June 29, 1895,] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
829 
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WOODCOCK IN ONTARIO. 
The American woodcock is a strange bird. A bird that 
feeds by night and restB by day, sees behind it without 
turning its head, gets its food by making deep drills, or 
"bores" in the earth with its bill, and which has two dis- 
tinct methods of flight if not more, may fairly be called 
peculiar. 
He is one of the finest of American game birds, rank- 
ing, as regards difficulty in shooting bim, quite with the 
ruffed grouse, and being far less abundant. I fear, too, 
that unless prompt measures are taken to save him from 
extermination, this beautiful and wily game bird is 
doomed to follow the wild turkey here in Canada on the 
pa,th of extinction. And the end of the wild turkey in 
Canada is now in plain sight, and twenty or twenty-five 
years at most will see it. The extermination of the wood- 
cock will probably follow (though a much longer lease of 
life may be given), and for the same reasons — viz., his 
range is limited and his covers are being destroyed. The 
axe is more fatal to him than the gun. Then the wood- 
cock cannot be preserved and artificially reared, as is the 
pheasant in England, and as the quail is in some parts of 
America and Canada. So I fear he is doomed. Of course, 
I speak only of Canada ; but I believe the same may be 
said of his prospects in the New England and Central 
States. 
The woodcock is seldom found in the States beyond the 
Mississippi, and never in our great Northwest country. 
His range in Canada proper, or old Canada, is over south- 
ern and central Ontario and southern Quebec. I have 
never heard of him in Muskoka or in the country north of 
Peterboro, though I have shot in those regions pretty 
often; and in northern Quebec he is quite unknown. It is 
true that on my first visit to Muskoka, while shooting in 
the vicinity of Lake Rosseau, I was informed by a native, 
of whom I was making some inquiries as to game birds, 
that "ef I went right ahead a little ways I'd find a couple 
of woodcock— big uns, too— poundin' away on an old pine 
shell with their bills like all gee-whittaker." Curious to 
inspect so miraculous a change in the hahits of the wood- 
cock as I had known them further south, I pushed on, and 
found that my friend meant by "woodcock" the great 
ivory-billed woodpecker or "cock of the woods." 
The name "woodcock" is universally applied to this bird 
all through our northern woods, and is apt to prove mis- 
leading to the sportsman. 
In the Niagara Peninsula and about Hamilton the 
woodcock, once very abundant, is now rapidly passing 
away. 
Prince Edward county, where the writer of this paper 
now lives, is probably the best county for woodcock shoot- 
ing left in Ontario, though the falling off in the number 
of birds of late years even there is sadly perceptible. 
A good many American sportsmen come here in the 
summer for bass and maskinonge fishing, some even 
staying till the fall to have a crack at the ducks. These 
gentlemen little think that within three miles of Picton , the 
county town, tnere are large stretches of cover, where 
really good woodcock shooting can be had. 
In my poor opinion, any kind of duck-shooting (whether 
you squat like a bullfrog in the rushes behind your 
bough house, or lie cramped in a monitor with both legs 
asleep and Blowly freezing to death) is as inferior to a 
good day's tramp after woodcock behind a steady old 
pointer, or even a well-broken cocker or Irish spaniel, "as 
is moonlight unto Bunlight, or as water unto wine." 
An incident, which happened to me only last season, 
will show that woodcock are still tolerably thick in the 
covers referred to. As a friend and myself were return- 
ing down the outside of one of these covers late one after- 
noon in October, after a pretty hard and successful day's 
work, we came on a small tongue or point, running out 
from the main cover, which somehow or other we had 
omitted to beat in the morning. 
As we approached it my Irish spaniel, which ought to 
have been at heel on the very edge of the cover, flushed 
a bird pitched in a lot of Canada thistles not 25yds. 
out in the open field. I walked the bird up and shot him. 
On reaching the place where he had emerged, we followed 
my friend Mr. S.'s pointer (the steadiest old dog I ever 
shot over) into the thicket. 
He had not gone 10yds. before he came to a dead point. 
The bird rose on my side, and at the report of my gun 
performed that peculiar dive into the bushes in the midst 
of a stream of feathers the sight of which causes a pleased 
grin to overspread the features of the average sportsman. 
The cover was so thick that my friend and I, though 
not 20yds. apart, could not see each other, as we slowly 
drew the dogs on toward the dead bird. But this did not 
prevent Mr. S. shooting three woodcock and myself two 
more before we reached the place where the bird, first 
killed, fell. 
Another cock, which I missed, Mr. S. (who is one of the 
best shots at woodcock or ruffed grouse I ever was out 
with) cut down as he rose wild from the edge of a further 
off cover. 
This made eight birds shot in ajaout ten or fifteen min- 
utes in a little bit of cover about an acre in extent. We 
felt as we pursued our toilsome way that we'd both "been 
on in that last act." 
The great beauty of the bit of country that I have been 
speaking of is that in the course of a day's shooting you 
have every chance of making what old sportsmen call "a 
mixed bag." The Wilson or English snipe is very plenti- 
ful in and about the covers, and, strange to say, is often 
flushed in the same dense thicket of vines and bushes as 
the woodcock. I remember once shooting a woodcock 
with one barrel and a Wilson snipe with the other in this 
neighborhood. 
There is also a fair sprinkling of ruffed grouse and hare 
to be found. In the marshy grounds between the covers 
in the small fields covered with a sickly growth of buck- 
wheat, sticking out of the sour water-soaked ground, or 
in occasional rows of forlorn turnips or disgusted-look- 
ing beans, you can put up golden or yellow-leg plover, as 
well as Wilson snipe. And in some of the larger ponds, 
Often hid in the densest woodland, you get an occasional 
crack at blue or green- winged teal or black duck. But of 
course the main standby for the sportsman here is the 
woodcock. The others are incidentals, welcome as the 
flowers in May to him when they come in his road, but not 
sought after as the main business of the hour. 
I have observed that in this big cover, and in others like 
it, throughout the county (for the place I have been speak- 
ing of is only one out of many), the woodcock early in 
September — about their moulting time here — leave the 
dense wet swamp altogether in the daytime, and go up to 
the knolls and dry upland ground, covered with dwarf 
poplars, maple and brambles in the immediate vicinity of 
their swampy feeding grounds. They certainly come 
down to feed in the wet covers at night, for you will find 
the mud round the pools and small streamlets of the low 
grounds riddled with their bores, and yet go for a couple 
of miles without flushing a bird. Go up to higher ground 
close by and you may put up a dozen in a very short time. 
A week or two later they are all back in the swamp again. 
This fact is worth noting by every pursuer of the wily 
woodcock. 
This same woodcock is a queer bird. Sometimes you 
will think he is the biggest fool of a bird that ever lived, 
and at others you will say, as a Southern friend of mine 
did, "that he knows as much as an Injin and more than a 
nigger." I've known one come out of the cover in an 
aimless sort of way, hang in the wind for a moment, and 
then flop down within sixteen feet of me, right out in the 
open, looking as if he thought he'd picked out the safest 
part of North America to rest in ; and then again I've 
known one to keep two good shots and two good dogs 
dodging about for half an hour in one thick bit of cover, 
going off in every direction but the right one with the 
velocity of a ruffed grouse, and the twist and dodge of a 
Wilson snipe. Half an hour's pursuit of a bird like this, 
in a dense thicket, on a hot September afternoon, with the 
thermometer about 90° in the shade, not a breath of wind 
stirring, and about a thousand mosquitoes to the square 
yard in the atmosphere round your person, gives you a 
much higher opinion of the woodcock's intellect. 
He seems to know, too, when you have got one leg hip 
deep in a bog-hole, and generally selects that moment to 
rise and depart. Even when you have him in front of a 
steady point, it's a toss up whether he shoots over the dog's 
back straight in your face like a sky-rocket, or zig-zags 
off so close to your comrade's head that you dare not fire 
for your life — or rather, for his life — or flops into a tangle 
of wild vines, and sticks there long enough for a boy ten 
years old to shoot him. 
Eor all that, he is one of the best of game birds to the 
real sportsman, who likes to kill his game fairly and on 
the wing; and it is a sad thing for all such to see him be- 
coming, as he is, scarcer and scarcer each succeeding year. 
Reginald Gotjrlay. 
NOTES FROM MINNESOTA. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I am afraid that the grouse shooting in this section of 
Minnesota will not amount to much this fall on account 
of the frequent heavy rains and extraordinary destruc- 
tive hailstorms which have prevailed between the 45th 
and 47th parallels for fifty miles. Hailstorms have de- 
stroyed whole broods of tame fowls, including hens, and 
this when partially protected by coops; so what chance 
have wildfowl on the open in such weather? Hailstones 
measuring lOin. in circumference fell at Lisbon, N. D., 
Abercrombie and other points last week, and at Fergus 
Falls, Minn., stones fell with sufficient force to break plate 
glass fronts. The hail lay 6 and 8in. deep and pelted 
holes in soft ground in which eggs could easily be 
dropped. 
Plover shooting is being indulged in to some extent 
hereabouts, and I learn that some sportsmen (?) are killing 
meadow-larks. 
There is little fishing now in the Red River. A few 
sturgeon have been taken this spring at Fergus Falls, 
below the dam. weighing 35 and 381bs. Bass are biting 
very nicely at Battle Lake and Clitherel, but taste rather 
weedy, and a few of a mess presented me June 10 were 
yet full of eggs. The closed season on these fish should be 
extended to July 1 , or J une 20 at least. 
T. B. Bushnell, one of the leading sportsmen in Minne- 
sota, has expended a lot of money in fixing up a pleasure 
resort at Ten Mile Lake, in Otter Tail county, 12 miles 
south of Fergus Falls. He has about as much as he can 
attend to. 
Great numbers of farmers from the prairie districts are 
now at neighboring lakes, notably those at Pelican 
Rapids, salting down fish for winter use, the pike being 
the kind most suitable for keeping. 
There are no ducks about here, it fact, I havn't seen 
a wild one Bince leaving the Superior region two weeks 
ago. 
Jack rabbits are numerous, and I look for the organiza- 
tion of a coursing club here next year. 
Elk and Moose Antlers' Spread. 
I have read with considerable interest the items con- 
cerning the spread of elk and moose antlers. I am going 
to measure some I know of at Brainerd, Minn., and think 
I can find a prize winner, for the West is rarely beaten on 
anything — except, possibly, a few truth expanders. I 
have had in my possession a moose head, the spread of 
whose prongs were about 200 miles, i. e. , the portion I 
possessed and its companion prong were spread that dis- 
tance apart, away out at Minot, N. D. Speaking of Minot 
reminds me that I don't know much about horns. In 
April, 1891, I stopped off at this place on my way to 
Montana on business. Near the depot were two parallel 
heaps of bones which had been picked on the prairie and 
sold to bone buyers. The piles were 600 feet long and 
fifteen or twenty high, and contained the bones of 
every sort of prairie animal, the buffalo predominating. 
Going over the piles in search of relics, I came across a fine 
pair of Texas steer horns which measured twenty- 
eight inches each. I took my find in triumph to the 
Journal office, and asked the boys if they ever saw a finer 
"pair." The boys began to snicker and I wondered 
thereat. Finally one of them whispered to me, "They are 
from the same side of the head." I had noticed that the 
horns did not jibe, one pointed ahead while the other 
pointed to the rear, but did not ' 'tumble" to my error 
until too late. Of course the crowd "irrigated" at my ex- 
pense and the editor "fixed." I searched the pile for the 
missing mates, but like my moose antlers they were some- 
what on the spread themselves. This pile, however, 
yielded me some interesting trophies, viz.: a shoulder- 
blade of a buffalo with one iron and one flint arrow head 
imbedded in it; a buffalo skull with eleven bullet holes in 
it, a silent story of a hard death; two deer heads firmly 
locked together, evidence of a deadly contest between two 
monarchs; and last, but not least, two pairs of fine large 
buffalo horns that now are serving a good purpose as a 
footstool. At this place several "pet" deer were allowed 
to roam at large through the streets. One of these pets, a 
two-year-old buck, caught a railroad engineer out back of 
of the Great Northern round house the following fall and 
gently tickled him almost to death with his antlers. I 
guess he, the engineer, had a slight attack of the"buck 
ager" we read of in Forest and Stream. 
"Buck Fever." 
Yes, I have had intermittent fever, scarlet fever and 
"buck fever." The "buck fever" came to me when I was 
in search of a broken telegraph wire fifteen miles east of 
Glendive, Mont., in 1880. I was out on a railrcad tricycle 
of rude construction and was spinning along at a good 
rate on the newly made track, when I heard the sharp 
Jci-o-tee of the coyote or plains wolf. I was a "tender- 
foot" from Egypt (111.), and had read of whole families 
being eaten by wolves, and naturally grew timid. Look- 
ing over my shoulder I discerned a pack of eight yellow, 
yelling monsters in full cry, coming in my direction. I 
"by ant OTH-ER name." 
had no weapon of any sort except a pair of pliers and a 
pair of climbers, and all would have gone well if a freight 
train had not hove in sight. The train of course had the 
right of way, so I was forced to try my luck at sprinting. 
I embraced the first telegraph pole and was quickly at its 
peak. The freight thundered by and I signaled it to stop. 
The engineer blew a blast that frightened the coyotes 
away and nearly blew me off my perch. The trainmen 
helped me and my machine aboard the caboose. I had a 
clear attack of "buck fever or ager," as you like to term 
it. I cut more gyrations than a go-devil firecracker, and 
my legs "wobbled" like the governor of a stationary 
engine. Oh, the feeling is delicious! Try it some time. 
When I got to Glendive I resigned in favor of the coyote, 
and with the $26 I got for salary went back to Illinois, 
only to be attacked a few weeks later with the genuine 
swamp chills and fever. My opinion of coyotes is not 
flattering. They are like some legislators I know of who 
"don't believe in game laws, nohow" — all noise and no 
bite (work). So much for "b-b-u-c-k-k a-g-e-r." 
F. J. S. 
MARYLAND ASSOCIATION. 
Baltimore, June 6. — Editor Forest and Stream: An as- 
sociation known as the Maryland State Game and Fish 
Protective Association was permanently organized at a 
meeting held in the Academy of Sciences April 16, 1895. 
It is most gratifying to the officers and members to see the 
deep interest manifested in the association by so many 
persons in Baltimore and throughout the state. Nearly one 
hundred members joined at the first meeting, and as 
many more have made application to become members 
since. In order that the Association become powerful and 
influential, we appeal to every person in the State inter- 
ested in the preservation and propagation of game and 
fish to become members. The annual dues have been put 
at a nominal sum in order that the membership may be 
very large, thus adding to the popularity and usefulness 
of the association. Our beautiful song birds and all in- 
sectiverous birds will be cared for, as well as game birds. 
All laws for the protection of game and fish will be rigid- 
ly enforced, and if the present laws are fouud to be inef- 
ficient, the "law committee" of the Association will draft 
new laws and ask the General Assembly to pass them. 
The most destructive agencies and violations of law that 
are driving wildfowl from our rivers, exterminating our 
game, and depleting our waters of fish may be summed 
up as follows: The use of big guns and shooting at night, 
which drive the ducks from their feeding and roosting 
grounds; shooting partridges and woodcock by market 
gunners during the close season for clubs and restaurants, 
which serve them as short bills; dogs that run at large hunt- 
ing rabbits day and night all summer, killing young rab- 
bits and destroying partridge nests; hauling seines during 
the spawning season; allowing small fish that are emptied 
from seines to he on the shore and die; setting fish traps, 
which kill everything, great and small, that get into them; 
putting lime into trout streams, and the abominable cus- 
tom of throwing dynamite cartridges, which kill every 
fish within several hundred yards of the place of explosion; 
and last, but not least, is a want of authority to enforce 
tne laws for the protection of that magnificent fish, the 
black bass; in the Potomac River. The dispute about the 
boundary line between Maryland and the Virginias is the 
stumbling block in the way that can be removed by uni- 
form legislation. 
It can be readily seen that the task undertaken by the 
Association is not an easy one; but we have entered upon 
the work with a determination that nothing will be left 
undone to accomplish the results for which the association 
was organized, and to this end we invoke the co-operation 
of all persons interested in the work undertaken by the 
Maryland Game and Fish Protective Association. We are 
persuaded beyond doubt that with proper laws regulating 
and restricting shootkg tnd fishing, rigidly enforced 
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