Jan. 12, igoi.T 
FOREST AND STREAM, 
I'T 
29 
the horse which had drawn the vehicle, so setting both 
himself and his friend afoot. This really happened this 
fall, and as the friend who lost the horse was some sore 
about it, the matter got into the courts. It is the history 
of the lawsuit which now comes to hand in the following 
cutting from a Duluth newspaper, which is sent down by 
a friend from that city: 
"The case of S. C. Confer against J. J, Frey, in which 
the plaintiff seeks to recover $250, the alleged value of a 
driving horse shot by Frey in mistake for a deer, was on 
trial in municipal court yesterday. Mr. Frey and Dr. 
Confer went out deer hunting together early in Novem- 
ber. They drove behind the doctor's sorrel horse. When 
they reached what was believed to be a favorable point 
for deer, the horse was tied to a tree, and both men went 
into the woods, taking different directions. Shortly after- 
wards Frey having become mixed in his directions, caught 
a glimpse" of what he thought was a deer and fired, and 
to his dismay discovered that he had killed Confer's 
horse. The two men had to walk home, a distance of 
several miles.". 
Sale of Game ia Minnesota. 
In the annual report of Agent Beutner, of the Minnesota 
Game and Fish Commission, the recommendation is 
made that the sale of all game be prohibited in that State. 
Mr. Beutner also recommendfi that the spring shooting 
law be amended, that a non-resident license of not less 
than $15 be fixed by law, that game wardens be put on 
salary, and that market fisherm.en take out licenses. These 
recommendations are fairly in line with the late devel- 
opments of the protective idea in the West It may be 
plainly seen that the whole trend in the Mississippi Val- 
ley is toward non-resident shooting licenses. Indiana 
is going to make a strong pull for a $ro license this ses- 
sion of the Legislature. The probability is that Michigan 
would in that case pass a similar law. It is only a ques- 
tion of time before Minnesota has this clause in her law. 
Agent Beutner says that in two years he has distrib- 
uted 4,611,000 trout fry, 43,300 bass, 69.100 croppies and 
31,400,000 i)ike. He wants a car for this work, and also 
wants the State to purchase instead of leasing grounds 
for its hatchei-y. The present site of the Minnesota 
hatchery is a very beautiful one, but it is only rented by 
the State. 
Carp. 
It is one of the boasts of the Illiiaois Fish Commission 
that it has successfully introduced carp into the waters 
of this State. The meed of thanks due the Commission 
for this enterprise can only be surpassed by that which 
would be cheerfully tendered them by the people of this 
State if they could devise some means of getting these 
carp out, and leaving this country just the way it was 
before these fish were put in. The old Maksawba Club 
marsh on the Kankakee River has had its wild rice all 
eaten off by these fish. Up at Fox Lake, in this State, 
property owners this fall raised a fund to attempt to 
destroy the carp in that chain of waters, which were once 
suitable for fishing and summer resofft purposes. In one 
week deputies seined out 30,000 pounds of these fish. 
They are said to have taken one which wieghed 56 
pounds. All this trouble and expense might have been 
unnecessary, just as it will probably be futile. These fish 
cannot be seined out completely, and the few left in will 
soon multiply again. There is no nuisance, after the 
English sparrow, which is worse than the German carp. 
There are a good many of us who are not quite ready to 
take the purely commercial attitude that because some few 
people will eat tliese fish the rest of us ought to stand 
for the raising of them at the expense of all the original 
attractiveness of our streams. It is up to the Illinois 
State Fish Commission to make itself popular by ex- 
plaining, not how to cook a carp, but how to kill it, in 
the quickest possible way. We ought to have a law per- 
mitting the spearing of these fish, and there ought to be 
a bounty put on them were it not for the sole fact that 
such a bounty would break this State. They are an un- 
qualified nuisance, and no amount of explanation in re- 
gard to their virtues will disabuse the average outdoor 
man of this belief. 
Dead and Down, 
The mills of the Government are still grinding at Wash- 
ington over the proposal of Capt. Mercer, Minnesota In- 
dian agent, to sell some more of the dead and down tim- 
ber belonging to the people over whom he has charge. 
There is the usual amount of heavy rumbling and jarring 
of the Government machinery. The lumbermen are coy. 
Secretary Hitchcock is non-committal. Indian agent 
Merecer is explanatory, and the Indians are silent. In 
spite of all this the result is easy to foresee. All the timber 
on those reservations is going to be dead and down. So 
far as the Indians are concerned, they constitute but a 
trifling obstacle in the scheme. Before long the Indians 
will also be dead and down. 
Efforts are making to purchase the Indian lands in 
Red Lake County, Minn., with a view to throwing them 
open to settlement. The sale of the White Earth reser- 
vation is still going on. It is the intention to purchase 
48,000 acres of the lower Brule Indians in South Dakota. 
The Indians are wilHng to sell it at $1.25 an acre. They 
get about that much for the splendid pine of the North- 
ern Minnesota reservations. That is to say, they think 
they will get it. Really, under the workings of our white 
man's justice, they get their dollar and a quarter, but it 
costs thiree dollars and a quarter to get it to them. You 
can figure it out yourself. The Indian is always in debt, 
and he will be, until he is dead and down. 
E. Hough. 
Hartford Building, Chicago, 111. 
Game Cunning. 
To S«mio«nt the Difficulty. 
"And if your party came suddenly to a stream," said 
the story teller, "too deep for your horse to wade over, 
too wide for it to jump over and too swiftly flowing for 
it to swim over, what would you do?" 
"Why, that's easy," said one of the party; "we'd sit 
down and think it over." — Yonkers Statesman. 
The Forest and Stream is put to press each week on Tuesday. 
Correspondence intended for publication should reach us at the 
}git<s9t by Mo!i4»y W4 IS^eii earlier ^ practicgblf^ 
If any one wants an illustration of the way in which 
animals grow wise in the ways of the hunter, they ought 
to come out to this country and try a hunt after some 
of the bull elk that hang around here. Usually a bull 
elk is not remarkably cunning, and the elk that stay back 
in the mountains are still rather simple. 
They use all the tricks that the sharpest buck deer or 
bull moose in Maine ever thought of, and in addition have 
invented a lot of brand new schemes of their own that 
are just suited to this country. When one remenibers 
that only a few years ago these elk were just as stupid as 
the balance of their tribe, one wonders where they picked 
up all this k-nowledge. Such things as making a loop 
down wind before lying down for the day, watching their 
back track and things of that kind, are only a very small 
part of their plans to escape being killed. The intelli- 
gence which they display in picking out places in which 
to bed down for the day is remarkable. I put in a couple 
of weeks this fall trailing around after some bulls that 
stay pretty close to the house, and in spite of all I could 
do I never even saw a hair of one of them. Their beds 
were always in a place where they could either see, hear 
or smell anything approaching them long before they 
can be seen themselves. Time after time I put in hours 
trying to get a sight of one of these old fellows, but 
with always the same result. 
After, loop after loop, down wind, after crawling for 
hundreds of yards at a time in snow a foot deep, and 
moving as silently as possible, I would find the bed just 
vacated. And if I waited until du.sk before trying to close 
in, I always found that the cunning brute had, on getting 
up and commencing to feed, gone up \\;ind into the thickest 
cover he could find, where it was absolutely impossible to 
get within sight without making noise enough to spoil 
the stalk. 
I guess the trouble is that the game is learning new 
tricks faster than us fellows who learned to hunt_ when the 
game was tame can figure out new ways of hunting. 
At any rate, I used to think that I could hunt, but when 
I chase around among a lot of elk for a couple of weeks 
and only get one fool calf that did not have any better 
sense than to stick its head out of the clump of spruce 
behind which the rest of the bunch were calmly watching 
me, I rather thinl< that something is wrong with my wood- 
craft. 
Civilization is spoiling the game, just as it is spoihng 
the Indian, the cowpuncher and, in fact, the whole West. 
And there is no other place to go, so I guess we might as 
well get civilized and be done with it. 
Wells, Wyo. Wm. WellS. 
A December Afternoon. 
It was cold — the thermometer stood at zero, although 
it was high noon, but the sun shone brilliantly and there 
was no wind. The air was dry and bracing, every breath 
of it full of life and energy to those who breathed it. Two 
old friends stood on the top of a hill that overlooked a 
level bottom two miles long and a mile wide, bounded 
on one side by the wooded hills along the river. Through 
the bottom ran several little streams, bordered by plum 
thickets, and the banks of the river were bordered with a 
wide fringe of undergrowth. There were bushes, too, 
along the old rail fences that divided the bottom into 
fields. The fields were covered with com stalks and 
weedy stubble, with here and there patches of high grass, 
while here and there were clumps of cottonwpod trees, 
the ground under them crowded with weeds high as the 
head of a man. I said there were two friends ; there were 
four. Two of them were four-footed, and named re- 
spectively Sinner and Flora, but they were none the less 
friends on that account. After a few minutes looking 
over the ground and deciding the course to take, these 
four went down the hill and swept out into the fields, the 
dogs full of life, going at full gallop, and the two men 
walking briskly, for the air was sharp and demanded lively 
"walking to keep warm. The dogs were going too fast for 
careful work, but it was useless to try to get them into 
moderation till they had warmed themselves and flushed 
a covey or two of quail. Flora went sailing down an old 
fence fringed with bushes, and all at once fetched up so 
suddenly that she turned end for end andj=tood headed in 
the opposite direction. 
"There they are," said E., "and I'll bet they are bunched 
in a sunny fence corner. I saw a famous covey along 
that fence the other day. Must have been twenty of 
them. If it's the same lot and nobody been into 'em, we 
will have fun with them sure." 
One each side of the fence, the two men approached, 
moving very slowly as they neared the dog. I don't know 
why they went so slowly, but that's the way they always 
do it. Presently E. said, "I see them all huddled together 
in the fence corner opposite the dog. 'Bout half a bushel 
of 'em. It's the big covey all right." 
"Well, let's put 'em up," said H. "It's too cold to stand 
here long." 
So they took a few steps more and out came the birds, 
and the air was full of them. It looked as if a shotgun 
fired into the "brown of them" was sure to kill a half- 
dozen at least, but these fellows shot three times and got 
but two. H. did not shoot but once, because he is great on 
scattered birds, and always is very careful about mark- 
ing them down. They went 80 to 100 yards along the 
fence and pitched into the weeds and bushes. 
"That's a layout for us," said E. "Couldn't have it any 
better if it was done to order." 
The dogs were kept in and the procession moved along 
the fence with the dogs a rod or two in advance. 
"Must be getting about there," said E., and a moment 
later out went one from behind him and started across 
to the nearest clump of cottonwoods. E. turned quicklJ^ 
steadied himself an instant, and fired. The bird folded 
its wings and dropped into the weeds. Flora was on the 
other side of the fence and made a dash to get over, flush- 
ing another bird which was a fair shot for H.. but instead 
of shooting it he proceeded to explain to Flora that she 
was old enough to know better and would consequently 
be held responsible for such lapses from plain duty. In 
fact, H. gave her a goodly dose of benevolent assimila- 
tion, applied outwardly by means of an elm switch, and 
at the same tiipe he told her that the sooner she got tlia^ 
wire edge oflf the better it would be for all concerned. 
While all this was going on. Sinner stood solid on a bird 
less than two rods away. Sinner was an old veteran and 
seldom got rattled about anything. 
"I marked that bird all right," said E, "Saw him go 
down between the two right hand trees of the cotton- 
wood grove." 
H. now stepped to where Sinner was pointing, telling 
E. to look out as it Jjl^uld be sure to dart through the 
bushes right to him, wliich it did, but just as E. pulled 
his trigger the bird turned and darted through the bushes 
again, so E. missed, but as it came in sight of H. a few 
rods down the fence, he got it. Just then a dozen or 
more got up and hied themselves away, some to the cotton- 
woods and some further along the fence. Another covey 
rose and joined the stragglers, going down the fence. The 
shooters followed along the fence and when they got 
among them there were flushes and misses and kills in 
such rapid succession that they hardly knew where they 
were at; but by the time the birds were all up, they had 
bagged six. Most of those that got away went to the 
cottonwoods, so the shooters followed them. Here the 
shooting was difficult, for the trees were close together 
and the branches were low enough to almost meet the 
tops of the high weeds, but as they had now "got down to 
business" and knew they had to do it about right if they 
got any birds, they did better shooting than they did in 
the open, and after thoroughly beating out the ground 
they got several more into the bag. 
"Where will we go nexc?" asked H. 
"Reckon we better go down Painter Creek," said E. 
There was a bad tangle of grass, weeds, hazel brusH 
and plum thickets with weedy corn along the edges, and 
there were quail in the weeds; the dogs found a trail of a 
covey that ran ahead of them and the men followed the 
dogs for a hundred yards, expecting a rise every mo- 
ment. At last E. said, "The tension is getting too strong 
for me. Let's rush them." So they took a few rapid 
steps and the air was full of quail. They rose, widely 
scattered, so they did not interfere with each other, and 
the result was two doubles, but only three were bagged, 
the dogs failing to find the other one. The escaping 
birds went into the tangle of brush, weeds and grass 
along the creek, and the dogs and men tramped and 
threshed the place all over, but the birds lay so close that 
not half of them were put up, though several more were 
bagged. \ 
The sun was now sinking out of sight, ■ and the cold 
was nipping at ears and noses, so the shooters got into 
the road and started on a lively walk for home. As they 
passed the cottonwood grove the scattered birds they had 
left there were calling to each other. "Some of the folks 
that write for the papers speak of the quail calling 
Bob White as they go home from quail shooting," said 
E. "That always spoils the story for me, for anybody 
who knows anything about quail knows that Bob White 
is their love call, and is never used except in the mating 
season." 
"I guess all the hunting that kind of man ever does 
is done hunting for a place where he can get quail on 
toast. Ouch, but my ears are cold !" said H. 
O. H. Hampton. 
Rhode Island Notes. 
Providence, R. I., Jan. 6. — Editor Forest and Stream: 
Last week it was reported in the local papers that two 
deer had been seen near Chepachet, and that about every 
gun, old and new, in western Rhode Island had been put 
in condition for shooting. Perhaps the would-be deer 
slayers are not aware that deer are protected by law, and 
that venison in Rhode Island may prove to be very ex- 
pensive. A deer is not a bird, but one of the Commis- 
sioners of Birds has thought it proper to call attention 
to Chapter 723 passed by the Rhode Island Legislature 
for the protection of deer, Feb. 9, 1900: "Section i. 
Whoever before the first day of Febraury, A. D. 19OS, 
takes or kills a deer, except his own tame deer kept on his 
own grounds, shall be fined not exceeding $500." The 
Commissioner also explained that in Massachusetts deer 
are protected at all times, the penalty for killing one 
being $100. The Connecticut deer cannot be shot legally 
until 1903. 
In the inaugural message of Gov. William Gregory to 
the General Assembly of Rhode Island, he called atten- 
tion to the following matters: 
Protection of Birds. 
"The State is to be congratulated on the devoted and 
intelligent consideration to the interests of bird life which 
is being given by the Commissioners created at the last 
January session, and provided with ample power to en- 
force the laws. The Commissioners report that public 
interest has awakened to a more general regard for the 
bird laws than ever before. The work of education is 
economic as well as humane, since our birds are necessary 
for the preservation of the crops, which is accomplished 
through the constant warfare they wage against worms 
and insects. Confronted by the circumstance that with- 
in fifteen years past bird life in our State has diminished 
65 per cent., that to save certain crops poisons are re- 
sorted to where nature formerly worked through the 
birds, the Commissioners are seeking diligently to re- 
trieve the disaster. The open season for killing game 
birds has been shortened, and it is trusted that with the 
co-operation of sportsmen and marketmen and an edu- 
cated public sentiment progress njay continue to be made 
without advising the last resort of a close season for two 
or three years. 
laland Fisheries. 
"From their headquarters, at Wickford, the Commis- 
sion has been unusually active during the year. Definite 
and valuable information relative to the habits, food, 
enemies and rate of growth of the scallop has been se- 
cured, the series of experiments on the life and habits of 
the clam have been successfully continued and encour- 
aging results are reported from the efforts to devise a 
practical method of lobster culture. The appropriation 
made last year enabled the Commission to build and 
equip a floating laboratory and to possess a small naphtha 
launch," 
Roger Larkin recently shot a cat owl, at South Kings- 
town, ■vyhich measured 3 fe^t 8 inclies from tip to tip. 
■ W. H. M, 
