Nov. n, 1905.1 
for licenses, and pay your traveling expenses as well. I’m 
able to do it; I’ve got the money right here.’ 
“Willis kind of wilted when he saw the old fellow cry- 
ing. ‘You asked me if I was the devil or a witch,’ says 
he. ‘I’m neither, but they used to say that I was the 
best tracker in New Mexico and Texas, and the North- 
west mounted police must have thought the same thing, 
for when I was in the Northwest they never sent for an 
Indian if they could get me. By the same token I wrote 
the book I saw in your house called “Tracks and Traces,” 
you’ve spoken about it several times. I’m thirty-seven 
' years old, and twenty years of my life has been spent in 
that sort of work.’ 
“Well, to cut a long story short, the crowd weakened 
' when they saw the old fellow felt so awful bad. They 
went back to the camp at Sickle Lake, taking the ox and 
sled with them, and before 10 that night Tommy called 
up a noble bull, and they ‘downed’ him. Next morning 
they happened on a cow and bull together ; they killed the 
bull and let the cow go. They were a pleased crowd 
when they came out of the woods. Tommy wanted to 
charge them nothing for the trip, but Willis said he in- 
sisted on paying, and they parted friends.” 
“Did Willis give the old man away after making 
friends with him?” I asked. 
“No, sir; he never opened his mouth. The way the 
story came out was this: Two years after this the 
Dutchman, Lutz, who went cookee for Willis and his 
crowd, foregathered with another Dutchman, and they set 
up a line of moose-snares between Pot Lake and Kettle 
Lake. I was taking my walks abroad and I came on the 
line, the poles were all hung up, the pits dug, pans niade 
and laid ready, and the fences set up. _ I waited until the 
season was nearly on, took Teddy Knight, the constable, 
with me and we ‘pinched’ Mr. Lutz and his friend the day 
we went in. They were trapped so badly that they con- 
cluded it would be best to pay their fines and not let the 
case come to trial. It cost them over $100, and they were 
mad as hornets about it. I told them that Tommy Keen 
wasn’t concerned in the matter, but they wouldn’t believe 
me. Two days after Lutz paid his fine he met Tommy in 
Peter Sinclair’s store, when there was a crowd in there. 
He started to tell the story on him, but Tommy cut in 
and said he could tell it far better himself. The boys 
told him to go ahead, and some of them told Lutz to shut 
his mouth until Tommy had told things his own way — he 
: was always a popular character. Then Tommy told the 
story himself, and he told it so well that he had the whole 
crowd laughing, and by the time he was through the wind 
was all out of Lutz’s sails. I call that camp Waterloo 
Camp,” said he, when he finished the yarn. 
“Tommy died two years ago last March, he took pneu- 
monia in the woods when he was out sugaring. His son, 
Malcom, does considerable guiding, and he’s a fair 
caller, but he isn’t a patch on his old father. Say, if we 
are to be on Sickle Bog to-morrow morning at daylight 
w^e’d best turn in.” Edmund F. L. Jenner. 
North Carolina Fields. 
Raleigh, N. C., Nov. i. — The hunting season in nearly 
all of North Carolina opened to-day with extremely fine 
weather and a very good prospect for birds, by this, 
meaning partridges. These wintered well, and good 
broods were raised this year. There are some small 
birds, but most are very well grown indeed. Very 
large areas of land are planted in peas, the best food 
for the birds, and there is plenty of feeding for the 
winter. It seems from what can be gathered that there 
will be more sportsmen from the north in the State than 
usual. Most of these have been in the habit of going 
west of Raleigh after birds, while east of here there 
are really quite as many. Chatham county is an ex- 
cellent locality for partridges. 
Game warden John W. Upchurch, whose headquarters 
have been at Raleigh for .the past two years has been 
assigned to special duty on Currituck Sound, where 
the most important work is to be done. He has; a 
swift gasoline boat at his disposal for patrol purpQse.s, 
and will no doubt do thorough work. His work here- 
tofore has covered some forty or fifty counties. He 
tells me that the Audubon law has been very well ob- 
" served and that it has steadily grown in popularity, 
this being, of course, a very strong point. 
The Sapphire Inn, up at Toxoway is to be open all 
the winter and I hear that some large hunting parties 
will be there mainly out for big game, particularly bear 
and deer. The shooting seasons for both bear and 
deer has opened very well in the eastern part of the 
State, and there have been a number killed. Some 
very large bear have been shot there during the last 
part of October.. In the canebrake and thick swamps 
known as pocosins, these bear are very numerous. The 
weather has been so warm until the past ten days that 
hunting was hot work, but now there have been good 
frosts and the weather is very agreeable for the pur- 
pose, in that rather heavy country, where, of course, 
there have to be guides for outsiders. 
Of other game than that referred to there seenis to 
be a lot. The Audubon law has certainly multiplied 
the game of various kinds. The season for squirrels did 
not open until to-day and these are becoming very 
numerous in some localities. There are very few deer 
in the thickly settled parts of the State. Hyde county 
is an excellent place for deer, and pg.rhaps Craven and 
Jones counties come next. There will be two or three 
new hunting clubs in operation during the season along 
North Carolina Sounds. Of nearly all these. New 
Yorkers are apt to be members or guests. The clubs 
now run down the coast to within a few miles of More- 
head City, and some are built directly on the ocean beach. 
The best shootin'^ so far as partridges are concerned, 
will not really begin until the first of December, after 
more rains and frost have taken the edge off the weeds, 
which are now pretty stiff, as the autumn has up to the 
past few days been phenomenally dry. 
There is nothing after all that North Carolinians en- 
joy more than hunting, and at night, since the first of 
October, much of this has been done for^ ’possums. 
Some of the darkies have made statements to the 
effect that the ’possums are getting scarce; but there 
really seems to be about as many as usual, and around 
the towns they are about as thick as thby are in the 
wilder country, as they can find food they like. 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
Maine Big Game. 
Bangor, Me., Nov. 4. — Editor Forest asnd Stream: To- 
day marks the close of the fifth week of the open season 
on deer and the third in the moose season, and under 
the conditions the results are certainly surprising. Those 
who have maintained that the deer and moose of this 
State are not on the decrease, as some pessimists have 
claimed, have been more than vindicated in the large in- 
crease in the number of both that have been shipped over 
the railroads of eastern Maine thus far, an increase of 
about TOO deer, and a material increase in moose oyer 
the corresponding period of 1904. To be sure, Jhe high 
water mark of 1902, the last season before the introduc- 
tion of the hunters’ license, has not yet been reached, 
nor will it be until the falling off in numbers due to that 
innovation and other causes is made up for by an increase 
in sportsmen visitors during the hunting months. But 
the extreme dryness of the woods, a condition not 
known in the last thirty years, has made hunting_ so ex- 
ceedingly difficult that it would have been surprising if 
the number of deer brought out equalled the same period 
of 1904. While certain sections report that the deer 
seem to have completely left them, there is reported a 
generous increase in most portions of game land, and 
the proportion of bucks has been very large for the first 
month of the season, a month which usually sees more 
does by a large majority than bucks, shipped out of the 
game section by the hunters. This year there has been 
a decided increase in the number of sportsmen going 
into the woods, as well as increase, in spite of the unto- 
ward conditions, in the number of shipments, both deer 
and moose. 
The moose have been well distributed over the game 
region, although Patten, which once held the banner for 
moose shipments, is doing splendidly this season, and 
has sent out a large number of those recorded, besides 
having several remain in the care of local taxidermists. 
Other shipping points are doing their share, and when 
the season is over it looks now as if the record would 
surpass any year since 1902. 
The conditions for hunting have, in the main, been re- 
ported as very poor, some hunters contending that not 
for thirty years have they seen it so noisy in late Oc- 
tober, while a very few with whom your correspondent 
has talked have suggested that there were a few days 
when, for a day at a time, the conditions were not nearly 
as bad as they might have been. 
Birds, which in mid-summer were reported as very 
plentiful throughout the State, and in large broods, seem 
to have utterly disappeared, although every hunter who ' 
can possibly find some is taking home a string of the 
delicious biddies, a privilege permitted the non-resident 
for the first time in many years. What has caused the 
birds to so thoroughly scatter or disappear hasn’t yet 
been satisfactorily explained, but certain it is that with 
the right to take them home, the visiting sportsman is 
shooting all that he can find, although it is doubtful if 
the wardens at the Bangor station have had occasion to 
count many strings tO' see if they exceeded the legal 
limit. Were the birds plenty this year a blunder of the 
printers (or of some one -in the fish and game depart- 
ment) would give the non-residents claim to more even 
than the newly enacted law does, since the licenses of 
this year bear a partridge coupon, permitting the holder 
thereof to take or ship home twelve ruffed grouse in- 
stead of ten, as permitted by the statutes. If the scar- 
city of birds is real instead of only apparent, the num- 
ber to wear the red tags across the border line into 
other States will be even smaller in 1906 than has been 
the case this season. For the sake of the sport, the State 
and of the sportsmen, we shall live in hopes that adverse 
conditions, and not a shortage of birds, has made it 
difficult for any man to get his limit. 
Since the seizing of the big bull moose by Chairman 
Carleton, who was on an investigating trip, with sport 
as an incidental feature, and who caught a sportsman 
and his guide red-handed dressing the moose on Sunday, 
the first day of open season, a bulletin has been issued 
to all the wardens calling for a rigid enforcement of the 
law which gives the game one day in seven for a breath- 
ing space. This law, which Mr. Carleton has himself 
said he did rot favor, and to repeal which efforts have 
in the past been made, that were not entirely unknown 
to him, has been observed more in the breach than in 
the enforcement, except possibly in the neighborhood of 
the settlements, where public opinion has demanded that 
disturbances arising from making the day one of hunt- 
ing should be prevented in the interests of Sabbath ob- 
servance. 'It has surprised not a few to read in the pub- 
lic press his instructions to the wardens “to as thor- 
oughly enforce the law against shooting on Sunday as 
on any other close time on game and birds.” Letters of 
inquiry directed to the fish and game commissioners, 
and seeking to learn if this law is to be enforced in the 
remote hunting sections as well as in the neighborhood 
of tht settlements, fail to receive any reply, or rather 
such a letter on the part of the writer met with such 
silence, so that this must be accepted as the State’s policy 
for the remainder of this season at least. If any modifica- 
tion of this bulletin has since been sent to the wardens, 
who have arrested several for Sunday violation and se- 
cured their conviction, it has not been made public. It 
is a fact that those roads which lead through wood lots 
outside of Bangor and' probably in many other sections 
of the State where there are partridge and woodcock 
covers, have hardly been safe on Sunday since partridge 
hunting began, the midde of September. Persons driving 
along or walking were kept in continual state of alarm 
because of the frequent reports with the occasional 
whistle of shot or bullet that came too close for comfort. 
At last the accident list appears to have reached its 
highest point, and for the last two weeks the number 
of casualties has been on the decrease, so that now one 
doesn’t read every morning of some unfortunate whose 
weapon, or whose friend’s weapon has gone off unex- 
pectedly. It is yet too early to congratulate ourselves 
that the awful record is oyer, but it is devoutly to be 
hoped that the number of fatalities, and of serious 
injury to humanity, shall grow no longer in the more 
than a month left for hunting big game. The majority 
of the casualties have been among residents, it is true, 
and with one or two exceptions non-residents have 
seemed to be -better able to handle their firearms with 
care than the “natives,” but there will be plenty of 
808 
men in the Maine woods who vote and their taxes 
in other States, who. are just as careless by nature with 
their rifles as any resident of Maine — may their op- 
portunities, and those of all who shoot, be cut off when 
human life shall be endangered. The tendency now 
is to investigate such events thoroughly, both through 
the services of coroner and in the courts, which is well. 
One non-resident only has been arrested for negligently 
shooting a man, and he was acquitted of any guilt under 
the law, his rifle having been discharged purely by 
accident, when the two were traveling through the 
woods. In some other cases, the men who did the 
shooting are being held for the thorough investigatian 
of the courts. 
At last it is raining, and all day to-day the rain hasi 
.fallen upon the thirsty earth in a steady downpour, thatt 
is as much greater than the little showers of the past 
month, as the winter winds are stronger than the gentle 
zephyrs that make a summer in Maine so delightful to- 
the over-heated city residents. At the present writing 
it shows no sign of abating, and a few days of this, 
which is snow in the big woods to the north. In fact, 
sportsmen who passed through the city to-day reported 
that it was snowing hard up the B. & A. R. R., when 
they got aboard the morning train. If this doesn’t 
change to rain, which is unlikely, there will be some 
great hunting days next week, and the big moose whose 
tracks have been so eagerly followed without success, 
as well as the monster buck that glides in safety just 
out of range, will have to look out for themselves. 
Her bert W. Rowe. 
Caribou Shooting in Newfoundland. 
St. John’s, Newfoundland, Oct. 21. — Editor Forest 
and Stream: Every year this colony is visited by an in- 
creasing number of sportsmen. Foremost among the 
English celebrities are F. C. Selous, the world-renownedl 
African explorer; H. Hesketh Prichard, the well-known 
novelist and famous cricketer, and J. G. Millais, son of 
the great Sir John Everett Millais, president of the 
Royal Academy and the greatest painter of the Victorian 
age. It is hard to say in which branch the son is 
most distinguished. In the home country he is well 
known as a marvelous shot. In the world of literature 
he is distinguished as the best natural history writer 
of our day. His great work on the mammalia is des- 
tined to become an English classic. Its size and im- 
mense cost (£18 i8s.) will keep it from the general 
public. It is specially a work for the learned and the 
rich. Mr. Millais is very much taken with Newfound- 
land and conies here every year. 
Mr. Selous is also on the warpath, and I will give 
you an account of his expedition in my next letter. 
Mr. J. G. Millais, like his friend Mr. Selous, shows 
his appreciation of Newfoundland as a sporting country, 
by paying frequent visits to our island. This year, 
with his companion and neighbor, Mr. McGaw, he went 
to the head of Bay D’Espoir. With the help of a num- 
ber of Mic-Macs from Conne River he portaged all 
his belongings over to Long Pond. Through a chain 
of lakes and rivers the party worked their way up to 
N. E. Dog Pond. They intended working out west 
either to Red Indian Lake or to St. George’s Bay, but 
they found the portage too long and with the assistance 
of some Indians that they met in the country they 
finally portaged ■over to the headwaters of the Gander 
and finally down to Glenwood. The march over the 
hills to the river was a very heavy job that took them 
more than a week. Mr. Millais speaks in very high 
terms of the Mic-Mac that Mr. Leslie, of Conne River, 
selected for him, also of his two men, Fred Wells and 
Robert Saunders, of Alexander Bay. Mr. Millais, who 
is a geographer, mapped out the country, and will 
lecture on the subject before the Royal Geographical 
Society in London. They saw over 3,000 caribou and 
got some very good heads. The season for sporting 
has not been very favorable. Owing to the mild 
weather, the big stags did not show themselves in the 
open as they always do on the first coming of snow and 
first touch of frost. Just at present Mr. Mallais’ chief 
literary work is the completion of the third volume 
of his great work on the mammalia. For this purpose 
he had fine opportunities at St. Lawrence, Newfound- 
land, of seeing a big whale captured, and he was en- 
abled to make sketches and photographs for his new 
volume. He feels very much indebted to Dr. Rismuller, 
both for his valuable information about these great 
mammals and for assistance in painting the animals, 
both alive and dead. The distinguished visitor_ is going 
to write a book on Newfoundland with special refer- 
ence to the caribou. It will take him a couple of years 
to complete the work, and he expects to visit New- 
foundland again in 1908 to put the finishing touches on 
his book and obtain more sketches of our animals. 
Every one who has read his splendid paper on the 
natural history of the caribou in my Guide Book will 
understand what the complete and elaborated work will 
be like. D. W. Prowse. 
Moose Hunting in Nova Scotia. 
South Brookfield, Queens Co., Nova Scotia, Oct. 30. 
—Editor Forest and Stream: Once more I will call your 
attention to our success in moose hunting in this section. 
The month of October has been an ideal month for hunt- 
ing and the sportsmen have had a good time and good 
luck in getting game. Dr. C. E. Lane, of Lititz, Pa., has 
been here, and got hi-s two bulls, and goes home a happy 
man, pleased in every way with his trip. He was only 
sorry that he could not take another, as the chance offered 
but the law would not allow' him. A gentleman from 
Grand” Rapids, Mich., got one bull, and just then had to 
leave the woods, as his guide was called home by the 
death of his father. Two others got two fine bulls and 
a bear. Some of my neighbors were out only forty-eight 
hours, others only twenty-four, and got their game. There 
have been a great many moose killed this season, and all 
report them very plentiful. As w'e still have two months 
for still-hunting I expect to hear of a great many being 
killed yet this season. Bears have put in their appear- 
ance again, and are quite plentiful; wildcats plenty. 
I am sorry to have to report the death of our old. friend, 
guide and hunter, Mr. W. S. Crooker, who passed away 
on the 4th hist, in his seventy-fifth year. G* S. 
