FOHEST AND STREAM. 
263 
-itch over this temporary cold storage of the vam- 
'tn<= we had shot, As Talob emphaticalh; declared tliev 
'.re "Good for --at for me for you/' it was quite 
scutial th.ii they Amnli ttcil he stolen hy the rodent 
ai\iuder-, 
My trami) had l.«en such a hard one, and the Cool 
ight was so vunisual u luxiirj'-, that I was fast asleep 
'Ug before oUr gatiie had been disposed of, and I 
ept soundly (?Ven without the steady roar of the surf 
-eak-ing on I'ccf, to which 1 had beconte accus- 
nned at iiiy seaside home. It hardly seemed that I 
Eld 'ilept a(- nil Avhen Tonga roused m'e in tlie gray of 
ie_ i\:\\n\ lo conir. out riitd lisferi to the song of the 
la'omfi'o. wliich silent except at that hour! There 
no bird nt)te that can cninpare vntlx the bewutv of tliiq 
oiintaiii bird's moniing sung. It fills the .iungfe valleys 
itli trills and r()itlades of melody for liA'e mirmtes at a 
- of a plaintive composition 'that carries every fine 
lade ot nm.sic. When one liird sings, all others listen, 
fid nat until oiic ha>s iinished its effort does another 
Lne up. While we Avere b'stenins to the dawn concert 
e heard the distant sound of shot.^. and Tonga told me 
at Suatcle. fea.ring tliat I would not care to eat vam- 
fes, had taken a bo^^ atvd had gone .off to shoot me 
me pigeons. Wtiile waiting for him to return^ we 
ent part way down the southern slope tu the waterfall 
F Papapapa, and had our morning phtnge in a- pool 
lat was almost icy. 
Suatc'-" ■ fears were without ground. The vampires 
hen baked in wrappings of /resh leaves after the night's 
iterment w-ere as succulent as o'u- squirrels, and as 
ainty a viand as could be desired, being both tender 
nd juicy. What with the pigeons and the vampires 
lere Avas enough for me to take back with rac a good 
ipply for my dinner at the end of the long homeward 
amp down the mountain. 
Llewell.v Pierce CntmcHiLL. 
Happenings. 
Inclosed find a perforated penny and a S-cent nickel, 
r you can plug the coins and pass them they are yours. 
\ was at Greenwood Lake a while ago, and while not 
3\ ing money to Inirn Ave had a little to shoot. There 
i nothing new- in .^hooting for or at money — what 
strange in this case is that we got a portion back. 
ertainly there Avas a return of a bad penny. It was 
laced in the withered knothole on that dead tree in front 
1 the Lakeside House, and shot at from a distance of 
oft., with a .22 long rifle cartridge. The report of the 
ifle and stinging on my left shoulder Avere synchronous, 
nd the penny dropped at my feet. Can j-'ou tell Avhat did 
? I have a theory, but some of my profoimdest 
loughts (to mej fall flat Avith others. 
II. 
I saAv a shrike circling over the tree tops about Has- 
rouck Institute the otlier noon, and in each foot was 
lutched an English sparroAv. Was the shrike catching 
heat, and will the little imps own all the buildings and 
roUey roads around that place if that shrike stays about? 
in. 
My people took our black field spaniel out a fcAV days 
igo for an airing and exercise. Well, he is more dog, 
lound for pound, than anything around. In a hilarious 
noment he essayed to climb up the glass hothouse roof 
It Peter Henderson's. He partially succeeded and 
nostly didn't. Then there was a crash of glass, a blend- 
ng of colors, and he Avas let in on the ground floor via 
;he roof. He was a hybrid and an exotic among the 
plants, and the plants were damaged to the value of the 
dog. FloAvers were cut, but the dog got away to run 
trauck some other daj^ 
While they Avere telling me of the escapade. Dusky 
winked at me and practically said: "I Avas right in it." 
IV. 
A neighbor moved away and another thought she 
■aw Moses, the big tiger cat belonging to the departed, 
sitting on the fence. Appreciating the sorroAv of the 
OAvner, and wishing to do a kindness to both cat and 
owner, she, by gentle persuasion, secured the cat and 
arried it to the supposed home. She Avas met at the 
door by the reality, and the real Moses resented the 
presence of the bulrush Moses, and there was nothing 
else to do but carry the alias back to the original local- 
ity. It belonged to another neighbor, 
To Happen, 
I "aiJi to spend the first two weeks of October deer 
hunting in the wildest portion of the Adirondack.s, and 
I am to spend the little sum hoarded up throughout the 
summer for that purpose. If the tAvo Aveeks in the Avoods 
as a realitj^ are as enjoyable as the two weeks of prepara- 
lion, the pleasure Avill be great. Do 3-0U knOAV what it 
is to anticipate a fcAv days away in that delightful place.'' 
You look at the trunk and the A^arious equipments, and 
wonder what you Avill carry. .Yon get the trunk down, 
you pack it and unpack it, you discard some things 
and tlien decide to take them, you look for leaks in your 
old boots, count the number of shells on hand, wonder 
how much tobacco Avill answer, and whether j'-ou will 
icquire more than one "tirst aid" package or not. Then 
you AA-rite to yoiu' guide, making all kinds of prepara- 
tions, and Avoriy yourself thinking that something will 
liappen and the connections will not be made. 
If the trip amount.s to anything, I will write yoll and 
tell you about it. With a big hunting knife in lieu of 
shears, a packbasket for a paste pot, and a rifle for a 
blue lead pencil. I will clip from nature's book such 
•writings as interest myself and may interest others, and 
will paste them on the walls of the camp as you Avould 
ifile away valuable documents, and with the lead of the 
Ijencil make such records upon birch bark and deer skins 
for parchment, that the grand combination, Avorked over 
iby yourself and resubmitted to the printers for correc- 
tion, will make sonre ncAv subscriber to your paper 
marvel at the triumph of "mind over matter." 
W. W, Hastings. 
Interior Alaska as a Game Preservet 
To the man who finds himself m the inhospitable in- 
terior of Alaska, the question of game becomes at ouce 
an interesting problem. The prospector is dependent for 
support on the provisions he carries with hirn, and even 
then he is deprived of fresh meat, unless he can find it in 
the country he traverses. It is more or less of a stipposi- 
tion that the vast game preserves of the North are in- 
exliaustible, for great inroads have been made on its 
former state of plenty by the cupidity of the traders and 
the necessities of the Indian populations. 
Ill the Yukon country are found quantities of moose, 
caribou, bears and foxes, but in the Avilderness south, in 
the Tanana hills and over the vast region drained by the 
muddy Copper River and its tributaries, the dearth of 
game strikes one more forcibly th-nh Hny evidence of its 
abundance. 
In'the early part of March Ave landed at Valdez, and a 
month later had crossed the glacier of that name. As Ave 
came into the slate-colored valley, one of our party shot a 
couple of mountain goats Avhi.ch he saAv on the top of a 
shale-covered hill. That Avas our first taste of fresh meat, 
and rank as it was, it Avas a delicacy after thirty days of 
bacon and beans. The animal itself furnished us with a 
good-sized white-haired robe, which proved useful wlien 
the cold weather came. 
Our anticipations from that time ran high as far as 
game was concerned, for our deductions had every appear- 
ance of being founded on logic; Ave could not haA^e hoped 
to find any living thing on that thirty-mile expanse of 
snoAV and ice, but even there, ptarmigan were plenty, and 
the footprints of large bears Avcre often visible on the trail. 
The day after the goats had been shot we saw a caribou on 
a green knoll some thousands of feet up a hillside. 
The ap])earanee of the Copper River country leads one 
to the impression that it coidd not be itnproved as a breed- 
ing ground. Seen from the high ridge which skirts the 
Klutena for a hundred miles, it presents a most beautiful 
vicAv. Far away to the south rise Mountains Drum and 
Wrangel, their tops crusted with .snow; to the east and 
the Avest appear glaciers innumerable, and to the north one 
sees the Avinding course of the Copper River set in an 
undulating country filled with small lakes and muddy 
tributaries of the glacial streams. The absolute solitude 
tends to increase the impression that game is plentiful, 
and the fact that the population consists of roAdng colonies 
of Indians confirms the impression. Long before Ave had 
seen any of these people, Ave learned that it was an uu- 
Avritten huv among them to kill the first white man caught 
in the act of shooting a moose or a caribou. This gave us 
an inkling of the probable scarcity of fresh meat. We 
found afterward that the Indian lived almost entirely on 
salmon. King Salmon is responsible for the existence of a 
miserable people noAv fast dying out. 
After our capture of the goat we traveled along the 
Klutena for fifty miles before Ave again caught sight of an 
animal, then on the banks of a clear stream called St. 
Ann's River we shot a brown bear. He fought viciously 
and was killed Avith difficulty. It is the custom of these 
animals to come to the streams to feed on the spaAvning 
fish, and they are to be found quite as often on the banks . 
of these tributaries as in the berry laden bushes of the 
Avoods. Several men were injixred seriously by coming 
on them unaAvares. We found in various spots antlers 
of moose and caribou, mostly in a state of decay. The 
A'alleys bore an air of forlorn loneliness, and in spite of the 
evidence of hundreds of rabbit skeletons in the Ioav trees 
we did not once see a rabbit. It was evident that the coun-- 
try had been overrun with them at a A-ery recent period. 
Later avc learned from an Indian that the cold Aveather of 
tlirce years before had frozen every one of them. 
The underbrush Avhich covers the Copper River region 
looks at a distance like a green carpet, but in reality it is 
a tangled undcrgroAVth. from Avaist to shoulder high. In 
ascending the various hills, this brush makes the journey a 
constant battle ; in addition, scattered over the lowlands, 
are large trees, leA'eled by fire and lying in inconceivable 
confusion, There is no doubt that in many cases the fires 
which destroyed them were purposely set, and during the 
late gold fe\er flames Avere to be seen in the summer 
months on all the mountain sides, Avhere they looked at 
night like the outpost lamps of a great city. 
On one of our expeditions into the Ioav hills, we found 
some twenty miles from the river a beaten moose trail 
Avinding up toward the high mountain tops. Though no 
animal Avas to be seen, the distinctness of the path assured 
us that it had been used by numbers and often. The large 
game haA-e an enemy who preys on them more persistently 
than man. and that is the mosquito. To avoid this pest he 
goes into colder altitudes. The pests are so persistent, so 
numerous and so virile that all the large animals, with the 
exception of bears, climb to the high mountain tops and 
remain there from the middle of May till the middle of 
September. 
The Indians witli whom we came in contact on the 
Tax.lina and Copper rivers AA'ere a dAvarfed people, re- 
sembling the Japanese — harmless and honest. > They were 
waiting, at our advent, for the approach of the salmon, 
and Avhen it came they offered up thanks hi true Chinook 
fashion. We found among them a fcAv furs, notably some 
fine specimens of silver fox skins, Avhich we purchased at 
a trifling price. The Indians infonned us bv gestures th;;t 
they were can.irbt to the far south, pointing to Mount 
Wrangel. 
As Ave proceeded further north, we saw even less game 
than before, tlic high clay banks of the Copper RiA'er 
offering no subsistence for life. It Avas Avitli great diffi- 
culty that Ave kept alive the one horse w^e had. and as the 
Aveather grcAV colder there was no Avay of procuring 
enough hay to last him through the Avinter. In the end 
we had to shoot him and use him for food. 
The scarcity of game is explainable not by the lack of 
forage, however, but by the severe Avinters Avhich often 
SAveep doAvn 011 that region. Many times the thermometer 
falls as low as 60 degrees beloAV freezing for long, 
periods, and the dark days and free course of the northern 
gales in winter, added to the hordes of mosquitoes in 
summer, prevent the multiplication of game which one 
expects to see on first entering the country, 
Percy Louls Shaav. 
The Forest and Stream is put to press each week on Tuesday. 
Correspondence intended for publication should reach us at the 
latest by Monday and as much earlier as practicable. 
Pet Deer. 
OiNK occasionally meets a person wJio hears with polite 
incredulity the theory that if a hunter picks up a favvn 
in the woods and fondles it a moment, if put down it will 
follow him home. I have told the truth so much that I 
knoAv how it is generally received, and I have seen people 
Avho did not take much stock in iny tales of the wondef- 
fid docility of a fawn captured wild in the mountainSs 
My tAvo brothers had occasion to pass through a strip of 
woods to reach a straAvberry patch in June, 1888. They 
saw a fawn in its bed, where, no_ doubt, the mother deer 
had left it. 
It ran when they came near, but after a hard chase they 
caught it. They brought it home and we shut the 
gates and all stood around expectant, Avaitiiig to see it 
loosed and run. AVe fel* misgivings about the'fence being 
high enough, but decided to risk it. When released the 
fawn sidled up to the one who had carried it in, and I 
suppose we Avho had been expecting a chase looked foolish. 
We taught it to drink milk, and it thrived. The women 
folks named the ncAv pet Diana (a most extraordinary 
name, you must admit), and for two years the deer was 
a delightful nuisance. 
Diana never became thoroughly civilized in the matter 
of shelter. She Avould persist in lying out in the weather, 
and the colder the rain the more contented she seemed to 
be. I remember her lying in the snow upon which chilling 
rain was falling, neglecting to make use of the barn or any 
other sheltered place. Whenever the rain was over she 
Avould get up and shake herself and want something to 
eat. The deer hunter recognizes the fact that after a rain 
all the deer Avill be moving. After two years she put on 
so many airs that we accepted an offer of $10 and sold her 
to a deer hunter. 
He put her into a ijen on a hillside with a low fence on 
the upper side. Deer could jump in, but once in they were 
securely trapped. Diana was the cause of the violent 
deaths of a number of her visitors that fall, and the next 
year she went to the Avoods to be wild. 
But in regard to the tameness of young fawns, an inci- 
dent related to a surveyor proves it better. As a rule 
the hunter Avho gets his clutches on a fawn thinks too 
much of it to try the experiment of letting it follow him 
home, but this surveyor was very far back in the moun- 
tains, Avhere the corps could not even carry as much grub 
as they needed. Then, Avhen a faAvn AA^as found on the line 
he was running he picked it up and petted it a little while 
and put it down, intending to let it stay where it was. 
The faAvn folloAved him all that day, and while it was not 
afraid of the other men in the corps, it singled its captor 
out and was close at his heels the whole time. Those who 
knoAv how a surveying party works through the woods 
Avill remember that no two of the party Avalk together. 
The rod man goes in front ; next the men with axes ; then 
the Avizard Avho follows the course through the trackless 
forest; then the chain-carriers at either end of the chain. 
When camp was made that night on the line, one of the 
men had so much pity for the little stray fawn that he 
Avalked over a high mountain to a mountain farm, to get it 
some milk. It is safe to say that the whole corps would 
have gone hungry before they would have made the trip 
for themselves. For this act of humanity, the fawn 
naturally fell to him. 
In a pet faAvn, the observer has a good opportunity of 
studying the spots on the little animal and to note the 
changes. As fall approaches the spots gradually fade out, 
andnomancan very Avell say Avhat day the fawn ceases to be 
spotted. I am reminded of the fact that all artists are not 
naturalists every time I enter a barber shop in this 
village. On the Avail is the picture of a park in winter — 
one of the yard-square cheap chronios. A herd of deer are 
depicted there, and a fawn eats out of a young female's 
band, and notwithstanding that snow covers the ground 
and the trees are leafless, the faAvn is spotted. The picture 
is much enjoyed by this hunting community. 
On the whole, nearly every one has found petting deer 
very unsatisfactory sport. The bucks are dangerous and 
the does mischievijus. One family living on the banks of a 
stream in September saw a fawn come doAvn the river and 
enter a cluster of AvilloAvs. The hounds came in presently, 
and the hunters, one of Avhom had shot at it and missed 
it, Avent aAvay. The faAvn was then found in a thoroughly 
exhausted condition in the AvilloAVs, and was carried to 
the house. It recovered and became very tame. It re- 
uKiined with them a year and a half, and one fine day in 
early spring, after playing hard and running in the sun, it 
died. The owners Avere so much moved by its death that 
they never adopted another deer, giving as the reason 
that they had become too fond of the one that died. 
.TThe finest herd of pet deer probably ever owned ill 
this county belonged to R. B. Kerr. There were seven 
of them, and they all but one inet with violent deaths one 
fall, and that one Avent to the Avoods and never returned. 
Mr. Kerr is a bachelor, and the deer were his especial 
pets, and as they were very troublesome and would bring a 
good price in market, the other members of the house- 
bold had urged tlieir extinction. He stood betAveen them 
and death nearly the whole hunting season. 
They Avere kept in the orchard, which Avas surrounded 
by a very high rail fence, built for the purpose. One day 
in the early fall the big buck of the herd had been chased 
by dogs and had run for his ])lace of refuge. The gate wa? 
shut, but after he Avas safe in he ruffled up his hair and 
scenied to haA-e an insane notion of jumping out. In 
trying he fell back Avith a hind leg through a crack in the 
fence, breaking it, and they gave him the mercy stroke. 
One stormy n.ight a great commotion Avas heard in the 
deer corraU and when morning came it Avas seen by the 
tracks that a marvelously big buck from the mountains 
had jumped tbe fence, and after stampeding the herd had 
returned to the nxoimtains Avitii yearhng doe. 
The first snow i\Ir. Kerr took his big mountain rifle and 
went up into Cheat to hunt deer. He had not gone far be- 
fore he came upon the trail of eight deer, and he followed 
them faithfully all day. Near night he found he had 
circled back near his house and was just preparing to cease 
huntuig when he sa>v a deer through the pines. He shot 
it and three others Avhich appeared about as fast as he 
could load and fire. When he Avent up to his game, elated 
by his luck, he saAA"^ he had killed four of his pets. 
