
Johnnie Bludworth grew disgusted by his inability to sup- 
ply the ready demand for raw oysters, and plunged bodily 
over the side, going just over waist deep in the water, so 
that only one corner of his eye showed above water when 
he stooped down to gather the oysters in his hands. This 
was a trifle rough on Johnnie, for the water was cold in 
spite of its being so near the Gulf Stream; but the rest of 
us profited largely by his venture, for we soon had a great 
pile of fine fresh shell oysters heaped up on the deck, 
whose opening and eating occupied a good part of the 
evening. Then, after the deliberate fashion of men who 
are not due anywhere at any given time, we agaj$ hoisted 
gail and slowly tried, further through tfw reefs, 
Voices of the Night. 
Dark settled down on us, or rather sunset and dark- 
ness, for there was a misty moon, and we were still 25 
miles from Rockport, crawling along in a faint and puffy 
wind opposite the low shores below the mouth of Hines's 
Bay. Far toward midnight we sat out on deck and en- 
joyed the lovely sail by night. When passing close along 
a certain long point, which the boys told us was called 
False Live Oak Point, we began to hear great quantities 
of wildfowl of all sorts, these voices of the night coming 
to us in a confused murmur of gabbling, honking, trum- 
peting and quacking, with many interspersed sounds of a 
wild, strange sort, such as none of us could name. Very 
melodious and wildly fascinating these hidden sounds 
seemed to us, coming out of the misty, unknown shore, 
whose outlines we could not see. We began to think it 
all over, and as the sounds of feeding birds continued 
and seemed 'to represent a great body of fowl, perhaps 
the very location we had been feeling around for on the 
coast, we concluded the best thing to do was to drop 
anchor and investigate a little in the morning. We 
turned in, or at least most of us did, though the skipper 
and crew navigated till 3 o'clock in the morning, in order 
to drop anchor at what they thought was a favorable spot 
for the morning's shooting. This was to be the last day 
of our trip on the coast, and the faithful owners of the 
Novice wanted us to have a good time. 
A Royal Sight. 
We did have a good time, perhaps the best time of the 
whole trip so far as the shooting was concerned, for cer- 
tainly at no other point did we see such abundance and 
variety of wildfowl, and had we stayed for a day or so at 
this point we could surely have shot to our hearts' con- 
tent. We found that there was a long expanse of water 
about a quarter of a mile inland from the shallow salt 
water bay, and this lake or arm of water we at first took 
to be fresh, though we found later that it was connected 
with the salt water by a narrow channel at each end. 
This inland lagoon was nearly two miles in length and 
was perhaps a half mile across at its widest point. On 
each side of it there ran many ponds and pools of shallow 
water. All these connected waters, as well as the shoal 
water of the bay in which we had come to anchor, bore 
innumerable thousands of fowl which were evidently 
finding plenty of feed, for they were all very fat and 
heavy, as we found later. I have never in my experience 
seen so royal a sight as that uncovered by the morning 
sun as it rose above these favored waters. There were 
long lines of honkers riding out at sea and passing inland 
to the lakes; there were ducks in strings and clouds com- 
ing and going along the coast and over the ends of the 
inland arm; hundreds of silver gray herons stood in gaunt 
profile along the sedgy flats inshore, and there came to us 
often the wild trumpeting of the great bugler cranes. 
Out in the bay, in great white squadrons of many acres in 
extent, floated the greatest birds of all our wildfowl, the 
big white swans, whose melancholy but melodious notes 
came wafted in volume on the early air of morning. 
The music of these many great birds of many sorts was 
loud, continuous and stirring, and the whole scene might 
well have moved to excitement more hardened sportsmen 
than ourselves. We were ready to admit that on this, our 
last day in the country, the gulf coast of Texas had 
massed its attractions to show what it could do. 
A Successful Shoot. 
But to get at the shooting was another thing. The 
cover was very low and meager, and a blind was a work 
of hours. Decoys we did not use — except that Mr. Pea- 
body for part of the time had out a small fleet in a little 
pondhole, with the result that he killed more ducks than 
any of us, the mallards and pintails decoying as beauti- 
fully as one ever saw them do anywhere. We were all 
in too big a hurry and too much crowded for time to take 
much care with preparations, and so scattered in all direc- 
tions and got into such cover as we could over a mile or 
so of country all along the inland lake. That the birds 
were obligingly tame we soon learned, and soon they 
began to pay the forfeit of their ignorance. In the early 
morning light I could hear the guns cracking, almost 
before one could see the length of a gunshot in the fog, 
and as the day grew clearer I could from my own point 
of operations see the stands taken by Burton, Dubois and 
Merrill, and could now and then see the deluge of fire and 
smoke from Jim mieBlud worth's awful gun, and hear the 
ping of the .44 With which Johnnie was trying to put in 
the morning, he having no gun with him, It was all ex- 
citing as a skirmish. 
That was one of the mornings when everybody was 
lucky. Dick Merrill killed so many geese that he could 
hardly lug them over from the lake to the boat landing. 
Wilbur Dubois and Bob Burton had geese and ducks both 
in their string, and Mr. Peabody was regularly cutting 
down the mallards in the finest bic of decoy shooting he 
ever had had in his life. Jimmie shot up all his shells, 
and Johnnie used up the last of his rifle cartridges, getting 
a fine honker and a splendid specimen of the white bugler 
crane before he was compelled to cease firing. It was 
about 11 o'clock when we first rounded up on the beach 
off the Novice anchorage, and when we piled up all our 
game we had a magnificent showing — nearly four dozen 
ducks, a dozen of the largest and fattest geese I ever saw, 
all Canadians, besides some white fellows not enumerated, 
the big crane and also a fine great swan. 
Adventures with a Swan. 
The swan I was lucky enough to kill myself, and we 
had quite an adventure over it before we got it in the boat. 
I was away down at the end Of the inland lake, near a 
flyway I had discovered, and was lying flat down on my 
back where the grass was about 6in. high, calling mal- 
lards, which often drew over from the bay to the lake at 
that point, so that I got a little shooting of a snappy sort, 
inasmuch as I could not move in the least, and so could 
not see the birds till they came over and past me. Very 
often a great line of geese would come down my way, 
after paying tribute to Dubois, Peabody, Burton and 
Merrill up above me, and though these usually kept out 
over the open water away from my point, I occasionally 
got a shot at them. It was well on in the morning when 
I heard a great honking and chattering and calling com- 
ing down the wind to me, and looking up carefully I 
eould see bearing down the lake the largest flight of wild- 
fowl J ever saw on the wing at one sight in my life. 
There were geese, ducks, white geese, everything a. 
man eyer did bear pf jn his life, all pne great, scatter^ 
