466 
Forest and stream* 
[JUNE 14, I502. 
his aim was to protect not to exterminate. Who that 
ever accompanied him on a trip afield could forget this 
charming, kindly, genial, lovable man? Who of all his 
many friends cannot say in recalling him, that he lent 
charm and pleasure to their lives? It was a privilege to 
have known Tom Fraine ; it ever will be a pleasure to 
remember him. Walter S. Lambert. 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 
The Dakota Buffalo Herd. 
Chicago, May 30. — Air. George Bird Grinnell, oi 
New York, who is in this city to-day after a trip of some 
weeks' duration in South Dakota, reports the sale of the 
formerly well-known buffalo herd of Dug Carlin of 
South Dakota to Scotty Phillips, a big cow man of the 
Cheyenne River Indian reservation. This sale includes 
forty-seven head of full blood buffalo. Nearly the same 
number of half breeds are retained by Carlin, so that it 
may be seen that there is quite a flourishing little herd 
in the Missouri River country of Dakota, of which very 
little mention has crept into the public prints. This 
herd was originally the property of the Dupuis estate 
and was based on some calves caught as long ago as 
1883. The last big summer hunt of the Sioux after buf- 
falo was made in the summer of that year, and the spe- 
cies became practically extinct thereafter in that vicin- 
ity. This little herd, the sole remnants of the great 
numbers which once ranged that country, have been 
guarded jealously ever since that time with what seems, 
under the conditions of to-day, a very great measure of 
success. Mr. Grinnell says that once in a while one of 
the old bulls of this little herd would stray off to the 
northward up on the Indian reservation above men- 
tioned. The Sioux seem not to share "the murderous 
proclivities of the Crees, but have, in cases like the 
above, left the old bulls alone, in many cases making 
pilgrimages of many miles just for the sake of seeing the 
buffalo once more. It is much to be hoped that they 
will have the privilege of seeing the buffalo on this reser- 
vation for many years to come. 
The Allard herd on the Flat Head reservation is also 
reported to be in very flourishing condition. Granted 
any proper sort of chance we might yet feel sure that the 
buffalo is not doomed to extinction, although perma- 
nently retired from circulation as a means of sport for 
the American people. 
Experienced Big-Game Hunter. 
Mr. A. B. F. Kinney, of Worcester, Mass., paid this 
office a very pleasant visit this week on his way back 
home from a trip out in California. Mr. Kinney, as is 
well known in Eastern circles, is a big-game hunter of 
extended experience, and his collection of trophies is a 
large and valuable one. I was a little bit surprised when 
he asked me what had become of the big sheep head 
which Billy Jackson gave to me at the first sportsmen's 
show in New York some years since. I told him that 
the big sheep head was now adorning the walls of my 
dining room, the place on earth for it. lie then asked 
me to place a price on it, but I told him that I could not 
do so unless the times got harder than they are at this 
writing. I remember very distinctly the conversation 
Mr. Kinney had with Billy Jackson, soon after Billy 
gave me this big head. He offered Billy what must have 
seemed a very large sum of money to the latter, but 
Billy was calm and explained that he had given me the 
head and hence would not sell it for any figure. Under 
such circumstances I could not, of course, myself sell the 
head for any figure. It will probably after my death turn 
uo in some museum of natural history, if I can pick out 
one good enough to receive it. 
"You have, without any question in the world," said 
Dr. Kinney, "the biggest sheep head in existence. The 
reason I want it is because I have the next biggest head 
myself. It measures 175^ inches, but I am satisfied 
from the measurements I made of this Jackson head 
which you now have that you have or did have, a full 
19-inch head. I wanted to put this head in a collection 
which I am arranging for an Eastern museum. I do 
not care for anything in my personal collection which 
I have not myself killed." 
If anybody in the whole wide world has a sheep head 
which he thinks is a pretty good one, I will have to bet 
him a little money at the start that I have got him beat 
right now; and after that I will tell him where he can 
sell his sheep head if it is anything like as good as mine. 
Biggest Grizzly. 
Mr. Kinney tells me that when he was out in Port- 
land, Ore., he saw a very large grzzly bear skin which 
was owned by the Hudson Arms Company, I think, of 
that city. It was a very poor hide, patchv and bare and 
really not worth a dollar. Mr. Kinney asked the owners 
what they would take for the hide and they said $100, 
which he dug out of his clothes the next moment, there- 
by becoming the owner of the bear skin. "It was the 
biggest grizzly bear hide I have ever seen," said he. 
"As to its real value, it had none, for the coat was 
wretched, but it was 10% feet long and 12 feet across 
the forearms. You may see it was not stretched Jong. 
I had the history of the old fellow at the time. He was 
a well known citizen in a certain part of the mountains, 
and got to be pretty much dreaded by all the miners and 
settlers of that country. There was a half breed Indian 
who one day, when he was 1 pretty well loaded with fire- 
water, announced that he was not afraid of that bear 
or, in fact, any other bear. The boys encouraged him 
in- this belief and sent him out into the country after the 
bear. The half breed had a .44 rifle with him, and 
pretty- soon the boys down at the cabin heard him fan- 
ning his .44 good and fast. The next day they found 
him and the .bear, both dead, and they said there was 
not a sound bone in the half breed's body. They took 
off the skin of the grizzly and marketed it in Portland. 
This skin I took East with me and kept for a time, sim- 
ply on account of its tremendous size. One day a friend 
came along and asked me what I wanted for it. I told 
him I wanted $ieo and he counted out the amount, which 
was exactly what I had given for it. This is the history 
of the biggest bear skin of which I ever had any track 
in the West." 
I think these figures, read simply as figures, would not 
impress one sufficiently. The thing to do is to measure 
them out on the floor and then stack up against the 
measurements the bear hides ©f which one has had any 
personal experience. He will find that most of his 
black bear skins, and indeed most of his grizzly skins 
to-day will rarely go over the six or seven-foot mark. 
Mr. Kinney is a firm believer in the theory that the 
grizzly and the black bear will cross. I told him about 
the red bear which I killed last spring, and he thought 
that in all likelihood it was a cross between a grizzly 
and a black bear. Scientists commonly do not entertain 
this idea, but scientists every once in a while run across 
something in the bear family which sets them guessing. 
Perhaps Mr. Kinney is right, perhaps not. Only bears 
and the stars can tell. 
The President's Mississippi Bear Hi nt. 
Chicago, 111., June 6. — Anent the possible bear hunt of 
President Roosevelt in the State of Mississippi, which was 
mentioned in last week's Forest and Stream, it is sad 
to add anything but words of encouragement in the mat- 
ter, yet the statement printed needs somewhat of qualifica- 
tion. There arc- bears yet to be had in the canebrakes of 
Mississippi, and there are good bear packs to be had, but 
it is doubtful if, even plucky a man as he is, our dear 
friend Rob Bobo would be able to join in even this notable 
bear hunt. Less than two weeks ago Bobo left the 
town of Champaign, 111., for his own home, after some 
weeks spent at Champaign, under the hands of a specialist 
who was trying to relieve him of the malignant tumorous 
growth which has destroyed one eye for the old bear 
hunter, and taken away nearly all of one side of his 
face. Bobo has been, and no doubt now is, in a critical 
condition. He is a man of splendid courage and iron 
nerve, as I can testify from having seen him both in the 
field and under the surgeon's knife ; yet it would be 1 tt'e 
short of a miracle if he were able now to take the saddle 
for even a day or so of his beloved sport of hear hunting. 
E. Hough. 
Hartford Building, Chicago, 111. 
Arms Used at Santiago. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
In the matter of "The Arms Used at Santiago," before 
Rough Rider Surgeon Henry E. Thorp, I cheerfully 
stand corrected. My information was gained entirely 
from newspaper reports. These led me to believe that a 
very small percentage of our troops were armed with 
modern rifles, and that even most of the regulars were 
armed with the old Springfield breechloader. 
There can be no question that our regulars are as well 
disciplined as the soldiers of other nations, but the term 
"raw recruits" was intended in the sense that our troops, 
on the whole, were new in battle. True, there were some 
veterans of the Civil and Indians wars there, but I think 
Surgeon Thorp will agree with me in the fact that our 
Santiago regulars had never experienced modern battle 
before the Spanish war. Inasmuch as the Spanish army 
had seen more or less fighting against the Cuban forces, 
therefore had gained some actual experience, our troops 
must have been "raw" in fighting comparison. Then it 
appears to me that all the greater credit and glory is due 
our comparatively inexperienced soldiers. Also that the 
best shots must have been on our side. I'm proud of 'em 
— Surgeon Thorp and all. William H. Avis. 
Hi'iMWooD, Conn., June 5. 
— $ — 
Proprietors of fishing resorts will find it profitable to advertise 
them in Forest and Stream. 
Taking Your Boy Fishing. 
I spent my summers as a boy in the country. There 
were no trout streams near by nor were there any ad- 
jacent lakes where bass were to be found. Salt-water 
fishing, with its attendant risks, was crossed off my pro- 
gramme, and there was but one thing left, fishing for eels 
and gold and silver fish in a large, well-stocked pond on 
a neighbor's farm. The pond was closed in by giant 
chestnut trees, and was a beautiful spot on a warm sum- 
mer afternoon. An alder pole, cotton line, barbless 
needle-hook and a baking powder tin filled with good 
stiff dough for bait completed my outfit. I carried a tin 
pail, which, after filling with water, served to keep my 
catch alive. 
My chum and I would select a flattened boulder pro- 
truding from the water, and well shaded by the over- 
hanging trees, and there we sat and patiently fished, never 
for a moment taking our eyes from the gaudily painted 
floats. 
We paid the penalty of carelessness once, for having 
laid down the pole to wander along shore, when we re- 
turned the pole was moving upon the surface of the pond, 
'being dragged hither and thither by some unseen agent. 
We swam for it and in due course landed a good-sized, 
squirming, dough-hungry eel, and only after an operation 
called vivisection did we suceed in recovering the hook 
from his "inwards." 
And from catching eels by day we tried bobbing for 
them by night. We laboriously, longitudinally and in- 
wardly threaded yards of these earth borers, and then 
tying some into convenient knots, our bait was ready. 
Securing the collected worms to a stout string attached to 
a springy pole, we were read}' for business when night- 
fall came. It was great sport yanking the hungry eels 
high upon the sloping, grassy bank, and then with lantern 
in one hand and stout hickory switch in the other, break- 
ing their spines and instantly killing them before they 
had wormed their way through the grass back to water 
again. 
And now my own boy wants to go a-fishing. Other 
than trolling from a boat with hand line and taking a 
pickerel or taking the greedy sunfish from the bridge, 
fishing to him so far has been a closed book. I am going 
to take him fishing, and I propose to fish by proxy. I 
shall rig for him my own tackle and shall take none for 
myself. He will fish with my best bass rod and reel, and 
will have a fresh casting line and freshly snelled hooks. 
Rotten line, weak rod and poorly snelled hooks shall not 
mar his pleasure. 
I will take him where the small-mouthed bass gather 
in numbers, and where it will not be a long time between 
bites. He will be taught to place his minnow properly 
upon the hook, and to allow his line to drift down stream. 
He will soon learn that the merest wavering of his line 
means a strike, and will learn that patience, until the bass 
has gorged the bait, is a sine que non. He will let the 
fish run, and after ample time has elapsed he will thumb 
his reel and strike. 
And, oh ! for a kinetoscope when that boy sets his hook 
into his first four-pound small-mouthed bass ! The tug- 
ging at and bending of the rod ; the screeching of the reel, 
the handle of which has very likely soundly rapped his 
knuckles in its mad revolution ; the breaking of the bass 
from the water into midair as it desperately vibrates its 
hook-laden jaws, all these things will happen to the boy 
and- — well, he will be very apt to get dreadfully excited 
and may break his line by failing to promptly give the reel 
play during one of the surges of the fish. Very well ; 
that's a matter only of a fresh hook and another min- 
now, and a valuable lesson in experience. And if that 
happens on his first bass, that particular bass will be 
photographed upon his brain, and if he lives a hundred 
years and fished every season, he will never look upon 
such a fish again. 
What a pleasure it will be to coach that boy through 
the intricacies of his first tussle with a bass ! And when 
that particular fight is over and the bass is gasping within 
the meshes of the landing net, will not that boy's cheeks 
flush with exultation, and will not his eyes sparkle with 
pride! How he will scrutinize the indicator of the scale 
as the bass is weighed, and as long as he lives will he 
ever forget that the first bass he ever caught in his life 
weighed three and a half or four pounds, as the case may 
be? And when he has begun to understand the workings 
of rod and reel, his lesson in bait-casting will be given 
him. The bass are but fifteen or twenty feet from the 
boat, so his tyro casts are apt to prove successful even 
though bunglingly made. He forgets his thumbing, the 
reel overruns, and he has a snarl to unravel that takes 
him a precious quarter of an hour, which waste of time is 
so vividly impressed upon him that the next cast finds 
him locking the reel with his thumb and snapping off the 
minnow. 
How keenly he watches the minnow come in after his 
cast, finding it difficult to watch his bait and evenly guide 
the line upon the spool at the same time! 
The morning fishing over, we rest up during the heat 
of the day under the spreading shade of a giant cotton- 
wood, and we watch the loggers raft their logs down 
stream. We stroll through the woods and watch the 
squirrels as they go scampering up the trees, chattering 
back upbraidings because of our intruding upon their 
domain. The violets are underfoot, and the trees are 
now almost in full leaf, and every tree seems to have its 
own bird orchestra tuning up. 
It is nearing 4 o'clock, and the slightly clouded sky 
and rippling water would lead one to hope for some luck 
with a fly at the end of the' wing dam where the water 
swirls and boils in its efforts to hurry down stream. 
I have brought a trout rod with me and a few bass 
flies, so we rig it up and for the_ time being lay the bass 
rod aside and pay no attention to the minnow bucket. 
Before we go near the bass convention in the eddy, the 
boy spends half an hour swishing the flies through the 
air, incidentally snapping off the tail fly. But after a 
while he manages to drop the flies in a more or less 
bungling manner twenty feet away upon the water. A few 
more tries and we move out toward the eddy, and when 
at the proper distance the first cast for business is made. 
It lands in the swirl and is carried to the eddy, but not 
before a bass has arisen, taken the fly, and, detecting its 
spuriousness, ejected it. That rush and the exposed, head 
and shoulders of the bass riveted the boy's attention, 
and his instructions to_ strike instantly the slightest dis- 
turbance appeared upon the surface near his flies was 
forgotten. Chagrined and disconcerted over the mishap, 
his following casts are failures, the line finally wrapping 
around the tip and the flies and leader becoming more or 
less snarled. It takes some time to straighten things out, 
the boy recovers his self-possession and again begins to 
cast, and this time he gets a rise, strikes and hooks his 
fish. The change to underhand reel at first bothers him, 
but he manages to avoid giving a slack line to the bass, 
in which he is assisted by the masterly rowing of the 
guide. The fish is a fighter, and the boy has his hands 
more than .full. The rod is frequently bent double, but 
the tackle is good, and it stands up to the strain. 
It is worth a fortune to see that twelve-year-old boy 
fight that fish. Admonitions to keep cool do much to 
assure the boy; these, accompanied with instructions about 
keeping the tip of his rod out of the water and being on 
the alert for the jumping of the fish, all this supple- 
mented by the interested and experienced guide at the 
oars ready for any emergency, finally result in the landing 
of the fly-hooked bass safely within the net. 
It has been a strain on the boy, and he draws, a sigh of 
combined satisfaction and relief when the strain is off 
the rod. I tell him to rest and watch as I take up his 
rod. And I cast away from the eddy and explain the 
whys and wherefores for the line, leader and flies doing 
certain things ; simply a lesson in casting. And then I 
turn and drop my flies and get a double rise, the bass 
in their eagerness taking the fly an inch or two above the 
surface. I certainly was up against it, for I wanted to 
save both those fish, and yet they were apt at any mo- 
ment to work both ends against the middle and one or 
the other break the snell loose from the leader. Once 
they both broke water at one and the same time, and I 
can imagine my boy's eyes as wide as saucers. Gradually 
we worked around into deep but still water, and then we 
fought the battle out and saved the fish. 
The wind was coming up, and clouds appeared a shade 
darker, and taking it all in all, we could ungrudingly go 
ashore and prepare for home and the coming of the train. 
Inasmuch as I have, on paper, taken my boy fishing and 
in a way anticipated results, it now remains to be seen 
