Jan. 7, 1899.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
7 
brush not a hundred j'ards away, and never offered to 
attack. But nowadays it is ahnost impossible to tree a 
bear or bring it to bay, even with good dogs. It always 
was hard to bring grizzly bears to bay with dogs, but al- 
most any dog would put a black or cinnamon up a tree 
in short order. Now a bear will run all day ahead of 
the dogs before taking to a tree or coming to bay. About 
the only way to hunt bears at present with any chance of 
success is in the spring after they begin to take bait well. 
By stringing out a lot of baits and still-hunting early and 
late fair luck may be had. 
In a country like that around the Yellowstone Park 
bears are quite plentiful, and in many of the remote parts 
of the monutains they are still thick enough to give good 
hunting. In a country where much other game is killed, 
such as elk and deer, and consquently much offal is left, 
bears are not at all timid about coming to bait, and one 
need not be careful about leaving scent behind. This is 
because they are in the habit of eating offal from which 
the hunter has been gone but a few hours. But in a coun- 
try where not much food is left lying around for them, 
and where they are much hunted, every precaution should 
be taken. The baits should be placed in as open a place 
as possible. If they are 200yds. from cover so much the 
better, as this gives a chance to stalk without being heard. 
After a bear comes to a bait once or twice without being 
disturbed, he is apt to get careless and come early in the 
evening. It is not much use nowadays to lie by a bait at 
night, as when one is near enough to see to shoot the 
bear nearly always winds his foe and does not show up. 
Take it' all in all, bears, and especially grizzlies, are 
holding their own fairly well in parts of the Rockies, and 
unless some new method of pursuit is discovered will 
give us bear hunting for many years. 
Wm. Wel].,s. 
Wyoming. 
Horns and Rodents, 
A GOOD many years ago, when a considerable propor- 
tion of the present readers of the Forest .=\nd Stre.\m 
were in their nurse's arms, a spirited discussion was car- 
ried on in these columns as to what becomes of the 
old horns dropped by the deer. A variety of behefs were 
expressed on this subject. Some people thought that 
the deer went of¥ to some secret place and there .hid 
the horns which they lost. Others averred that they 
ate them; others still that they buried them. Many let- 
ters were written, some of which displayed great in- 
genuity and ignorance, and others more or less knowl- 
edge of the facts. The whole correspondence showed 
that among people at large little was actually known 
about the subject. 
It may be assumed that most people understand pretty 
well that a deer's horns are dropped just where the 
Nodule of moose horn; all that is left of an antler gnawed by 
porcupines. From Canada. Shows the way in which shed antlers 
are destroyed more speedily than by natural decay. 
deer happens to be at the moment when tlie antlers be- 
come sufficiently loose on the head to part company 
with it and to _fall by their weight to the ground. It 
is also understood that tlie two antlers do not neces- 
sarily fall at the same time, thotigh usually they fall 
on the same day. A friend has reported to us that he 
saw a deer pass over a hill wearing both his antlers, 
, and that when in his pursuit of the deer he next saw 
it it was carrying only one antler, and that before he 
shot it it had dropped the second. 
In a timbered country, the antlers falling in the for- 
ests or in the underbrush are soon afterward partially 
covered by the vegetation whiclt grows up about them, 
and when auttmm comes they are still further con- 
cealed by the dying grass and the falling leaves, and 
when one considers how small an amount of space even 
the largest horn takes up, it is not strange that we do 
not stumble on them more frequently. On J:he other 
hand, in old times, in certain parts of Colorado, where, 
in the late winter and early spring, great herds of elk 
frequented high bald hills, which the wind kept con- 
stantly free from snow, we have seeti shed elk antlers 
strewn so thickly over the ground that it was neces- 
sary to wind in and out among them to avoid stepping 
on or over them. In such places twenty years ago it 
would have been practicable for a man to have col- 
lected each spring many wagon loads of such antlers if 
he had wished to do so. Similar conditions no doubt 
prevail now in and near the Yellowstone National Park. 
A shed horn is merely dead bone, and when it lies 
out ill tlie weather is just as perishable^ as any other 
bone. It soon becomes white and weathered, begins 
to split and to become porous on the surface, and as it 
grows older and older the animak matter leaves it 'more 
and more, until at last it splits into fragments, breaks 
into small pieces and becomes a part of the soil. This 
process of rotting and weathering, however, is not the 
only way in which the horns are destroyed and disap- 
pear. As is well known, the rodents or gnawing ani- 
mals which constitute so very large a portion of our 
f.Tuna like to try their teeth on horns that they raaj^ 
hnd Ijing upon the giuunJ. Just v,hy tliey do tlu^ ii, 
perhaps a question. It may be for something that they 
find in the horn which they like to eat, or which perhaps 
is necessary to their well being, or they may do it for 
the pure pleasure of grinding down their incisor teeth. 
The. front or incisor teeth of an animal like a rat, 
woodchuck, porcupine or beaver of course grow from 
persistent pulps, and continue to grow through life. 
These teeth are constantly being used on hard sub- 
stances and wear down very rapidly, and if it were not 
for the constant growth they would soon be worn away 
Mountain sheep horn gnawed by rodents. From Goat Mountain, 
St. Mary's Lakes, Montana, 1897. This shows one method by 
which old horns are destroyed and disappear. 
down to the gum, would be useless, and the animal 
might no longer be able to procure its food. These 
teeth wear away again.st each other. Tlie back part of 
the tooth, that toward the animal's body, is formtd of 
dentine and is softer than the front part, which is coated 
with enamel. The soft, bonelike dentine, wearing down 
much faster tlian the hard enamel. kte])s tlie teeth con- 
stantly with a keen chisel-like edge. A very familiar 
picture in books on natural history is tin: cut nf the 
head of some rodent which by accident has lost one of 
its incisor teeth, when the opposing tooth in the other 
jaw, not being worn down, continues to grow, curls 
about inward and perhaps penetrates even the llesh 
and skull of the unhappy animal. Wc reproduce from 
an early number of Forest and Stre.am a woodchuck 
skull, showing what happens when the teeth do not meet. 
Now it is certain that many species of rodents, for 
whatever reason, delight to gnaw horns. A cut is 
given herewith of an old weathered deer skull on which 
one of the horns remains. This antler has been gnawed 
down by porcupines, as shown by the size of the tooth 
marks, so that in some places it is as thin as paper. 
Another example of this sort is a nodule of moose horn 
which comes to us from Canada. This is as large as a 
small hen's egg, irregular in shape, and presents a half 
dozen flat faces showing marks of the porcupine's 
teeth. _ 
We picked up on the side of a tall mountain in North- 
eim Montana the old mountain sheep horn which is 
figured. This has been gnawed in a dozen places. 
Abnormal Growth of Woodchuck Teeth. 
chiefly, it would seem, by mice, or possibly by the 
mountain marmots, or whistlers, a species of wood- 
chuck found abundantly all through the Rocky Moun- 
tains. This is the first example of a mountain sheep's 
horn gnawed in this way that we happen to have seen, 
but no doubt the rodents whet their teeth to some 
degree on these, though manifestly, from the very soft 
horny texture of the sheep horns, they would not be so 
attractive to the rodents, if tooth sharpening were their 
object, as the harder antlers of the deer. 
We have never seen the horn sneaths of antelope 
bearing the marks of rodents' teeth. Perhaps these are 
too soft to attract them. Certainly they are very per- 
ishable. We satisfied ourselves on this point on one 
occasion manv years ago when we placed a pair of an- 
telope-horn sheaths in a particular spot one summer 
and visited them each year when we returned to the 
locality, The htst }car alter they had been put out 
they showed some signs of cracking, the second year 
they were badly split and curled, while on the third visit 
a year later nothing could be seen of them exceot a few 
hair-like splinters of blackish-brown horn. 
It is hardly necessary to occupy ourselves in devising 
elaborate explanations of the operations of nature when 
simple and natural ones will do as well. The deer do 
not go off into a secret place to hide their horns, and 
indeed it would be difficult to tmderstand what is meant 
by a secret place in the forest or on the prairie. All 
places are alike secluded where natural conditions pre- 
vail, but so soon as man has found his way to them 
they cease to be secret. Neither do deer bury their 
liorns. The horns are buried ultimately, but it is by 
due process of nature working in her slow and silent 
way, and instead of the deer eating their horns, they 
furnish horns to be eaten by others, by the small, sel- 
dom seen creatures of the grass, the rocks and the 
woodland, which by their numbers, if not by their size, 
play a most important part in the economy of nature. 
Nannie. 
Nannie was the name of a gentle-eyed creature that 
was led into the yard one day — all bruised and full of 
wood ticks. She had been taken from her far forest 
h-jn,e when she was but a fragile spotted fawn. Reared 
on the ;)Ottle, she almost seemed to grow up as one of 
the children of the hunter's family. She followeil them 
ill their play, and like Mary's little lamb, attended the 
district school — but book learning wasn't her role, and 
when school would "take up" Nannie returned home, only 
t .■ follow again the next morning. When school close. 1 
she tool: her recreation by going to the pasture with 
the cows, browsing with them, but returning when the 
capricious notion occurred to her. At length garden 
.-»e;;soi' was "on," and Nannie commenced to make sad 
havoc with the tender plants. She was the idol of the 
c juntry family, but her browsing habits and athletic t|Ual- 
ities caused her to be brought to town and put on sale. 
Bruised from her long ride n a lumbering ox-cart, she 
cnlisied sympathy and secured a home. For two or three 
days amid her new surroundings she suffered with home- 
sickness, apparently missing the children most, for she 
would run to the fence as children passed, enjoying their 
caresses intensely. Although only confined in the large 
:>ard, she made no effort to escape. Gentle and atTection- 
aco, loving companionship, her wild instinct wns ever 
present. A strange sound, and she would dart away. 
Fragment of Gnawed Horns. 
The passing b.v of a neighbor's dog would cause every 
nerve to quiver, and with head erect and eyes dilated, 
with her grace, beauty and symmetry, she made a pic- 
ture worthy of a Bonheur. 
She was so friendly and so gentle that she grew vo be 
an annoyance to the cook, by coming into the kitchen 
and taking cabbage, potatoes, etc., from the table, as 
they were being prepared for dinner. The kitchen had 
so many openings that she felt no fear of getting into 
a trap; but it was never possible to get her beyond the 
middle of the hallway of the house, where she would 
stand with a wistful look in her wonderful ej'-es, but no 
entreaty or tempting food would persuade her be^'ond 
what she seemed to consider the "dc^ i line." She would 
stand on the piazza by the hour chewing her cud, and 
when tired would contentedly lie down, as if feeling the 
presence of the inmates within doors; but a sound to 
which she was unaccustomed would cause her to leap 
over the railing, the noise and the jump apparently be- 
ing instantaneous. She would occasionally take playful 
spells, and with tail and head up run round and round 
the house until she was all out of breath. Her eating 
showed the effects of civihzation. Candy was a tempting 
morsel to her, while cake, bread and oranges, saying 
nothing of sweet potatoes, both raw and cooked, corn 
and oats, kept her for a time from nipping plants and 
flowers in the yard. But the greatest surprise in her eat- 
ing was yet in store for us. Day after day the minnows, 
kept for the herons, would be missing, but who was the 
culprit? Nannie had been seen at the tub, but then 
"Nannie wouldn't eat minnows." One day a boy brought 
a fresh lot of minnows, and the deer seemed excited over 
the contents of the bucket; he quietly and without 
thought handed her a fish and she ate it ravenously and 
begged for another, and so on till we called "enough" — 
but the minnow thief had been discovered! 
A scene, that should have been photographed, was 
r^ft'-" T'itnpssed on the veranda steps. In the center 
stood the deer, with forefeet on second or third step and 
hincifeet on the ground, taking this position so that she 
might reach the food from the hands of those on the 
upper step. Tke dog and cat on either side of her 
head, while al the bast of the steps the big- Mue hcj"Otr,a 
