8 v s 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[July 9, 19a ; 
twenty different States. In either case, we must have a 
large organization of sportsmen with a salaried secretary 
or other official, to work for us all the year round, and 
a good supply of money for expenses. 
I suggest that all of the sportsmen in the country, to- 
gether with other lovers of nature, members of Audubon 
Societies, and every individual that can be persuaded to 
come to our assistance, be organized into a great league 
or association, with small annual dues of from two to 
five dollars, according to the numbers we can obtain. We 
may be able to obtain such numbers that two> dollars, or 
even one dollar, a year would be enough. We must then 
decide which course we shall pursue, the amendment or 
uniform State legislation. Having settled that question, 
we could hold annual meetings and distribute literature 
all over the country, and agitate the question in every 
newspaper in every county, and have members using their 
influence in every corner of the United States. 
If we once got control of the situation, with uniform 
action throughout the great duck-shooting regions, we 
could, I think, very soon restore the wildfowl to the con- 
dition they were in sixty or seventy years ago. We 
could in the beginning declare every other year an off 
year, with no shooting at all, and I believe this would, 
in a very short time, produce an increase that would 
astonish everybody. We would soon not need any off 
years, but could shoot every year, under proper restric- 
tions. Sydney G. Fisher. 
Don't Kill the Hedgehog. 
One day in the autumn a fawn was with its mother en- 
joying a good feed of beechnuts, which were thick upon 
the ground. "Oh," said the fawn, as he run his nose 
against a hedgehog quill that lay among the fallen leaves, 
"I do< wish those fellows were not so careless in discarding 
their outer garments, and I for one am glad that my coat 
is not as coarse as theirs, stupid things that they are." 
"Softly, softly, said the mother deer, "you should not 
speak so of one who is the best friend we have in all 
the forest. They help us to many a meal when starvation 
stares us in the face. If it were not for his rough coat, he 
would have but little protection against the pack of hounds 
that you remember live down by the edge of the clearing." 
But the smarting of the fawn's nose put him in no mood 
to see much good in having a neighbor like the hedgehog. 
It was not long before winter set in, the snow became 
deep, and day after day the poor deer had to travel, over 
the same route from one end of the swamp to the other, 
until there was not another branch or bough that they 
could reach. They had become so weak they could not 
break new roads through the deep snow to find other 
feeding grounds. Then there came a day when the wind 
blew from the east, and that evening the rain came down 
in torrents; but before morning the thaw had turned to 
a cold which caused a hard crust to form over the deep 
snow. "Now," said the mother deer, "is our time to call 
on neighbor hedgehog, and see how he and his family have 
put in the winter." 
Away up by the granite ledge they found that their 
neighbor had managed to keep a good path from his den 
out to the several hemlocks that stood in his front yard. 
They found him at work away up in the_ top of a tall hem- 
lock, out on a limb as far as his weight would allow. 
Here he was, as busy as he could be, cutting off the 
tender boughs with his teeth and. letting them drop to the 
ground; then he would descend and enjoy eating them; 
but he was always sure to cut off enough so that his neigh- 
bors could have a feast as well as himself. Every day 
the deer made a visit to the hedgehog den for a feed, and 
he, being an industrious fellow, always had the table well 
supplied, and helped to keep the wolf from the door of his 
neighbor until spring. 
That is why I don't kill hedgehogs. 
Byron E. Cool. 
Adirondack Deer and Forests. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
The note this week on Adirondack deer prompts me to 
send the inclosed letter from Frank Chase, an experienced 
and reliable guide, who has spent his whole life of sixty- 
five years in the woods. He wrote about April 1 from 
Newcomb, concerning the deer and the forests, and the 
relation of one to the other, in the Adirondacks. 
J. B. Pellett. 
"My experience this winter in the woods has taught me 
that the deer where I have been trapping (and I have been 
a good many hundred miles on snowshoes) are all right. 
I have found only one dead one. That was a little stunted 
fawn. Some scamp had killed his mother when he was 
very young, and he had grown but little, if any. There 
was a crust then, and the snow being so deep, he could not 
get around to get food enough, so got weak and perished 
on one of the coldest days. But that is only one case, and 
it is very evident that if his mother had been left to nurse 
him for two or three months he would have had a consti- 
tution to carry him through the winter. 
"Lumbering is a curse to the Adirondacks. It is open- 
ing up the forest so that the poor deer and other animals 
find little protection from the cold wintry winds and deep 
snows. It seems like desecration. There may be places 
where the forests are so devastated by lumbering that the 
deer congregate at the most sheltered place they can find 
to winter, and after eating everything within reach that 
is good for them to eat, are obliged to eat balsam and 
cedar, which they will not eat unless they are obliged to. 
This weakens them greatly, and perhaps there may be 
some places where deer have succumbed to the cold in that 
way. I don't believe there is any epidemic among them. 
If I could see some of those deer and the ground and sur- 
roundings where they were found dead, it would not take 
me long to trace out the cause. 
"Deer dig down to the ground to get a little moss or 
grass or something of that sort, until the snow gets so 
deep or a crust prevents them. We don't usually have a 
crust that will bear up a deer until some times late in 
February. I have seen many deer wallowing with the 
snow clear up half way on their sides. Forty years ago 
they did not lumber as they do now. They only cut the 
spruce and other soft timber down to ten inches and over. 
The result was that in a. few years you could hardly tell 
that it had been lumbered. The young trees that were left 
soon grew up large and thrifty; the old tops rotted down, 
so that the only indication left that it had been lumbered 
would be occasionally an old stump that a person might 
sometimes mistake for a deer. Now it is cut and slash 
everything as big as a man's arm. What isn't cut down is 
knocked down by the other trees falling. After it is 
opened up so, little cherries and underbrush spring up 
thicker than hair on a dog. This generation will not see it 
again in its original beauty, and I am not certain that the 
next will. Thus I see the beautiful forest that I love so 
well despoiled by the inroads of what some people call 
energy, progress, and civilization." Frank Chase. 
A Good Told Story. 
Sheriff Cook, of Tucson, Ariz., has in his pos <l-,s | 
a weapon which was probably used in the making of if 
tory in Arizona in the days of the '60s and '70s. I til 
revolver of an old model Colt, and was found on thli 
between Sentinel and Agua Caliente a few daws :i| 
There were found, rudely engraved on the metal w|| 
the letters, "K. W." Six notches were filed on the sidfl 
the barrel. The conclusion was reached that the gunfl 
a part of the armory of King Woolsey, whose stronghl 
at Agua Caliente was one of the best known places inl 
territory. The old weapon was shown to Justice Burjjl 
who said that it recalled to him an incident in a tourH 
party of "tenderfeet" across the continent. There wM 
breakdown of a Southern Pacific train near Sentinel, I 
there was no prospect of the train moving for sevi 
hours. The tourists exhausted all the means of amjl 
ment at their hands, and finally one proposed shootinji 
a target. Half a dozen revolvers were collected, J 
several empty soda, beer and other bottles, which \fl 
found lying around the station. The marksmen esll 
lished a range at a distance from the train and pop4 
away at the bottles for an hour or two. One of the tcl 
ists, but only one, succeeded in hitting a bottle nowfl 
then, and he was recognized as the Dr. Carver of 1 
party. _ ■ . jj 
An old man with flowing whiskers, attracted by the j 
charge of firearms, rode up and sat on his horse obsed 
the target practice. Whenever the "champion" tou 
fired the old man would give a grunt expressive of c 
tempt. Finally the champion turned to him and s 
"Maybe you think you can shoot?" The old man! 
nothing, but, dismounting, he picked up a bottle, fasti 
a string about the bottom of it in such a manner thai 
bottle would hang inverted. The old man tied the stj 
to the limb of a mesquite. He next took the cork fj 
the bottle, and when the bottle had become stationary 
measured with his eyes a spot directly under the md 
of it. He placed a flat stone there, and put the cork 
it upside down, directly under the mouth of the bo 
Then the old man set the bottle swinging, and, wall] 
away 30 yards, he estimated the position of the bottle 
made a calculation of the momentum. He drew a revo 
and fired. The bottle fell, and one of the tourists 
and picked it up, corked. — Springfield Republican. 
Trophies from Canada. 
East Hampton, N. Y.— E. B. Muchmore has, displa 
in his father's store, the mounted heads of a caribou 
a moose, which he shot last fall in Canada. They are 
prettiest heads that have been seen in the place, that of, 
moose being an especially fine specimen. A tape str; 
from the tips of the antlers marks 51 inches; ithastwei 
nine points. The caribou head has thirty-five points. 
Arrested for Boarding Wild Birds. 
Charged with haying live wild birds in her possess 
out of season, in violation of the State game laws, Is 
Christiana Unger was arrested in New York city | 
week b}' State Game Warden John E. Overton. In cc 
Mrs. Unger said she was having a hard struggle to k 
from starvation, when a man from the West asked hes 
board the birds. Magistrate Whitman held her for ti 
The Chain Broken! On the Cars! 
The breaking of the chain is synonymous with the 
closing down of the lid of your desk. There's the rub. 
But once closed and on the cars with your face pointed 
toward camp and canoe, and all is well. Expectancy and 
anticipation fill your mind and crowd out business cares. 
So turning things over to my son (and blessed is the 
man who has a son who can share the load), here I am 
flitting over the rails, bound north for Kobekiana Camp, 
with my rod-case stuffed with rods that have remained 
idle and unused for many moons on the attic shelf. 
I am alone because old man Bassford has failed me at 
the last moment, and instead of alternately listening to his 
yarns and holding my sides, I am whiling away the time 
writing these few lines. I have just finished reading my 
beloved Forest and Stream, and find that Mr. McCand- 
less has taken the wind from my sails in describing 
the robber thrush levying toll from the industrious robin. 
I saw the sparrows holding up the robins in this same 
identical way, and had intended to "remark" on same in 
your columns. 
Well, as the minutes pass by, I feel that I am neanng 
the end of the trail, and there is where the fisherman ex- 
pects to "find things." 
In the seat beside me is my weatherbeaten rod-case, 
plastered up with Maine stickers that awaken in my mind 
memories of days that are gone— days of thirty years 
ago, when I tramped the woods and enjoyed my first 
trout fishing. It shows wear and tear, and I am sorry to 
say the shelf marks are too much in evidence upon its 
weatherbeaten surface. 
I am carried back to my first heavy trout. I am out on 
old Moxie Pond, above the forks of the Kennebec. The 
boys have gone up stream, and I have taken the boat and 
gone out to try by myself. I make a cast — the fly disap- 
pears without a ripple — a tug, and snap ! goes my split 
bamboo at the second joint below the tip; a clean break, 
and the line and tip fall upon the water. With a sigh I 
recover the line, pulling it in by hand, only to find that 
the fly was "sot," and the fish was still fast. I pull in 
hand over hand, as one would do when fishing with a 
hand-line for bluefish, and fortune favors me, for I land 
a fine 3-pound trout at my feet in the boat. I look at the 
break, and find the wood damp and spongy, and then I re- 
member that my rod stood next a tree during the night, 
and that it rained great guns, nearly washing us out of 
our lean-to, and I reason to myself that bamboo rods were 
not made to stand all night in the rain and do good work 
the next day. 
I pull up anchor and row back to camp, and with jack- 
knife and waxed silk I make repairs, using a supporting 
sliver of wood on each side of the- break. It is not a neat 
looking job, but I figure it will hold, arid I go out again 
for the mate of my first trout, and cast and strike, and 
although the rod, as it bends under the strain, is not 
akin to Hogarth's line of beauty, yet it holds. The fish 
is gamy to the last, and as the fight goes on_ I begin to 
lose confidence in my splice, and wonder if it will last. 
It does, and as I "slip the net under the trout I draw a 
long breath of relief. And I land another, and as I 
the camp-fire glimmer on the shore I quit and pull 
the shore and supper. That experience taught me to kl 
my rods out of the wet at night, and to take more t| 
one rod on an extended trip. 
Then again I am up on Greenwood Lake after bl 
It is late in the season and cold. The "guide snaps J 
fingers after drawing them from the minnow bucket ] 
baiting the hook. We are fishing up and down the la jl 
rock in front of the club house landing. The bass j 
hungry, and after my third or fourth fish, my reel beri 
It is useless. The best I can do is to borrow a brass i| 
■ — one of the kind that goes with rod, line, hooks, ; 
sinker in a department store — all for 75 cents. But 
port in a storm, and I fish on under difficulties, and 1 
bass after bass. And I learn the lesson to not only t 
an extra rod, but reel as well. 
I am going where there are bass — large-mouth, wj 
eyed pike, and maskinonge. I have not as yet reconc! 
my way of thinking of the large-mouth bass as welll 
Dr. Henshall regards him. I have taken him only in s" 
warm lakes, and found him so slow and unresisting r 
I was cured of any desire to fish for him. But in j 
north country, where the water is cold and clear, I 
told he conducts himself differently, putting up a fij 
class fight. We shall see. I am told of a lake near 
camp alive with bass; not of a large size, however, 
greedy for a fly, and full of ginger. I am assured t 
three or four flies mean a rise to each fly. That wit 
four-ounce rod there's fun galore. And before I le 
