May i6, 1903.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
887 
New Brunswick Cow Moose Butchefy* 
We are permitted to quote from a private letter received 
May 6, the following remarks : 
"I have just received a letter from a friend down in 
New Brunswick, which I quote in substance as follows. 
" 'I spent Saturday and Sunday in the woods. Got a 
shot at some geese, but failed to stop any. I am sorry to 
have to report that I found partly decomposed bodies of 
two cow moose near the camp, while half a mile up the 
barren lies the body of a third, all killed late last fall. 
On going out I saw two moose quietly feeding by the 
roadside. A friend saw a fine big bull feeding near the 
lake a couple of weeks ago with a broken hind leg hang- 
ing loose, the bone not having mended. He had been shot 
last fall and had yarded near the lake.' 
^ "The killing of the cow moose was, of course, in viola- 
tion of law. These moose were shot at night and the 
guilty parties, after ascertaining what they had done, were 
afraid to make any attempt to get the meat, so the bodies 
were allowed to rot. The limping bull, it seems to me, 
emphasizes a fact which all sportsmen ought to take to 
heart — not to shoot at all until conditions are such that 
the shot may be well placed. It is evident that there art 
parts of the provinces where the very thorough protection 
of game noted by Mr. Hough does not exist. This viola- 
tion of the law must certainly have been knowm to some 
of the game wardens. Nevertheless several months have 
elapsed and no one has been brought to account, although 
there is good reason to believe that a little investigation 
would have uncovered all the facts." 
To this we may add that if Mr. Flewelling, the Deputy 
Surveyor General, or any prominent game protector in 
New Brunswick, should, as a result of this letter, make 
inquiry of us as to the sources of this information, we will 
give him the name of an entirely responsible gentleman 
who will lay before him all the facts that he has. 
— ^ — 
Proprietors of fishinff resorts will find it pr&9table to advcrtiM 
them in FomxsT aho Stkbam. 
On the Opening Day. 
From a friend of mine, whose good nature and veracity 
cannot be doubted, 1 obtained the following account of a 
fishing excursion which took place at the opening of the 
trout season for this year: 
For at least a month previous to the iSth of April, 
George and I had been conjecturing as to what locality 
and brook iu particular should be honored by our atten- 
tion on the opening day of the trout season. 
After discussing various streams, the merits of whi.-h 
it had been our good fortune to have had a previous 
knowledge, we decided that there was not one among 
them that could possibly possess the qualifications of 
Spring Brook; this meandering, as it did, through a 
sparsely settled locality should, we decided, be equally 
clear and w^arm as any of the others ; there was, more- 
over, one great point in its favor which was that for 
many years there had been maintained by parties of a 
neighboring town, a costly and well constructed trout 
pond, located in the vicinity of the stream's headwaters. 
This pond had been well stocked with several varieties of 
trout; that early in March the great bulkhead which had 
for so long been the means of retarding the general flow 
of the stream, and which had kept the pond well filled 
with_ water, had been swept away by freshets, thus leav- 
ing it to drop back to its natural bed. 
This was, to our minds, a point worth considering, the 
trout contained in the pond, some of which were knoAvn 
to be lusty fellows, we had no doubt hade been swept away 
down the stream and were sure to be found by crafty 
fishermen like ourselves lurking in the deep pools below. 
This fortunate piece of information was further aug- 
mented by George, who declared there were mighty few 
people who had any knowledge whatsoever of the wash- 
out, and I, knowing that he was speaking of his native 
wilds, considered that he ought to know whereof he spake. 
Having decided, then, that Spring Brook should yield 
up its own, and having obtained the usual outfits of fisher- 
men who fear that the elements are ging to combine 
to spoil sport, a costume which usually appeals to one 
not deep in the science of capturing the speckled beauty, 
to be possessed of a superabundance of pockets, the pur- 
poses for which these are really designed being within the 
grasp of some (usually the wearer), the general public, 
however, is left to mere conjecture. Having obtained, as 
I have said, a complete set of these regimentals, and laden 
with rods, baskets and bait-cans, we boarded a late after- 
noon train, our objective point being a small town in the 
vicinity of our stream, where we were to spend the night, 
in order that we might be able to make an early start the 
following morning. Upon our arrivel at D late in the 
evening, and a.fter having obtained a substantial lunch, 
which was in itself a glowing tribute to our host, who 
'must have come from old fighting stock, in order to have 
maintained on the corner of this shack the emblazoned 
sign Hotel, we retired to the chamber we were to occupy 
for the night, our genial host piloting us up the creaky 
stairs, lamp in one hand, in the other a good sized hamper, 
contannng our grub for the following day. With the 
warning to keep an eye peeled for Roberts' bull and a fer- 
vent prayer for our success, our host departed. 
I forgot to mention that this little jerked town is some- 
thmg of a railroad center ; I didn't know it before, but I 
learned it that night, for after we had turned in. prepared 
for a few hours of rest and sleep, along came what is 
commonly termed "a mile of empties," the engine doing 
the ordmary amount of puffing and the box cars playing 
their enjoyable tattoo on the rails. I am sure I heard this 
train as it departed in the distance for at least ten miles ; 
I am willing to make affidavit as to ten ; it may have been 
more, but I wouldn't swear as to more than that. Next 
came a lone engine bent upon scraping together a long 
tail of empties : I am sure that its intentions were carried 
out to the letter. How many more of the^e disturbers 
of the peace passed and repassed beneath our window I 
jam unable to state; they became so numertilis that I lost 
all count, and finally fell asleep trying to guess how many 
hundreds of miles of track they would cover if combined 
in one long train. 
Having slept, as it seemed to me, about ten minutes, but 
in reality full four hours, I was awakened by George, 
who seemed to take a diabolical pleasure in informing 
me that it was time we were up and doing, for we had 
determined to be the first ones on the ground, even if ^ve had 
no sleep at all ; so out I crawled and groped about in the 
darkness for the stand on which matches and the lamp 
had been left. These articles having been discovered, I 
began getting into my clothes, relating to George the 
while a wonderful dream from which he had rudely 
awakened me. How I had hooked a mighty trout,, safely 
landed him, and was proceeding to inspect my prize, 
when, to my wonder and astonishment, it rose on tiny 
wings and flew swiftly toward the stream; how I, awe- 
stricken at this wonder, still felt that I could not allow 
it to escape ; so, rushing forward, I smote it with the butt 
of my rod, felling the creature to earth; just here, while 
I was slipping my suspenders over my shoulders, some- 
thing fell with a crash on the floor, and even in the dim 
light I was able to discern that it was a flask of sorne 
sort which some miserable fellow had put into my hip 
pocket ; however, I swallowed my chagrin, merely remark- 
ing to George that my spirits were ebbing already. 
As the boy would say, "it was darker than a stack of 
black cats" when we enierged from the hotel, the rain 
was drizzling down in a manner which seemed to indicate 
that it meant to continue, but we started on up the road, 
and after a half hour's walk came to the point where our 
stream intersects this thronging thoroughfare; here we 
clambered over the fence by the roadside and struck off 
into the wilderness of rain and darkness, guided chiefly 
by the gurgle of the tiny stream. I thought that tramp 
wpuld_ never end, and it seemed as though we walked 
mlies innumerable, crawled over and through a thousand 
fences el'e we reached a point sufficiently far enough up 
stream to warrant our stopping and whipping it back. 
With the Consent of all hands we proceeded to tackle 
the lunch-box, to which George had desperately clung 
dilring our weary march; our spirits seemed to revive 
with every bite, so that after satisfying the inner man, 
the outer one felt fit for anything, and despite the driz- 
zling rain we soon fell to fishing. 
Haying caught my hook several times upon overhang- 
ing limbs and twigs I at length came to the conclusion 
that it was altogether too dark for me to fish, so laying 
a.'^ide my rod I patiently awaited the coming of the morn- 
ing light. At length the darkness began to give way and 
a dull, rrtisty light to take its place; I began to discern 
neighboring objects and to speculate as to what they were. 
?Tere stood a spreading elm and yonder was the straggling 
outlines of a rail fence, and still further down the stream 
1 could discern, as I supposed, several stumps, scattered 
along at intervals. 
As it became brighter, I prepared to resume operations, 
and incidentally glanced down the stream again to locate 
the positions of those stumps in order that I might not 
run afoul one while fishing. Imagine my surprise to see 
cue of those stumps suddenly move in my direction and 
another to bend over and right itself again; this phe- 
nomena was easily explained by a closer inspection, which 
proved to me that my supposed stumps were, in fact, 
human beings, and how human they were can best be 
judged from the fact that each and every one of them was 
a fisherman, and out here in this pouring rain on the same 
errand bent and actuated with the same ideas as were 
we — i. e., that this stream would be the best in the neigh- 
borhood, and that each one of them would be the first 
on the fishing ground. 
After thrashing the brook for a couple of hours or so, 
and meeting some thirty of our fellow beings, we at length 
crawled beneath the lowest strand of a barbed-wire fence 
for at least the fifth time that morning; this particular 
fence, however, manifested an affinity for my coat-tail 
that I had not remarked in any of the others. By this 
fence we came upon a mati who informed us, among other 
things, that he lived near by, and who also commented on 
the number of fishermen that he had observed during the 
morning; he, however, stoon stalked away in the direction 
of a farmhouse to be seen not far distant, so our atten- 
tion was given to fishing once more. 
Up to date I had taken three chub, and was beginning 
to feel proud of the exploit, for George had not even 
hooked a chub, when my vain boastings were interrupted 
by a sound from the direction of the farmhouse, and 
glancing back I beheld our acquaintance of a few 
moments since, leading some kind of an animal into this 
very pasture in which we were fishing. At once my im- 
agination took fire, the warning to keep an eye peeled 
for Roberts' bull ; the hint as to the number of fishermen 
about, as dropped by the farmer, instantly flashed through 
my mind. This, I was sure, was an unique plan of the 
farmer to clear us off his premises; a fierce bull, I felt 
confident, had been loosed upon us. So, calling out a 
warning sentence to George, and grasping the butt of 
my rod in one hand, with fish-basket trailing out behind, 
away I sped for a neighboring fence, just as fast as a 
pair of rubber top boots and rainy-day costume would 
permit. Twice I stumbled over mounds of earth, and 
once I plunged the tip of my rod into the soft earth, 
causing it to bend nearly double, but I plowed madly on, 
determined that no bull should gore me if I could be the 
means of helping it. At last I reached the fence, and safe 
and sound upon the other side I paused to look back. 
There was George walking slowly along by the stream 
and my bull grazing peacefully near the bars. 
Some moments later, when George came up to the spot 
where I was seated, still breathing like an old-fashioned 
bellows, he, Avith many a guft'aw, remarked that I need not 
have been in such haste, for even a good sized calf like 
this one had never been known to harm anyone. 
For some time after my adventure with the supposed 
bull — am safe in calling the adventure mine; indeed, I 
might leave out all mention of the bull and still have just 
as valid a claim to the adventure — as I was saying, for 
some time after this there was peace. I saw nothing that 
I felt compelled to shy at or run away from; naturally I 
was inclined to growl somewhat at the weather and things 
in general, but for the most part everythir^g passed 
smoothly ufjtil somewhat late^ jn the day. I sho,v\)d judge 
that it was along about three fff■\o<^^ in the afwnoon; 
the rain had ceased and I could see George fishing on the 
opposite side of the stream some few rods on. He had 
just landed the finest trout of the day; that isn't saying 
a great deal, but it wa^ encouraging, just the same, for at 
the moment I was struggling for the third time within ten 
minutes with my hook, which somehow seemed- to delight 
in coming into contact with objects foreign to the use 
for which it had been designed. Manfully I strove to 
restrain sundry inelegant but effective expressions that 
came to mind, for this last time I had hooked on to a 
stout root on the opposite side of the stream. I decided 
that, contrary to my habit, I would not yank this time 
and break the hook and stand a chance of losing some 
few feet of line as well; this time I would, like any 
decent-minded citizen, cross the stream, unhook my tackle, 
and return to my own side after so doing. The stream 
at this point could not be more than four or four and a 
half feet in width, I conjectured. Of course I didn't care 
how deep it was ; ordinarily I am not considered the most 
sprightly creature that„ walks. I know my failings, too; 
but crossing this stre^ni would be as easy as hopping 
across a puddle in the_ road ; its firm even banks would 
afford a safe start and alighting. So I laid aside my rod, 
drew my boots up at the hips, stepped back a pace, and lit 
out. If all human calculations were correct, what a lot 
of worry and fuss we could spare ourselves in this "vale 
of tears." It happened either that this particular brook 
laterally stretched somewhat as I took wing, or else some- 
thing unknown retarded that astonishing leap I made. 
Any way, the fact of the matter is I alighted plump in the 
middle of the stream. Whew 1 How cold that water was. 
I have the habit of a cold morning plunge, but I never 
ran up against anything like this. Vainly I grasped at the 
muddy bank; in up to my shoulders, I could hardly stand 
upright, so swiftly did the water rush about me. Then 
it dawned upon me that, clad as I was, I could not 
emerge from this roaring torrent without assistance ; so I 
bellowed lustily for George to come and rescue me. I did 
not shout in vain, for in a moment up galloped George, 
who proceeded to grasp me by the collar and haul me up 
the slippery bank, and no small job it proved to be. Hav- 
ing seen me safely landed on terra firma, he proceeded to 
laugh immoderately, going through as many contortions of 
voice and form as a professional limber-man and grand 
opera singer combined. This, indeed, was a last straw. I 
would stand it no longer. I had been imposed upon. 
Who was to blame I couldn't say, but I felt it, just the 
same. When all these mishaps happen to one meek, un- 
offending man in the course of one day, it is time he 
retired to the peace and quiet of his regular vocation. 
So I decided, and back we started, arriving in town late 
that night. George has not yet ceased explaining to our 
friends what a fleet runner I am, and how much I re- 
sembled a muskrat when he saw me first in that muddy 
stream, my rubber hat only visible on its surface. 
John B, Aiken. 
Memories of Lake Whitney. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Reading that most interesting account in a recent num- 
ber of the Forest and Stream about early days on Lake 
Whitney, New Haven, Conn., brings to mind my college 
years and the happy days spent on that interesting sheet 
of water at the end of the horse car line. My thoughts 
go away back to 1877, and I want to tell about my very 
first experience in a birch canoe on any stage in any 
water. There was a good sportsman, George Greenleaf, 
who sang in our old St. John Street M. E. Church choir, 
and he used to tell the basses in Prof. Benjamin Jepson's 
musical organization in the organ loft, between the acts 
on rehearsal nights, of the great sport hunting and fishing 
he had at the lake in his old birch. As I seemed to have 
the right sort of appreciation, it was agreed that he was 
to call for me after Saturday morning Greek one bright 
spring morning. We got to the lake and George found 
his canoe somewhere' in a barn or shed. It may have 
been cared for by the celebrated fisherman of pickerel 
mentioned by your correspondent, only I did not have the 
good luck to meet him. I do remember the neat little 
low house covered with vines by the landing. We pushed 
off and sat right down in the bottom of our craft, and I 
remember how much more staunch she seemed than the 
pine log dugout over which I wielded my virgin paddle 
on Four Mile Run on the Ticonderoga Flats. No two 
boys with their guns and tackle ever make a trip with the 
wind unless they try a sail for a short time. So we rigged 
up a big coach umbrella, which made us fairly_ fly, and 
concealed our identity from a staid boat full of girls from 
Miss N.'s boarding school, for we were like all young 
sportsmen, very shy with young w'omen folks, and, be- 
sides, we did not want to be annexed to any female ambi- 
tions on that day, at least. I well recall how we passed 
up to the north end, under the bridges, and saw the water 
lilies bursting into bloom, and-the Swarms of small fish 
about the stems of the water plants, and occasionally got a 
sight of a big father pickerel down in the dark depths 
below. 
We kept right on up the inlet, finding no difficulty in 
threading its crooked channel by looking sharply after 
dangerous roots, until we neared the falls over which we 
would have to carry. We decided to hide the boat and 
take luncheon. We were amused at the antics of a little 
box tortoise about the size of a Mexican dollar which 
we had caught and tied with a narrow ribbon to a thwart. 
We would abandon him feigning death on his back, but 
just as soon as we left we could hear the "turkle" turn- 
turtle. This he could do with ease every time. A fire 
was built of twigs "and several lamb chops were un- 
wrapped from a modest brown paper package. Thej' did 
not go badly toasted' o'n long sticks stuck into the ground 
near the coals, and 'the drips falling on the fresh bread 
made a good substitute for butter. " This was our first 
course. The perch a'jTd other fish were just swarming in 
the cool water of t'\e creek down under the deep banl« 
upon which we were "dining, and it did not take me long 
to catch a lot of them. Perch are best when skinned, as 
we do up in Lake George in the summer when in a hurry. 
Besides, there is no harder work than scaling- these armor- 
clad beauties in the old way. The fish is taken in the left 
hand and a slit is cut with a sharp knife from the 
center of the hack ^own parallel with the ^ills, Then 
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