June lo, 1905.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
4B8 
over and over down the hill — one confused, pitching 
mass of legs, and antlers and body, till a tree mercifully 
caught and stopped him in his fall, and he lay still for- 
ever. Where had his wild life flown to? Who knows? 
Oh, you brute! How could you mercilessly, need- 
lessly kill this poor dumb ranger of the forest, so beau- 
tiful, so strong, God's own creature? Why? Who can 
tell? It was the spirit of the hunt— a fever. The hunter 
shoots not at a living breathing creature; he sees only 
the object of a week's, a month's, weary quest, he re- 
joices in the attainment of the long wished for, and he 
■merely stops the wonderful head in its mad career, as 
you would pick a berry ; then brings his trophy home 
and mounts it, where its beauty is appreciated, not by a 
lone hunter once or twice in a life-time, but by many 
who see and rejoice in the beauty of God's wild creatures. 
So I had niy prize and rejoiced; but as I looked up 
the hill in the grassy park above, lo, there stood a whole 
herd of elk— cowS with dainty heads tilted to one side, 
ears pricked up on the alert, and soft wide-open eyes 
gazing wonderingly down at me, little startled calves at 
their sides, and quite near at hand another wondrous 
bull, the lord of the herd, still larger, still mightier than 
the first, with magnificent, massive, many-pronged 
antlers branching and reaching heavenward. Again I 
raised my rifle; again that sharp crack and cruel spit of 
fire; and the bull sorely wounded, started painfully, 
heavily up the hill. A little way and he stopped, unable 
to go farther. Silent as a statue he stood, wondering, 
waiting, with a pathos in his sad, dumb eyes, and a 
piteous drip, drip, drip writing death in red upon the 
ground beneath him. Poor wild creature — how could 
he, who had never tasted sorrow, know of the tragedy 
of Life and Death? But the cruel fever was in me. 
Stealthily I crept up the hill till I was only eighty, sev- 
enty yards away; then, a sudden report, and the great 
head fell and lay still, never to move again. The great 
inevitable end had come at last. 
I turned around; the other elk had all vanished. I 
looked across the sky to another ridge far ol¥, and there 
they went, one bounding lightly after another, seeking 
new and better feeding grounds. Away they went in a 
long string; away, far away, till I Could see them tio 
more. 
And I was left alone in the forest. 
Francis B. Sayre. 
A New Zealand paper relates that a settler in the 
Upper Plain noticed a hawk flying about in a peculiar 
manner and crying out as if in pain. The settler obtained 
a gun and shot the bird, and investigation showed the 
cause of its distress was a weasel, which was perched on 
the hawk's back, with its teeth buried" in the bird's neck. 
Apparently the animal had pounced upon the hawk when 
it was on the ground, and was carried skyward. 
Concerning the Heroic Pose. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
An official attempt to suppress in Washington the cir-' 
culation of a periodical in which President Roosevelt is 
criticised severely for killing wild animals, has aroused 
discussion of the ethics of hunting, and the newspapers 
are taking sides according to their politics. It is not 
worth while to make a row over the President's hunting, 
even if one disapproves such amusement, and it does not 
seem to me much of an argument to call him "an edu- 
cated bulldog," as does the president of the Massachu- 
setts S. P. C. A. But it does seem worth while to dis- 
cuss candidly the question of our treatment of the wild 
things that share with us the occupancy of the earth. 
Now, I never was accused of being a sentimentalist, 
and I do not think I am a crank. I have hunted quite 
a lot in my time, and I have destroyed animal life for no 
better reason than the excitement of "sport" or the ex- 
ercise of a certain skill with weapons. "Game hog" I 
never have been, yet I admit freely that I have killed 
creatures that I could not use for food. So, if anyone 
sees fit to take issue with what I have to say, he may as 
well omit the personal note and not trouble himself to 
suggest that the pleasures of the chase, and the "strenu- 
ous life" are out of my ken. I have been through it all, 
and have enjoyed as. keenly, perhaps, as does Mr. Roose- 
velt the excitement of the bear hunt, even alone and 
without dogs. 
But one's point of view changes, and now I question 
seriously the moral right of man to kill without neces- 
sity any other living creature. Without dipping into the 
shoreless and bottomless sea of metaphysical abstrac- 
tions, I presume it will be admitted that cruelty is evil; 
that is, morally wrong. Thoughtless cruelty, lacking evil 
intent, is less wrong than deliberate infliction of needless 
pain, So I do not condemn the man who hunts and kills 
for sport, if he has not given thought to the matter and 
cannot look at it from my point of view. I deem his act 
evil, but not himself. If I should do the same thing, 
knowing or at least believing it to be wrong, I should be 
bound m reason to consider myself an evil person. 
Is it not fantastic hypocrisy to demand the enactment 
of Stringent laws for the preservation of game in order 
that we may have always something to kill? The sports- 
man professes deep and abiding love for all nature, ani- 
mate and inanimate. He talks about the birds and ani- 
mals as if he regarded them with the tenderest affection. 
H^e writes bookfuls of beautiful gush about them and 
himself— usually giving more space to himself and his 
fine feelings and noble nature than to them — and really 
seems to take seriously his pose of superiority tO other 
men because of his soulful appreciation of the wonders 
of nature. 
If the animals do think, I wonder what they think of 
that noble creature, the true sportsman. If they don't 
regard him as he regards the rattlesnake and the man- 
eating tiger as a malignant destroyer, a pest — it is be- 
cause a merciful Providence has spared them the agony; 
of understanding. 
As a matter of fact, man is the only wanton, malicious, 
cold-blooded murdering animal on earth. The rattle- 
snake is not vicious, and the man-eating tiger kills only 
to satisfy his appetite — even if it be a perverted taste for 
human meat. 
To attempt to exalt sheer ferocity into a manly virtue 
is monstrously absurd. The primitive man, who fought 
the cave bear with a club or a stone ax, was a brave fel- 
low. When the spear and the sword were man's most 
deadly weapons, it required courage to hunt the fighting 
animals, and strength of arm and steadiness of nerve to 
slay them. Even with the muzzle-loading firearm, the 
hunter took a "sporting chance" when he tackled the 
grizzly bear, the lion, the tiger, the rhinoceros and some 
other big game. 
But to pretend that there is great and inevitable dan- 
ger in hunting any wild beast on earth with modern 
lethal weapons is arrant humbug. Of what avail are the 
strength and courage of the king of beasts against a 
stream of bullets poured into him from a high-power 
repeater? The big game hunter of to-day exaggerates 
the perils of his sport and assumes the heroic pose to 
cover up the essential brutality and cowardice of the 
butchery. 
A welcome symptom of the change that is working in 
the attitude of man toward the animals is the gradual 
disappearance from the pages of sporting journals of 
detailed accounts of the killing of game. There was a 
time when the sportsman felt it incumbent on him to 
write to his favorite journal a precise description of the 
wounds inflicted by him upon his quarry. He told just 
where the bullet struck, how big a hole it made, what 
organs it tore and what bones it smashed, and he de- 
scribed minutely the death agonies and convulsions of 
the tortured animal. The pages of sporting papers were 
filled with reports of autopsies and post-mortems on 
assassinated dumb creatures. They reeked with the lit- 
erature of blood and entrails. Thank heaven, that repul- 
sive stuff is disappearing, even if it has given place to a 
lot of sentimental twaddle and ridiculously false "natural 
history" of talking jack rabbits, metaphysical coyotes, 
pedagogical crows and emotional catfish. 
The twaddlers will twaddle themselves out in time, 
and the good there is in their work will remain. And 
then we shall understand the good poet who said: 
•'He prayeth best who loveth best, 
All things, both great and small; 
For the good God, who loveth us, 
He made and loveth all." 
FuNT Locke. 
The Log of a Sea Angler. 
X. — The Roba'o — A Gamy Fish — Taking a Large One 
to L-^se It— Fight with the Sharks — A Tiger of the 
Sea— Siibd ing a Man-Eater— Sf^e of Sharks — Danger 
from Sharks — Tarpon Taken. 
RY CHARLES FREDERICK HOLDER, AUTHOR OF BIG GAME 
fishes/' "adventures OF TORQUA," ETC. 
The shark as a menace to life was scorned, and nO' at- 
tention was paid to them in the inner channel; but I was 
extremely careful not to capsize or fall overboard where 
I fed and fished for them in the outer channel. It may 
be said that these sharks were well fed; still large fel- 
lows which were hungry doubtless often came in from 
the outer gulf, yet though gross carelessness was dis- 
played by myself, the negroes and fishermen, I never 
heard of an attack in the five or six years spent on this 
portion of the reef, winter and summer. What the result 
would have been if essayed in the open gulf a mile dis- 
tant I do not know — I drew the line there. 
Surrounded by twenty or more large sharks of several 
kinds thoroughly aroused by the scent of blood, one finds 
an excellent opportunity for observation. Nearly every 
shark had two varieties of attendants, first remoras, a 
fish a foot or so in length, black, peculiar in appearance 
and adapted by nature to its peculiar life, and always at- 
tached to either a turtle or shark, a large grouper or jew- 
fish, and never seen alone or far from a protector, at least 
in my somewhat extended experience. The remora has 
a flat head upon which is a large sucker which calls to 
mind the slats of a Venetian blind, and the fish has but 
to swim up to a shark, turn itself over, press its sucker 
upon the tawny hide to become thoroughly and com- 
pletely attached. So firm is the hold that I invariably 
had difficulty in wrenching them from the shark after 
landing one. The remoras habitually cling to their huge 
companion, and all the sharks in this conclave had from 
two to five or six dangling from their sides, presenting a 
strange contrast, being black or a gun-metal hue. When 
hungry they would cast off and swim, rapidly about, feed- 
ing on the small bits dropped from their master's table; 
and I never Saw a shark attempt to seize one, although I 
have rbserved them darting about with a wriggling mo- 
tion directly in front of the shark's mouth. 
There are a number of species of remoras, all of pe- 
culiar .appearance. ' One I- found fastened to the oper- 
iculum of "a spearfish ; and two were caught on a pegged 
iturtle. This little fish was jet black,' with two white 
stripes' from head to tail, making it a most conspicuous 
objectr- I recall seeing them attached to a large fifty- 
pound -drumfish which came sailing along with two or 
thJ-ee remoras trailing from its sides like pennants, The 
common remora of the sharks was dark or brown, and 
had a darker stripe with light edges. I killed a black 
grouper that proudly bore four of these dusky big- 
mouthed attendants which often take a crawfish bait. I 
caught two one morning, the companions of a large shark 
that was hovering about. . One I hooked not three feet 
in front of the shark's nose where it coiled like an eel 
for a few seconds, doubling and struggling; yet, appar- 
ently, the shark did not notice it. Bob told me that he 
had seen them on the porpoise, the big amberjacks and 
dolphins at sea, but this, doubtless, was another, kind. 
The largest remoras I saw were at least sixteen inches 
long, and Were Wrenched from the side of one of the 
largest man-eaters I took— a monster that could have 
dined upon a horse. I performed a post mortem upon 
him with this result, or contents of his stomach: three 
tin cans of beef; they had been merely punctured, con- 
demned by the quartermaster and tossed overboard; one 
piece of frayed rope, one horn of a steer, sawed off or 
blunted, with a large piece of the skull attached, three 
hoofs of steer, turtle's head and flippers, and a quantity 
of other matter that must have weighed one hundred 
pounds. This was extraordinary, yet it was a bagatelle to 
the meal of a certain thirty-five-foot man-eater taken on 
the high seas off Australia, that had dined that day upon 
a complete horse that had been thrown overboard by the 
troop ship. In all my experience of swimming in and 
about the reef, I never heard of but one instance of an 
attack. This was up the reef near Cape Florida, a tiger 
shark having killed a man. Personally, I dreaded the big 
barracudas more than sharks. 
The second band of associates of the sharks were the 
pilot fishes, striped fishes resembling the young of a 
Seriola, near kinsmen of the amberjack and the sjjlendid 
yellowtail of the Pacific, and others. These little fishes, 
to the number of a dozen or more, attached themselves 
to every shark, and I have seen them about other large 
fishes, as the drum. The association is, doubtless, as- 
sumed for protection. The pilots in no sense pilot the 
shark, at least those observed by me rarely advanced far 
from their big consort ; but they were continually darting 
out several feet and rushing back to cover, the sharks 
paying not the slightest attention to them. 
Shark fishing was legitimate sport here. The men used 
■the oil for some remedy (I trust not cod liver oil) which 
they sold to an agent in Key West. The jaws were sold 
to travelers, while the backbone was manufactured into 
cqnes ; hence the shark had a decided economic value and 
there was an excuse for its capture, a contest always of a 
strenuous nature. I fished for sharks from the beach 
often smgle handed, and succeeded in wearing out fifteen- 
foot fellows which "ten or a dozen men found difficult to 
drag up the beach. A strong man js a match for a very 
large shark providing he understands the method'of play-^ 
mg It, The secret is to have a very long line and to fight 
the game vigorously from start to finish, and if possible 
keep it headed in. I had a line about the size of a 
clothes line, a three-foot chain, and a swivel hook a foot 
long, barbed, and used for bait a twelve or fifteen-pound 
grouper. The bait would be tossed out into the channel, 
the line coiled on the beach, one end fastened to a heavy 
timber, and where it led into the water, held by a stick 
thrust into the sand as a tell tale, while near at hand was 
the dinghy hauled up and ready to follow the game should 
it carry everything away. 
Lying on the sand in the terrific but never dangerotks 
heat, I watched the stick that invariably fell within a few 
moments. The line would slowly run out. Foot by foot 
it would glide into the channel, and when ten or twenty 
feet had slipped away it was supposed that the shark had 
the bait well in its capacious maw. Then I seized it, 
waited until it came taut, and gave the shark a theoretical 
butt, a jerk that often resulted in my being jerked forward 
on my face. 
It seemed impossible sometimes to let go quick enough. 
The first rush of the shark was irresistible, but it was 
always possible to take the line when one hundred feet 
or so had gone, and then began the fight. By holding 
with all my strength, bracing back with feet in the soft 
sand, I could turn a large shark up the beach and run 
with it, pulling and hauling, and finally make a stand, turn 
it and lead it back. This was strenuous work, and more 
than once I was dragged into the water and forced to 
give up, and swim ashore amid the laughter of my com- 
panions who never ceased to wonder why I could see 
pleasure in what they considered the hardest kind of 
work. , 
Here we see a peculiarity of sport. If you call it sport 
and -believe that it is, you enjoy it, but dub this same 
pastime labor, and set a price of six bits a day upon its 
head, and it assumes another phase, it is something to be 
avoided by the average man. 
This sport had its peculiar excitements, and many were 
the big sharks I laid along the sands and many a one laid 
me low, or took my line. One mighty gamester that no 
one ever saw, took the rope with such a rush that it 
nearly j erked me overboard, carried it all away, overturned 
a heavy sentry box in which stood a negro, who leaped 
overboard to save himself, dragged this into the channel 
with a plank that five men could not lift, towed them 
away; and when we reached the wreck in the dinghy, and 
fastened a new rope to a - stake buoy the monster broke 
the line. Let the imagination soar to picture his dimen- 
sions. 
I often took sharks from the boat, the big steeds tow- 
ing her up and down, often escaping, and on more than 
one occasion nearly capsizing the boat. I had a small 
light hoat rigged for this sport. She had an air-tight .com- 
partment in the bow covered |3y a deck, and on the cut- 
water a gropyp like a rowlock to receive the linej znd 
