July 30, 1904-1 
FOREST AND STREAM 
89 
■such expert work with the rifle as did the shooting of 
■deer on the run; or wild turkeys on the wing. He says 
Iniarksfnanship is a thing of the past, because all fixed 
■ammunition is overloaded. The old Kentucky rifle shot 
la ball no larger than a buckshot, and when laid in the 
Ip ; alm of the hand this ball was covered with powder, and 
■that constituted a proper charge, and when the gun was 
f fired, it did not jump out of your hands or kick you. 
A. D. McCandless. 
Boone, and it is a mighty bad thing for a man to be 
conceited and know it all. J. W. Parsons. 
;H0pe, Kansas.— Editor Forest and Stream: In the July 
18 number of your paper, I read the article on squirrel 
barkers by. Rifleman. I have heard about barking squir- 
rels' since I can remember, and as soon as I read the 
piece I showed it to my father, who is nearing the three 
score and ten limit, and he says he has done it himself 
many times and has seen it done hundreds of times. He 
used one of the old style rifles, 52 balls to the pound. Not 
only have I his testimony, but that of two other men in 
town who are past the sixty year mark, and who have 
been hunters from boys, and who to-day can shoot with 
any of the young men; both say they have done it and 
seen it done hundreds of times. My father was born and 
raised in Michigan; one of the others is from Ohio, and 
the other is from Illinois. The one from Illinois is sixty- 
six years old next month, and he says, "If he don't be- 
lieve it, let him come out here and I will take him out 
and show him. I have done it before and I can do it 
to-day." And they all tell me it was almost a disgrace 
for a man not to shoot a squirrel through the head. Now, 
I have known these men for years, and consider them all 
truthful men, and if the myth buster does not believe it, 
he can come out and be shown. O. H. Pease. 
{Editor Forest and Sir earn: 
Can squirrels be barked or not ? They can. 
Fifty years ago the average farmer's boy with his 
I squirrel rifle thought nothing of killing them in that 
Sway. I have often done it, and with the rifle I then had 
I could still do it, though my hand shakes more now than 
it did then. 
I My rifle carried a ball weighing about 80 to the pound ; 
J I used it on deer and squirrels, and have shot both within 
ij less than fifteen miles of the preserve limits of Alle- 
gheny City, Pa. The only deer to be found in all that 
jj country now are in the public parks. 
I When I did not want the squirrels, I would not kill 
I them. If I did not want them, I would wait until I had 
fgot one out on a small limb of a tree, then try to hit 
the limb he - sat on a foot away from him. It would send 
him tumbling down every time, but did not seem to hurt 
him. 
I was across on the Peninsula, a strip of timber that 
shuts in Erie harbor from the lake, one day last summer, 
and had two half-grown boys with me. One of these 
boys had just been given a new Stevens rifle, and he was 
anxious to try it on about everything that had life in it. 
The most of these small caliber rifles won't hurt any- 
thing badly when a ball fired out of them does hit it; but 
these Stevens rifles shoot wicked. I have put a ball out 
of one of them through two dry one-inch hemlock 
planks, and nearly through the third plank. 
A few Sundays ago a boy who was shooting sparrows 
with one of these rifles just beyond the city limits, put 
a ball into' the leg of a man who was at least 106 yards 
away from him when he did it. The man had to go to 
the hospital, while the boy was taken to the Mayor's 
office, where, after his gun had been confiscated, he was 
let go. 
I had been trying the gun carried by the boy I had 
with me to-day on mud turtles that nad crawled up on 
driftwood to sun themselves, and found that I could hit 
one of them nearly every time. While we were 
Scrambling through the timber in the strip of woods we 
ran across a large gray squirrel, which was on the 
ground under a tree when we first saw him. 
The boy was about to shoot when 1 stopped him, tell- 
ing him that the law was on that squirrel just now. He 
must not be shot. The squirrel ran up the tree as soon 
-as he saw us, and while we stood watching him he ran 
out on a small limb an inch or two in diameter, and sat 
there chattering at us. He was about forty feet above 
the ground. 
"Now, the law forbids me shooting that squirrel," I 
said to the boy,' "but it says nothing about me scaring 
him to death. Watch me and see how I do it." 
Taking the rifle I took aim at the limb he sat on, a 
foot away from him and toward the tree trunk, fired, and 
missed ; then firing again, I hit this time, and the squirrel 
dropped. The boy was about to rush over and pick him 
up, but I stopped him. I knew that the squirrel was not 
hurt badly, only stunned; he was not hurt as badly as 
the boy would have been if he had made an attempt to 
pick him up. The squirrel lay there a minute then got 
lip and made tracks to his tree again. He had not been 
hurt at all; he was only waiting to see if we were going 
to do any more shooting. Cabia Blanco. 
Canton, Pa. — Editor Forest and Stream: I have been 
much interested in the barking squirrels discussion in 
jour journal, and while I do not consider it safe to make 
any positive assertions on account of the doubt that may 
be thrown on one's veracity for so doing, I wish to say a 
word about the matter. 
* When I was a young man of eighteen or twenty, I 
conceived that a rifle was the only scientific firearm to 
use on squirrels, and I had also read of Daniel Boone 
and his exploits in barking the frisky little fellows. _ I 
spent a good deal of time and ammunition in attempting 
to duplicate his performances in that line, and twice, to 
my distinct recollection, I succeeded in securing a squir- 
rel without a mark of the bullet on him. 
Now, mind you, I don't say that they were barked as 
Boone did it, but that they died very shortly after I 
touched the trigger of the rifle_ aimed in their direction, 
and in each case there was a little fresh bullet mark on 
the limb just under the place where their necks had been. 
They may have died of apoplexy or heart disease or indi- 
gestion; but they died, and in my ignorance I' had always 
supposed that I was the cause of their death, not knowing 
at the time that they could not be killed in that way. 
' However, I am very glad that this discussion has come 
up, for I should probably have gone down to my grave, 
otherwise, thinking I was almost as good a shot as Daniel 
■i 
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8 
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Clarksdale, Miss. — Editor Forest 
and Stream: Your correspondent, 
Rifleman, quotes an unnamed "Myth 
Buster," who discredits all the records 
on the subject of "barking" squirrels, 
by old-time hunters with old-time rifles. 
The said "Myth Buster" undertakes to 
demolish what he calls a myth, by re- 
citing his own experience in his effort 
to perform the feat of "squirrel 
barking." 
This seeking after knowledge at first 
hands was certainly commendable in 
the Myth Buster; but he should have 
taken a guide along to show him a 
squirrel. It is evident that the animal 
experimented on by Myth Buster was 
not a squirrel. Most probably it was 
a cat, one of the nine-lives variety; or 
possibly a raccoon. First he "barked" 
his animal in a variety of ways, then 
sent a .44 Winchester bullet through its 
hind leg, then its body, then shot away 
part of its skull and brains, and finally 
"chunked" it out of the tree and 
clubbed it to death. No squirrel that 
ever grew hair could have stood half 
the treatment that this animal got. 
The writer once shot at a squirrel in 
a small tree with a Colts .38 caliber 
pistol. The squirrel jumped to the 
ground, ran a few steps, and with a 
gasp or two was dead. On examination 
it was found that the bullet had cut a 
track through the hair across the abdo- 
men, without breaking the skin. There 
was no limb to "bark" in this case, as 
the squirrel was among the twigs of a 
pine sapling. 
Within the memory of the writer the 
type of rifle in universal use for sport- 
ing purposes, was the old-fashioned 
"Kentucky" rifle. The present type of 
long range repeating rifle had never 
been heard of. The "Kentucky" rifle 
had a long, heavy, octagonal barrel, 
with a deep shoulder socket in the 
stock. There was a silvered bead on 
the muzzle end, and an open hind sight, 
both fine. 
There were still a few flintlock rifles 
then in use, and many old ones that 
had been converted to percussion locks, 
while most were of more modern make. 
The caliber was generally small, and 
was expressed in terms of the number 
of balls to the pound, as 40, or 60, or 
80, to the pound. The balls were 
spherical, and moulded by the hunter 
himself, the neck being cut off with a 
pocket-knife. 
The powder used was very fine 
grained, and a common way to measure 
the charge was to place the bullet in the 
palm of the hand and pour the powder 
on it slowly until the bullet was just 
covered. After pouring the charge into 
the rifle a small square patch of cotton 
goods was laid over the muzzle, the 
bullet placed in the center and pressed 
down with the thumb, after which it was 
rammed home with a long, slim, hick- 
ory rod, that fitted into thimbles on 
the under side of the barrel, or was 
thrust down between the barrel and 
stock, when the stock extended up to 
the muzzle. 
An important feature of these old- 
time rifles, that had much to do with the 
accurate shooting done with them, was 
the set trigger. There were two trig- 
gers, the hind one being first pulled to 
set the other on edge. In shooting the 
rifle, at the instant when the sight was 
in the right place, the merest touch of 
the trigger with the end of the finger 
set it off. These details are doubtless 
familiar to your readers, but the 
younger generation of the Forest 
and Stream family are probably • 
strangers to the old "Kentucky 
rifle. ' , . , 
The writer, m his boyhood, 
has attended country shooting- 
matches, where the prizes were^ 
not turkeys, as in the matches at- 
tended by Sam Lovell and Uncle 
Lisha, where the 
distance was meas- 
ured in rods in- 
stead of yards; 
but a beef usually 
afforded the prizes 
that were shot for. 
There were five 
prizes in the beef, 
beginning with the 
choice of hind 
quarters, down to 
the ' hide as the 
fifth choice. 
The distances 
were 40 yards off- 
hand, or 60 yards 
with a rest. The 
targets had a 
cross mark made 
in the center with 
a pencil, and the 
winners had to 
knock out the 
cross, or come 
very near it. 
In squirrel hunting I do not remember any hunters 
who made a practice of barking squirrels, though I 
have heard it alluded to as one manner of killing them. 
It was not considered sportsmanlike to hit them any- 
where except in the head, and that was too tempting 
a target to aim anywhere else. 
When the Civil War ended, this writer, then scarcely 
more than a lad in age, but with a big bunch of ex- 
perience on hand, returned home and found the family 
"refugeeing" in the country. Food, money, and ammu- 
nition were very scarce. There were plenty of squirrels 
in the woods not far from the house. Using shotguns 
was too expensive in ammunition; but there were a 
couple of old-fashioned rifles about the house that had 
escaped the exigencies of the war and the eyes of the 
raiders, and the family larder was often dependent for 
meat' upon the prowess of a younger brother and my- 
self, among the squirrels with these old rifles. 
The subject of scarcity of ammunition calls to mind, 
that when the writer came out of Port Hudson, Louis- 
iana, in 1863, after a six weeks' siege, a prisoner on 
parole by the grace of General Banks, he carried home 
a tin canteen that had been filled with powder by 
emptying rifle cartridges into it, together with a quota 
of musket caps mingled with the powder. A piece of 
corncob was driven tightly into the mouth of the 
canteen and broken square off, around which some 
molasses was smeared. This innocent-looking canteen 
passed General Banks' sentinels without exciting sus- 
picion, and was the means of much good sport in the 
woods and fields in the few months' interval before the 
prisoner on parole had to report for duty again after 
being exchanged. Coahoma. 
Life in the Woods. — XIIL 
Some Queer Things. 
On another day we hunted some, but without any luck, 
and later carried in some more deer. That evening the 
talk turned on queer experiences in the woods, and 
among the narratives were the following: 
The Colonel for some reason drifted to the subject of 
dreams, and said that from the time he first began hunt- 
ing in the North Woods dreams had had quite an in- 
fluence with himself and his companions for the reason 
that a great many of them came true. Oftentimes, he 
said, the first salutation in the morning would be, "Well, 
what did you dream last night?" "Who is to shoot a 
deer to-day?" Sometimes the reply would go around, 
"Nothing dreamed last night." At other times, "I had a 
dream," would be the answer, and then it would be told 
to the company. For instance, S. B. dreamed one night 
of seeing a large buck at the Norway choppings. He was 
a large, peculiar looking deer, with big, broad antlers, 
homely and very old looking, and, according to the 
dream, the Buckeye shot him. As evening approached, 
the Buckeye, happening near the identical spot, posted 
himself for the evening's watch. Just as the twilight 
began to disappear, a large buck made his appearance 
among the Norways, and a moment later was the Buck- 
eye's game. An examination proved him to be identical 
with S. B.'s dream. On returning to camp the Buckeye 
asked S. B. to describe again the place and deer, which 
he did, even to the most unimportant detail, all the time 
not knowing that just such a deer had been shot at just 
such a place. 
Another member of the party told how before he left 
home he had a dream about as. follows: It seemed that 
he had been very successful in the hunt, killing two of 
the largest deer, and that the day he secured the last 
one he brought the heart in and laid it with three others 
all in a row on a log in front of the camp. The two 1 
from his big deer headed the procession, and as he stood 
looking at them, up came S. B., softly behind him, and 
putting his hand on his shoulder said : "I am proud of 
you." This dream he did not relate to any of the mem- 
bers of the party, but told the folks at home of it, and, 
in fact, had forgotten all about it until the day it was 
fulfilled exactly as he had dreamed it in every particular. 
The Colonel also related another odd experience. He 
had just been telling about the buck dream and continued 
by saying: "On the same hunt when we were about to 
break camp at Echo Lake, and were carrying some things 
down to the river, S. B. was making a drive, and it was 
near the place where he had killed two deer when we 
first came in; I was on the runway watching. Pretty 
soon I saw two deer passing through the woods slowly. 
I fired quickly and the deer disappeared. Upon going 
HP to where I saw them, I found signs that showed that 
one of them was badly wounded. Presently both John 
and S. B. came up and showing them the blood, I left 
them to go on and look up the deer while I started back 
to the river. They soon came up to it, and after killing 
and dressing it, they dragged it out to the road. By that 
■ time I was returning and happened to meet them just as 
they struck the road. It proved to be a doe with horns, 
and in all of the experience of our party it is the only 
horned doe that has ever been seen. It has also proved 
to be the only doe with horns that has ever been killed in 
that part of the State. Later on an account of the kill- 
ing of this doe was published in a sporting paper, and 
it developed the fact that up to that time only two in- 
stances in addition to this one were known among hun- 
ters where a doe with horns had been shot." 
About this time someone asked if anyone present had 
ever known of a wounded deer attacking a person. Bill 
said that the nearest incident he had ever known to such 
a thing happened in the fall of 1887. In his own language 
this is the way it occurred : "Two companions, Louis 
and Brad, and I were hunting in the woods of northern 
Michigan, and we had been out all day at this particular 
time without having had any success ; that is, we got no 
deer up to three o'clock, and were hunting toward camp. 
We came to a large cedar swamp which I knew was a 
good place for deer, as there were some small islands in 
it which were high and dry. So I told Louis and Brad 
to go around to a certain place and stand while I went in 
on the opposite side to try and drive some deer to them. 
I had not got into the swamp very far when I heard 
some deer start and run right toward the place where 
I had told my companions to stand. Sure enough they 
