Nov. 30, igoi.J 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
431 
Notes^ 
The Watertown Standard reports that iii the vicinity 
of Gouverneur, the farmers in the old Scotch Road settle- 
ment have had many cattle killed by the deer hunters. 
Many hunters have mistaken heifers for deer, and the loss 
has been so great that the farmers have posted signs on 
the trees forbidding further hunting on their lands. -Some 
of the shots which killed the cattle have been spent bul- 
lets, but to the novice a red heifer may resemble a deer 
at a distance. 
Ex-President Grover Cleveland has recovered from a 
cold which threatened to develop into pneumonia. It was 
contracted when on Monday of last week Mr. Cleveland 
was on a hunting trip at Cape Charles and lay for many 
hours in a duck blind. 
President Roosevelt went on a duck hunting trip down 
the Potomac last week, going by the Government vessel 
Sylph to the club house on the island owned by the Metro- 
politan Club, of Washington, in the mouth of Chappawsic 
Creek, near Quantico. The weather was such as to pre- 
vent any shooting, however. 
The twenty-eighth annual banquet of the Cuvier Club, 
of Cincinnati, was held in the club house on Nov. 20, and 
was in every way a most successful affair. President 
Alex. Starbuck and his fellow ofKcers welcomed the more 
than 200 guests. The game on the menu comprised veni- 
son, prairie chicken, ruffed grouse, snipe, quail, blue- 
winged teal duck, wild turkey. The object of the Cuvier 
Club is not simply, as this great banquet might lead 
some to assume, to feast on the good things of the land 
once a year; it has other and more serious aims. Its pur- 
poses are to preserve, protect and increase the game and 
fish of Ohio, rigidly enforce the laws concerning them, to 
promote and advance field sports, and to create a meritori- 
ous museum, for the benefit of the public and public 
schools. The organization also holds that spring shooting 
of birds when breeding, or the taking of fishes when 
spawning, is most reprehensible and should be absolutely 
abolished. It also holds the non-export laws and license 
for non-resident sportsmen, should receive due attention 
and that a uniform .system of laws should prevail as the 
most efficient means of protection to our rapidly disappear- 
ing game and fish. 
Elmer Butler, a well-known Adirondack guide, when 
near Aden Lair Lodge in the town of Minerva, on the 
Boreas River, one day last week, came upon a bear, which 
he killed with a single bullet through the base of th^ brain. 
These dimensions are given : "The bear weighed 515 
pounds, measured 17 inches from the top of the head to 
the tip of the nose, 12 inches from eye to eye, 7 feet 3 
inches from tip to tip, and 5 feet 4 inches around tlie body. 
It was apparently about four years old. The bear was jet 
black, except about the nose, where it was brown." 
Robert J. Schoonmaker, the proprietor of the Hunter's 
Home af Black Lake, near Monticello. N. Y., and well 
known to many sportsmen of New York city, committed 
suicide on Nov. 22. It is recalled that ten j^ears ago his 
father, Smith Schoonmaker. was gored to death by a 
bull, and three years ago his brother^ who was then a 
member of the New York Police force, was killed by the 
accidental discharge of his gun while hunting. 
A number of new animals have just been added to the 
New York Zoological Park, including a pair of Kuldscha 
bears from the northwest of China, a pair of Russian 
brown bears and a pair of sloth bears, two Gelada baboons, 
three mandrill baboons, two Barbary apes, two blue-gray 
lemurs and two entellus or sacred monkeys, a pair of 
Egyptian geese and some fifty other water birds. 
wad Life in Maine. 
AuBURi^, Me., Nov. 20.— Mr. W. P. Davidson says that 
he hardly thinks that Mr. Covert would find a white 
weasel in October. But the weasels are white in the 
northern Maine woods in October. While I was at Roach 
River I went picking beech nuts, which were quite plenty. 
I found the red squirrels very- numerous, and they had 
piled beech nuts in piles of half a gill to half a pint in 
small hollows in the ground; but the nuts were always 
covered over with leaves or dead wood. We picked 
several pints of these nuts that had been piled up by 
squirrels. They were always good nuts. It is said that 
the red squirrel never lays bj*^ a winter store, but it would 
seem that they do. I get a ten-pointed moose with a 
finely proportioned head, with a spread of 45 inches. This 
is a fine moose country, Avith the best of camps and 
guides at B. A. Runnels, twelve miles from Lily Bay. 
We saw many bear signs and more moose than five years 
ago. I believe the moose have increased the past few 
years in Maine. Geo. W. C.-^iiTER. 
Cwfritttcfc Ducks. 
Currituck, N. C, Nov. 15. — Our opening day for 
ducks, geese and swan, Nov. ii, was "'a winner." I esti- 
mate the total number killed at ten to twelve thousand. 
In many instances 200 to the gun were killed. The 
largest bag to a single gun so far reported was 243. 
There were more mallards and redheads killed than I 
have seen before in manj- years, and I never saw ducks in 
finer condition. It is next to impossible to give you the 
individual bags at this time. Will write more on the 
subject later. I hear of one club that killed nine hundred. 
I think, altogether, we shall have the finest sport we have 
had at Currituck in many years. 
More Anon. 
The Kind They Were. 
Two men. claiming to be from Boston, have been stay- 
ing at the farmhouse of a well-known and well-to-do 
farmer in the foothills of the Adirondacks. They have 
spent several weeks this fall hunting, and seemed to be in 
good circumstances. Having related their places of busi- 
ness, address, etc., to the host, they were considered guests 
whose wants should be well attended to. 
Oni 4ay l^st week one of the went into the WQocl? 
hunting with the farmer's son, who was also enjoymg 
the company of the metropolitan acquaintances. In the 
meantime the other hunter said that it was very queer that 
he had not received a check from home, but went further 
to say that if he was out of coin his partner would have it. 
Evening found the sportsman back to their hostelry, and 
in changing his clothes he was very surprised to learn 
that he had lost his pocketbook. 
The farmer, of course, offered them money, which they 
declined, saying it was unnecessary and they would prob- 
ably receive a check before they needed it. Next day one 
of the men asked the farmer for a few dollars, wliich the 
host went to his strong box and procured. The men ate 
supper and said they would probably go camping in the 
evening. 
When Friday morning came the men were not back to 
the farmer's. He and his family were somewhat worried. 
Knowing how easy it is for those not accustomed to the 
woods to get lost, he concluded that perhaps that fate had 
befallen them. The day was then spent in search of the 
hunters, but all effort to find them was in vain. By 
chance the man went to get some money, but found the 
box empt}--. There had been about $40 taken by the city 
guests. The farmer and his son are now wearing out some 
of the old clothes which they cherish in memory of their 
friends who were lost in the woods. — -Watertown (N. Y,) 
Standard. 
A'^lMassachtisetts Fnttti6ge* 
Whitinsville, Mass., Nov. 18. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: I send inclosed a photogarph of setter dog and 
partridge which I think is good enough to be illustrated 
in Forest and Stream. The partridge is an extra large 
one — an old cinnamon back — and was one of a nice bag 
of four that a friend and myself secured on a short half- 
day's trip a few days since. It was by far the largest bird 
of the lot. 
We do not find partridges as plenty- this fall as we had 
A BIG FELLOW. 
hoped for here in this section of South Worcester county. 
I do not hear of bags of over five or six partridge to two 
guns for a day's shoot, and not often so many as that. 
Perhaps the old market-shooters get more, and I hear 
thftt in some other sections near us there are more birds, 
but here all agree that partridges are scarce and seem to 
be more so than last year. We have had quite a number 
of woodcock for us, more than iisual, and quail are met 
with often enough to give quite a taste of the sport. 
Quail should be plenty next year with a good winter, as 
there will be a good many left for seed. 
c. A :..-T 
Indian Teffitory Quail Again. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Mr. Rightmire is all wrong. His letter reads "six crates 
of quail containing 2,000." There never was a coop made 
that contained over sixty — total 360, instead of 2,000. 
They were shipped to Pittsburg two weeks before the 
shooting season opened. After the law was off, four gen- 
tlemen bagged thirty-one birds. The banquet spoken of 
as numbering ''1,200" was just twenty-two, and "quail 
on toast" was roast quail a la turkey. Philip. 
Gttn Boftowers. 
There is an old English saying in a sporting journal, 
"Never loan rod, gun, dog or wife." L, I. P. 
Long Island Deer. 
It is estimated that 125 deer were killed on Long Island 
tliis year. 
**Fofest and Stream** Sells Real Estate. 
MooDus, Conn., Nov. 33, — Please stop ftiy advertise- 
ment and send bilk The preserve was sold through the 
Forest anq STiiEAJvt advertis^.rncnt to Mr. Lanier, of New 
100 $Dort$men'$ finds. 
Some of the Qaeet Discoveries Made by Those Who Am 
Looking for Game or Fish. 
76 
Mr. Charles Hallock contributes to our list of sports- 
men's finds a soldier's priming wire, which had been lost, 
near Fort Capron, Fla., in the Seminole War, and was 
found in the crop of a wild turkey in 1878. It is now in 
the museum of the Military Service Institution on Gov- 
ernor's Island. 
77 
Charles Hallock also refers us to a collection of 
curiosities which Capt. J. W. Collins once showed, and 
which had been taken from stomachs of codfish at sundry 
times while being split and dressed by the bank fishermen 
off Newfoundland, the process usually taking place on 
deck. Among the lot were a splitting knife with a wooden 
handle and blade 6 inches long, a small brass-handled 
knife of quaint workmanship, a rough piece of red 
granite weighing 3 or 4 pounds, an old felt hat, two 
counters and part of a euchre deck (five cards), a frag- 
ment several inches long which the scientists thought was 
lignite, and a brass lamp! Talk about the gorge of an 
ostrich! It isn't a circumstance in comparison. There 
is an undercurrent of whisper that the lamp fell .over- 
board while lighted and was swallowed and fed for' a 
time on cod liver oil, but that the siipply failing, it went 
out and left the stomach of the cod in gloom, with ^ 
general feeling of goneness about the diaphragm. With 
regard to the so-called lignite, it is more probably a frag- 
ment of charred wood which fell overboard from some 
vessel and became heavy with the salt of the ocean, it 
being the habit of the fishermen to make wood fires on 
deck in large tubs filled with sand. 
78 
Two hunters in the woods near South Meriden, Conn., 
found a hermit eighty-four years of age dying of starva- 
tion and exhaustion. This is only one of numerous her- 
mit finds by sportsmen. 
79 
Two New Brunswick, N. J., fishermen fishing in the 
Raritan River thought they saw a turtle, and pulled it out 
Avith a hook, and then found it was a mail bag, the top of 
which was cut olT. In it were two bundles of letters, 
water-soaked, and an iron railroad brake. The letters 
were from Baltimore, and the pouch had evidently been 
thrown in the river that morning. It was delivered to 
Postmaster Price, who notified the Post Office Depart- 
ment. 
80 
All sweet things come to the soldier. Asa Witham, on 
his return from hunting, was met by a summons to join 
his company. He threw his hunting coat on a tree and 
started. This was in Maine in the May of the Spanish 
War year. On his return from hard living at Chicka- 
mauga he found a swarm of bees in possession of the coat, 
drove them off with a smudge, and reaped a harvest of 
22 pounds of honey from the pockets. 
— <^ — 
Proprietors of fishing resorts will find it profitable to advertise 
them in Forest and Stream, 
Winning from Adverse Conditions. 
Why is a fisherman so constituted that the successful 
attainment of what others deem impossible yields more 
contentment than the largest catch in favorable weather, 
under favorable conditions? This is a question that has 
been constant with me this evening of Nov. 22^ while 
thmking ul my fisherman's luck yesterday afternoon and 
this forenoon. 
Your columns in other years have borne articles from 
my pen praising the Cottonwood River of Kansas- as 
the home of that "lord of streams," the large-mouth 
black bass; but the excessive drought of the past summer 
has stopped the springs and smaller tributaries from their 
usual musical flow, and with low water in the river this 
fall's fishing has been very poor, and a caicli of a haU- 
dozen bass 0'" a dozen cr,i ' 1 two tiitn ui a day" sl- 
ashing t'.T? hefti co^ntc J '-ri^rfi 1; have '3^way3 
hr.e.ti p i : that p* or below the mill 
ijpTn. ^r..j j„y .joat is k* : l : .ticiids who jisc the 
' ' iU and have fished bc^ v/ sc via^ times wiLh poor suc- 
cess Ijave urged me ':o 1 them "put the boat above the 
dam. for the hass have all left or been caught out below 
and there are none down below," until T was almost ready 
to grant their rcciuest, but concluded that I would inves- 
tigate for myself before the boat was taken above the 
dam. 
Having leisure from the duties of the law office yester- 
day afternoon, I spent an hour with a minnow net on 
the rapids turning over rocks, and finding, after the most 
tiresome hard Avork, that I only had fourteen chub 
minnows, but saying in thought "if there are no fish I 
have plenty of bait, and if there are fish, and the old say- 
ing is true about an east wind, I have enough bait any- 
way." I started down the river with a minnow dragging 
after the boat, and for a mile and a half of river no sign 
of a fish was apparent. Finally, in the deepest hole in 
the river my hook caught on a snag, and in working to 
loosen it I made the discovery that the bottom of the 
river resembled a forest "windfall" from the trees and 
limbs strewn over it. Adjusting the float, a small piece 
of soft pine, but slightb^ larger than a penholder, just 
large enough to support two No. 000 shot, to the depth 
of the water, I let the boat drift over the submerged 
forest, and caught two fine two-pound bass. As I was 
turning the boat to pass over the fishing ground again, 
I saw the approaching boat of a market fisherman with 
foiu- poles over the stern, and to my question, "What 
luck?" he answered, "Not a. bite." While I plead guilty 
t?) wishing him at §om? other plaQe-^o^ th^ pver— iij'? 
