212 
FOREST •AND STREAM. 
March 14, 1903.] 
directly at them. Presently he dropped down behind and 
then gradually sank forward, never running at all from 
the spot where he was struck. The shot was through the 
body, close to the shoulders. Mr. Jenkins says that he 
has never known a .30-40 bullet to go entirely through a 
moose. This does not coincide with ray own limited ex- 
perience, as the first shot which I fired into my moose 
passed entirely through the body, as nearly as we could 
determine. 
Mr. Jenkins says that Nova Scotia in physical appear- 
ance is much like New Brunswick, much overgrown and 
■of a monotonous regularity, there being few opportunities 
left for a look out over the country. He likes the Rocky 
Mountains, but gives his countrymen the worst of it in 
the guiding proposition, as he says these men of the 
northeastern country were as skillful and as cheerful 
hunters as he ever saw. I doubt not that he and his 
newly made hunter friend, Mr. Phelps, and his plegmatic 
associate, Mr. Hotchkiss, will be headed somewhere, to- 
ward the west for the next big-game season, however, 
as Mr. Jenkins sa3fs he has now killed four moose and 
thinks he has had his share. He wants now to kill a 
grizzly bear, and if any gentleman has one staked out any- 
where, he migh do well to communitcate as to terms, etc. 
Duck Shooting in the Southwest. 
The duck shooting on the Gulf coast in southwest- 
ern Texas seems to be languishing of late and the 
north-bound flight is now setting in, depriving the 
Coast shooters of something of their accustomed 
sport. I hear that Mr. W. VV. Peabody, of New 
York, and Mr. Alex. Settle, of Cincinnati, who went 
down to Rockport last week, met rather good weather 
and rather poor shooting. They did not damage any- 
thing verj^ much and put in most of the time loafing. 
Pretty soon we will hear of some of these Texas ducks 
up in this part of the country. The birds do not get 
much rest either in Texas or in the North. I wonder 
how Texas would feel about a law closing the shooting 
on wild fowl January i? This Avould give the Texas 
shooters as long a fall season as we have up here, and 
would indeed cover the best of the winter shooting, 
the cream of it in Texas coming along in November and 
December. E. Houcn. 
Hartford Building, Chicago, III, 
Two Men and their Books. 
New York, Feb. 26. — Editor Forest and Stream: I am 
one of the old time readers of Forest and STKE.^M who 
is saddened by the losses from its old list of contributors 
which seem to follow one another so rapidly. At different 
times I have thought that some men could never be re- 
placed; yet I am bound to acknowledge that to-day the 
paper seems to me better than it has ever been. 
There is one thing that we can none of us be suffi- 
ciently grateful for, and that is that some of these old 
contributors, who were so highly valued by your readers, 
have left behind them in their books memorials which 
will give pleasure and instruction to generations who 
have never seen their writings in Forest and Stream. 
One of the first of these writers is Mr. R. E. Robinson, 
whose charming pictures of New England life seem to 
me unequalled by anj'thing that I have ever read. With 
the charm and the simplicity of a Burroughs or a 
Thoreau, Mr. Robinson combined a broader view ; and 
seeing all that there is of beautiful and sweet and tender 
in nature, he sees also all that there is of beautiful and 
sweet and tender and strong in woman and in man. The 
world is better and happier because Mr. Robinson lived 
and wrote. 
Fred Mather's writings always had for me a very great 
charm. He was one of the men who, having eyes, saw- 
something that a nutnber of people can do. though the 
number is not large — but besides seeing, he could make 
others see, and his clear, concise and often humorous 
descriptions when once read were not forgotten. Fte was 
another very human man who saw the humanity all about 
him and could describe it. His "Men I Have Fished 
With." and its sequel, "My Angling Friends," are books 
that should be in the library not only of every angler, but 
of every sportsman and of every lover of his kind. 
If we regret that these two men have left us, let us at 
least be thankful for what they have left behind them. 
Sage. 
Albany Legfislation. 
Albany, March 7.— Governor Odell has signed As- 
semblyman Reeve's bill. Int. No. 183. making the trout 
.season on Long Island open on the last Saturday in 
March. 
Fish and game bills that have been reported from com- 
mittee made the following progress the past week: 
Senator Armstrong's, Int. No. 124, relative to the sale 
of grouse and woodcock, third reading. 
Senator Bailey's, Int. No. 344, powers of Queens, Nas- 
sau and Suffolk supervisors relative to game, third 
reading. 
Senator E. R. Brown's, Int. No. 301, to stop sprmg 
shooting, third reading. 
Senator Townsend's, Int. No. 138, for the protection ot 
wild black bear, Assembly committee. 
Assemblyman Denison's, Int. No. 371, close season for 
wild deer. Senate commitlee. 
Assemblyman Reeve'.s, Int. No. 828, taking wildfowl, 
Peconic Bay, second reading. 
Assemblyman Whitney's, Int. No. 376, for the protec- 
tion of game, third reading. 
Assemblyman Bedell's, Int. No. 428, close season tor 
trout. Orange countj', third reading. 
Assemblyman Doughty's, Int. No. 613, relative to tak- 
ing pheasants. Senate committee. 
Assemblyman J. T. Smith's, Int. No. 418, relative to 
taking fish from Whaley's Pond, Dutchess county, Senate 
committee. 
Assemblyman Bedell's, Int. No. 427,_ close season for 
certain game. Orange county, third reading. 
Assemblyman Reynolds', Int. No. B50, close season for 
grouse, woodcock and quail, Rensselaer county, third 
reading. ■ ____ _ . , 
The Cruelty of Trapping. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
In a recent publication, Mr. Earnest Russell describes a 
barbarous manner of snaring moose in Nova Scotia by 
which the animals are partially suspended and are some- 
times left so for several days by the shiftless class of 
men that set the snares, to be visited only at long in- 
tervals. 
It is cause for some wonder that humanitarians, so- 
cieties for the prevention of cruelty to animals, and sports- 
men also, have not arrayed themselves strongly against 
such methods of snaring and trapping as cause protracted 
torture to the victims, with steel trapping uppermost in 
mind. 
The steel trap closes with such force that it frequently 
crushes the leg bone of the captive, and usually lacerates 
the skin and flesh until the cold steel clamps only upon 
the naked bone. In this horrible state of torture the 
animal must await the convenience of the trapper, who 
may, by some happy chance, make his rounds the next 
forenoon, and kill the creature as an end to its sufferings ; 
but too frequently he has made a journey to distant parts, 
leaving his traps .set. In the course of two or three days, 
perhaps a week, he will return to terminate the suffering 
he has prolonged by his indifference. 
Let the readers of Forest and Stream rise up en 
masse against the using of such a machine for torture 
upon our dumb neighbors of the woods. If the campaign 
is vigorous and widespread through the local press and 
the legislatures in every State, the end may be accom- 
plished. Tripod. 
Mississirr". 
Diagram prepared by T. .S. I'almer, of the Cinlogical Survey. 
The dotted areas show the region where spring shooting is pro- 
hibited. See page 208. 
— ^ — 
Long Island Trout Season. 
A LAW signed by Governor Odell on March 3 amends 
the Long Island trout season section to read : 
Sec. 109. Trout shall not be taken or possessed from 
August 31 to the last Friday in March, both inclusive. 
Trout taken lawfully may be sold or possessed in the Cit.y 
of New York in the open season established by this 
section. 
Notes on Fish and Fishii g. — L 
With the month of June, good sport on most of our 
Eastern trout streams may be said to end. The hot 
days of early July usually send the fish to their summer 
retreats, and no matter how numerous they have been, 
few can now be found, except a school here and there 
at the mouths of cold brooks, or where springs pour 
their freshening waters into the main stream. 
On the whole, the season of 1902 may be said to have 
been a fairly satisfactory one, in spite of heavy floods 
and ice jams during the winter. Trout were quite 
abundant in all the old nearby brooks and rivers, and 
took the fly well until late in May, when symptoms of 
hook shyness began to appear, with great discrimina- 
tion in the color of the artificial fly. One pattern would 
be taken and the other left. On our last fishing excur- 
sion we found the fish (piite hard to please, and great 
perseverance and many changes of fly were necessary 
before a fair basket coidd be made. 
Anglers are too apt to pin their faith to two or 
three favorite flies, and to imagine that if the trout 
will not rise at these, that they will not take at all. 
In many of the New York and Pennsylvania waters 
this is a great mistake, particularly 011 those streams 
that produce a great variety of natural flies. Some 
one particular color is apt to be the favorite for a 
time, and I honestly believe that even when the trout 
are taking almost anything, larger fish and a better 
average will reward the man who takes the trouble 
of looking out for the iiatural fly, and, if possible, imi- 
tating it in color and size. 
This question has been pretty well thrashed out, and 
men whose experience has been chiefly confined to 
wild waters in Maine and Canada or the regions of 
the great lakes, will be apt to scout such ideas, as well 
as many other good anglers of experience. How- 
ever, the proof of the pudding is the eating of it and 
chewing the string. I have been fixed in my faith 
by many experiences, but I grant you that entomology 
is only necessary, or particularly successful, in some 
localities in others, it is a waste of time to study the 
natural fly, though tQ me it is always interesting, 
One thing is clear, if you grant that a fair copy of the 
living fly is the best that can be put up in a certain 
stream with which you are familiar, you at once have 
something to go by; you are no longer fishing at ran- 
dom, but have a definite end in view. At the risk of 
being tedious, I will give a few of the many experi- 
ences which have led me to study entomology, as far 
as my opportunities have permitted. 
Many years ago I was fishing a fine large lime- 
stone stream ner Bellefont, Pa., in company with a 
native of that town, who was a most expert angler 
and who cast in a particularly graceful manner. The 
scene of our afternoon's sport was a rather shallow 
mill dam constructed only a few years before; this 
dam was full of brook trout of about a quarter of a 
pound each, and they were rising steadily all over the 
water. We cast and cast, and compared the flies in 
our respective books. Finally, iri an old envelope in 
the pocket of his book, my friend found a small straw- 
colored fly closely approximating the fly at which the 
trout were rising. He put it on, and in half an hour 
or a little over caught 42 trout. He had only one fly 
of the kind, so I was forced to play audience; nothing 
that I could offer being tempting to the fish. 
During the same week I had much the same expe- 
rience with a very dark, almost black fly, which I 
think belonged to the crane fly genus. I was fishing 
with three flies on my leader, and the middle fly hap- 
pened to be nearest the natural. It had a very thin 
body of silk, and fishing quite a short line over a deep 
channel under sheltering willows, I could see the trout 
rise and take this fly between the two others. After 
some hours the fly was literally chewed up. and I sub- 
stituted another, which I thought very nearly the same. 
The body was a little lighter and was made of niohair 
instcad of silk. It proved to be entirely useless, and 
I was forced to put on the mangled remains of the old 
fly. when I again began to kill fish. 
Again, on a hot morning, after a five-mile tramp, we 
were refreshed by a charming cool breeze springing 
up from the southeast. My companion on this occa- 
sion was a veteran angler of large experience and a 
most agreeable man to fish with. The month was 
July, and as we reached the stream we noticed many 
of the little blue duns with long tails rising from the 
surface of the pools and floating easilv up stream be- 
fore the breeze. I had a dozen flies on No. 12 hooks, 
which, as far as body was concerned, were the right 
color, and my friend had two of the same which he 
had copied from mine the day before. "I put up two 
flies of the same kind, and he one of them as a tail 
fly. We soon began to take fish, but my companion 
was so unfortunate as to lose his tail fly in a_ trout. 
For some reason he wished to keep his remaining fly 
as a sample, and being a little ahead of me put on_a 
small coachman until I should come up. When I did 
so he borrowed a couple of the bluish-bodied flies. 
Meanwhile, however, the small trout had been taking 
his coachman freely, and being partial to the use of 
this fly, he did not care to change it, but persisted in 
its use. We kept quite close together as the stream 
was large, and again and again he said, "Was not that 
a pretty big fish you caught." Several times he saw 
the fish when landed and said, "Well, I have seen no 
fish like that to-day." We ate our lunch sitting on 
a log far up the stream. 
Returning, he fished first, I giving him fifteen min- 
utes' start. I caught up with him at a large pool just 
as he was wading out, it seemed useless to fish at once 
after him, but I waded in and made a cast, when at; 
once two large fish rose at the flies. I hooked one, and 
after a good fight my friend netted him for me.. 
"Well!" he said, "What fly are you using? I have 
seen no such fish to-day, but time is up; we must start 
for home." "Wait a minute," I said, "There is another 
fish here. I waded in again, and at the first cast 
hooked the trout, which, after a good struggle man- 
aged to free itself from the hook and escaped. On the 
way home we stopped at a cold brook to rest and 
turned out our fish to wash them. We found that my 
friend had ,<i trout and I had M, but that mine 
weighed double, owing to the larger size of the fish. 
This case was peculiarly clear, as we fished together 
nearly all the day, and my chum was in several re- 
spects the more skillful fisherman; his casting was fine, 
and he had a very neat and expeditous way of netting 
his fish after playing them up to him. 
The weather has everything to do with the time at 
which natural flies appear, there may be a difference 
of from one to three weeks in different seasons. A 
few varieties do not appear annuallj'^ in numbers. I 
have one fly in mind that was very abundant in August, 
1890, but only a few specimens have been seen since 
then. I could find a few at almost any hour on a cool 
day, and a great many in the morning or after four 
o'clock P. M. The body was peculiar, a yellow with 
a tinge of olive or green. After several failures a 
lady gave me a quantity of scraps of crewel, and pick- 
ing one of these to pieces, I spun it on light yellow 
silk. This gave the exact color, and adding pale dun 
wings and a ginger hackle, I had a good imitation of 
the natural fly. which proved very killing for about 
three weeks. It did not matter where this fly was 
placed on the leader, all the best fish were taken with 
it, and on several occasions I was successful when 
other anglers had poor sport. This fly has not been 
of much service, except for a short time in 1898. 
There is a little orange-bodied dun, that hatches out 
on cold days in July, which is a great favorite with 
the trout. It seems to come up when a strong wind^ 
is blowing and clouds obscure the sun. A very small 
drk cowdung is well taken while this fly is on the 
water, the hook must not be larger than No. 12. A 
small blue dun is an excellent fly at times all through 
the season, but it is difficult to get hackles of the 
right color for legs. Hens can be found at long inter- 
vals which give the right color, but their hackles are 
very soft. If you cannot do better use the lightest 
brown or ginger hackle you can get. We have a beau- 
tiful large fly, which may resemble the English May 
fly, but it is a very light yellow. If you make the body 
pf silk it is apt to be too, dark when wet. I prefer, 
