334 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[May 6, 1905. 
fall plumage they began to strut, after the fashion of 
the turkey gobbler. The tail is spread, the wings are 
dragged on the ground and the ruflf is thrown out 
around the head, and a great deal of bowing, shaking 
the ruff and hissing is indulged in. The male and female 
of the ruffed grouse- are not distinguished by any 
marked differences in plumage. I suppose at first that 
strutting was definite indication of male sex. but doubt 
if this is the case with young birds. With turkeys the 
young of both sexes strut. At any rate, all the birds 
that I have reared from the egg have strutted more 
or less, and still, from their size and other character- 
istics of head and neck, I am inclined to think that three 
of them are females. Neither of the wild birds have 
shown any signs of strutting, although apparently per- 
fectly at home with the others. 
As far as domesticability is concerned, our ruffed 
grouse are tamer than most barnyard fowls. They 
have not evinced instincts of fear at any time to any 
remarkable degree. They feed readily from the hand, 
and will hop upon the knee— even the wild ones— to 
do so. They have not drummed as yet, but it is to be 
hoped they will in the spring. The outlook is good 
for nests and broods next season, if present health and 
vigor of the birds can be taken as any indication of 
future possibilities. C. F. Hodge. 
The pheasant breeding work of the commission- 
owing perhaps in part to the extreme cold of the prev- 
ious winter— was not so successful as might have been 
hoped, but each year as the work is continued more 
is learned about breeding these birds. An extraordin- 
ary incident during the year was the attacking of the 
pheasants by rats in large numbers. The report closes 
with a feeling memorial to Capt. J. W,. Collins, long 
the chairman of the Massachusetts Commission. 
Havier Venison. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
That is a very interesting article of Keeper Hickmott, 
of England, on havier deer in your issue of April 15. 
Most of it is new matter to me, and I dare_ say it is to 
most of our sportsmen who have never visited Great 
Britain for sport. In the course of the gentleman's re- 
marks he refers to the period of the year during which 
natural venison is eatable. In England, he says, the sea- 
son (that is for buck venison, of course) continues from 
May to September, and yet we in this country do not per- 
mit venison to be killed until six weeks later, or just 
when the rutting season is on, and the meat, of course, 
strong. I have seen fall venison that was as rank as an 
old Rocky Mountain goat, and I am free to say that I 
have never been friendly to a law which compelled me to 
eat viands only when most unfit and at their worst. _ For 
in classing the two sexes in one under the prohibitory 
law we do just this very thing. 
How few of us would know the taste of really good 
venison if we had never eaten of jt _ clandestinely. Of 
course does and fawns should be rigidly protected, and 
for them the present close season is all right enough, but 
strange to state, at the very time when the bucks .are dis- 
carded and outlawed by their own kind, our Legislatures 
place them under safeguard. 
I have had considerable to do with formulating game 
laws, and your files of Forest and Stream will show, as 
long ago as 1874, how I appealed to Americans to study 
the game laws of England, Germany and Switzerlahd and 
to be governed by their centuries of experience when the 
natural conditions were found to conform. But we are 
still eating fall venison when the bucks are so busy rut- 
ting that they have no time to eat, when their flesh is 
disgustingly strong in flavor, if not actually lean and 
stringy. So I urge that you circulate Head Keeper Hick- 
mott's letter among the clubs, and let them canvass the 
legislators in their respective States, so that the laws may 
be duly amended to except buck deer from their operation 
at the earliest possible date. Every year in New England, 
where I rusticate, deer are becoming more and more a 
nuisance by their numbers and their immunity under the 
law, so that my suggestion is at least opportune, and, I 
think, the majority of full-grown sportsmen will approve 
of it. If we cannot put this in force let us adopt the 
havier practice. "Gesundheit ist besser als Krankheit." 
Charles Hallock. 
kind with crevasses to winter in. Three years ago this 
spring a ranchman named Cockerel! found a den about 
a mile from his outfit on a branch of Deep Creek and 
killed over forty-five snakes there (can get affidavits) and 
I saw a number of the rattles afterward, the largest hav- 
ing sixteen rattles and a button. 
Spectator in his travels through Texas evidently did 
not get into the snake country. 
Another fact about rattlers which is curious is that if 
the snake gets into a dog hole before you can get to him 
you can generally get him out bv standinof at a safe dis- 
tance back of the hole and scratching dirt into it with a 
long stick. Almost always after a certain amount of 
dirt has gone down the sn?ke will begin to rattle and 
eventually come out. ' 
The natives there give as an explanation that when a 
rattler gets into a prairie dog's hole the dog will try and 
fill it up to keep him in. The snake being "on," comes 
out. However that may be, I have killed a number of 
rattlers that way. Mark Hopkins, Jr. 
New Hamp.shirb. 
The Rattlesnake^s Strike. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Our always interesting friend, Cabia Blanco, says some 
things about the rattlesnake which I must object to as 
generalizations. He says the rattler "throws himself into 
his coil, then springs his rattle; and while he is in that 
coil — and he never strikes before that — he can only strike 
half the length of his body." 
I have seen rattlesnakes violate every one of those 
rules. I have seen them spring their rattles while 
stretched at full length; I have seen them strike without 
coiling oftener than from the coil; I have seen a rattle- 
snake strike my boot at more than his own length, when 
he had a favorable tail-brace and a downhill slant. My 
observation has been that the coil— and by coil I mean 
the posture similar to a coiled line — is a defensive atti- 
tude, and that when the rattler is really "on the prod" he 
strikes from a position like the letter S with an added 
reverse curve or two. 
Friend Cabia Blanco has not seen rattlesnakes do such 
things, but it does not follow that such things "never" 
are done. The generalization, I think, is too hasty. 
A. K. 
Tamed Wild Twfkeys. 
Ardmore, Pa.. — Editor Forest and Stream: I send you 
an extract from a recent letter received from Mr. Chas. 
Baker, Orange county, Fla., that is of interest. It deals 
with taming wild turkeys. He says : Over at Clay 
Springs, where we go for the bathing, Major Skinner, the 
lessee, is the game warden, and he has gradually baited 
in a flock of wild turkeys, and now they are quite tame. 
He feeds them twice a day. 
They come stalking in in a long line and feed, no mat- , 
ter how many people are present. There are some forty- 
three in all, and they make a fine sight; and unless you 
run at them or make quick gestures or sudden noise they 
will let you get- very close to them — say ten or fifteen 
yards — and hardly move; stand as still as posts. 
They are grand birds, and seem much longer legged 
than the domestic turkey, with the muscular part of the 
leg not so large or prominent, necks a little longer and 
heads smaller. Their plumage is just like metal in ap- 
pearance. When suddenly alarmed they half unclose their 
wings and fold them up again before starting to run or 
move off. It is not often you get so good a look at such 
a lot. This is the same place the wild scaup ducks used 
to come into and were fed in 1902. I. N. DeH, 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Cabia Blanco in his article in the April 29 Forest and 
Stream was right about rattlesnakes in speaking of Spec- 
tator's article, as he generally is. 
In the part of Texas in which I have lived and worked 
on a ranch for five years rattlesnakes were common in 
the summer season. I have killed as many as five in a 
day's fence riding, and remember one time when having 
let the snake get into a dog-hole I walled him in and 
two days after on taking out the rocks from the mouth 
of the hole, killed him with my rope. He was blind as a 
bat and had mashed his nose to a pulp on the rocks in 
trying to get out. 
Along some of the creeks near the ranch there are 
rocky ledges. The snakes (rattle) take a place of this 
Domestic Pigeons Nesting in an Elm* 
Rockland, Me., April 11. — You may remember me as- 
an old-time correspondent. Now I want to call your at- 
tention to the fact that a pair of common doves have 
built their nest in an elm tree and are sitting, on the eggs. 
The nest is in a crotch about twenty feet from the ground. 
The tree is in front of a house in one of the residential 
streets. There are no dove cotes about nor near this 
house. I have been quite a close observer of bird life for 
years but never have heard of a like instance before. 
James Wright. j 
[It is new to us as well, and we think very unusuiM 
Have any of our readers known of a similar case?] 
Memories of the Buffalo Range. 
L— Trails to the Salt Licks. 
Many years ago I made a prospecting trip through the 
great northern range of the buffalo in the Far Northwest, 
to what was then the limit of the white man s travel by 
pack horse and horseback, for the great Saskatchewan 
River is a muskeg country, hardly to be crossed by horses 
in summer. , . , . ^ . 
When I got some 350 miles north of the forty-nmtli 
parallel I found that I had lost sight of the great herd of 
buffalo that roamed over those vast plains, much as a 
sailor loses sight of the land when he makes the wide 
ocean We were traveling over that vast stretch ot 
prairie that to-day stands for the last great tract of land 
in America that is open to the pioneer settler from the 
older settled States of the Far Northwest and great 
Middle West. As we were mining prospectors, not hunt- 
ers our route of travel took us along the eastern flanks 
of the main range of the Rocky Mountains, and thus we 
were at most times on the western edge of the great 
northern herd of buffalo. After we had gone beyond 
High River we found little or no signs of alkali or ground 
of that salty nature that the buffalo so eagerly partake of 
at certain seasons of the year. I noticed now that our 
horses began to be attracted by the refuse of our camp 
and to look for food thrown out, such as bacon rinds, and 
anything else that savored of salt. t, 1 fi.« 
After that trip I took much notice of the habits of the 
large game animals, more particularly the buffalo, in their 
northern range and in the summer or breeding season. 
When in the early autumn they began their migrations to 
the soutliward-toward the Badlands country-on their 
great march over the Milk River Ridge on through to 
the Missouri and Yellowstone, Big and Little Horn 
rivers, thev seemed to seek eagerly for the salt of nature 
—the alkali—which could be found m abundance m all 
the valleys and on many of the divides. All the herbivor- 
ous animals-the great herds of buffalo, elk and an; elope 
—that roamed over that vast country ate the alkali dirt. 
I have seen great herds of antelope much like the herds 
of domesticated sheep of this day on a protected slope of 
Flat River valley, when, after some early fall storm at 
the season of the year, they had begun to bunch together. 
I noticed that in their migrations in early autumn to 
their southern feeding grounds the buffalo, when once 
they got started, covered a long distance in one steady 
march, if all was quiet on the range. With -great shaggy 
heads lowered they moved along over trails that nature 
had taught them led to water, but they did not stop when 
the water was found but moved along, shaking the very 
earth with their tremendous passage, apparently having 
but one thought, to get to some certain place, lo see 
them coming from High River or Big Bow River valleys, 
across the Belly River, up and on over the great Milk 
River Ridge, across the North Fork of Milk River down 
in CO the valley and toward the Bad Lands of the South 
Fork of the Milk and to the Missouri River was a sight 
long to be remembered. . 
When they found the finish— as it were the end of their 
march— with an eager running rush they plunged into 
the alkali pools and lakes of water, eating and drinking 
eagerly of the salty mud and water. Then all became 
quiet for the time being, as the great shaggy animals had 
now reached their goal— the alkali country they loved so 
well. But in spring, led by experience or instinct, they 
drifted northward again and in the breeding season found 
quiet and repose from the white hunters' rifles in the 
great stretch of the Far Northwest, where the salts of 
nature were to be found in only very limited quantity. _ 
The buffalo was not by habit a timber mountain loving 
animal, his natural range being the great plains, particu- 
ularly where the alkali was most abundant. Every day 
he would seek water, his great lumbering strong strides 
enabled him to cover long distances from far up on the 
ridges and divides where he delighted to feed and bed 
down, with some watchful animals lying apart while the 
cows and the calves quietly chewed their cuds. _ 
Nature had so amply protected him that, with his face 
always toward the wind, he was ready to face any blizzard 
that might come to him over the plains from the Far 
North. It was a delight to the buffalo to find a pool of 
alkali water to plunge into and wallow, when he would 
emerge covered with the yellow clay peculiar to such con- 
ditions, and would then roll about on the dry alkali shale, 
much as a horse rolls when he is turned loose. ^ Under 
such conditions he was a sight to see. I have m mind 
hunts with Indian youths, taking part in the sport of run- 
ning some great bull whose hide was so coated over with 
alkali mud that he could hardly keep up with the balance 
of the band, owing to the load that he was carrying. Thei 
Indian boys chased him in pure fun, calling him all kinds 
of funny names on account of his uncouth appearance. 
A buffalo bull in this condition presented a very strange: 
appearance, and after the coating of mud had become 
thoroughly ' dry, when running him at close range, he 
made a peculiar rattling noise, owing to his hard leggings; 
being matted and to the balls of dried mud which hung- 
from his long hair and rattled against one another as he: 
ran. I have had my horse run from such a bull as thougii 
afraid that it was some strange animal that had suddenly 
arisen which he had never seen before. 
To-day the old buffalo trails are relocated by the great 
herds of the domesticated cattle which follow them to 
water. It is to be hoped that the last remnant of that? 
once great game, such as the Pablo-Allard herd that aj 
gentleman has offered to take over and deliver to the 
Government, will not be confined to a mountain range 
such as obtains in the Yellowstone Park, but rather havej 
some two or three divisions or bunches made of them,i 
and a range be selected upon the prairie with a Bad Lands 
range, where they may have a free run to alkali water 
and licks, a range condition that they love so well, and; 
which nature has so abundantly supplied for them in our 
great State. Charles Aubrey. 
Browning, Mont^ 
Pinehtitst Preserves. 
The work of planting food supply patches on the Pine- 
hurst, N. C., shooting preserves has proven so generally 
satisfactory that this work will be carried out during this 
summer even more extensively than in the past. Not 
only cow peas, but millet and buckwheat will be planted 
to provide a food supply for the birds. J 
Within the past month 150 dozen quail have been liber- 
ated, which it is confidently expected will breed well and 
greatly improve the shooting next fall. 
Good Roads School at Gjfnell. 
The College of Agriculture of Cornell University ha^ 
called a good. roads conference for May 16 to 19. This 
conference is for the purpose of discussing the educa- 
tional phases of the good roads movement, and to give 
instruction to students and to all others who desire U 
come. 
