446 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Deo. 4, 1897- 
of sight. We became satisfied that the first dog had taken 
to flushing through jealousy, for he was a very jealous 
dog. as will presently appear. The other dog had taken 
to chasing birds through excess — growing excess — of en- 
thusiasm, for some dogs do not get their full measure of 
hunting passion in their early years. They both looked 
to me "like hopeless cases, but A. said be would have 
them all right in a couple of weeks. And before I left the 
liver-colored pointer actually pointed, far off on the prai- 
rie, although before we got there he flashed the covey, a 
very large one. The trouble with the first of the apostles, 
as I have intimated, on the other hand, was that he was 
too much of a puppy. He would just as soon hunt butter- 
flies as birds. Soon after the exodus of the liver-colored 
pointer, Matthew showed the entire catholicity of his pre- 
dilections by starting of£ full tilt after a jack rabbit, taking 
Luke and the Fargo dog with him. The latter two were 
readily recalled by the whistle, but the dog with the bib- 
lical name did the "Song of the Brook" act. 
"Now," thought I, "we will see an imitation of a dog get- 
ting a licking," as there came into my mind the conven- 
tional idea of all the whippings a dog must receive by the 
time the trainer has sent him back "trained." 
Well, he came back after a while, and when he came 
near A. got down from his chariot and met him, whip in 
hand, not a gj'eat way off. The dog came on, apologetic, 
but unsuspicious. Had I been Matthew then I should 
. have cut for home. 
"Mat," in broader Scotch, "shame on ye!" 
And Mat looked sorrowful. Whereupon the man raised 
the whip and the dog sat down. The whip was then 
pressed upon Mat's back — not struck, mind you, but 
pressed — while there floated from A.'s whistle a far-away 
little counterpart of his previous whistle. This was re- 
peated three or four times, with a few sorrowing murmurs 
from the man in the intervals, which the dog received 
with becoming abjectness. 
"A,," said I, "why didn't you whip that dog?" 
"Man, I'd be fit to lose my occupation if I did. IVe 
been lattin' them all chase rabbits and everything else all 
summer. They'd be no glide else." 
Presently the liver-colored pointer was put in the 
wagon, and Mark and May let out; soon after which a 
broken covey flushed wild and went off" across the level 
prairie, near some stacks about a mile away. The liver- 
colored pointer was feeling sore at being back in the 
wagon, and the added chagrin of birds a-flying, and the 
strange man with the gun missing a pretty fair shot at a 
bird which came back by the vehicles, was too much for 
him, and he inaugurated a dog fight with Spark; the other 
dogs, used to the occurrence, crowding to the rear of the 
wagon and leaving them plenty of room. A. now came 
up and opened the door at the rear, reached forward and 
dragged the culprit out by the hindleg and gave him a 
good trouncing. At intervals during the time I was with 
the outfit this performance was gone through with. The 
dogs in the wagon crowded constantly to the front, where 
they were interested observers of the hunt, which, when 
it became fast and furious, they greeted with howls and 
lamentations. And when patience gave way, the pointer 
pitched into Spark, or, if he was not in, then the next 
best fighter present. He was not a fighter at other times, 
but that was his way of overcoming grief, especially when 
A. was off from the wagon, as he was sure to be when 
birds were near. When we got near the stacks May 
found one of the birds, which flew over A., who dropped 
promptly to wing, seeing which, I killed the bird. May 
tipped me a merry wink, and looked as if it did her little 
heai't good to see the old man take his own medicine. 
We stopped at the stacks and fed the horses, watered 
all the dogs and proceeded to take our nooning, which 
consisted in a light repast of beer and sandwiches, a smoke 
and a long nap, the latter broken once or twice by A. 
going after his team, which he had unbridled and let graze, 
and which now and then got too fax away with the pre- 
cious freight of dogs. The team was a typical dog trainer's 
team, stopping of their own accord the minute the dogs 
got on a point, and safe to leave standing alone a mile 
away while we followed the birds. Sometimes we would 
signal to my driver, and he would attach the check cord 
to them and come to us with both teams, saving us the 
walk back. When we awoke from our last nap it was 4:30 
o'clock; the hot wind had gone down, and it was getting 
cooler. We started up a neighboring stubble, when one 
of the broken covey rose at my left, and I killed it from 
the carriage, as I was on the watch for him. "Good 
kill," said A. So I got out and stepped it, and found 
it was 67yds. A. was at the bird with the dogs 
before I was, interesting them with it; first allow- 
ing them to find and point it, then showing them 
that it was dead, and allowing them to nose it; 
handing it especially to Matthew, the frivolous, and 
to the black and white timid pointer, if they were out. 
Then, if the wagon was near by he would carry the bird 
over there and pass it along the slats to the row of drip- 
ping jaws and noses stuck out sideways. Sometimes a 
clinging, coaxing paw was insinuated toward the bird, 
striving to hold the dear, delightful fragrance yet a little 
longer. It was a very fetching sight, and, needless to say, 
one enjoyed it more than killing the bird. Another spec- 
tacle was the calling out of a fresh contingent of dogs. Of 
course, they all wanted to be let out each time, and felt it 
was their turn always; but the bunch would be pushed 
back and A. would call out: "Mark!" and straightway 
Mark would come driving through or over the other dogs 
and "fall on his neck;" and the next instant would be 
.50yds. out, while at the call of "Luke!" the performance 
would be repeated. They all knew their names, and 
made no mistakes. Some time after this a rare thing 
happened. Two chickens were found in oat stubble. It 
may not be rare with others, but it is the only time I have 
ever had it occur. May and Mark found them. "There's 
nothing here," said I, "this is oat stubble," 
"That little May is hardly ever mistaken." 
And sure enough, she was not. She was easily the best 
dog of the lot. Not so large as her four clerical brothers, 
and perhaps not so fast as Luke, but withal a rapid and 
far ranger, and as sure as an old campaigner, and full as 
careless of stinkbirds and gophers. Added to this, she 
was the prettiest Gladstone setter one would meet from 
St. Paul to Devil's Lake in September. Two blue-black 
ears tinged with tan, black and tan rings about the eyes, 
and similarly colored trimming about the jaws and from 
the ears, back ticked black and white in even, dollar-sized 
spots. Such a dog, according to convention, would be 
good for nothing but bench shows and killing chickens. 
One has to hunt in this way, with a whole wagon load 
of dogs, to come to a proper realization of the marked in- 
dividuality of dogs, despite breeding and despite training. 
Some of those dogs will be always troublesome and hard 
to handle, despite the best of training at the outset; while 
some will be a joy forever and, to my mind, would have 
been, with even the indifferent training of the amateur, 
not bad dogs. Many of them, however, would have been 
wholly ruined by anything short of the gentle, persuasive 
treatment they received. With such treatment, however,, 
they are good dogs, and, if their future masters continue 
the same reserve and gentility, will remain so. The thing 
which struck me all of a heap about the dog training busi- 
ness was that dogs trained with a mild voice and a slow 
temper are very apt to be spoiled by the man who gets 
them. He is apt to depart from what have been the 
methods of training and shock the poor dog's sensibilities 
by too much forcefulness when the man himself is all the 
time thinking he is not loud enough and severe enough. 
Another thing: this kind of training is all directed to the 
development of the animal's hunting sense, and he is not 
bothered much by whistling and commands, and if he 
falls in with a drill master he will be all at sea. They are 
using their heads, and haven't room in them to listen to 
Annie Kooney on a calliope. If a dog that has been 
trained in this way cannot find the birds without your ex- 
plicit directions when you get him back from one of these 
B. Waters's plan trainers, it is because you sent the 
trainer a sow's ear from which to make a silk purse. 
There might well be a sliding scale of prices for training 
dogs, for the timid dog requires twice the pains and is not 
likely to become a valuable dog at that. How would it 
do to send a trainer a batch of pups and tell him to train 
the good one and send the rest back as soon as possible? 
He would send you some of them before long, and the 
money spent on the remaining one or more would not be 
misspent, and you would have more good dogs in the end 
and more puppies to give away. Another thing, while I 
am at it: it occurred to me that sometimes a puppy is 
made timid by the strange and sometimes pugnacious 
company he is thrown with when he leaves home. The 
trainer should make it his business to protect the weak 
until they get their courage; and those that are not born 
fighters should be kept separate from the scrappers, to 
the end that their finely organized nervous systems be 
not injured in this manner. It may be that many dogs 
thus innocently enough come to be ruined. To a young 
dog that has been raised with other dogs, a dog fight is 
merely an incident; whereas to one that has been raised 
by himself, a dog fight, particularly if he happens to get 
the worst of it — and which, by the way, is most likely — is 
a tragedy, and it may affect him accordingly. This oc- 
curred to me possibly because the black and white 
pointer, a beauty of a dog, was very timid, and the 
trainer told me that several of the dogs I saw had been sim- 
ilarly afflicted, but had recovered. It may be a reflection 
upon the practice of Mr. A., and for all I know of other 
trainers, of housing all the dogs together and allowing the 
bold and strong to oppress the weak; but I am not writing 
for Mr. A.'s benefit, but in the effort to let others see 
what I saw, be it good or bad, of this dog training busi- 
ness. At any rate, it is a little thing to say, where all the 
rest is in his favor, or rather, in favor of the modern 
methods practiced by him. One word more: there were 
a number of dogs there owned by one man, who had taken 
it upon himself to provide food of his own choosing for 
them, the basic property of which was "cracklings." It 
was manifestly an inappropriate dog food, for the dogs fed 
on it were constantly getting out of order. Either the 
feeding should be left entirely to the trainer, or else, when 
the dog is sent to him, there should be sent along with it 
a supply of dog biscuits suflacient to last during his absence. 
The expense is trifling compared to the value of the dog 
one hopes to get back; and by this means the proper feed- 
ing of the dog is put beyond a perad venture. The trainer 
will be satisfied, and ought to be more than satisfied, and 
glad to see that none of the food is improperly or improvi- 
dently disposed of. Mr. A., before coming to this country 
from Scotland, was a gamekeeper, as was his father before 
him; and during our noonings I was much inter- 
ested in his description of the way they preserve 
game and propagate it. He said a gamekeeper 
with a well-equipped "pheaaantry" can raise and 
turn out 2,000 young pheasants per year. The difficulty 
in the way of this work in this country seems to be more 
imaginary than real. A "pheasantry," viz., hatching 
houses, netting, yards, etc., costs about $1,500. The game- 
keeper and his two or three assistants (boys) ought not to 
cost more than that much per year, and with the eggs pro- 
cured by the gamekeeper, who would know how to get 
them at small cost compared to the cost if procured from 
dealers, two or three years would stock a place so that good 
shooting could be had from that on. True, pheasants have 
to be fed on corn partly, but this is a cheaper and simpler 
thing than first appears. The corn is put in iron boxe^ 
fastened to trees in the coverts, having lids which effectu- 
ally keep out other birds and all vermin. When the 
pheasants require other food than that which they find in 
the woods and fields they go to the feed box, alight on the 
part of it which causes the lid to fly up, take the corn out 
and hop off, whereupon the lid falls back in place. The 
young birds are all accustomed to the workings of the feed 
box before being turned out, and soon learn to stay in the 
neighborhood of the boxes, so that they do not really 
scatter throughout the countryside when turned out, but 
confine their movements to the radius of the feed boxes. 
George Kennedy. 
Maine's Deer Supply. 
Macomb, 111., Nov. 5. — Editor Forest and Stream: I have 
just returned from Bangor and Orland, Me. Iti8 truly won- 
derful that the hunters have killed so many deer in the 
Maine woods this year. It is estimated by those who have a 
chance to know that there have been over 4,000 deer killed 
there this fall, and not less than 3,000 hunters have been in 
the Maine woods this fall. How long can the deer stand 
such a slaughter as this? I was at Bucksport, and stood on 
the spot where a bear was shot three weeks ago. He was 
killed on one of the principal streets of the town, about three 
blocks from the business part of the village. It is supposed 
that the bear strayed awajr and got into the town, and be- 
came beTPildefe^. W. O. Blaisdbll. 
THE LONG ISLAND DEER FRAY. 
These is deer hunting and deer hunting, and as time 
passes we of course have reason to conclude that the last 
deer hunting would be better than the first, and the ways of 
the aged deer hunter would be more dignified, correct and 
sportsmanlike than the ways of the young novice, with his 
impetuous nature and imperfect training to condone his in- 
fractions of sporting rules and plead his excuses as well. 
And about that center of culture. New York city, we would 
expect the refinement which comes from long study of sport- 
ing ethics, gentlemanly emulation and the higher training of 
centuries, the nobler ways of sportsmanship, and ia all this 
we are not disappointed. 
The higher sportsmanship can be seen in its full play on 
any Wednesday in November in the deer country on Long 
Island about Center Islip and contiguous country, where 
the deer have multiplied so satisfactorily in the past few 
years. This year, as all know, each Wednesday in Novem- 
ber was an open day for deer shooting on Long Island, 
which, it is said, was good in itself for the sportsman who 
lived far and near, and particularly good for the local resi- 
dent, who could kill a deer on any day, and if caught with 
it in his possession could plead that it was killed on the 
last Wednesday, thus making the law a dead letter.. 
So keen are these local sportsmen m deer protection, these 
resident sportsmen of Long Island, that they will not let an 
outsider hunt on any day of the week, if he should he so un- 
wise as to take his own commissary along with him, that 
being a violation of the Monroe doctrine, inasmuch as it ie 
an vmfriendly act. It is a cleavage of social and sporting 
ties which is a total taboo. It is a violation of the tenderest 
feelings of the community. Against the invader the grounds 
are posted, the residents are unsympathetic and unresponsive 
pleasingly, not to say hostile. But let the visitor come in 
sportsmanlike fashion, stop with a farmer or resident, and 
he is no longer an invader, he is a guest. From having 
every man's hand raised against him as an enemy to the pub- 
lic weal when he brings along his own commissary, he rises 
at once to the dignity of a brother who owns the deer in com- 
mon with them if he can get it first and hold it afterward. 
So long as the guest stops with a farmer and pays well for 
his accommodations, he ranks in the neighborhood as one of 
the family, with all the privileges, usufruct, good will, cit- 
izenship and brotherly love thereunto appertaining; under 
other circumstances he is an unfriendly eyesore to the com- 
munity. 
Let us now assume that the outsider arrived on a Tuesday 
night of November, and qualified according to the honored 
exactions of the community by evidence of good faith. His 
farmer is forthwith a friend so soon as the financial arrange- 
ments are concluded, and the plan for the next day's slaugh- 
ter are minutely unfolded, and the visitor then becomes an 
active force in the local sportsmanship, and the following is 
the experience of one, told in his own words : 
We rose in the morning early according to our prearranged 
plans, and immediately started by lantern light for the 
grounds to get a good stand, the center of operations being 
at a famous cut in the raflroad, an embankment a short dis- 
tance east of Center Islip. Our group went to a good stand 
and proceeded to settle itself, when dark figures arose and in 
tones of firmness told us that we might move on to some 
other stand; we couldn't have that one, since, having sat on 
it all night, sleeping on their arms as it were, it was their 
stand. We moved on from one good stand to another with 
the same result, till at last, finding one of the best second 
choice stands, we ensconced ourselves for the deer hunt, if 
hunt it may be called, when a fellow waits for the deer to 
come his way. 
As dawn crept over the world, I had a chance to observe 
the array of deer hunters as they are at the end of the cen- 
tury. 'They were an aggregation of groups pressed as closely 
as they could be one to another near the main deer pass in 
all the different points of vantage, whether of concealment 
or commanding position, or chance possibilities; and the later 
comers had to take what was left outside, till they made a 
line up and down the railroad a distance of about three 
miles. Some of the parties had dogs, and the dogs of one 
party were of different kinds, and the dogs of each party 
were different from the dogs of every other party. "There 
were hounds that could trail, there were dogs that could 
bark, and others that could fight anything which offered; 
and there were still others which did any impulsive thing 
that added ^to the excitement, and still others which were calm 
and looked wise, but didn't know a thing. 
There were men arrayed in sportsmen's costume or in the 
plain clothes of the farmer, which had the composite shape 
of straight lines and curves made by constant use, by the 
wear at work and at home for so many years that a change 
of clothes would be a change of personality and of charac- 
ter; there were men tall and short; lean and fat; frank and 
furtive; generous and selfish; gentleman and clown; some 
with whiskers which were but little younger than the owners 
were, and men who never had any whiskers at all, Some 
had guns which loaded at the muzzle, others had breech- 
loaders, and they were all lengths, bores, makes and condi- 
tions, quite as much so as the hats, caps, boots and clothing 
of the owners ; but whatever the variegated features of the 
hunters, their groups, positions, etc., they all seemed to 
have a common purpose, and that was the killing of the 
deer and getting possession before any one else coulo do so. 
There was thus a kind of good-feflowship, and yet there 
wasn't. They were deer hunters first and sportsmen after- 
ward. If one was bigger and huskier and had a deeper bass 
voice than the other, he presumed on that to rule on what 
was the correct procedure of others and what he should re- 
serve for himself; in short, be was a sportsman, The men 
who owned dogs at last scattered out through the country, 
first covenanting that of the deer killed they were to have 
the head and horns, the mpat going to the killers. Of the 
three miles of sportsmen lying perdu or semi-perdu or less 
60, each group had an ample supply of creature comforts, 
stimulants to keep up their hopes, good nature or skiU, ac- 
cording to the needs of the individual; for the same alcoholic 
thing seemed to answer for many different purposes, and the 
different kinds of bottles were only matched by the different 
kinds of whiskers, guns, dogs and costumes. 
But the deer is started. There is a babel of confusion. 
There is a qtii vim along the whole line. The elderly man 
with long gray whiskers has an avaricious gleam in his fishy 
eyes as he fingers the triggers of his muzzle-loader. The 
young man has a heightened color and thinks of the honor if 
he can but kill. The man who has some ideas of sport won- 
ders where the old man and the young man are going to 
shoot, but thank goodness rifles are barred, and it is not so 
bad to be killed outright by a bullet as it is more leisurely by 
a buckshot. The deer comes toward a certain point in the 
