Dec 14, igoi.J 
FOREST AND STREAM 
467 
one should act under certain conditions, but are charm- 
ing descriptions of shooting trips by competent and well 
equipped men in which the instructions are all given, 
but dressed in most attractive form. Here are two quo- 
tations, the first of which pictures the wild rice fields 
of the interior before the settlement, and when they were 
the feeding ground of vast numbers of ducks; 
"Scattered over the northern country, between the 
Hudson River and the Missouri, are many thousands of 
reedy swamps and shallow lakes, and great stretches of 
wet meadow-land, where the wild rice grows. In the 
spring, so soon as the water is warmed by the genial 
rays of the advancing sun, the tiny pale green spears 
show themselves above its surface, and, all through the 
Jhot summer, grow taller and stouter, until, when August 
comes, the tasseled heads begin to bow with the weight 
of the flowers, and, a little later, the soft, milky grain 
appears in a waving crop. In the good old times, before 
the white man's foot had explored every recess of our 
land, or his plow furrowed every prairie, or his crooked 
gray fences disfigured each landscape, these rice fields 
were the homes of innumerable wild creatures. 
"On their borders the herons built their nests, and in 
the open waters, among the stalks, they did their fish- 
ing. In and out among the steins the wild ducks and 
grebes swam in daily journeyings, while the rails and the 
coots ran, or waded or climbed, among the stalks, un- 
disturbed. Here the muskrat had his home, living, in 
the summer, perhaps, in a hole on some higher piece of 
ground, and. in winter, building for himself, from the 
reeds and the stems of the rice, a house, substantial and 
impervious to the cold. Here, too, lived the mink, tak- 
ing his daily toll of fish or frogs from the water; some- 
times killing the muskrat, and now and then feasting 
greedily on the eggs or the young of some bird, whose 
nest he had despoiled. 
"Among the rice or the reeds, the blackbirds built 
their hanging nests of grass, supported by three or four 
natural columns, and all through the heat of the June 
days the mother bird brooded her pale blue, black- 
streaked eggs, swinging easily to the movement of the 
rice stems, like the sailor in his hammock at sea. More 
solid and substantial were the houses built by the marsh 
wren; round balls of grass, deftly woven about a stalk 
of the rice, roofed over as well as floored, and with only a 
narrow hole for the passage in and out of the tiny 
owner. Sometimes a single pair built half a dozen of 
these nests, near one another, before making a habita- 
tion that pleased them, and those that they had left 
were taken by the bumblebees for homes in which to 
■do their housekeeping." 
Here is the other, which suggests the number of the 
iowl that in the old days resorted to these rice fields in 
multitudes not to be described, but only to be hinted at, 
as in Mr. Van Dyke's graphic words on the evening 
flight: 
"The number of ducks increased by the minute. Thej^ 
came with swifter and steadier wing and with more of 
an air of business than they had shown before. Those 
hitherto Hying were nearly all ducks that had been spend- 
ing the day in and around Senachwine and its adjacent 
ponds and sloughs. But now the host that during the 
day had been feeding in the green corn fields of the 
prairie began to move in to roost, and the vast army 
of traveling wildfowl that the late sharp frost in the 
north had started on their southern tour began to get 
under way. Long lines now came streaming down the 
northern sky, widening out and descending in long in- . 
clines or long, sweeping curves. Dense bunches came 
rising out of the horizon, hanging for a moment on the 
glowing slcy, then massing and bearing directly down 
upon us. No longer as single spies, but in battalions, 
they poured over the bluffs on the west, where the land 
sweeps away into the vast expajise of high prairie, and 
" on wings swifter than the wind itself, came riding down 
the last beams of the sinking sun. Above them the air was 
dotted with long, wedge-shaped masses or converging 
strings, more slowly moving than the ducks, from which 
I could soon hear the deep, mellow lionk of the goose and 
the clamorous cackle of the brant. And through all this 
were darting, here and there and everywhere, ducks, 
single in pairs, and small bundhes. English snipe 
were pitching about in their erratic flight; plover drifted 
by with their tender whistle, little alarmed by the can- 
nonade: blue herons, bitterns and snowy egrets, with 
long necks doubled up and legs outstretched behind, 
flapped solemnly across the stage, while yellowlegs and 
sand snipe, mud hens, divers — I know not what all — 
chinked in the vacant places." 
The third division of the volume takes up the Art of 
Shooting, and treats of guns and loading, giving the 
author's views on how to hold, when to shoot, the flight 
of ducks, and the etiquette of the blind. The Chesapeake 
Bay dog — which may fairly be called the American re- 
triever — is briefly described, and something is told of 
the good work that these dogs do. Then follows a con- 
sideration of decoys, including living ones, and some- 
thing about the breeding of wildfowl in confinement, 
from tlie pen of the late Fred Mather. A chapter on 
blinds, batteries, and the boats used in duck shooting, 
concludes this section. The final chapiter of the book 
tells of the decrease of wildfowl, gives some of its 
causes, and recommends the adoption of certain reme- 
dies, all of which look toward a lessened annual destruc- 
tion of wildfowl, and the concluding words of the vol- 
ume are. "Stop spring shooting; Limit the size of bags 
for the day and season; Stop the sale of game." An 
admirable index concludes the book: • 
Besides the fifty-eight portraits of North American 
ducks, geese and swan already referred , to, the volume 
IS copiously illustrated. Of the full page plates, four are 
reproductions of some of Audubon's magnificent pictures 
of ducks, but besides these many smaller half-tones are 
-scattered through the volume. A very interesting one 
is the small engraving on page 11 showing a group 
of gulls occupied in fishing. Every gunner will be in- 
terested also in the more than fifty vignettes drawn by - 
Mr. Wilmot Townsend which are found through the 
text. Though often slight and sketchy, these vignettes 
are full of real character, and not a few of them will re^ 
mind the gunner of something that he has seen. Of 
line dra'S'ings, the more important are the plans of 
f^OfiMe and sing:le battfrie§ \<']\\^\) ^re published with 
their specifications, and the sketches of various types of 
ducking boats. 
With its heavy paper, good large type, its rubricated 
title page, wealth of illustration, and quiet but effective 
cover, the volume may be commended to all gunners. 
B. W. 
New Hampshire Deer Hunting. 
Three of my neighbors and I have just returned from 
a trip after deer. Our location was the same as last year 
— Rocky Point Cottage, Stinson Lake. Rumney, N. H. 
Last year we did well, killing four bears and four deer in 
five days' hunting. We can leave here early in the 
morning and reach the cottage at 10 in the morning of the 
same day. From the hills near my house I can see the 
mountains where we hunted. We planned to be on the 
grounds when the first snow fell. Snow, however, came 
very unexpectedly and early — somewhere about Nov. 10. 
I was told by residents of Rumney and Ellsworth that it 
measured from 12 to 18 inches. When we arrived there 
was about- 8 inches in the woods, with a little crust. The 
outlook for still-hunting was very discouraging. 
We reached our cottage at 10 in the morning, and at 
noon we all started out to look over the near-by grounds. 
Before r o'clock one of us had killed a deer. We saw a 
good many tracks, but they were all a number of days old. 
Wherever there were beech trees the deer had pawed up 
the leaves in all directions looking for nuts. The third 
day one of our party killed a very large doe. This ended 
our killing of deer. We all worked hard for about a 
week, and hunted over a great deal of ground, going 
back seven or eight miles from our own house, hunting 
all over the mountains around the three ponds. It is a 
hard country to hunt on bare groimd, and with 8 inches 
or more of very noisy snow it was very much harder. 
One day when I had tramped four miles to the lower 
pond and hunted up tO' the top of the mountain south of 
the pond, climbing over and under windfalls and over 
ledges, I thought it did not pay. Had I killed a good-sized 
deer in there I could not have dragged it out in a day. 
The snow was so noisy that one could not get anywhere 
near a deer, and those deer when once started ran as 
though they never meant to stop, and there was no chance 
to circle around and work up from the opposite side. I 
followed the track of a small deer which had been started 
by one of our party for two hours, and it never let up. 
Another member followed four deer fully ten miles and 
never saw where they showed any signs of stopping. 
At our comfortable quarters at Rocky Point Cottage 
we talked over the prospects^ every night. We did not 
want to give up, but I could see no chances of improve- 
ment. It would take at least six or more inches of fresh 
snow to deaden the noise of the crust, and six inches more 
meant too hard traveling. Snowshoes would not work 
for still-hunting, so we gave it up, and perhaps it was 
well we did. The night after we got home it began to 
snow, and some 20 inches fell, and the wind blew a gale. 
Perhaps the deer up there can get around in it. I know 
that we could not. 
It is only a few years since hounding of deer has 
been stopped in this State. When dogging was allowed 
nearly all the deer killed M^ere driven by hounds. There 
are quite a number of rapid rocky streams and rivers in 
the upper part of New Hampshire, and they seldom 
freeze entirely. My experience in driving deer to such 
waters was very unsatisfactory. Take the East Branch of 
Pemigewasset River. You never could tell where a 
deer would go to the river, and the water made such a 
noise that a dog could not be heard 500 yards away. 
I was up in Carroll one winter. There was quite a 
party of htmters, and we had six dogs. We started a 
deer the first morning, and we followed him four days 
and never saw him. There was some 6 inches of snow, 
with a crust that would hold a fox. It cut the dogs 
badly, and they could not run fast. At the end of the four 
days we had six dogs so footsore that they would not 
stand up, and the deer were apparently as lively as ever. 
With the ending of hounding began the development 
of the still-hunter, and he has been increasing both in 
skill and numbers ever since. I think it is safe to say 
that three deer are now killed every season in that part 
of New Hampshire north of Plymouth where one was 
killed in hounding days. I do not make the above state- 
ment as an advocate of hounding. I never was and 
never expect to favor the dogging of deer. When the 
question of allowing hounding was brought up I did all 
I could against it, and I would do so again were there 
any chance of its being revived. It has been said that 
hounding of deer drove them out of the country. I 
never found it so. A deer, as I have found when fol- 
lowed by dogs, might run over the mountains, but when 
he got rid of the dogs he would come back within a few 
days. Still-hunting will make deer more wild and wary 
than any kind of hunting. Ordinarily a deer when he 
hears (and he is pretty sure to) the least sound, such as 
the packing or squeaking of the snow under the foot of 
the still-hunter (no matter what he may wear), will jump 
up and stop to see what is coming. When he has been 
still-hunted to any extent he does not wait to see; he 
knows, or thinks he does, all he wants to, and he jumps 
out of his bed and leaves at once. 
There is always more or less uncertainty in all hunting. 
In still-hunting it is decidedly more (I am not referring 
to places where deer are so numerous that no tracking is 
needed, or where they try to crowd the sportsman out 
of his camp; I have heard of such places, and been to 
some of them, and always found things just about as 
others who went there have). To get really good still- 
hunting, where there are a fair number of deer, a good 
soft snow is needed. Even then a good many deer will 
be started without getting a good^shot. How often will 
there be just the right snow? The man who lives on or 
very near the hunting grounds will be the one who gets 
such days. Perhaps he has made some arrangement with 
a sportsman living two or three hundred miles away. 
The snow falls, perhaps unexpectedly, during the night. 
The local hunter finds early in the morning that it is an 
ideal still -hunting day. ^ The nearest point where he c^n 
wire his man is some distaiice away. He says, "I will'^o 
out to-day and perhaps kill a big buck, and to-night I wjll 
go and send for my man. If he does not kjU anj^thipg I 
f-an sell him the buck I have.'- In the coi^rse of a day or 
two the 5Port§n>an arrives, pnly to find thai th?r? I^a^ 
been a thaw or a little rain, and the snow is very noisy. 
He works hard and jumps every deer; he tries to tol- 
low, perhaps now and then getting a faint glimpse of a 
white flag in the distance. He takes home the buck his 
guide had ready for liim. He knows that he did not kill 
it lie tries to make his friends believe he did. They 
may pretend to believe his story, but they do not. 
Not all of the rural still-hunters, even if they live on 
the grounds, are successful. A certain local hunter in 
the vicinity of where we hunted called at our cottage 
now and then. After we had given him some refresh- 
ments he told us all (and perhaps more) than he knew. 
The weapon he used to exterminate deer was a single- 
barrel semi-hammerless shotgun. Pie said it was a good 
gun sometimes. Last year, on the first snow, he started 
out, found the tracks of three deer where they had been 
to some apple trees, followed back to the woods, saw a 
deer standing looking at him about thirty yards away, 
found that his hands were so cold that he could not cock 
his gun. The deer after a while ran off. A few minutes 
later he saw deer No. 2, with same result. He then 
cocked his gun, and soon saw deer No. 3. Forgetting that 
the gun was cocked, he almost broke off the lever trying 
to cock it, and deer No. 3 followed the others. 
This year he tried a rifle; got two very easy shots at 
big bucks. The rifle went off and so did the deer. Not 
all local hunters are so unlucky. Three young fellows 
living some three miles [rom our cottage built a camp on 
a deserted farm back in the mountains. When the first 
snow began falling they went to their camp, and in a few 
days killed six deer. I saw where they had dragged four 
of them in. 
Other hunters were lucky. Some of them knew very 
little about hunting, and just went out and poked around, 
and either met or ran across deer. One man, as I was 
told, was going along on open ground near a spruce 
thicket. He saw a large buck standing broadside looking 
at him. He shot at the buck and mis.sed him; the deer 
still stood, and a second shot dropped him. When the 
shooter went up to his deer he found a doe on the other 
side, which had been shot through the neck by the same 
bullet. On my way home 1 met on the train a former 
member of the New Hampshire Fish and Game Com- 
mission. He had heard of this killing two deer at one 
shot, and I asked him as follows : "In case a man had 
killed one deer and then shot at a second and^ found his 
last shot had killed two, what would be done?" He said 
it would be a hard question to decide. The reliability of 
the man doing the shooting would be taken into account, 
otherwise some one who had killed one deer would run 
across two more and shoot both, and say he killed the two 
last at one shot. I find I am writing a great deal more 
than I intended when starting to tell of our unsuccessful 
trip. Well, to-day I am practically snowed m— roads 
blocked, no mail or anything; can't even go after a fox, 
hence the above. C. M. Stark. 
DUNBARTON, N. H , Dec. 3. 
Wyoming Game Protection. 
Editor Forest and Streatn: 
During the year there appeared in several sporting 
periodicals, under the heading of "Game Protection in 
Wyoming," articles elicited by the fact that the hunting 
license in that State for non-residents had been raised 
from $20 to $40, the same law compelling a guide to 
register and pay a license fee of $xo. And, since Wyom- 
ing is in many respects the greatest of our big-game 
States, it may be of interest to sportsmen to learn, from 
a personal experience, how well these game laws are en- 
forced and with what eflicicnt care elk, in particular, are 
protected. Non-residents hunting in Wyoming are 
compelled to pay a license fee of $40 for the open hunt- 
ing season of three mouths, from Sept. i to Dec. i. 
Now, while the State itself guarantees nothing, it is cer- 
tainly to be presumed that, in return for this sum, the 
non-resident is given all the protection that strict com- 
pliance with the law on his part entitles him to, nor 
does it seem unreasonable in him to expect a vigorous 
enforcement of the law at the hands of the Game Com- 
mission and the county authorities. The resident sports- 
man pays a county gun license of $1.00 for the season, 
and he, like the non-resident, is limited in his killing to 
two elk, three antelope, two deer, one goat, and one 
sheep in each hunting season. 
And now for our experience: While hunting in the 
Gros Ventre Mountains this autumn we were told by our 
guides. Nelson Yarnall, of Dubois, and his son, Silas, 
that on their way to join us at St. Anthony, Idaho, they 
had met two suspicious looking characters who claimed 
to be prospectors, but Avhose outfit and general appear- 
ance, together with the nature of the country, made it 
much more likely that they were market-hunters. As it 
happened, our party entered the locality through which 
these men had preceded us by about ten days (no one 
else had been there in the interim, and their footprints 
were unmistakable), so that when we began to find car- 
cass after carcass of elk. from which only the teeth 
(tusks) had been removed, we were morally certain as 
to the slaughterers. In the course of our hunting, in 
a limited section, and without effort upon our part, we 
found six victims of their work, five bulls and one cow. 
Not a part of any of them had been taken for meat, 
though, as a blind, the heads of some had been removed 
and hidden in the bushes, where we found all but one; 
but from every elk, however, cow included, the teeth 
had been carefully cut, leaving- the rest of the carcass 
prey for bear and coyote. 
Now, this sounds atrocious, even in the reading, but 
for the man who has a drop of red^ blood in his veins, 
the sight of a huge bull elk whh magnificent six or 
seven-point antlers, lying rotting on the ground, killed 
by a rascally scoundrel merely for a pair of teeth of the " 
value of three of four dollars, is infuriating, and had we 
encountered the perpetrators of this crime we would 
most certainly have taken the law in our own hands, 
and, at the risk of curtailing our hunt, so acted that they 
would have received the full legal _ penalty. Our one 
desire was to have them brought to justice, for, in addi- 
tion to their wanton destruction, they had seriously im- 
paired our hunting, though, thanks to the skill of our 
guide^, we both giibsequently secured fine heads. Con- 
?ef]ilfntly V/e Ci?^te>'<?^ days and sent Silas fifty wle§ 
