Jan. 7, 1905.] 
FOREST AND STREAM^ 
11 
as residents; under such a law coupons could be at- 
tached to each license allowing hunters to ship their 
game home. 
_ "A general license law would be of great assistance 
in increasing our revenue," said Mr. Fullerton, in ex- 
planation of the recommendation. "The Wisconsin 
department is self-sustaining, largely because of, such 
a law." 
It. is further recommended that the number of ani- 
mals each hunter is allowed to kill be reduced as 
follows: _ Deer, from three to two; chickens, quail 
and partridges, from fifty to twenty-five; ducks, geese 
and brant, from one hundred to fifty. The Commis- 
sioners believe that if the "game bag" were thus cut 
down, so-called market hunting would bo discour- 
aged. 
The report deals with the proposed plan of estab- 
lishing a closed season for deer and moose, and the 
commissioners express the opinion that this is not 
favored by citizens generally, and is not necessary, 
as the supply of game is increasing instead of decreas- 
ing, and will continue to increase as long as there is 
adequate protection. 
The advisability of co-operating with the States of 
the Northwest in an attempt to secure uniform laws 
regarding illegal fishing in boundary waters, is urged. 
The laws of Wisconsin and Minnesota, for instance, 
are very different, and considerable friction has arisen 
as a result of illegal fishing in Lake Pepin. South 
Dakota and Minnesota have had the same difficulty 
in dealing with illegal fishing in Big Stone Lake. The 
proposed uniform laws will be recommended by Gov. 
Herried, of South Dakota, in his annual message to 
the Legislature of that State. 
Last year was one of the most prosperous in the 
history of the Commission. There were 256 arrests, 
and the percentage of convictions was exceptionally 
large, about 81 per cent. Fines collected amounted 
to $3,789.10, with one $20,000 fine pending. The jail 
sentences aggregate 1,195 days. There were 50,000 
feet of nets confiscated, from the small hoop net to the 
large seine. Over 70,000,000 fry were distributed, as 
follows: Wall-eyed pike, 67,000,000; trout, 4,310,000; 
bass and crappie, 1,806,000. 
The construction of the new hatchery at Glenwood 
is reviewed, and the Commission asks for a car in 
which to transport fish. 
"It makes every sportsman in Minnesota blush when 
he recalls that Minnesota had to ask Pennsylvania 
for its car to transport the Minnesota exhibit to the 
St. Louis World's Fair," say the Commissioners. 
The Hunting Instinct Uncontrolled. 
The mishap that befel Colonel Colin Harding near 
Kalomo in Barotseland, is one that will gain for him 
the sincere sympathy of all sportsmen. From the 
somewhat meager account sent by Reuter's agency it 
appears that Colonel Harding while driving about two 
miles from camp encountered a troop of seven lions 
on the road; and having his rifle at hand, stopped the 
vehicle and fired, wounding one of the lions severely — 
fatally, as it afterward transpired. Having fired, he left 
his cart and followed what he believed to be the 
wounded lion into some long grass wherein it would 
seem the whole troop had sought cover, and catching 
sight of an animal he supposed to be his quarry, fired 
two more shots at it. _ This latter, however, was another 
of the troop. The lion which had been wounded on 
the road was lying hidden within ten yards of Colonel 
Harding when he entered the grass and fired the second 
time, and no sooner had he discharged his rifle than 
the brute first wounded charged and felled him, and 
mauled him very seriously. Under the circumstances 
Colonel Harding must be warmly congratulated on 
having escaped with his life. The unfortunate incident 
no doubt offers an excellent text whence to point the 
much-taught maxim anent the following of a danger- 
ous animal wounded into cover, but that is not the 
view that presents itself most prominently to us. Given 
such an opportunity as this, a troop of seven lions 
within shot and a loaded rifle at hand, how many sports- 
men would pause to weigh the consequences of opening- 
attack? Careful deliberation would perhaps indicate 
the wisdom of leaving so strong a party alone; but in 
the big-game shooting there is not often time to de- 
liberate. The Shikari who would score success must 
take his chance as it comes and calculate possibilities 
afterward. So it was in this case; the lions seemingly 
appeared on the road which ran through long grass 
jungle and probably paused for a moment or two to 
stare at the apparition rattling along toward them. 
Colonel Harding's choice was "now or never," and he 
did what nine men out of ten would have done-: snatched 
up his rifle, stopped the cart, selected his lion and fired. 
Had he been fortunate enough to drop the animal 
where he stood the business would no doubt have ended 
there. Lions are courageous -enough by night, but we 
do not think there is any record of a troop of un- 
wounded lions attacking a white man by daylight. 
. During the construction of the Uganda Railway it 
will be remembered that the lions became s© audacious 
as to seriously handicap the contractors in keeping their 
labor; but their depredations, unless memory plays us 
false, always occurred in the darkness of night and 
never while daylight lasted. There was accordingly 
nothing foolhardy in taking the chance under these 
circumstances. Were leonine nature such that a shot 
fired at one of a troop would bring upon the sports- 
man a unanimous charge of the whole crowd the case 
would be very different. One man with a rifle would 
have small prospect of emerging with life from attack 
by seven lions; and however ready the rash individual 
might be to throw away his own life, he would have no 
business whatever to throw away that of his servants, 
who must inevitably share his fate. The lions in the 
present instance were true to their traditions; they at 
once left the road and, having ensconced themselves in 
safe cover, stopped to await developments. Then, we 
will not pretend to object, was the time for deliberation, 
and all the more careful deliberation because the 
\V6unded lion was not alone. The mistake which cost 
Colonel Harding serious injuries was one which any 
man might have made once he tcck his life in his hmd 
and followed the lions into ground which was all in 
their favor and against him. Knowing his quarry to be 
hard hit, he might well suppose that it would lag be- 
hind the rest, and it was natural enough to assume that 
the first one he saw was that which he sought to give 
its coup de grace. There is something essentially re- 
pugnant to the feelings in criticising from the arm- 
chair the degree of rashness which may characterize 
the act of a brave man, and we do not propose to 
pursue the point. The alternative to following up the 
quarry was to leave the stricken beast wounded, and 
that is not a course which any right-thinking sportsman 
adopts without much hesitation. 
It is, of course, open to the theorist to say that it 
is not playing the game to fire at a dangerous animal, 
unless the sportsman can either make certain of killing 
it dead in its tracks or is certain that he can follow it 
up if wounded and bring it down. In theory this is 
quite right and proper, but theory, as so often happens, 
does not apply very well to practice; and were every 
man to stay his hand in the presence of dangerous game 
because he recognized that there was a chance of the 
animal getting away there would be few skins and 
skulls wherewith to adorn the bungalow. To assert 
that a shot should never be fired unless the sportsman 
were certain of killing or of ultimately killing his game 
is manifestly ridiculous, as it supposes the pos'sibility of 
certainty in the most uncertain of human affairs. Let 
there be a reasonable prospect of killing or, at least, 
let us put it, a reasonable prospect of not losing the 
quarry in a wounded condition, and that is as much as 
any one has the right to ask. Apart from this, allow- 
ances must be made for the natural impulse of man in 
the presence of dangerous game; his instinct is the in- 
stinct of the Old Adam, or the primitive man, to kill. 
The hunting instinct is too deeply implanted in man to 
be atrophied by a century or two of civilization; a few 
months in the wilds will convince any man, however 
delicately reared, however artificial the precedent con- 
ditions of his existence, that he himself is a predatory 
animal. Soldiers, who have seen service, have said 
that the ease with which they became accustomed to 
painful sights and sounds, which would have made 
them literally sick amid civilized surroundings, sur- 
prised them. The fortitude with which these things 
are endured after brief apprenticeships, merely prove 
the existence, below ^ the veneer of twentieth century 
life, of the instincts of the Stone Age. It is that in- 
stinct which prompts the sportsman to use his rifle on 
dangerous game without pausing to reckon up the 
chances to himself or to his quarry. We say "to him- 
self" advisedly, for his own safety is a factor which 
does not enter into his mind at all under such circum- 
stances; his whole mental being is concentrated for the 
moment on the business in hand; it may be said to lie 
behind the sights of his rifle. Hence it comes that we 
have from time to time the sad ofifice of recording fatal 
mishaps brought about by following wounded animals 
into cover. The man feels certain that the game is his 
and fails to allow for the extraordinary vitality of the 
great cats. To put the accepted maxim in another way 
the sportsman should exercise self-control and remem- 
ber that he, even with the best and most reliable 
weapon made, is the weaker animal of the two when 
the surroundings favor the lion or tiger; and being the 
weaker he should exercise the discretion which becomes 
the weaker but more intelligent. — The Asian, Calcutta. 
Duck Shooting in the Pond Holes* 
_ Closely similar to the shooting in the southern wild 
rice fields, is that still practiced at a few points on the 
Atlantic Coast in the fresh-water pond holes, to which 
the black ducks and some other species of non-diving 
ducks resort at night or in stormy weather when wind 
and rain drive them from the open broad waters where 
they spend much of the day to the shelter of the fresh- 
water pools. One of the places where many years ago 
this form of shooting was practiced with remarkable suc- 
cess, was Parmore's Beach, on the coast of Virginia, a 
wild and lonely strip of sand lying between the Atlantic 
Ocean and the marshes that bordered the main land. How 
this shooting was practiced is well described in the fol- 
lowing account written by the late Frank Satterthwaite. 
Mr. Satterthwaite was the discoverer of the shooting 
possibilities of the island, and for years he had it all to 
himself, enjoying extraordinary shooting there. The ac- 
count, which was published in the Forest and Stream^ 
is as follows : 
"If a man of property, a dozen years ago, had made a 
specialty of investing his money in the natural ducking 
grounds along the sea coast of Maryland, Virginia, North 
and South Carolina, what a fortune he could have made 
by this time by disposing of his shores to shooting or- 
ganizations. I know of an island off the coast of Vir- 
ginia that could have been purchased in those days for 
$7,000. It is sveen miles long and several miles wide, 
in a direct line it is about six miles from the mainland. 
When I first visited it there was but one house on the 
island, approachable only at high tide by a muddy creek. 
This was twenty years ago. The house consisted of two 
Hpliced-together cabins off wrecks, and the door was as 
liard to find as the bower in the Rosamond puzzle. The 
occupant was a long, lanky, savage, senescent sea captain. 
He had gotten into trouble and was on the dry-dock, so 
to speak, in unquestionable seclusion. He, being a 
widower, there was no grown female to make one feel 
uncomfortable on the island, but the old salt's little 
daughter, who looked as if she never had her hair brushed 
in her life, lived in one of the lockers, only coming out 
periodically to roast black ducks and geese, and play 
dominoes with her 'dad' with a broken set kept in an old 
shot bag. Having been the sole proprietor of the ship- 
wreck which cast me on the bleak shores alone, the cold 
made me muster up courage to approach the stronghold 
of the man with a dead bad record. My reception was 
simply diabolical. The old cuss grunted worse than the 
biggest wild hog on the island, and that weighed over 
four hundred. He declined to let me in. The efficacy of 
prayer on prayer on this occasioti was a dead failure, so 
I played Jameson's Irish whiskey, in an imperial quart 
bottle, instead, and made a winning from the start 
"'T lived in tke island ten days, and during that' time 
enjoyed the best black duck shooting I ever heard of. 
The center of the island was covered in those days with 
a heavy growth of red cedar. This was traversed by a 
narrow glade — a series of shallow fresh-water ponds 
about as wide as Broadway — in which grew an abundance 
of duck grass. When the northeast . wind would blow, 
and rain and sleet pelted down, the ducks on the vast 
Broadwaters would seek the glade for shelter. Standing 
shivering under a red cedar snag, I, with an old muzzle- 
loader, killed as many ducks as the law allowed. I am 
not bragging about my shooting ; anyone could have 
done the same. The ducks simply hovered thirty or forty 
feet in front of me, and were very gentle. The trick of 
the whole thing was in knowing how to handle the birds, 
and by refraining from shooting into the flocks. I got 
the tip about these ducks from an old shooting friend, a 
blockade runner in war times, who used to hide his boat 
up the muddy creek. He told me that it nearly made him 
crazy to see the ducks go boiling into the glade, and 
from fear of discovery be afraid to fire a gun. 
"I shot on the island four winters. What was rather 
strange, a half dozen very well known New Yorkers were 
at the same time shooting quail and fowl not eight miles 
away; often they gunned for geese under the lee of the 
south end of the island, yet not one of them or their 
men ever located the ducks settling in the island ponds. 
I systematized my secret down to a fine point, and only 
shot in the wildest kind of weather for fear of being 
heard. I baited the ponds with corn and cabbage, the latter 
for the geese, and only shot two or three times a week. 
There were sotne big salt ponds at the north end of the 
island which afforded fair goose shooting, and when not 
after fowl I used to go hog hunting with the Captain. 
"The island was overrun with hogs, which for forty 
years had been the masters of the situation. As cold 
weather approached they became aggressive, and the Cap- 
tain never ventured far from home without carrying his 
long muzzleloader charged with ball and buckshot. I 
was duck shooting one morning in the glade not far from 
the house, when I heard the report of my host's gun, 
and then saw him coming toward me at the top of his 
speed. Close behind him was a huge boar covered with 
froth and blood in full pursuit. I had never seen any- 
one run so fast before in my life, except the long-legged 
Captain the night he saw the ghost of an old sailor walk 
out of the surf, climb upon a sandhill, make a fire and sit 
down to dry himself. That night he came home on a 
dead run, and this time he was even lowering his pre- 
vious record. The two loads of duck shot I sent into the 
brute only tended to madden him the more; he had just 
overhauled his victim, when the Captain seized a low 
overhanging limb and swung, himself up clear of the 
ground; but as the boar passed under, with one of his 
long curved tusks he ripped the Captain's leg open from 
knee to ankle. He had just managed to save his bacon, 
but he was lamed for life. The boar halted for a second, 
and then went dashing into the woods. The shooting on 
the island is now a thing of the past. A fish factory 
grinds away where the geese used to honk. The woods 
are cut down and the ponds in the glade have long since 
been filled up with drifted sand from the beach. Yet 
what a place it would have been to organize a club." 
Deer CIttbbefs Fined. 
The Newburgh (N. Y.) Journal reports: "Two 
Rockland county men who brutally clubbed a deer to 
death have just paid over to the State Game Com- 
mission a fine of $100 for violation of the game laws. 
"On Dec. 13 last, at about noon, a handsome buck 
with spreading antlers came down out of the moun- 
tains in the neighborhood of Jones' Point, crossed the 
railroad tracks, plunged into the river, and started to 
swim to the other shore. A man named Abram 
Lent saw the animal take to the water, and his first 
impulse was to kill the beast. He and a friend se- 
cured a rowboat and set out after the deer. The an- 
imal was swimming rapidly and had almost reached 
the east shore, when the boat overtook it. With 
clubs the two men cruelly and brutally hammered the 
poor beast to death. They pounded it over the head 
until they had smashed its antlers to pieces. When 
life was extinct, they drew the carcass into the boat 
and took it ashore, where they buried it under a heap 
of snov/. 
"This happened about 12:30. Before 3 o'clock Wil- 
lett Kidd, the Fish and Game Protector, had found 
the deer, and had learned all the facts about the 
wanton slaughter of the animal. He had got a 'wire- 
less' about the occurrence, and caught the pair with 
the goods on them. He told them the penalty, and 
there was nothing for them to do but hand over to the 
Game Commission the sum of $100. This they did 
promptly, and the case was declared closed. The 
deer was a handsome buck, and weighed about 175 
pounds. 
"Suit has been begun in the Supreme Court by C. 
L. Waring, as counsel, against^ Solomon Barrett, of 
Putnam county, to recover a penalty. Barrett is 
charged with trapping partridges. The complainant 
is Dr. Kidd. 
"Complaint was made to Dr. Kidd recently- against 
Nelson Smith and others of Ulster county for illegal 
fishing. It was charged that Srnith and others drew 
oft' the water from a pond near Wallkill and took fish 
in a rack, The fish were afterward divided among 
the men who did the work. This was settled by the 
offenders by the payment of a fine of $50 to the Com- 
mission," 
Do Foxes Destroy Many QaaH ot Partfidges. 
The game bird situation in Massachusetts is very 
serious at present, especially with regard to quail and 
partridges, and everything possible must be done for their 
better protection. 
We would like to have the opinion of every sportsman 
in Massachusetts, based upon actual experience or per- 
sonal observation, as to the fox as a destroyer of game 
birds, and any information on this subject will be greatly 
appreciated by the Massachusetts Fish and Game Pro- 
tective Associaticn. - H. H, Kimball, Sec'y. 
BoSTOw, M&ss, 
