Jan. 26, 1901.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
will only weigh about 45 pounds). My cousin 
shouted to me to shoot the buck, and as the place where 
this happened was within a short distance of where 
Senfft missed a buck an hour or two ago, I tried to do 
so, thinking that this was a buck he had wounded earlier 
ip the morning. But I found I had a hard task before 
ine, bcause I was afraid of hitting my cousin, for man 
and beast were jumping around in a lively manner. At 
last 1 succeeded in putting my rifle on the shoulder of 
the buck, and drew the trigger. But in this second 
the buck must have moved; and instead of shooting him 
through the heart the ball only broke his leg. On hearing 
the report, my cousin, only too glad to get rid of his 
task, let go. The buck thereupon made off on his three 
legs as if he had four, when the second ball from my rifle 
brought him down. 
I should almost have liked to miss him, to have been 
able to study SenfiEt losing his coveted prize after holding 
it so long. 
We found on going up to the buck that he only had 
my two bullets — the one that had broken his leg and the 
one that had brought him down — and that the buck had 
been perfectly sound before. 
My cousin then explained things. He had seen 
the buck sitting under a tree and stepped out of the 
cairriage to shoot it. But when he raised his rifle, the 
posture of the buck gave him the impression that it must 
be a dead one. He therefore stepped up to it and grasped 
one of the horns to raise the head, to better inspect them, 
when, to his surprise, up jumped the buck. My cousin 
having the luck to grasp his other horn, held on to him. 
This is the most extraordinary occurrence with a 
sleeping deer that ever occurred to me, though I have had 
several experiences with deer at home, which have led 
me to the conviction that you will once in a while run 
across a deaf one. E. G. V. S. 
The Barking Deer of the Philippines 
Dapitan, Mindanao, P. I., Nov. 10. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: I have something curious to tell you about that 
black deer of mine, concerning which I have already writ- 
ten you. As I stated in a former letter, he is a yearling 
past, very dark, with a coarse coat for this climate, black 
tail with white tip, and his horns grow straight up from 
head on a line with his nose, as may be seen in the photo- 
graph T sent you. Lately he has shed his horns. 
I remember reading once, from the manuscript of a 
friend in New York, a story, in which the baying of a 
pack of invisible hounds ever followed the fleeing deer, 
l)ut I little thought the conceit would be brought forcibly 
to mind in later j'ears. 
One night about two months ago I was aroused by 
the savage baying of a dog trying to get into the in- 
closure where the deer is kept at night. I rushed down 
there revolver in hand, picturing to myself the agony the 
deer might be in penned up as it was. There are dogs 
here trained especially to hunt deer, and as the town is 
full of masterless curs of high and low degree, I was not 
surprised that some of them should come around at night. 
Well, I wore myself out trying to find that dog. A 
short time afterward he appeared again earlier in the 
evening, in full cry, that filled the house and could be 
heard a quarter of a mile away. On this occasion an 
interesting whist game was broken up, and each vied 
with the other to get a shot at the intruder. The in- 
closurc where the deer was is a room by itself, under the 
quarters occupied by the officers, and has a rather frail 
partition separating it from another room open from the 
outside, and from this point a powerful animal might dig 
his way in to the deer. The barking and baying seemed 
to proceed from this partition. It being a moonlight 
night, two of the party stationed themselves at the win- 
dows commanding the premises, while I went down to 
this outside room, with a candle in one hand and my 
revolver in the other. 
No dog. ... 
The next day I had a hole cut in the floor near and 
above this partition, and the next night that the sounds 
appeared, I stationed myself at the opening ready to 
shoot at the sound, if unable to distinguish any form. 
It seemed to proceed from the inclosure where the deer 
was. Is it possible, I thought, that that dog could have 
gotten in at the high window and was even now attack- 
ing the deer? I rushed around to the stairway with a 
candle, but the deer stood there quietly looking at me. 
1 retired puzzled. 
This howling occurred two or three times a month. 
One night a corporal, our interpreter, who sleeps in the 
building, went to the stairway and listened. Next morn- 
ing he said, "Captain, is it possible that a deer can bark 
like a dog?" I thought not, but I interviewed the presi- 
dent of the town on the subject, who said at once that it 
was the deer, that it was a common thing for the bucks 
to bark like a dog, and he added that at times they make 
such a noise in the mountains that one cannot sleep in 
their neighborhood. He said that they barked at all 
seasons, but most at running time and at the full of the 
moon. 
A few nights ago the deer set up his nocturnal roaring 
and. I went with a light and sat down on the steps and 
.saw him in the act. Being so close there was a false note 
in it, but a few yards away it seemed most like the deep 
mouthed bay of a hound. While he is barking or baying 
he stands and stamps with one foot. It continued at 
intervals for fifteen or twenty ininutes, and as I. said 
before was loud and could be heard a quarter of a mile. 
I thought I knew a little bit about deer, having hunted 
them many years and killed hundreds of them, but this 
particular breed is a curiosity. He is a handsome animal 
like a blacktailed buck, with small ears and shapely head, 
and when I shake a banana at him. comes running 
with a whimpering cry to take it form my hand. 
Luther S. Kelly, 
Captain 40th Infantry. 
[Just what this curious deer may be is not certain, but 
very likely it belongs to the genus Elaphodes, which is 
allied to the muntjac of India, bat has unbranched 
antlers.] 
The FoEEST AHD Stream is put to press each week on Taetdsy. 
Correspondehce intended for publication should reach u* at tl>« 
latest by Mend&y and u much earlier as practicable. . 
Strange Birds. 
Col. W, Coltman, a neighbor of mine, in the fall of 
1858 shot m the White Oak swamps, near Snow Hill, Md., 
a gigantic woodcock. This bird was more than twice the 
size of any woodcock ever seen here before or since, and 
had a few white feathers in its wing. It lay to the dogs 
like an ordinary bird, flew quite swiftly and made a loud 
whistling noise. The Colonel took his bird to Snow 
Hill and showed it to many interested in such things, then 
he sold it to a Mr. John Maddox, of New York city^ who 
was staying there at the time. This gentleman called it a 
European woodcock. This, I think, was before the time 
of introducing new species here, and must have blown 
across in a storm to Newfoundland, and then drifted 
down the coast. The strange part is the white feathers in 
the wing. 
The first week in December, 1900, Mr. Laurent and Mr. 
Livezey, of Mt. Airy, Pa., were shooting quail here. The 
dogs pointed and a rail bird flushed. Mr. Livezey shot 
and killed it, and on picking it up found a bird he had 
never seen before. He gave the bird to Mr. Laurent, who 
is connected with tlie Academy of Natural Sciences, Phila- 
delphia. He said the bird was new to him, but looked 
more like a corn crake than anything he had ever seen 
here. The bird was carefully laid away and taken home 
in the fle.sh. On examination at the Academy it was found 
to be the real European corn crake, of which but . two 
specimens have been taken in the United States before 
this one. The Eastern Shore is a wonderful place. If 
you cannot find all you want here, you are indeed hard to 
please. O. D. Foulks. 
Stockton, Md 
The Engflish Sparrow. 
Sayre, Pa. — The A^ociferous community of English 
sparrows which tenants the interior of the new passenger 
equipment paint shop at this place affords a convincing 
illustration of the bird's power of resistance to the ordi- 
nary methods of warfare waged against it. Every ven- 
tilator attached to this mammoth paint shop has been 
equipped with fine wire screens, and all the tracks en- 
tering the .shop have been closely fitted with leather 
fenders attached to the doors, with a view of excluding 
the pugilistic Britons, but thus far all efforts in this 
direction have proved unavailing. 
The mottled aliens quarrel and fight and forage im- 
I.ntdently, and multiply surprisingly. Occasionally a bird 
falls to the floor overcome by the poisonous paint and 
varnish fumes, or intoxicated with the penetrating tur- 
pentine perfutue, but on the whole the birds exhibit an 
amazing vitality. They swarm through the- vast network 
of girders and roof stipports. in joyful estate, creating a 
deafening clamor, at certain hours of the day, defying 
alike the ingenuity of man and the unwholesome, con- 
ditions of their environment. ' . ■, , 
As furnishing an example of contented existence under 
the most adverse circumstances the English sparrow has 
been and continues to be pre-eminently successful. This 
characteristic- at least entitles him to some respect, 
M. Chili* 
The Cat Came Back. 
.Sayre, Pa.— The homing instinct of cats .was lately 
illustrated in the case of an ebony-coated Tabby that' 
for some time made its home in and about the stock 
room connected with the big passenger car paint shop 
of the Lehigh Valley R. R. Assistant Foreman John 
Brainard having a desire to make Tabby a member of 
his household carried the animal home one night, a dis- 
tance of over. a mile, and covering a journey across a 
great tangle of railroad tracks and often between^ a 
congestion of loc'omofives, freight cars and rolling equip- 
ment unsurpassed in variety and extent probably along 
the ejitire Lehigh svstem outside of New York and 
Bitffalo. ' . ' . 
Evidently,' however, the black cat was alert and sharply 
observant, for two days thereafter its melodious voice 
fell softly upon the air in the vicinity of the stock room. 
Investigation disclosed the satin-furred feline perched 
high , aloft upon the roof of the paint shop, a lookout 
point gained only by climbing an iron fire escape and 
general utility ladder equipped Avith widely separated 
rungs. 
Removed from its exalted perch, the cat mewed Con- 
tentedly, tied itself into a hard knot athwart a varnish 
can and slept the sleep of a thoroughbred Bohemian. 
M. Chill. 
Mr. Boardman. 
The death of our old friend and correspondent, Mr. 
George A. Boardman, which took place last week, will 
cause pain to an unusual number of readers of the Natural 
History Department of Forest and Stream. One of the 
last letters written by him was a kindly response to an 
inquiry from this office as to whether he knew of a siiigle 
authentic instance of the taking of the panther in Maine. 
His reply was in the negative, and he added, "I have for 
fifty years been looking after the skull of a panther that 
was killed in this part of the State for my museum and 
have not been able to get one" ; and then he added, 'T 
have been much pleased with your cuts of the ducks in 
Forest and Stream. They are first class." 
■Warning: to Mountain Climbers. 
Boston, Jan. 10. — A special committee of the Appala- 
chia Mountain Club, which has been investigating the 
death last summer of Father Bill Curtis and Allan Orms- 
bee in White Moimtains, finds that there was no care- 
lessness, but says the time is a proper one to teach certain 
lessons. The warning which the committee issues says : 
Provide adequate clothing. Then if experienced and 
strong, turn back rather than face such a storm. If in- 
experienced, do not let bright skies and an open pathway 
lure you to where you may need resources not at hand, and 
do not go alone. Hold together. Watch, to foresee the 
conditions ahead of you. Do not exhaust yourself by 
wasteful hurry and needless continuousness of severe 
effort. Keep couragej resist the fatal desire to lie down 
— New York Evening Post. 
0^wj^ l§^q md ^m. 
— ® — 
Fropiietors of •hooting resorts will find it proitable to adTcrtise 
them in FoMlT AWO SrwUK. 
Notice. 
All communications intended for Forest amd Stbeau should 
always be addressed to tke Forest and Stream Publishing Co., and 
not to any individual co'itiected with the paper. 
fFor Smooth Bores and Safety. 
Philadelphia, Ba., Jan. 16. — Editor Forest and Stream: 
During a recent trip in the South, I happened to take up 
your issue of Dec. 22, and read what your Maine corre- 
spondent said about the great number of very interesting 
shooting accidents which are constantly occurring in the 
Northern woods. They are not confined to the North- 
ern woods, however, for they occur in the Northwest 
and wherever modern rifles are used in a forest country. 
I have been in the Maine woods myself and heard a 
great deal about these accidents, and I have seen in a 
way how it is that they occur so easily. The great num- 
bers of them are appalling, and I sometimes think that 
the statistics are exaggerated. But even allowing for 
the exaggeration, there are far too many of them, and 
it seems to me that everybody interested in sport should 
do his utmost to devise means for preventing them. 
Your Maine correspondent suggests several remedies. 
He would have a law passed making accidental shooting 
a criminal offense. This, I think, would hardly meet the 
case. It would be contrary to the general principle of 
law that it is the criminal intent which makes a crime. 
It would hardly be proper under our system of juris- 
prudence to punish a man by fine and imprisonment for 
doing what he never intended to do. A man may be 
punished under our law for killing a person by gross 
carelessness, or for doing an act in itself unlawful which 
unexpectedly results in killing some one. But I do not 
think that we have ever made mere accidents punishable 
as criminal offenses. I do not think that the thought that 
there was such a law on the statute book would make 
people any more careful or make accidents fewer. You 
cannot by a few printed words alter human nature in the 
matter of carelessness, and these shooting accidents arise, 
I think, out of certain circumstances as much as out of 
carelessness. 
Nor do I think that your correspondent's suggestion 
that all sportsmen be compelled to adopt a certain color 
of dress which would make them absolutely distinct in 
the woods and prevent any possibility of their being mis- 
taken for a deer would obviate the difficulty. It would 
really be most ridiculous and would show that our sport 
had degenerated sadly, if we should try to adopt such 
an extraordinary rule as a safety costume. I do not know 
any color that could be adopted except white; and that 
might perhaps be the most dangerous of all, for a great 
many of these tenderfeet who do the reckless shooting 
have heard that there are at times white deer found in 
the woods, and they are enthusiastic for a shot at one. 
It seems to me that the great difficulty arises, or the 
preventable part of the difficulty arises, from the 
condition to which the modern rifle has been developed. 
I have hitherto used one of the old Winchester .44's. 
In fact, I have had one for twenty years and more, and 
it would be described now-a-days as a very low power 
rifle. Recently, in order to be up with the times, I pur- 
chased a modern rifle, one of those deadly little .30-30's. 
It is really a most w'onderful instrument, and in my use 
of it in the Maine woods I have been lost in admiration 
at the triumph of mechanical skill which it represents. 
I saw, of course, while in the woods, the rifles used by 
other sportsmen, many of them .30-40's, and more power- 
ful than mine. They are nearly always magazine rifles 
and the way in which young fellows and ministers of the 
gospel, not to mention ladies, pump bullets out of them 
at every object they see and at every glimpse of brown 
or gray color in the woods is frightful lo contemplate. 
There are whole classes of accidents which I think are 
due almost entirely to the extraordinary power of these 
modern rifles. For example, that class of accidents in 
which a man suddenly finds himself struck by a bullet or 
is found lying dead in the woods, and no report of a 
gun i,? heard, nor any means of knowing why he was 
hit, is, I think, in every case, due to the random pump- 
ing of bullets from these terrible weapons which carry 
far beyond the sound of the explosion. There is another 
class of accidents which come from the extraordinary 
accuracy of these rifles at long range. I have been using 
rifles all my life; but the accuracy of these new instru- 
ments at a great distance when used even by an inferior 
marksman astonishes me. A tenderfoot who sees some- 
thing moving along the edge of the lake or sees brown 
or gray color through the leaves and blazes away at it 
is very likely to hit it. If he finds afterward that he has 
shot a woman or a guide or a friend, he is, of course, very 
sorry. 
The rifles have, in fact, become too good. They are 
so good that the element of sport is eliminaated. Shoot-- 
ing with them has become merely a mechanical pumping 
out of lead. Havin.g been brought up to use a shotgun 
tor quail shooting or duck shooting and similar sports, I 
can see no sport whatever in shooting moose with one of 
these modern rifles, and there is scarcely any sport in 
deer shooting with them. There is not much sport under 
the best of circumstances in moose shooting as compared 
with the beautiful skill required in quail or snipe shoot- 
ing, and there is only a little real sport under the best of 
circumstances in deer shooting. Of course the wild 
romantic life one Icadi^ in the woods when in pursuit of 
moose or deer is the most delightful of all things. I 
have nothing at all to say against that. I enjoy it'more than 
words can describe. y\nd fishing is still a. true sport. 
God bo prasied that mechanical ingenuity cannot destroy 
that pleasure. 
But in order to save life and to reduce the pursuit of 
big game in forest countries to its proper limits, I make 
bold to suggest that we abolish by statute the use of the 
rifle altogether and go back to smooth bores. 
Years ago in the Maine woods, say before the times 
of the Civil War, moose and deer were often hunted with 
smooth bores. The famous hunters who went out to 
