FOREST AND STREAM. 
tMARCH l8, 1899. 
"The bear is a strange beast. An old Indian when he 
kills a bear takes a hold of its paw and says, "Thank you, 
Mr. Bear, for giving meat.' If he didn't do that he thinks 
he wouldn't kill any more bears. If a bear's bowels are 
out of order, he knows just what plants to eat to regulate 
them. I don't know exactly what they take, but I think 
one thing is the kind of Scotch thistle that grows wild. 
"In the spring, when the bears come out, they can get 
very little to eat, and fairly starve. They eat any blamed 
thing they can get a hold of till the suckers come along. 
Then the bears stand in the ci-eeks and scoop them out. 
When fish are plenty they like to leave them on the bank 
till they' get a little high, and then come back later and 
eat them. This habit gives the Indians opportunities to 
trap them." J. B. Burniiam. 
7" 
Red Letter Days. 
IV. — Cariboo Shooting. 
There is a well-known story — for the accuracy of 
which I cannot vouch — of tlie notice in a Western saloon, 
in large letters over the head of the musician, "Don't 
shoot the poor beggar at the piano; he's doing his best." 
May not this be said, figurativelJ^ of one of the class 
of "old reminiscences." so-called, in his feeble elTorts for 
the public good? When sympathy for this relic of the 
past increases as years roll by. and when he "takes stock" 
of reminiscences, as his only solace, happy the man who 
can put his hand upon what even he may consider a 
few "red-letter days," and hold them up to view as things 
to be admired. Better still, if he can before night sets 
in, add to his stock of these much-valued days; sympathy 
may thus for a while be averted. 
The writer, though not having yet aspired to the 
rank of an "old reminiscence," having reached the stage 
of "take it easy, or if yoit can't take it eas}^ take it as 
easy as you can," or, in other words, being "untasked 
with needless services," found himself not long ago in 
company with an old friend one winter's evening en- 
gaged in the aforesaid occupation — "taking stock." The 
smoke curled slowly from the mouth of each. They 
had, as evening advanced, told their stories, and silence 
reigned, each being evidently occupied in building castles 
in the air. At last one of the party, more enterprising 
than his neighbor, ventured to speak, and this is what 
he said: "Surely reminiscences are not all that is left 
for us. We'll do deeds to follow on our words. Some 
red-letter days still remain for us — even for us." 
This speech brought both old sportsmen simultane- 
ously to their feet. Yes! both could still do a good day's 
work in green woods and on barrens. The hand and eye 
of each could still work together in that which gives 
so much thought to the n9vice in the gun trick busi- 
ness, viz., trigger squeezing, and can only be learnt by 
that which teaches — experience. They therefore re- 
solved to make immediate arrangements for a Pew davs 
caribou stalking before the close season then approach- 
ing set in. 
Two well-known Indian guides in these parts of eastern 
Canada, the brothers Jim and Joe Paid, were secured: 
a line of barrens not far distant, Eastbrook Plains, were 
selected; the usual camp rations were procured; and in 
a well equipped double sleigh we moved off. a cheery 
party, reminding us of many a similar expedition in days 
gone by. The last house in a settlement, ten miles fn nn 
the plains, was reached at an early hour, and we changed 
from our comfortable sleigh to a less comfortable coun- 
try sled. These ten miles over rough woodland roads 
on one of winter's coldest evenings, were cheerless 1n the 
extreme, pointing to the conclusion that even. caribou 
hunting is not all "cakes and ale.'" Before night set 
in, however, we reached a spot in green woods not too 
near the plains affording shelter from the wintry blast, 
and with a good supply of fuel wood available. Here 
we decided to camp. Two small lean-to tents facing 
inward were soon pitched, wood was cut. fire made, sup- 
per cooked, and as we sat on our waterproof sheets laid 
on the snow, discussing the evening meal and the pro.^- 
pects of the morrow, difficulties and drawbacks fled to 
the winds, and each could say with all his heart, "Tht re 
is pleasure in the pathless woods."' 
All save Paul rose bright and early the tollowuig 
morning; the cook, busy preparing wagan (food), we old 
soldiers looking to ammunition and rifles (mme a 
Hotchkiss repeater, my comrade's a short Snider-Enfield). 
The ablutions and toilet of each being minimized, sud- 
denly Paul starts from sleep. "Caribou we get to-day- 
good dream. Plenty caribou!" 
There was therefore, with this good prediction, no time 
lost in the morning start. , . , . 
There was but little snow on the ground, with enough 
m the woods for fair snowshoeing. while on the barrens 
we took off snowshoes and had good walking in moc- 
casins With happy reflections en route, we are moving 
on quickly, but silently, Paul leading, we following m 
single file. We pass through some perfect caribou 
country, cranberry plain for the most part, where 
"browse" (moss well-known as Lichen rangefenna) is 
plentiful with here and there a few stunted spruce 
bushes; and here and there the country is broken by an 
occasional hill or a small ravine. When about three mile,^ 
from camp, we came upon fresh tracks of a herd ot 
caribou about ten in number, .ludgmg by the beds 
in the snow (their last night's resting place). There was 
also abundant sign of their search for food (the many 
holes made with forefeet when uncovering the lichen). 
Here again we "off snowshoes," there being but little 
if any wind, in order to creep carefully upon the game. 
We had not crept far. when, ascending a small hill. 1 
saw the heads of the herd. A low whistle from me brings 
our party to a halt, and a short council of war deter- 
mines our course, viz., to retrace our steps and then 
make a cast well around, so as to approach the herd 
from almost the opposite direction from that we had been 
taking and thus to move up wind, if any, and besides 
gain some slight covert in that quarter. 
Stealthily and carefully we move; it seems hours before 
we eain the desired spot. Paul does the work of com- 
mander in chief in these difficult tactics. Not a word is 
SDoken We arrive at a place where we can only creep 
on hands and knees without disturbing the herd, the 
hands and knees of each of those who follow being 
carefully placed in the spot previously similarly occu- 
pied by his predecessor. Thus we avoid the noise of 
breaking the crust of snow. Suddenly Paul lifts his head 
and points, and there, (what a picture for an artist!) 
we saw the herd at about 300yds. distance, utterly ignor- 
ant of their danger. Paul advises opening the ball at 
this range, but, no; from experience I well know how 
small an object a caribou presents at 300yds. We decide 
to creep on t'urther 10 a bush within about looyds. ot 
the herd. Careful as we had been hitherto, we are doubly 
careful now. Could we but hush the noise of breathing! 
Oh, that M'e were dressed in snow-colored garments, and 
thus coidd avoid being seen and heard! Each yard 
seems a mile. We had besides lost sight of the quarry 
in the_ undulating ground. At last we reach the spot, 
a motion of my hand brings my comrade to my right 
side, and as previously arranged, the man on the right 
takes a caribou on the right, and vice versa. We have 
only to pick and chose. A fine yellow stag on the left 
stretches his lordly form. I must have him. T aim — no! 
I bring down my rifle. A darker one, with good horns 
appears in view. Ample time for display of "fine dis- 
cipline." I decide on him. My friend selects another with 
horns. At a given signal we fire. My bullet reaches 
the desired haven, behind the shoulder, his falls short. 
The herd is quickly afoot. My stag plunges forward 
and bites the dust of snow. This checks the herd in their 
onward course. They only move about 300yds.. with a 
series of bounds, then stop and turn to seek their 
fallen brother, then off again. This gives another and 
yet another chance to us. The game of "hide and seek" 
goes on. Every bush, every undulation of the ground 
is taken advantage of. We fire now at long ranges. 
A well-directed shot from me and one from my friend 
pull down a couple more of the herd — some more care- 
ful stalking. We gain another vantage spot. We again 
open fire and secure two more of the herd, making a 
total bag of five caribou. (We had also a wounded one 
to follow — this we got subsequently.) 
It must be stated that this occurred before the day's 
of limiting the number of caribou for each gun. Anj-- 
way, old sportsmen though we be, five caribou "before 
the sun had crossed the yardarm" on the first day out 
we considered not top bad, and in "taking stock" of 
"red-letter days," we can now go "one better." 
Mic M.\c. 
Fredericto.n. 
Snowshoes, 
Ediior Forest and Stream: 
In Forest .\nd Stream of March 4 Mr. Mather 
speaks of snowshoes and gives an illustration of different 
shapes. For such uses as I have for snowshoes. 1 
prefer a ionsr. narrow shoe, more like the No. 1, or the 
Alaska model. I used such a pair one winter on a trip 
after moose in Nova Scotia. The rest of the party 
(who were residents of the Province, as well as our 
Indian guides) used much wider shoes, more after the 
Montreal pattern. The oldest Indian in our party, after 
looking at my snowshoes. asked: "What arc you 
going to do with them kites?" I think, however, that 
he, as well as the others, were convinced before our 
hunt was ended, that my shoes for practical work were 
as good, if not better, that tlie style used by the rest of 
the party. 
What I wish to say relative to snowshoes is princi- 
pally regarding the filling. Such snowshoes as are for 
sale in most of the stores, while pleasing in general 
appearance to a novice, arc not as a rule very satis- 
factory for hard practical work. The filling when wet 
will sag badly. I was speaking about such shoes to a 
Maine guide, who uses snowshoes a good deal, and 
who made those he used. This guide said the cause 
of many snowshoes bagging when wet was on account of 
the filling not being properly stretched before the shoe 
was filled, .or. as he expressed it. "The stretch had 
not been taken out."' His method of stretching was to 
soak well in water the hide used after it had been cut 
in strips, then to take a flat piece of bone or part of 
a moose or caribout horn, bore a small hole through 
it and draw the strips of hide through the hole. This, 
he claimed, stretched the filling to a certain extent, and 
also grained it; then the filling was fastened together 
in the usual way, making a strip long enough to fill 
a shoe. It was then thoroughly soaked, and then se- 
lecting three small trices standing in a triangle a few 
yards apart, he would wind the filling around the trees, 
going .from one to the other, stretching it all he could; 
then getting a number of slicks of timber, lay quite a 
number across the filling between the trees, and let 
them remain until the filling had dried: by putting on 
considerable weight he claimed that the stretch would 
be pretty well taken out. After the filling dried it \vas 
again soaked, and woven into the frames. This guiele 
said there was more work in preparing filling in this 
manner, and that when making snowshoes to sell the 
filling was not stretched at all excepting what stretch- 
ing was done when weaving it when wet in the frames. 
Such filling when dry always seems as tight as possible, 
but after it gets thoroughly wet it will sag badly. 
The filling of about all the snowshoes. I have seen as 
sold by dealers, was said to be caribou hide. I know 
those I used which were said to be of such material 
gave out in a short time. The men with whom I have 
talked about snowshoes and who made those they used, 
said that the hide of a three-years' old steer made as 
o-ood filling as they knew of. A ?ood dead depends on 
preparing the hide. If the glue is not nearly all re- 
moved the filling is liable to be brittle and break when 
using on cold, dry snow. My last two pairs of snow- 
shoes were made by two of mv neighbors. Both pairs 
were filled with steer's hide. Yet the filling oi one pair 
will and has outworn the other. 
There are several methods of fastening on snow- 
shoes In Maine I found the usual way was to use a 
long strip of leather or buckskin, which was fastened to 
the toe loop and then wound around the_ foot and back 
of the heel and tied over the instep. It was claimed 
that when fastened in this way the snowshoe could at 
anv time be kicked off by giving the foot a twist, m 
cas'e any one should break through the ice when cross- 
ing a lake or stream. I could never make this strap 
fastening work well, as it was continually getting loose. 
The fastening I have found the most satisfactory ij to 
have quite a broad strap fastened firmly to the shoe 
for the toe of the foot with a strip of leather running 
back under the sole, and a heel strap very similar to 
tlic old style heel strap of a skate, and with a strap 
buckling over the instep. When crossing any place 
where there is a chance of breaking through the ice 
I always unbuckle the strap over the instep. The snow- 
shoe will stay on fairly well in this way, and I can kick 
it 'off at any time. 
Mr. Mather speaks of paying an Indian $2 to make 
a pair of snowshoes. T cannot get such a pair as I 
want for any such a price. My last pair I paid $6 
for, including the fastening, and the man who made them 
cannot turn out such a pair in less than two days, and 
he does not care to make them to sell, even at that 
price. Such shoes as I now use do not compare favor- 
ably in appearance with the fancy-looking articles in the 
stores; but for practical hard work over rough ground, 
windfalls and such places, I have found them worth sev- 
eral pairs of the fancv-looking ones. 
C. M. Stark. 
DU.NBARTON, N. H. 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 
Goose Shooting at Chteagd. 
Chicago. 111., 'March ri. — Mr. Townsend Smith, who 
lives at Lake Bluff, a suburb some thirty miles north oi 
the center of Chicago, tells me that he has for several 
years had very decent shooting at wild geese, the Canada 
honkers, near his home, sometimes killing two or three 
dozen during the spring season, and one day bagging a? 
high as seven splendid specimens of this wary bird. 
It seems that there is at times quite a decent^ flight 
of geese in and out of Lake Alichigan, and I have 
myself seen these birds dipping down into the lake, a 
mile off from shore, at a point not very far from the city. 
Mr. Smith tells me that he gets most of his geese on the 
cornfields about a mile and a half inland from the lake, 
where the geese are in the habit of coming to feed. He 
uses decoys, just as one does in stubble-shooting in Da- 
kota, but 'does not dig any pits. His way of shooting the 
geese is simply the old-fashioned corn-shock shooting 
■which we used to practice out in Iowa years ago. There 
is no better blind than a corn shock, and this sort of 
shooting has the advantage that one can shift from one 
part of the field to another, according to the way the 
flight may be coming in. As I remember this sort of 
thing, it used to be very exciting to see the long. low. 
black line of birds coming in from a distance, with the 
average chance much against their coming within range. 
I should think Mr. Smith would prize his honkers very 
much, getting them thus, as he does, so near thi.s' big 
city. He tells me that very often parties station them- 
selves on the bluffs near the lake and shoot at the geese 
with rifles as they pass over, going high and qiiite out of 
range of the shotgun. He knew one man to kill four in 
this way during one afternoon. One time he caught a 
flock of honkers in the open lake near the shore, so close 
that he was able to stalk them and kill three before they 
got away. When I add that Mr. Smith tells me he some- 
times gets splendid snipe shooting near his home on 
the Skokie marsh, often as many as fifty bircls to a pair 
of guns, I have perhaps added something to the da'a re- 
garding Chicago as a shooting resort. 
From Texas. 
Mr. Wallace Clark, of Chicago, recentl>" came back 
from a shooting trip in Texas, where he was located at 
Fordham, in San Patricio county. This is near the Rock- 
port country, of which I have written so much. Mr. 
Clark had all the duck shooting he wanted, and was de- 
lighted with his trip. He said that he sometimes saw as 
many as 20,000 geese, he should think, in one body, such 
a sight as always sets wild a Northern man who scc^ 
these great bands of fowl for the first time. 
The Wisconsin Duck Question. 
A Milwaukee journal this week contains a strong 
communication from Mr. L. F. McLean, of Fond du 
Lac. Wis., who writes to antagonize the views of another 
gentleman who wants to see killed the bill which is in- 
tended to stop spring shooting in Wisconsin. Mr. ?ifc 
Lean goes to some pains to score the non-resident shoot- 
ers, who constitute a good portion of the membership 
of the leading Wisconsin ducking clubs. There is some 
justice in his charge "in re.gard to non-resident spring 
shooting in Wisconsin, supposedly on the deep water 
ducks only. I take pleasure in corroborating Mr. Mc- 
Lean's statement in regard to one practical example of the 
wisdom of stopping spring shooting. On the Horrison 
marsh, of that State, no spring shooting is allowed by 
the club members, and in the fall there are many more- 
birds to be found on that marsh than on any where there 
has been duck shooting in the spring. We cannot hope 
for spring restriction in Illinois, but it is within hope 
that we shall see spring prohibition enforced in Michi- 
gan, Wisconsin and Minnesota within the next few years. 
For .those who like a somewhat warm statement on the 
matter Ave might offer some of Mr. McLean's remarks: 
"Is it not a fact that these non-resident club members 
are about this time down on the Illinois and Sangamon 
rivers, in Illinois, and the large duck marshes in Indiana 
comfortably quartered in fine club houses awaiting the 
arrival of the aquatic bird? What are they doing there? 
Mr. Meyer may infer that they are there for the purpose 
of driving the birds away from the resident shooters, who 
may not be so fortunate as to be able to support a club 
house or game preserve, to the boundary line of this State, 
where the birds are to be protected by the passage of an 
act now before our Legislature in the interests of these 
gentlemen. 
"Is it not the fact that these non-resident club inem- 
bers are down there for the sole purpose of shooting every 
duck in sight, and when the flight movesjnto our State, 
do not these gentlemen come to their Wisconsin club 
house, and remain with us until the latter part of April, 
or until every duck has been driven from the State? 
"When the open season in September comes around, 
do vou not notice the absence of these non-resident raem- 
