tMAY-23i 1903. 
ewes and lambs, a little later the hunters came upon 
large herds of rams and a number of unusually fine speci- 
mens were secured. 
It was now September and the best of hunting. Bears 
were plenty in the country, but, though signs were seen, 
none were killed. 
From here they crossed over a rough spur of the 
mountains to what was called Kootenai plain, losing some 
horses on the way and traveling straight across the peaks 
and not by a known trail. From the Kootenai plaiu their 
route was to old Bow Fort on Bow River, which they 
were anxious to reach, partly because their provisions 
had largely given out, though they still had abundance of 
dried sheep meat, of pemmican and of tea. Goats were 
abundant here, but, as a little earlier with the sheep, they 
had not yet learned how to hunt them. The game con- 
stantly saw the hunter and climbed away, and he speaks 
of them as "enchanted beasts;" beastj which, however, 
at last he succeeded in circumventing. Toward the end 
of the month an Assinaboine hunter was met who guided 
the party to the camp of his own people, Stonies, who 
were killing goats and moose. These, people were Chris- 
tians and very simple, good natured and anxious to learn 
from and please the white men. From Bow Fort the 
route was back to Edmonton, which they reached October 
12, finding Mr. Christie then in charge. 
Leaving Edmonton October 17, they started down the 
Saskatchewan River in a boat, but before long the river 
froze, and it was necessary to send to Fort Pitt for horses 
in order to escape from the country. On the first day of 
November the men arrived, bringing sixteen horses, and 
six days later they were at the fort. It was now winter 
and the weather very severe. They passed along by way 
of Fort Carlton to the Touchwood Hills, and thence to 
Fort Pelly, where they passed Christmas day. From here 
by dog teams they reached Fort Garry, and in February 
Sir James Carnegie found himself in Boston and took 
passage for Liverpool. 
Nebraska Game Country. 
Although the springtime in Nebraska is most aggra- 
vatingly short, there is no sweeter or more charming 
cycle in all the horoscope of the year. The April rains, 
which fall with so gentle palter upon our fertile plains 
and low, graceful hillsides, quickly start the young 
grass and in less time than it takes to tell it, almost, 
field and wayside are carpeted with a delicate emerald 
which painter can never hope to imitate. Just now 
the universal green is spangled with numerous wild 
flowers of early bloom, and overhead arches an ex- 
panse of azure flecked daily with fleecy splotches of 
cloud that cast shitting shadows upon the peerless 
landscape below. Not a tree or a shrub but which now 
shows the effect of its recent drenching, and table-land, 
hillside, and gully, swept of their recent covering of 
dead grass and ragged leaves, by the boisterous winds 
that proceeded the heavy rains, have fully awakened 
from their long winter's slumber. Along the glorious 
Elkhorn's bottom the stunted oaks, glistening cotton- 
woods, plum and straggling elms have donned their 
early summer raiment as dainty and fresh as the face 
of the schoolboy's sweetheart. Aromatic pink blos- 
soms and furzy bursts of faint color in every miniature 
canyon gives promise of a rich harvest of crab apples, 
golden plums, purple crow-eye grapes, wild rose buds 
and the acidulous sumach berry. Along the gushing 
Rawhide, the Papio and Silver Creek pungent water 
cress crowds its tender shoots along with clumps of 
wild musk and tough sawgrass, while bordering the 
wooded banks are tangles of lacy ferns, maiden-hair, 
Johnny-jump-ups and sturdy little polypods. 
The thorny locust is just sending forth its almost 
stifling fragrance from adjoining thickets, where the 
alder buds are swelling and sweet azaloas blowing. 
The Morpho butterfly undulates upon the sensuous 
air, the dragon fly flits in and out of odd nooks and 
crannies over the dark places, and from the woods 
higher up the valley comes a lilt of melody from robin, 
thrush and tanager. This is Nebraska at the dawn 
of the first month of summ,er. 
Notwithstanding the past winter, for continued in- 
tensely cold weather and heavy drifting snows, was the 
worst we have experienced out here since 1888, and 
notwithstanding the statistics I have accumulated from 
all parts of the State, show that fully 33 per cent, of the 
quail crop was frozen and starved to death, there are 
undoubtaljly more of these birds in the State to-day 
than ever before in its history — thanks to the three 
years' prohibitive law, which expires on the last day of 
next October. Deputy State Game Warden George 
Carter, of North Platte, told me some weeks ago that 
fully 50 per cent, of the quail had been winter killed, 
according to the warden's figures, but he has amended 
this opinion by reason of more recent and broader in- 
formation, and now puts the birds' loss at 20 per cent., 
but I consider my own estimate the nearer correct. 
However, there are going to be thousands of birds in 
all sections of the State, and the sportsmen are jubilant 
over the fact that they will be allowed to indulge in 
their favorite sport once more this fall. With a favor- 
able season of breeding Nebraska's tangly creek bot- 
toms will, afford better quail shooting than can be 
found elsewhere in the United States, north or south. 
But if the quail are going to be plentiful, what about 
the chicken? If I should presume to lay before the 
readers of the Forest and Stream the facts with refer- 
ence to tlae plentifulness of this royal game bird in 
Nebraska at this period, I know I will be charged with 
willful extravagance and an attempt to falsely boom the 
State through the medium of its wonderful game re- 
sources. But to those who are familiar with my en- 
thusiasm as a sportsman and my selfishness in keeping 
good things to myself, these assertions will be taken as 
anything but idle gossip. So far as life is concerned, I 
am fast getting on the other side of the slope, and if I 
was purely selfish the general reader would receive no 
information with regard for chances at the sport I love so 
well. Why should I care if you all went hungry, just so 
I had my fill? But I do care. I never did enjoy fishing 
or shooting alone, and now as the years keep rolling 
steadily on, I find myself in these times of restored plenti- 
tude less able to endure fatigue. I try to convince 
myself that it is simply some temporary indisposition or 
weakness, but from the way 1 felt the other evening after 
coming in from the snipe bogs, I sadly fear it is some- 
thing that has come to stay. It doesn't vbother me, 
though, as I used to think it would— a kind provision of an 
all-wise Providence— and it is simply my generous nature, 
my keen interest in the generations of younger and 
brawnier sportsmen, who can tramp and row and climb 
and shoot and fish with all the ability to endure that I 
once knew, that influences me in telling what I tell. 
And the chicken. 
While they are not to be found in such flourishing 
abundance over as wide a scope of territory as in former 
years, they are every whit as numerous in certain locali- 
ties — especially in the lonely sandhills— as they were half 
a century ago, and it will be no trick at all this fall for 
even an ordinary shot to kill the limit— fifty birds per 
day — at hundreds of different points in the northern and 
western parts of this State. While riding across a 
measureless tableland on Barber's big ranch out in Cherry 
county on the 23d of March last, en route for the ducking 
grounds on Pelican Lake, we saw thousands of chicken 
at a single glance of the eye in any direction — more 
chicken than many sportsmen have seen in all their lives 
together. It was early morning, with the sun just send- 
ing his arrowy shafts of gold across the almost limitless 
and closely cropped expanse of pasture land. The birds 
v/ere sitting everywhere — two's and three's generally, but 
sometimes as many as two hundred in a bunch. The 
cocks were "a-boom-oom-oom-ooming" in the bounding 
ecstacy of the trysting time, walking and jumping and 
sweeping around, with tails outspread like fans, the un- 
impressible hens, and the spectacle was such a rare one, 
that, as keen as we were to get our blinds made, we 
pulled up the teams and watched them for many moments. 
And coming into Wood Lake from Stilwcll's ranch, after 
the hunt was all over, we flushed both chicken and sharp- 
tail grouse at intervals of less than a quarter of a mile 
for the entire distance of the forty miles or more. And 
it was the same throughout the whole sandhills world — 
and it is a big one — as we were told by Stilwell, Ballard, 
Harris, Francke, Baird, Anderson, and scores of other 
ranchers and cattlemen. Last fall, corning from Stil well's, 
we saw the same picture, only thirty-five miles further 
north. We were on our way to Valentine then, instead 
of Wood Lake, and after we had crawled down the long 
rocky escarpment of the roaring Niobrara, and struck the 
wagon road in the valley along the river's shore, we were 
fairly startled by the rising of flocks of pintailed grouse 
that numbered their thousands and thousands, and as they 
got up in front of us and from along the brushy hanks, 
they streamed in veritable sheets across the broad river. 
I warrant you it was a sight that but few sportsmen in 
these modern days have ever seen. 
The movement on foot in Nebraska to interest sports- 
men as well as the farmer and the public generally in the 
preservation of the birds, is one that commends itself 
favorably to every righteous minded man, woman and 
child among us. That much has already been done in 
this line is demonstrated by the fact that many of the 
birds that were all but driven out this section of the 
world — notably the blue bird — are returning and many 
other species which for several years have undoubtedly 
been on the wane— robins, larks, chickadees, nuthatches, 
chewi»ks, song sparrows, thrushes, cedar and jay birds — 
are conspicuously increasing. Even the twittering, 
sheeny-coated martin has returned quite numerously to 
various localities that have not known the bird for years 
and j'ears, and there is a riiarked increase, at least in this 
particular region, of the little feathered denizens of all 
kmds. No longer ago than yesterday, while driving out 
the Ponca road along White Tail Run, I saw, about the 
cupola of the little old rustic church at the base of Long 
Hill, scores of sweet-voiced martins in aerial convolution, 
and the sighf and sound took me back to the days when I 
was a boy "back in Ohio." 
Nebraska is certainly a great bird State — probably the 
greatest in the Union. There is something like 400 
varieties that dwell at least a portion of the year with 
us, and all our citizens should take an especial pride in 
their protection and preservation, not from any mere 
sentimental standpoint, although sentiment alone is suffi- 
cient to furnish a most abundant reason for this plea — but 
from a serious consideration of the economic relation of 
the birds to man. 
In September and October last I made many notes of 
passing "bird life in Nebraska, and while I observed that 
the migrants were tardier coming down from the north 
than I had seen them for years, there were many more 
of them when they did come. It was not until September 
10 that the warblers whose mean line of northern migra- 
tion is along the British boundarj', put in an appearance. 
But from this date on till October 20 there were plenty 
of all kinds of migrants that linger a brief time with us — 
j uncos, white-throated sparrows, thrushes of several 
varieties, and mingling with this late issue I noticed were 
many red-breasted nuthatches, Canadian peewits, and our 
sturdy little hyperborean friend, the golden-crowned king- 
let. As late as the last of October, on certain lowering 
days, almost storms of robins and blackbirds came in, 
and for days they were here, in confusing thousands. 
There is no doubt whatever that last year, in this and 
adjoining States was a particularly auspicious one for the 
birds, and what incontrovertibly contributed to this happy 
condition, was the better sentiment Avhich prevails among 
men with reference to their care, protection and preserva- 
tion. In a little pamphlet written by Professor Bruner, 
of the State University, and scattered broadside through- 
out the State, he says: 
"To appreciate the beauty of form and plumage of 
birds, their grace of motion and musical powers, we must 
know them. The ease with which we may become 
familiar with the feathered neighbors robs ignorance of 
all excuses. Once aware of their existence and we shall 
see a bird in every bush and find the heavens their path- 
way. One moment we may admire their beauty of 
plumage, the next marvel at_ the ease and grace with 
which they dash by us or circle high overhead. The 
comings and goings of our migratory birds in spring- 
time and fall, their nest-building and rearing of young, 
their many regular and beautiful ways as exhibited in 
their daily lives, stir within us impulses for kindness to- 
ward the various creatures which share the world over 
with us. But birds will appeal to us most strongly 
through their song. When your ,ears are attuned to the 
music of birds, your world will be transformed. Birds' 
songs are the most eloquent of Nature's voices ; the gay 
carol of the grosbeak in the morning, the dreamy,, nijdday 
call of the pewee, the vesper hymn of the thrush, th^ 
clanging of geese in springtime, the farewell of the blue- 
bird in the fall — how clearly each one expresses the senti: 
ment of the hour of the season !" 
In nearly every case where the food habits of otn' bird? 
have been carefully studied, do- we find that the good done 
far exceeds the possible harm that might be inflicted by 
our birds._ Allowing twenty-five insects per day as an 
average diet for each individual bird, and estimating that 
we hav^ about one and one-half birds to the acre, or in 
round numbers, 75,000,000 birds in Nebraska, there would 
be required 1,785,000,000 insects for each day's rations. 
Again, estimating the number of insects required to 
fill a bushel at 120,000, it would take 15,625 bushels of in- 
sects to feed our birds for a single day, or 937,000 bushels 
for sixty days, or 2,343,750 bushels for 150 days. These 
estimates are very low when we take into consideration 
the number of insects that various of our birds have been 
known to destroy in a single day. For example, the 
stomachs of four chickadees contained 1,028 eggs of 
cankcrworms. Four others contained about 600 eggs and 
105 mature females of the same insect. The stomach of 
a single quail contained loi potato beetles, and that of 
another upward of 500 chinch bugs. A yellow-billed 
cuckoo shot at six o'clock in the morning contained forty- 
three tent caterpillara. A robin had eaten 175 larvEe of 
'Bibio, which feed on the roots of grasses, etc. Birds, like 
all other animals, feed upon that food which is most 
readily obtained, hence the insectivorous kinds destroy 
those insects which are most numerous — the injurious 
species. 
Ed Krug; a prominent naturalist and inveterate fisher- 
man, is at his own private box down on the Waubuncey, 
and reports the bass rising famoush'. Yesterday he 
landed 21, the largest tipping the scales' at 5^4 pounds. 
Frank Dworak, president of the South Omaha Gun 
Club, on the bottoms below Bellevue, ten miles south of 
Omaha, pn April 12 killed 104 jacksnipe, including one 
pure albino, which he has had mounted. 
Ex-United States Senator Manderson and George 
A. Hoagland will leave Saturday for Woman's Lake,' 
northern Minnesota, for a try at the muscallonge. 
Sandy Griswold. 
May 15. 
Hearing Deer Walk. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
A recent correspondent remarks at length on the noise- 
lessness of a deer's movements when undisturbed, and 
says in all his years of experience he has never "heard a 
deer walk." I have. Once when my long-time comrade 
on hunting trips and I were spending a night far from 
camp, and were trying to sleep on the boughs and under 
the boughs (overhanging), we more than once distinctly 
heard deer walking quite near us. In the morning we 
found several tracks, and one independent fellow had 
come within about twenty feet of us. We had not dis- 
turbed him, and he had not disturbed us, for the rain and 
the charm of the situation had kept us awake most of the 
night. 
Another time I was on a fishing trip with a party and 
another party came to the same Adirondack pond to hunt 
deer. We assured the newcomers that they were welcome, 
and we would be quiet at night and keep our fire down 
so as to facilitate their hunting. ("Jacking" was then 
legal.) Reassured, they made themselves at home, and 
the one who was to hunt was soon asleep preparatory to 
his night's work. We soon knew his fate would be dis- 
appointment. Talk about a lion's roar I I have never 
heard that, and I don't want to if it is any worse than 
that man's snore. We were morally certain no deer would 
ccme to the pond that night. The hunter and guide went 
out between 10 and 11 o'clock, but soon gave up and the 
snoring was resumed. I could have slept better in a 
thunder storm. During that night I "heard a deer walk" 
on the side hill above the pond, but of course he did not 
"come in." 
Again : On two different occasions when I had taken a 
friend into the woods to give him a shot at a deer, he 
heard the deer (undisturbed) coming for some distance 
in the woods before appearing in sight. In one case the 
deer came into view about 100 yards away, and in the 
other case about_ 200 yards. Both times my friend told 
me of hearing it in advance of the animal's appearance. 
I do not question your correspondent's statement that 
he has not "heard a deer walk," nor that in general ihcy 
can go quietly if they wish (I also know something about 
that) ; but my experience and that of several friends 
teaches us that they do not always wish to. Like man's, 
their practice varies. Juvenal. 
All Around Guns. 
Orient Point, N. Y.— Editor Forest and Stream: I 
do not suppose there is any shotgun so popular as the 
"all around." For more than forty years I, with most 
of our shooters, believed the lo-pound lo-bore was the 
right gun for this locality, where the game is principally 
ducks, rabbits, quail and snipe. All is changed now. 
I sell ten 12-bores where I sell one lo-bore. Were I 
compelled to carry and use it in all my shooting, I 
would not accept the best lO-bore lo-pound $100 ham- 
merless gufi as a gift — made in this or any other coun- 
try. The same gun cannot be the best all around 
gun for all localities. In some parts of the world I 
would rather carry a 6-bore than a 12, but these are 
not the parts of the world I live in. It is folly for 
(what some call) small bore cranks to contend that a 
16 or i2-bore can do the execution of a 6 or 8-bore, 
either a short or long range. 
In selecting a gun the shooter should take into con- 
sideration the kinds of game he has to shoot. Mr. 
Hammond, in his book "Hitting vs. Missing" (which 
I have just .finished reading), gives good advice to those 
about to choose guns. We agree exactly as to size 
of bore, length of barrel, weight, etc — of the "all 
around" gun. He recommends 12-gauge hammer or 
hammerless, length of barrels 28 inches, weight 7 
