S48 
FOREST AND STREAM 
[Nov. 2, 1901. 
we know we are alone, and strike a fresh trail, with how 
much more deliberation and satisfaction we can follow 
it; taking time to observe every little detail of ani- 
mal action, as we see it recorded on the snow, and 
thereby deriving the full and complete joy connected 
with the hunt, which is too often lost by over anxiety to 
kill. 
At such a place, and amid such surroundings as the 
latter, it was my glorious privilege to have many a hunt. 
Beginning about eighty rods above my cabin in the 
Rockies, and extending many miles up into the moun- 
tains, was an immense body of green timber, composed 
of steep moimtain sides,, sharp ridges, deep ravines, level 
flats, old beaver dams and swamps, and every variety 
which goes to constitute a good deer country, most of 
which was open timber and easily traveled. 
For several years in succession it was my habit to 
go up into this green woods on the morning of the 
first tracking snow in the fall, for a deer hunt. 
Leaving home at or before the break of day, I 
would be up in the best of hunting grounds about three 
miles, in time to find the game, feeding; and never a 
fall did I miss getting one or more deer on the first 
day of snow-hunting, as they were seemingly more un- 
wary at that time, not having been disturbed from the 
fall before, and then very rarely, as I was about the 
only one who ever went there to hunt. In the fall of 
i8g2 I went up there early one m.orning for my regular 
hunt on the first snow of the season. 
As I was trailing a little bunch of deer quite early 
in the morning, about three miles from home, I heard 
a sHght rustle in the brush, and a couple of vei-y faint 
and muftled "thumps.'' across a ravine on the top of a 
ridge ahead; while it was r,o slight as to have been un- 
noticaTjle to one not familiar with such sounds. I knew 
well what it was. Crossing over T found what I ex- 
pected — the snow ploughed up where they had made 
their big jumps. They started out along a steep moun- 
tain side, and I followed rapidly while keeping a sharp 
lookout; although it was the least of my expectations 
to see them short of a half hour or' more. 
My expefience has been that if they are frightened 
by seeing or hearing a himter, they are apt to stop at 
any time within a ve.r\r short distance to investigate, 
while if they are startled b}^ getting the scent, thej' put 
a good distance between themselves and their pursuers 
before they stop. I had gone but a very short dis- 
tance when I saw a buck standing at about 60 yards, on 
the steep mountain side, directly above me, headed as 
if going back the opposite direction, and watching me. 
In less than three seconds the .45-90 cracked, and 
the buck staggered a few steps down the hill and fell 
dead. After dressing it, I dragged it — or rather guided 
it and kept it from running over me and let it slide — 
about 100 yards down the hill to the bottom, where 
was a little flat along a stream of water, where it was 
easy of access with a horse, and there I hung it up on 
a tree. 
He was a fine fat two-pronged buck, probably a two- 
year-old, and presented a picture, hanging there on a 
tree in the dark evergreen, snow-covered f®rest, which 
would make the heart of any hunter glad. To me the 
dark grey color of deer with back ground of snow 
composes a harmony of colors which cannot be equalled 
by any combination. 
After feasting my eyes on the picture, I went to in- 
vestigate how it all came about; I found this buck had 
left the others and walked back about 50 yards along 
the side of the mountain, and above their trail to watch 
for danger, and also found that there were left a doe 
and two fawns. They had gone on. some distance from 
where he had turned back, and waited until the shot, 
and then started again on the run, as the tracks showed. 
Circumstances made it neccessary to leave the buck 
hanging there about a week before going after it; when 
I went after it late one evening with a pack-horse, I 
found one entire hind-quarter eaten out by martens, 
as their well-beaten paths showed, and at first I felt 
provoked; but it was only for a moment; I saw where 
the loss could be turned to good account. Hastily 
packing on the horse what was left of the buck, I made 
long and lively strides for home. 
I wanted to set traps for the marten, and to insure 
success I must get my traps there that night.. 
Just a few minutes before sundown I got home with 
my deer: I put ,the saddle on a fresh horse, and taking 
two steel traps and some bait, started on a race against 
night. I set one trap at the root of the tree where the 
deer had hung, and another a few rods away, by the 
side of a log, and rode leisurely home in the dark, feel- 
ing a satisfaction and contentment peculiar in itseh, and 
hard to define, but which certainly does not come in the 
ordinary walks of life, surrounded by a throng of peo- 
ple as most of us are. 
The next morning on going back I found a marten 
in each of the traps which had the finest fur and brought 
the highest price of any I ever caught. I reset my traps 
but no more came; I have never known before nor have I 
since of marten coming so far down toward the settle- 
ments in that belt of timber. Thus does the following up 
and accomplishing of one pursuit, in the hunter's hfe as 
elsewhere, open up new opportunities for profit or pleas- 
ure, making even a Hfe of solitude in the wilderness full 
of interest. 
Emerson Carney. 
Pennsylvania Gtouse and}' Other Game* 
Sayre, Pa. — Ruffed grouse are. being found in plenty 
throughout all this northern Pennsylvania country., In 
fact, one can scarcely go amiss of good grouse country 
hereabouts. The same statement applies to much of the 
cover lying adjacent to the State line. Gray squirrels 
are not plentiful. Rabbits are in evidence everywhere. 
Barring the illegal shooter, the quail season will dis- 
close a fair supply of birds abroad t-he Chemung and Sus^ 
quehanna bottom lands. - - - 
Wild geese are moving south by easy stages. Ducks are 
furnishing some fair shooting on Cayuga and Montsuma 
marshes, but the best shootijig oh these birds- is destined 
to come later on. M, Qmuu 
Engflishl Pheasantsi andlfFarmers/ 
Amacansett, N. Y., u'ct. 25.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: Most farmers are beginning to see the value of 
birds to protect the crops, yet there are some in this neigh- 
borhood who insist that the English pheasant, which our 
Amagansett Sporting Club let go, do more injury tlian- 
good. I would like to read in your paper an article on 
this subject. Dimon Conklin, Sec'y. 
We quote as the best information on the subject the 
following paragraphs from W. B. Tegetmeier's work, 
"Pheasants; Their Natural History and Practical Man- 
amegent" : 
Like the domestic fowl, which it closely resembles in its 
internal structure and its habits, the pheasant is an om- 
nivorous feeder; grain, herbage, roots, berries and other 
small fruits, insects, acorns, beech mast, are alike accept- 
able to it. Naumann gives the following detailed descrip- 
tion of its dietary on the Continent: "Its food consists 
of grain, seeds, fruits and berries, with green herbs, in- 
sects and worms, varying with the time of year. Ants, 
and particularly their larvas. are a favorite food, the latter 
forming the chief support of the young. It also eats many 
green weeds, the tender shoots of grass, cabbage, young 
clover, wild cress, pimpernel, young peas, etc. Of berries: 
the wild mezereum. wild strawberries, currants, elder- 
berries from the species Sanibucus racemosa. S. nigra and 
.S". ebulus: blackberries, mistletoe, hawthorn. Plums, 
apples and pears it eats readily, and cherries, mulberries 
and grapes it also takes when it can get them. In the 
autumn, ripe seeds are its chief food ; it eats those of 
many of the sedges and grasses, and of several species of 
Polygonum, as P. diimetorum; black bindweed, knot 
grass and also those of the cow-wheat, and acorns, beech 
mast, etc., form a large portion of its food in the latter 
months of the year. Among forest plants, it likes the 
se^ds of the hemp-nettle, and it alSo feeds on almost all 
the .seeds that the farmer sows," 
To this long catalogue of its Continental fare may be 
added the roots of the common silver weed, and those of 
the pig-nut or earth-nut and the tubers of the common 
buttercups, which are often scratched out of the soil and 
eaten. Macgillivray states that "One of the most remark- 
able facts relative to this, bird that has come under my 
observation was the presence of a very large quantity 
of the fronds of the common polypody in the crop of 
one which I opened in the winter of 1835. I am not 
aware that any species of fern has ever been found con- 
stituting part of the food of a ruminating quadruped or 
gallinaceous bird ; and if it shoidd be found by experiment 
that the pheasant thrives on such substances, advantage 
might be taken of the circumstance." 
Thompson, in his "Natural Hi,story of Ireland," re- 
counts the different varieties ©f food he observed in open- 
ing the crops of ten pheasants — from November to April 
inckisive. In seven he discovered the fruit of the haw- 
thorn, with grain, small seeds and peas. In one no less 
than thirty-seven acorns; Another had its crop nearly 
filled with grass ; only one contained any insects, the 
period of examination being the colder months of the 
year; in summer the pheasant is decidedly insectivorous: 
all contained numerous fragments of stone. He also 
records that in the spring the yellow flowers of the pile- 
wort are always eaten in large quantity, as are the tuber- 
ous roots of the common silver weed, when they are 
turned up by cultivation. 'Mr. Thompson adds: "While 
spending the month of January. 1849. at the sporting 
quarters of Ardimersy Cottage, Island of Lslay. where 
pheasants are abundant, and attain a very large size — the 
ring-necked variety, too, being common — ^I observed that 
these birds, in the outer or wilder coverts, fed, during 
mild as well as severe weather, almost wholly on hazel 
nuts. In the first bird that was remarked to contain 
them, thev were reckoned, and foynd to be twenty-four 
in number, all of full size and perfect; in addition were 
many large insect larvas. Either oats or Indian corn 
being thrown out every morning before the windows of 
the cottage for pheasants, I had an opportunity of observ- 
ing their great preference of the former to the latter. I 
remarked a pheasant one day in IsIay taking the sparrow's 
place, by picking at horsedung on the road for undigested 
oats." 
Among the more singular articles of food that form 
part of the pheasant's very varied dietary may be men- 
tioned the spangles of the qak so common in the autumn 
on the under side of the leaves. These are galls caused 
by the presence of the eggs of a species of gall-fly, which 
mzj be reared from the spangles if they are collected in 
the autumn, and kept in a cool and rather moist atmos- 
phere during the winter. .About the fall of the leaf these 
spangles begin to lose their flat, mushroom-like form and 
red, hirsute appearance, and become by degrees raised or 
bossed toward the middle, in consequence of the growth 
of the Inclosed grub, which now becomes visible when the 
spangle is cut open. The perfect insect makes its appear- 
ance in April and May. Some few years since Mr. R. 
Carr Ellison published the following account of their 
being eagerly sought after and devoured by pheasants in a 
wild state: "Just before the fall of the oak leaf these 
spangles (or the greater part of them) become detached 
from it, and are scattered tipon the ground under the trees 
in great profusion. Our pheasants delight In picking 
them up, especially from the surface of walks and roads, 
where they are most easily found. But, as they are quite 
visible, even to human eyes, among the wet but un decayed 
leaves beneath the oaks, wherever pheasants have been 
turning them up, a store of winter food is evidently pro- 
vided by these minute and dormant insects, with their 
vegetable incasement, in addition to the earth worms, 
slugs, etc., which induce the pheasants to forage so in- 
dustriously, by scratching up the layers of damp leaves 
in incipient decay which cover the woodland soil in win- 
ter. Not only have we found the spangles plentifully in 
the crops of pheasants that have been shot, hwt, on pre- 
senting leaves covered with them to the" common -and to 
the gold pheasants In confinement, we obser\'ed the birds 
to pick them up without a moment's hesitation, and to 
look eagerly for more." _ . _ 
The value of pheasants- to the agriculturist Is scarcely 
sufficiently appreciated; the birds destroy enorraeus num- 
bers'" ©f" injurious insects— ^upward qf twelve- hundred 
wifeworms hav? been taken gut of the wop of a pheasant; 
if this number was consumed at a single meal, the total 
destroyed must be almost incredible. There is no doubt 
that insects are preferred to grain; one pheasant shot 
at the close of the shooting season had in its crop 726, 
wirewonns, one acorn, one snail, nine berries and three 
grains of wheat. Mr. F. Bond states that he took out of 
the crop of a pheasant 440 grubs of the crane fly or daddy 
longlegs — these larvje are exceedingly destructive to the 
roots of the grass on lawns and pastures. As another 
instance of their insectivorous character may be mentioned 
the complaint of Waterton. that they had extirpated the 
grasshoppers from Walton Park. They also occasionally 
eat molluscous animals. Mr. John Bishop, of Llandovery, 
records that he killed a pheasant on the coast of Islay 
whose crop was filled with the colored snails abounding 
on the bents or grass stems on the coast. 
Lord Lilford, in his magnificent volumes on the "Birds 
of Northamptonshire," writes: "The pheasant, where 
not preserved in unreasonable numbers, is a good friend 
to the farmer, from the enormous number of wireworms 
and other noxious Insects which it devours, to say nothing 
of its liking for the roots of various weeds; but it would 
be absurd to deny that grain forms its favorite food, and a 
field of standing beans will, as is well known, draw 
pheasants for miles. It is very much the fashion to feed 
the birds with maize; but, In our own opinion, the flesh 
of pheasants which have been principally fed upon this 
corn is very far inferior in flavor to that of those who 
have found their own living upon what the land may offer 
them." 
Like their allies, the domestic fowls, pheasants are oc- 
caslonalli'" carnivorous in their appetite. A correspon- 
dent writes : "This morning my keeper brought me a 
pied cock pheasant, found dead ("but still warm) in. some 
.standing barley. The bird was in finest condition, and 
showed no marks whatever, when plucked, of a violent 
death. On searching the gullet I extracted a short-tailed 
field mouse, which had doitbtless caused death by strangu- 
lation." And a similar instance was recorded by Mr. 
Hutton, of Northallerton. The Hon. and Rev. C. 
Batliurst, in a letter published in Loudon's Magazine of 
Natural History, vol. -vii., p. 153, relates that Sir John 
OgiU'y saw a pheasant flying off with a common slow- 
worm; that this reptile does sometimes form part of the 
food of the pheasant is confirmed by Mr. J. E. Harting. 
who recounts, in his work on "The Birds of Middlesex." 
that "on examining the crop of a pied pheasant, shot ill 
October, 1864, I was surprised to find in it a common 
slow-worm, which measured eight inches in length, ft 
was not quite perfect, having lost the tip of the tail; 
otherwise, if whole, it would probably have measured 
nine inches." 
ThellMaine Game f Country, ^ 
Oct. 27. — If one is doubtful about the Importance of 
Maine as a resort for big game, let him read the Bangor 
record for th^ week — 472 deer, 32 moose and 5 bears. 
These figures only represent the game shipped through 
Bangor toward the west, and are but a very small part 
of the game actually killed in eastern Maine. This is 
especially true since the great interest In big-game hunt- 
ing that has grown up within a few years among the 
Maine farmers and lumbermen. Local hunters are getting 
twice the game that falls to outsiders. The Bangor rec- 
ord for the corresponding week last 5'ear was 423 deer, 
43 moose, showing a gain of 49 deer this year and a loss 
of II moose. The" record for the season, up to Friday 
night, was 1,076 deer and 46 moose; same time a year 
ago, 1,000 deer and 56 moose. This year the gain is 76 
deer, with a loss of 10 moose. It is certain that the 
number of hunters this year is a good deal in excess of a 
year ago. Women hunters are decidedly in greater num- 
bers than ever before noted. Mrs. S. W. Whillden, of 
New York, has had good success in the neighborhood 
of Greenville. From a week's hunting she brought out a 
moose and a deer, both good specimens. Other ladies 
who brought deer through Bangor last week were Miss 
Lucy Hobbs, of Milo ; Miss Esther Durgln. and Mrs. 
E. F. Dallas, of Bangor; Mrs. A. Davis and Mrs. W. 
Briss. of Oldtown; Mrs. F. L. Wood and Mrs. J. A. 
Tabor, of Corinna. Boston hunters seem to be getting 
their full share of Maine big game, though the number of 
moose and deer reaching the markets is unusually small. 
Only two or three moose have been received. One was 
received at Faneuil Hall Market Thursday that barely 
cleared the law. He had horns with only two tines ; not 
antlers at all, but round, like cow horns. Evidently he 
was a two-year-old. A market man of many years' ex- 
perience told me Saturday that not half the deer are com- 
ing in that were coming in a year ago. If hunters are 
getting them they are not sending them directly into the 
market. He says that there is now no shipment of Maine 
game into Boston by underground railway, what is re- 
ceived coming directly from the hunters. Often, perhaps, 
the shippers do not kill the game themselves, only bring 
it out. But they have to make oath in Bangor that 
the game is their own, and false statements are dangerous, 
since the wardens are watching closely. Now it is pro- 
posed to have an examining station for game at Portland, 
since big game is coming from a vast territory- that does 
not come through Bangor at all. Four live deer passed 
through Bangor on Wednesday. They _ were froni the ' 
Kineo region, and consigned to C. W. Dimmick, of Bos- 
ton, and doubtless will be shown at the Sportsmen's Show 
here next spring. 
.A great many deer are leaving: the region of Kineo 
daily, the hunting conditions having been good. 
Many hunters secure the full limit of the daw — two deer. 
T. Sedgwick Steele, of Hartford,^ Conn., left Kineo last 
week, after a two : weeks' trip .into the West Branch 
region. He took out a white deer, a very beautiful speci- 
men. A. L. Young, of Auburn, Me., shot his moose 
the- other, day, from the piaz.za. of. the Chesuncook club 
house;- at Chesuncbok Lake.. Willi.aro .M, .Davis, .of New- 
ton -Highlands., sliot a large bear last.we.ek, in the v.icin.ity 
of -Big- Stream-Brook, where he lias. been. hunting.In com- 
pany with A. A.-Soule. The bear was an.Qld. female,; very 
gaunt- and -large^ and must have weighed .SOOipdunds when 
in- flesh.- M,r..SOule secured a moose with .a fine hgad. 
Morton L. -Dennis, -of Skowhegan, Me., .shot ,a. moese 
af Dead Water, : oiv-Aiistin .Stream,- last -■week-rrthelfirst 
