Jan. 14, iBgg.J 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
88 
from a spni;g- in winter, but it is temperature, and not 
sociability, that leads them to congregate in this way, 
That is the only answer I can give my correspondent. 
Spring Shooting. 
In the fsanie letter Mr. McIUree writes: "1 have read 
I'OREST AND STREAM from its Very early days, and have 
gathered much useful information from it."; pages, T have 
been knocking abont the Northwest Territories for nearly 
a quarter of a century, and have seen the buffalo and 
other large game disappear, to my sorrow. We have 
nothing much left now, unless one goes far north, but a 
few deer and antelope, with some sheep and goats in 
the mountains. We stop spring shooting at ducks the 
coming year, and I would like to see it stopped every- 
where. By reason of our climate, the duck season is 
short: it begins Aug. 23. and they are virtually gone by 
the end of October, and in some years earlier. Then they 
are continually shot at south of .us until they return in 
April to breed. By what I read in Forest and Stream 
it takes a lot of ducks to satisfy some men, and it is a 
mystery how the supply holds out. We do not shoot 
snipe in the spring here, hut down your way I read that 
they are then slaughtered by the thousand." 
Here is a sermon in a few words, and they are words 
of wisdom. If there is to be any game left in the year 
1925. we must stop shooting it on its spring migration 
to the breeding grounds, when every pair of birds is 
ready to go to housekeeping and bring us a flock in the 
fall. Wherever moose, elk or deer are protected the 
close time covers the season of rut to the weaning of 
the fawns. Any change of these times would mean de- 
struction to the animals. Why hesitate to apply the same 
principle to all game? 
I have seen the prairies covered witli buffalo as far as 
the eye could see; the wood so full of the passenger 
pigeon that they broke great limbs from trees, while 
hogs below fattened on the wounded. I have seen flights 
of ducks on the Mississippi that darkened the air, and 
have flushed a score of ruffed grouse in a day within 
sound of the town clocks of Albany, N. Y. 
Where is all this wealth of game now? Consider the 
fact and the question before reading the answer. 
The hide-hunter sent a dozen riflemen to follow a herd 
of buffalo, and only let their horses graze when the buf- 
falo fed. They had a wagon-load of ammunition follow- 
ing. The shooters kept on the flank of that herd for 
weeks until it was shot to death. Then came a wagon- 
train of skinners, who took only hides and tongues, and 
there ended the American bison. I speak of what I have 
seen, for I was on the plains of Kansas from 1857 to i860, 
and have seen many thousands of carcasses festering in 
the sun and polluting the air for miles. Once I 
went on a buffalo hunt and killed one animal, when I 
sickened at the slaughter.* 
The wild pigeon has gone, and it went suddenly. There 
has been an attempt to prove that its food failed; that the 
beech-nut no longer grew in quantities to supply the bird 
with food. If that was so, a few would have survived, 
but I say it was netting the birds in the nesting season for 
trap shooting that exterminated the wild pigeon. Come 
down on me, all you trap shooters of twenty years ago; 
show that 1 don't know the first thing about wild pig- 
eons; call me names, if you will, and I will ignore per- 
gonal abuse and give you facts straight from the shoul- 
deT, My days for physical fighting are past, yet I con- 
fess to liking a "scrap," and have some mental courage 
left. 
Of the great flocks of ducks, geese, pelicans, sandhill 
cranes and other birds which went down tha Mississippi 
in my time, much less than half a century ago, there are 
but a few left where I used to shoot, according to my 
friend, Judge Seaton, of Potosi, Wis. 
It is many years since I have shot in the spring, and 
I will never do it again. The time has come to prohibit 
it in every State, but in the New York Legislature the 
members from Long Island will vote for any sort of 
law provided that the island is excepted from its pro- 
visions, and the members from other parts who want 
the Long Island votes on other questions give in to 
them. The laymen and market shooters thus paiTy the 
day and shoot in the spring. 
Fish Poison Again. 
A man in Millville, N. J., writes: "Your article on 
Skates in Forest and Stream of Dec. 17 had an item 
in it about poison from fish wounds. Next day after 
reading it I heard of a singular case, which 3'ou might 
wish to record, as it is a curious one. A friend, with 
whom I was discussing the matter, told me that a man 
called "Sailor Jack," living at Bayside, had been stung 
by an eel and was blind. Of course, I knew that an eel 
has no sting, but to look up the matter I went to Baj'side 
and found the man. His right name is William Edger- 
con, and he lives by fishing. The case was not a recent 
one. It happened early in September, and this is the 
story, ' divested of his EngHsh. He was skinning a large 
eel and the fish in its struggles struck him in his right 
eye. The blow was, of course, painful, but he thought 
it would pass oft', and kept on. with his work, with one 
good e3'-e and the other streaming t«ars. 
"In about a week the smarting had given way to an 
aching pain, and he could not see with that eye. He 
asked medical advice and the doctor diagnosed the 
case as one of cataract, but it grew so fast and was so 
painful that on hearing the story of the man the physi- 
cian concluded that slime from the eel's ,tail,^ impacted 
on the pupil, was the cause of the trouble. Did you 
ever hear of such a case?" 
I can truthfully affirm that I never did. It "beats all 
my goin' a-fishin'." I've "skun" many a thousand eels 
in boyhood days and have seen the pelts taken off from 
more thousands, but never met a case like this. I hope 
that Mr. Mitchell will let us know how the case' ends; at 
present the man seems to be not only blind in one eye, 
but is suffering. Observations of all such cases should be 
put on record, and I am glad to get them. No man need 
apologize for writing me such things because he is a 
personal stranger. If he has a thing of interest and hes- 
itates about making it known to the editor, I \vill digest 
* See sketch of Amos Decker in "Men I Have Fished With." 
his facts, and if worth printing will put them in concrete 
form, as in this case, Many men distrust their "liter- 
ary style," and fear to write what they know or have 
seen. As Mr. Mitchell is one of this class I told him, as 
T have told hundreds of others: Shoot that bugbear of 
"literary style;" if you have anything to tell, just write 
it in your own way; the editor is the man whose duty it 
is to straighten the kinks out of your grammar, spelling, 
faulty sentences and to "blue-pencil" all ornamental and 
unnecessary lines in your story, according to his ideas. 
With that same "blue pencil" he has killed what I 
thought to be most brilliant jokes; he, in his reading, 
didn't catch the point— but we must all submit to the 
editor — even if I have a personal dislike to his "blue pen- 
cil." The editor and the proof-reader are at their daily 
grind and are not always in sympathy with the writer's 
thought; imagine Ruskin, Emerson, Byron and the great 
writers of the past subjected to revision by an editor and 
a proof-reader! 
Charles Hallocfc. 
The perennial arid ever-blooming Hallock, long may he 
wave and bloom, writes me from the South, where he 
iinds life inore enjoyable than in the frigid northeastern 
part of Minnesota, where he went in his younger days 
and built the town which is named for him, Charles 
was, and still is, full of vim, but the day has passed when 
he and I could do forty miles a day on snowshoes, and 
our ambition to do it has died out. He writes me from 
Fayetteville, N. C, that he has found a delightful win- 
ter home among the pines in the southeastern part of that 
State, and urges me to join him, if for a week only, any 
time between now and May. He enthuses over the climate 
and says : "The water is cool, sparkling and delightful," 
but makes no mention of the tokay, scuppernong and other 
things which flow in the hills of North Carolina. He tells 
of tramps after game that he should write to Forest and 
Stream, and of his successes in that line. All this is 
mentioned here to let his numerous friends know where 
he is, and that he is as well and happy as ever, capable 
of carrying his years like a man who has spent much of 
his life in the open air, for Hallock, like. more of us, is not 
a spring chicken^, .^ut there is a lot of good leather in 
his physique. 
Habits of Trout. 
To the old questions: "Do the sun tnove?" and "Do 
a trout take a fly with his tail?" I have a new one. It 
comes from central New York in this shape: "Are trout 
as numerous in the outlet as in the inlet of a lake, where 
there is one of each? This refers to such a lake as 
Cranberry, in the Adirondacks, about the month of 
August. Some contend that when a ti'out runs up stream 
to spawn she does not return, and that in August they 
are moving up from below the lake. I would like to know 
how this would affect the fishing fifteen to eighteen miles 
below, say at Cranberry." 
While I have fished most of the Adirondack region. I 
never got over in the northwestern part where Cranberry 
Lake lies. In a general way it hardly seems that a trout 
would drop back fifteen miles from the spawning ground 
after once starting for it. But, while individual trout in 
that elevated region may move to the spawning beds in 
August, there are others which will not start for a month 
later, for these fish do not all spawn in the same month. 
Again, there are barren trout which do not need to 
run up to the gravel beds, and they may move from the 
outlet to get warmer spring water if the outlet is cold. 
Some trout spawn only once in two years, and these are 
the "barren" ones mentioned. There are years when 
domestic animals are barren; hunters find a barren doe 
the best venison, and when in the West I found that a 
barren cow buffalo was the fattest and juiciest of all. 
These animals may not have been permanently barren, but 
just skipped a year. Trout are often barren, but whether 
any of them are permanently so or not I cannot say. Who 
knows? I made experiments in this direction, but they 
were not continued to the point of having a decided opin- 
ion on the following points. Some trout spawn in suc- 
cessive years; some skip a year. This much I know, but 
whether there are trout that are permanently barren I do 
not know. 
My knowledge is mainly from trout bred and reared in 
confinement, where they can be well under observation 
and marked individuals can be kept track of, but I have 
taken trout in August in the Adirondacks which gave no 
sign of developing their eggs, while in June I have found 
eggs so far advanced that an angler who was not a fish- 
culturist would consider them nearly ripe. Ml these 
tilings enter into the question of the habits of trout, and 
in my opinion tend to show that there is no hard and fast 
rule which impels every trout to follow a rigid custom of 
its fellows. We are too apt to think that 'one individual 
of a species is like all others. As there is what we call 
"individuality" among men, so there is among animals. 
The owner of a dozen dogs knows the character of each 
one, and no two are alike, even if of the same breed. A 
shepherd knows the face of each of his sheep, and as they 
differ so do their characters. When a boy I kept cage 
birds as pets, and knew the faces of my different bobo- 
links and "yellow birds." As faces differ, so charticter 
diff'ers, and I have seen trout- of the same age, bred in the 
same troughs and ponds, on the same food, that at four 
years old showed different facial characters. A boy's face 
is like a girl's, it takes time to develop character, and— 
but this is degenerating into a lecture on physiognomy. 
More Dreams. 
Mr.-C. L. Whitman writes from New Brunswick as 
follows-: "In your article of Nov. 5 you wonder if others 
are afflicted like yourself in their dreams, and try to shoot 
game with a gun which will not go off. I am. a fellow 
sufferer in this manner. Hundreds of easy , shots at 
moose, bear and deer have com-e to me in dreams and I 
would pull at the trigger until it seemed as if it would 
break, but the gun would not go off. For a score of 
years after the Mexican war, where I was behind a gun. 
there was the same dream disappointment in shooting 
'greasers.' Like yourself, I thought it peculiar, but I see 
by what others say it is a common thing. I have read 
Forest and Stream from the first number, and every 
number, and hope you will * * * " Here the taffy was 
so thick that the letter was "balled up." 
"Calm and peaceful be thy dreams," comrade, and may 
you have none more frightful than those you tell of, and 
may you enjoy Forest AND (Stream for many years to 
come. 
A Female Grilse* 
Campbellton, N. B.— Editor Forest and Stream: As 
you well know, my dear father was credited with writing 
some very interesting articles upon fish and game life. 
He possessed a great deal of practical knowledge, and 
knew whereof he spoke, and it just occurred to me that 
the information I am about to convey to you would, I am 
sure, have been most interesting and surprising to him 
were he naw living. 
I have spent twenty-two years in the service of the 
Dominion Government, part of the time as officer on that 
king of rivers, the Restigouche, under my father's train- 
ing; but for many years past I have been engaged in the 
piscicultural branch, and have operated many of the 
hatcheries in the Dominion, and think I am safe in stating 
that I handle and manipulate more salmon annually than 
any other man in America. The point I wish to make, 
however, is this, that in all my experience, and that of 
my father, I never saw nor heard of a female grilse in any 
of our rivers emptying into the Atlantic Ocean. The 
theory generally advanced is that the female does not 
mature and is not ready to propagate until the fourth year 
of her existence. But while manipulating some 400 or 500 
salmon at St. Johns, N. B., this year, I for the first 
time handled two female grilse averaging about 3lbs. in 
weight, both yielding eggs. Still a greater curio, how- 
ever, was an adult salmon possessing the organs of both 
sexes, yielding both eggs and milt simultaneously. I took 
about 1,000 eggs from this individual fish, fertilizing them 
with the milt from the same specimen. These eggs are 
now in the breeding trough at the Restigouche Hatchery. 
The results will be closely watched, and may introduce 
into the Restigouche a new and very interesting species of 
salmon. This wonderful specimen of fish was sent to 
Prof. E. E. Prince, Dominion Cpmmissioner of Fisheries, 
Ottawa, for scientific investigation. 
The hatchery is filled to its utmost capacity, and truly 
this has been a wonderful season on the Restigouche. Fish 
and game in abundance. It may well be called the sports- 
man's paradise. Certain New York parties have made 
as many as four trips to the fishing preserves and hunting 
grounds this season. One gentleman alone spent over 
$3,000 for guides, etc., on the river. When the new Resti- 
gouche and Western Railway, which is now being built 
from Campbellton, N. B., through a pristine wilderness 
to a point on the upper St. John River, is complete, it will 
open up the finest fish and game country in the world, and 
bring the tourists and sportsmen of Boston and New 
York within twelve or fourteen hours' ride of the Resti- 
gouche. Alexander Movvat. 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 
Ice Fishing, 
Chicago, 111., Dec. 31.— State Warden J., f, Ellarson, of 
Wisconsin, hands out an opinion from Assistant Attorney 
C. E. Whelan on ice fishing with hook and line in the 
State of Wisconsin, which goes on to say that the law 
does not contemplate the use of more than five lines to 
one man, or one hook to one line, and does not allow a 
line to remain set during the absence of the owner. This 
may affect a certain sort of fishing in Wisconsin rather 
.severely. A great deal of market fishing is done on the 
ice in that State each winter. It is the peculiar feature of 
this form of work that it carries its own detection with it. 
Michigan Fish Ladders. 
Fish Commissioner H. W. Davis, of Michigan, comes 
out flat-footed in favor of fishways in dams. "It is use- 
less," says he, "and only waste of money, to stock streams 
with fish if there are dams with no means for fish to get 
over them." These are words of wisdom. 
From the Blackfeet. 
Mr. J. W. Schultz, very well known to all Forest and 
Stream readers through his communications from the 
Blackfeet reservation in Montana, is visiting a while in 
Chicago with friends. Mr. Schultz, it may be remem- 
bered, was the ho.st of myself and Mr. McCliesney on our 
sheep hunt a couple of years ago. We had a rather weird 
hunt then in some respects. We made a little side-hunt 
and carried out a small lodge, which we put up on the 
upper Two Medicine Lake. This lodge we left standing 
when we returned to the main camp, and old John Mon- 
roe said that he would go out and bring it in some time. 
He has never yet been able to find it, as he was not with 
us, and we could not direct him very closely. I suppose 
the little lodge is standing out there yet somewhere in the 
pine woods, and no doubt at this date buried a dozen 
feet beneath the snow. 
Another little incident of our trip was mentioned in 
the story I wrote of it at the time. T borrowed one of old 
John Monroe's big steel traps and set it for a mountain 
lion, which had been eating up one of our sheep car- 
casses, John was not with me when I set the trap, and 
as we had to leave that country very suddenly when the 
team came in, I could not go out and get the trap. I told 
him where I had left it set, and though he. never ex- 
pected to find the trap, he said he would go out and try. 
A little later, as he told Mr. Schultz, he did go out, and 
found where the trap had been. Something had gotten 
into the trap and marched off with it. just as I supposed 
would be the case. I had put a good heavy clog on the 
trap, and John followed the trail of the clog quite a way 
down the mountain side, but finally lost it, it being some 
days old. I have no doubt wlmtever that I -caught old 
Fahkukkus himself, and my only Tegrelis that I was not 
there tq land Iiim, for he surely had: niade us plenty of 
trouble. - , 
M r. Sclniltz tells me that -our aid Forest and Stream 
friend, Billy Jackson, continues in verv bad health and 
cannot go hunting. This is news which no Forest and 
Stream reader will like to hear, I presume every one at 
the Sportsmen's Exposition at the year of the (Forest ano 
Stream) Indian camp will remember the Indian baby, 
