Feb. 12, i898.] FOREST AND STREAM. 127 
eler" to the effect that in the Peace River country there 
are at least four herds of buffalo, not less than 2,000 head 
in all. 
The old principle of the common law, that ignorance 
of the law is no defense, was brought out twice this 
week in instances of violation of the game laws. A 
farmer in Iowa killed a prairie chicken, believing he had 
a right to do so on his own land. He was fined $25. At 
Pomeroy, O., William Bickner, a farmer, shot a strange 
bird which he saw sitting on a tree, and which he thought 
was a hawk. He took the bird to the game warden, who 
told him it was a mongolian pheasant, and worth, under 
the circumstances, $25. 
Sportsmen of Joliet, 111., are drganiziiag a duck shoot- 
ing club, with grounds on Goose Lake, one of the fa- 
mous wildfowl grounds of the Illinois river bottoms. 
The club will nmnber 25 members and will control 650 
acres of property. Henry Young is one of the pro- 
moters. 
A dozen foxhounds, imported froni England, are in 
Chicago this week, on their way to Sioux City, la., 
where they will be used by the Woodbury County Hunt 
Club in hunting coyotes. E. Hough. 
1206 BoYCE Building, Chicago. 
Elk in Jackson^s Hole. 
Jackson, Wyo., Jan. 12. — Editor Forest and Stream: 
I am glad you take the stand you do ui regard to the 
catching and shipping of elk in Jackson's Hole. We 
are decidedly against the practice and wish to see it 
stopped, and you can do us a great deal of good by 
helping to stop it. Inclosed find photos of elk taken 
by me this winter, showing the elk on their winter 
range. Imagine the harm that could be done by chasing 
such bunches of elk in the snow. Elk are very easily 
heated up. On a cold day to run a bunch a quarter 
mile makes the steam rise over them as if they were on 
fire. It is not only what are caught, but the damage 
done to those that are left, that should forbid the chas- 
ing. At present we have about 6in. of snow in the val- 
ley, and the elk are wintering well. As I write these 
lines I can see them in nearly every direction from the 
ranch quietljr feeding on the hillsides, with nothing to 
alarm them. It does a person good to' look at them. 
The people of Jackson's Hole are in favor of the 
protection of the elk, but we get the blame for the deeds 
of tourists aijd non-residents, and are woefully misrep- 
resented. S. I^f. Leek. 
Another correspondent writes: "The people of this 
valley are as a rule anxious and willing to protect the 
game, and we have always done so, and there is more 
game here now than four years ago and prior to the In- 
dian troubles of 1895. There are 300 head within two 
miles of my ranch at this writing, and the game is not 
affrighted at travel or our passing near the bunches. Last 
evening I passed through a large band of elk and they 
seemed to pay no attention to me, Whether the present 
timber reserve lines will do any good to protect the 
game or not I cannot say, but I don't think so. The 
game winters much south of the Cleveland or Teton 
timber reserve lines and among the settlements. 
As long as our people can have fair dealing from the 
press we will use all necessary force to keep intact 
the largest band of elk now existing on the American 
continent, and it is my opinion that this band of elk 
will always under existing conditions continue to in- 
crease some in numbers, unless it be the male animals 
which are ruthlessly hunted during the fall months and 
the open season. It is true that without hay once in 
four years the calves will most all die. If the Govern- 
ment would take this game into its keeping, and buy 
about $5,000 worth of hay per year and feed these elk, 
these mountains would keep them for a thousand years. 
Some one interested in the game should come here and 
investigate its condition. 
"That reminds me.-" 
The Rattlers of Gran Coulee. 
In those days deer were in the woods three miles or 
•so from Monroe, not far from the head of Lake Erie. 
A big whitewood shaded a pool in the ditch that 
drained Gran Coulee. Hundreds of footprints proved that 
coons and turkeys and deer knew that pool. 
I stopped beneath the branches of that tree to cool 
off, after a hunt for squirrels one afternoon. I looked 
idly at those tracks, and thought: "How great a thing 
it would be to come here some bright night, climb into 
this tree, kill a fat duck, and stop their laughing about 
boys who go out to hunt squirrels and come home to 
hunt grub — without the squirrels." 
A buck jumped the dooryard fence one evening 
soon afterward, to drink from the spring that bubbled 
in the middle of the lawn. He took his drink quietly. 
I don't know whether he had been told that no dog nor 
gun would be allowed to molest deer or bird or other 
wild thing within that fence; but he was certainly una- 
fraid. I looked at him, and suddenly felt that the hour 
had surely come for slaying a buck at that pool under 
the whitewood tree. 
The moon beamed brightly on the yellow stubble of the 
coulee, and the snow-white sand that lay in a ridge .>e 
side the ditch was a clear road for me. I was soon 
seated on a big limb not more than 7 or 8ft. from the 
sand. Within half a minute a mosquito came to see 
who had come. Others of her kin quickly followed — or 
had they come with her? Other hundreds were there 
almost as soon as the first. 
I waved my handkerchief about my face gently. I 
suddenly brushed that part of my jeans trousers which 
was drawn tightest as I sat on that branch. I was gentle 
with them, very gentle, for the slightest sound — well, 3'^ou 
know how it was. 
Blessed saints! how fast those mosquitoes came! How 
promptly they sank their shafts! How promptly they 
sent in their bills! They were more prying than a smart 
lawyer at a cross-examination of a shifty witness. They 
bored me even worse than this yarn is boring tlie reader. 
And I dared not slap them, even though I might kill 
thousands. I hardly dared hint, with softly moving hand, 
that their attentions were too pointed. One slap, and 
all the bites already endured would have been sufiEered 
in vain. No deer within half a mile would have come 
to that field within another hour, and an hour of that — 
not for all the deer that ever trod those woods. 
I began thinking that it might be better to wait until 
another day to kill my deer; the deer were evidently 
willing to wait. They would be fatter when the buck- 
wheat woiild be harvested, and they would hop over the 
fence to feast on the three-cornered grain. 
Five minutes- — or was it perhaps twenty seconds — con- 
vinced me that it was a closed season for deer, anyway, 
and that it would be vastly unkind to kill a deer that 
night, and so prevent his fattening for some man's 
Thanksgiving dinner or some other man's Christmas 
supper. At any rate, it was time to stop those mosqui- 
toes fattening on me. 
I tied a corner of my handkerchief to my belt and 
that to my rifle. Then I peered intently at every bit 
of shadow fringing that field, to see whether there might 
be some visible reason for changing my opinion about 
leaving the deer to eat up the buckwheat of hardworking 
farmers. But the coast was clear, abominably clear; so 
T lowered the gun and swung it to one side, that it might 
be out of the way when I should drop to the ground. 
That gun was jerked up again as if it had been my 
hand. What the dickens was that! What made that 
rattling down there? 
T remembered, suddenly and vividly, that thick rattle- 
snake which had crawled lazily out from a sheaf of wheat 
when Dnluy had dropped it after binding. That snake 
was as thick as my arm. Why, it was not 20yds. from 
this very tree that we killed the thing! 
How hot the night was! Sweat ran down my back 
and into my staring eyes. The mosquitoes troubled me 
no more. 
T cautiously moved around to another limb, and again 
I lowered the gun. I swung it again, widely, too, but 
with another purpose this time. And as sure as I live, 
I stirred up another rattler. But that time I didn't jerk 
the rifle away. I had reflected that even the biggest 
fangs or the most venomous snake could hardly hurt 
the iron. I waited. I suppose I thought. I know T 
sweat awhile. And the mosquitoes made themselves felt 
once — no, dozens of times more. At last the moonlight 
fell on the white sand beneath the branch on which I sat. 
"I'll risk it! I can drop in the middle of that white 
path, and skin out before a rattler can strike. Let me 
get out of this shade once, and I can see snakes, if there 
are any, quick enough to dodge 'em." 
I did it. I trod most cautiously along that snowy path 
until I reached the road; and not a rattler struck at 
me. But I did jump half a rod or so at the sound of a 
rattle when my gunstock touched a little bush as I 
passed. 
I had snakes in my dreams that night, and I was an old 
man when they roused me out for breakfast next morn- 
ing. A cup of coffee put new courage into me. It was 
time, for the old stock had run out the night before. By 
the time my stomach was full of breakfast my soul was 
full of resolve to go to that field and annihilate those 
rattlers. I found them; plenty of them, too. Some 
were close beside the path along which I had legged 
it in the night. Others I found under the very limb 
on which I had perched. I didn't exterminate them. 
There were too many. It would have been too much 
work — too much like everyday, hard farm work. 
Thev were wild peas, ripe in their pods. 
E. L. Peritaea. 
On Bistineau Lake. 
There was good fishing, and a variety of it, in north- 
west Louisiana some twenty years ago, and no doubt 
there are plenty of fish left; but I only made one trip 
down through that country and Arkansas, and it was a 
trip so full of incident that I could fill a volume with it, 
if I could get any one to read it. Fishing, shooting, 
gander-pulls and shooting matches, interspersed with 
dances where conventionality did not bar out fun, kept 
me busy studying mankind as well as fishes. 
Bistineau Lake lies between Bienville and Bosier 
counties, is over twenty rniles long by some two or three 
wide, and empties into the Red River. At Euckhorn I 
found a darky who had a team and wagon, and also a 
boat upon the lake, and I subsidized him to take me 
and a 5gal. alcohol tank over the lake, some few miles 
of¥. He said that his name was Augustus Ca?sar Trulo, 
and I never forgot it. A man told me afterward that his 
late master's name was Truxillo, and the corruption 
from the Spanish was evident. 
Rod case, creel, luncheon and all necessary impedi- 
menta had been loaded, and we were driving through 
the heavy timber, over a rough road, in a lumber wagon 
whose jolts forbade prolonged conversation; but as we 
came to a comparatively smooth place where one could 
speak without danger of biting his tongue, I asked: 
"What did you say your name was?" — not that I had 
forgotten, but to get down to a basis where I might 
get a name that could be handled without having to 
run over the list of Roman and possibly of Spanish 
heroes. 
"Augustus Caesar Trulo is my name, sah." 
"Yes, I remember; but on a fishing trip that is more 
name than I can sling out when I'm reeling in a fish 
and want you to hand me the landing net. What do 
your friends call you?" 
"De people 'bout yeah, dey mos'ly calls me Gus, sah; 
but w'en I lived with ole Mass' Trulo, befo' de wa', he 
call me C^sah, sah; but he done got killed up 'bout 
Georgia, an' he had no fambly, so we boys drifted from 
Opelousas up dis a-way. We's a-comin to de lake at 
de nex' turn in de road, jes' beyond dis swamp." 
"Very well, I will call you Gus." 
"Yes, sah; an' w'en I wants to speak to you, w'at 
shall I say?" 
"My full name is Aristophanes Demosthenes Socrates 
Kego-e-Kay, but my friends shorten it into Smith, and 
you may call me so." And right there Gus and I got 
right down to plain, practical business principles and 
dropped all nonsense. 
Gus had his own tackle and baits, for methods of 
fishing by the natives were a thing I wanted to study. 
He had a native cane, and it had been well selected for 
taper and for even distribiition of strain; it was as 
good a specimen of that very good crude fishing rod as 
you will find in a thousand. He had no reel, but he had 
tied small brass rings at intervals, and one on the tip. 
and evidently depended on his left hand to haul in or 
pay out from a coil in the bottom of the boat. When 
his tackle was inspected it was plain that its owner was 
an angler, kml I had fortunately blundered on the right 
man to take me to such parts of the lake where the 
fishing might be good. He had a can for live bait and 
a mosquito-net seine to catch them. Great was his sur- 
prise when I picked out a lot of his bait-fish and 
plumped them into the alcohol. The larger fish of this 
region were well known, and the only hope of finding 
any new species lay among such as never grew beyond 
4in. in length. To explain the value of these to Gus 
would be a waste of time, but he was always curious ' 
about them. 
"Dis weed- bed dat we's comin' to is a great place fo' 
trout, an' I'll drop de ancho' at dis end, an' move up an' 
aroun' it w'en yo' say so. I dun cotch some big trout 
yere in de las' May, an' dey's plenty lef." 
Knowing that all through the Southwest the black 
bass is called "trout," and that the natives do not differ- 
entiate the two species, and also that it would be useless 
to try to correct the nomenclature, I "drank the wine 
of the country" and spoke of the two species of black 
bass as "trout." Men have been btirned at the stake 
for their opinions, but not in modern days. Just as' I 
gave in to Gus in order to avoid useless argument, just 
so I would yield to avoid torture; but my opinion, like 
that of Galileo on the rotation of the earth, would not 
and could not be changed. I admire the courage of the 
martyrs, but not their diplomacj'. 
Gus watched the putting together of a split-bamboo 
rod and the attachment of the reel in silence; but when 
the gut leader was brought from its damp box and the 
fly-hook opened his curiosity was aroused. "What yo' 
gwine do wid de feddei^s on de hooks? Is dem de kin' 
o' bait yo' use?" And he looked incredulous, but said 
no more. 
"Yes, the feathers on the hooks are bait of one kind; 
they look like insects to the trout, and we call tliem 
flies. If the fish here refuse them, I'll try your min- 
nows. 
"Dey looks like dry fodder fo' a fish, 'deed dey do 
fo' a fac'. an' dey doan' look like de flies we has in dis 
parish. Is de flies in de Nawth all bright, speckled an' 
hairv like dem?" 
"Oh, yes." It was easier to say this than to go into 
an entomological lecture on a subject that I did not 
fully understand, and Gus was so intent on my curious 
rig that I was ready and made several casts before he 
attempted to rig up. Then came a rise and a strike, and 
the reel sang. The play of the rod and the alternate 
giving of line and reeling in kept my colored friend 
dumb with excitement until the fish leaped from the 
water some 30yds. away, when he yelled: "Hang on to 
him, Mr. Smith; doan' let him break yo' pole; he's de 
bigges' trout in dis lake; he break yo' pole, shuahl" 
"No, he can't break it, not if he was ten times as big. 
You get that landing net ready to slip under him when 
I get him near the boat; slip it in the water alongside 
the boat, and don't frighten him by a sight of it." 
"Yassah, but dat leetle pole mighty apt to break fo' 
yo' get dat fish to de boat; it's duu mos' bent double 
now." 
"Never mind that! Get the net in the water, and don't 
make a splash. Lie's tired, and is resting as he comes 
in, but will make a rush for the weeds or under the 
boat if you scare him." 
The fish had rolled up on its side, nearly exhausted, 
and was led near the net. Victory was at hand, but it 
was victory for the fish, for instead of using the net Gus 
gave a whoop as he grabbed the leader and tried to lift 
the fish into the boat. I had a glimpse of a big-mouthed 
black bass which might have weighed 81bs. going off 
with my fly and some 2ft. of leader, and my remarks, 
Ajfter several expurgations and condensations, might be 
translated like this: "Mr. Augustus Cajsar Trulo, I 
much regret that you did not obey ,my orders and use 
the landing net. The great warriors after whom you 
were named would have made an example of you for 
so serious a breach of discipline. Your orders were 
explicit to use the net, and bless you! you poor, blessed, 
doubly blessed man and brother " (here my notes 
are blurred ;_ the wires of memory's phonograph buzzed, 
but not distinctly. 
Gus had dropped into that sensible state which fol- 
lows a moment of excitement, and said, apologetically: 
" 'Deed, Mr, Smith, I see dat ah trout a-gwine undah 
de boat, an' I try to bring him in. Dat ah net I fo'get 
'bout, 'cause I nebber use one. I'se sorry you lose dat 
big fish, but dah's biggah ones in dis yer lake, an' afo' 
yo' go dah'U be some cotched. I'sc sorry dat yo' use 
such pow'ful strong language w'en a fish dun got away, 
'cause dey's mo' fish to como, an' I'se been tol' dat yo' 
mussen' swear if yo' want to ketch fish." 
By this time "the leader was repaired, and a large 
brown hackle had replaced the last red ibis, and I merely 
said: "If another fish is hooked, don't you touch my 
line. I'll keep this oar here, and I'll knock you over- 
board if you do. Get that fact fixed in your mind, and 
use the net as I have told you. This rod is not made 
to lift a fish out of the water, but it can tire out a fish 
that_ would snap your cane pole. That fine silkworm 
gut is only fit for such work as the rod can do, and when 
I bring a fish to , the side of the boat I want you to do 
just as I say; lift him in the landing net if you can, 
but don't scare him so that he will make a rush under 
the boat or into the weeds. Have you got that through 
your wool?" 
"Well, sah, Mr. Smith, I mus' ask yo' to 'scuse me; 
I nevah dun fish dis way befo'; de trout seem like he 
