Dec. 2, 1905.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
483 
stern Hunting. 
Observatiots acd Reflections of a Sportsman. 
We read of the big game which once frequented the 
Western part of the United States in such large numbers, 
traveling over that section in a Pullman it is surprising 
to remark that we seldom see any evidence of it. Leave 
the line of the railway and settlement, the monotony of 
the sterile plain covered with sagebrush is unrelieved by 
any signs of animal life, except horses and cattle and 
occasionally herds of sheep. The old life has passed and 
the new has hardly developed sufficiently to> supply its 
place. 
Here and there may be found spots which excite the 
ardor of sportsmen, but they are generally inaccessible 
except through the agency of a competent guide. The 
great herds of buffalo which once swept over the plains 
in such vast numbers as to endanger the life of the 
pioneer, have disappeared entirely; the elk have almost 
vanished and their annual migrations have ceased to be 
a terror to the ranch man, who fenced in his hay to pro- 
tect it from the famished herds. Even the smaller game 
has greatly diminished. There are still some localities 
where primeval conditions still continue to a great ex- 
tent; about the most noted is the country south of the 
Yellowstone National Park. To the providential care of 
the National Government, in laying out this great pre- 
serve, is due the preservation of the principal sport which 
now remains. Lai'ge bands of elk frequent this preserve 
during the greater part of the year, until the heavy snows 
drive them down from the higher elevations to obtain 
pasturage. Other game beside elk may be hunted in the 
country adjacent to the Park, such as sheep, goats, ante- 
lope and black-tail deer, besides smaller animals. With 
a pack of well trained dogs it is also possible to hunt with 
success cougars, bobcats, lynx and sometimes bear. Elk 
and deer do not, as a rule, frequent the same locality to 
any extent. If one desires to hunt sheep and goats a still 
different plan of operation must be adopted, while ante- 
lope inhabit a country where neither elk, deer, sheep, nor 
goats are likely to be found, except by merest accident. 
The' time when a sportsman could pitch his tent most 
anywhere and expect the wild animal life of forest and 
plain to come tO' him like they came to Adam when he 
first named them, has long since vanished. To hunt with 
success one must be thoroughly versed in woodcraft, be 
possessed of a good knowledge of the habits of game 
and the localities where they are to be found different 
seasons of the year — a good eye to pick out a desirable^ 
head — must be a reasonably good judge of distance, to 
gauge the proper elevation of a rifle. The happy com- 
bination of these qualities make the skilled hunter; 
marksmanship, provided it be fair, is the least of all. 
There are a great many men who are good shots at a 
stationary target who are bad shots at game, there are 
men who are good shots at game, who are by no means 
experts in shooting at a mark. This statement may seem 
paradoxical but readily admits of explanation. The 
marksman has his range given him, he takes his time, and 
is not betrayed into sudden action. Change these condi- 
tions and he is out of his element. If his eye is not 
trained to j udge distance in timber or on the plain, he can 
easily misgauge it, and shooting at a moving object he 
cannot take his time; the absence of any spot on the 
animal near the point he is aiming at is another disad- 
vantage to the man of the target. The practiced hunter 
knows his distance ; his quick eye readily distinguishes 
his quarry, although it may blend with the landscape, so 
that the unpracticed eye might easily overlook it; he is 
accustomed to taking a quick sight and shoot, making 
proper allowances for the moving object; if a quick ad- 
vance is possible and necessary to cut off the game before 
it can pass a given point for which it is heading, the 
huntsman chooses his course, as if by intuition, and often 
has a chance to get several more shots where another 
would fail of his opportunity. The skill of a hunter gen- 
erally brings him within such proximity of game, as to 
relieve him of the necessity of making an extra difficult 
shot. It is surprising how seldom the huntsman dis- 
charges his rifle, compared to one who practices at a tar- 
get. The man who is fond of target practice will prob- 
ably use up as many rounds of ammunition in one after- 
noon shooting at a mark as the average huntsman will 
consume in an entire year. 
A sportsman who is a fair shot and who goes in a 
locality where game is fairly plentiful, has every reason 
in the world to expect success, provided he is accom- 
panied by a real hunter, such an one as I have above de- 
scribed. It is very important to employ a competent 
guide if one expects a successful hunt. When I speak of 
a competent guide I mean a man who is a good hunter 
and also capable of managing a hunting outfit. 
Guides may be divided into three classes : 
(i.) Ordinary frauds who are watching an opportunity 
to “work” some “dude”, by which name sportsmen are 
sometimes designated in the slang of the country. 
(2.) Backwoodsmen who are good hunters and tireless 
and will supply a sportsman with the best they know 
how’ to provide, but being ignorant of the ordinary com- 
forts of civilized life, treat their sportsmen with the same 
cruel neglect to which they have accustomed themselves. 
(3.) The man who makes a regular business of acting 
as a guide, wffio is both a good hunter and who knows 
how' to provide a first-class outfit. Game having greatly 
decreased before the advance of civilization and the wan- 
ton slaughter which took no thought of the future, the 
wild life which survives owes its preservation to the al- 
most inaccessible character of the country in which it 
has taken refuge and animal ciuining, which of necessity 
has become very acute,- 
To know the habitat of game and outwit its wariness 
requires the skill of the practiced hunter. 
We have heard a great deal about roughing it. That 
phrase as formerly understood, must be greatly ^qualified 
if the modern sportsman patronizes an up-to-date outfit. 
Going to a wild and rather inaccessible country has a 
certain charm of novelty about it, and part of that charm 
grows out of the idea of roughing, it. Some people have 
a tendency to greatly exaggerate ■. the ordeals through 
which they pass, in order that they may enhance the in- 
terest of their experience. This goes with the same 
w^eakness for overstating the distance and increasing the 
apparent difficulty of the shots, which they make: in se- 
curing their trophies, in which error they are tbo fre- 
quently sustained by the somewhat elastic conscience of 
the guide. This is an age of progress, and that phrase 
applies to methods of enjoying sport quite as well as it 
does to anything else. Having good sport with comfort 
in camp life is simply a question of dollars and cents. 
The mind of the average person is behind the times in 
understanding the present conditiohs of sporting life in 
a wild country. It must be borne in mind that hunting 
in the rough sections of the West, where the big game 
still abounds, although in much smaller numbers ' than 
formerly, everything has tO' be carried on pack horses. 
What you are to take is limited simply by the supply of 
pack horses you care to engage. In an up-to-date outfit 
the open camp-fire, such a picturesque feature in an illus- 
tration, has been supplanted by a plain sheet-iron stove, 
which is placed in the tent, with a few feed of pipe at- 
tached, to carry off the smoke. If one wants the open 
fire, it of course can be easily supplied,, and at first a 
good many sportsmen desire it on acdount of the romance 
and novelty of the experience, but the same pampered 
tastes which have forced man from a savage life to adopt 
the comforts which civilization supplies, will invariably 
lead to the open camp fire being, abandoned for the com- 
monplace sheet-iron stove — very unromantic but thor- 
oughly practical and useful. The open camp-fire, with 
the smoke blowing in your e}'^es from every direction, 
which gives you the sensation ©f being scorched on one 
side and frozen on the other, does not appeal to. the mod- 
ern sportsman, who disassociates sport from martyrdom. 
. Folding tables and chairs can be “packed” quite easily, 
and it is much pleasanter to sit in a chair arid eat off o-f 
a table than to sit on a log trying to make a table of your 
knees, and occasionally converting your lap into a plate 
for your spilled victuals.. A portable rubber bathtub, if ' 
one objects to jumping into cold water, satisfies the de- 
sire for cleanliness. With a fire in the stove one can take 
a bath as easily and comfortably in camp as at home. For 
thorough cleansing it is best for one to take, a bath in a 
tent in warm water, but I strongly recommend for those 
who can stand it a plunge in cold water or having a 
bucket or two thrown over one every morning before 
dressing for the day. This stimulates the body and gets 
the system in fine condition. 
For those who find it uncomfortable to sleep^ on tffe 
hard surface of the ground I would recommend a pneu- 
matic mattress. An ample supply of canned stuff in- 
sures against the chance of bad cooking, because it re- 
quires little or no skill to prepare canned provisions, if 
the other food in camp is not particularly appetizing. 
This article is not intended fdt the experienced hunts- 
man who has had plenty of experience of Western hunt- 
ing; nor is it intended for the man who haa his heart set 
upon roughing it in the sense that he desires to see how 
much he can go through and survive. A great deal of 
the advice given to people has been in the opposite direc- 
tion, namely, to cut out as much as possible from their 
hunting outfit. I claim that the average person who de- 
sires sport with as little hardship as possible, except what 
is unavoidable, should be very careful about reducing his 
outfit too much. Most sportsmen live most of the time 
surrounded by the ordinary comforts and conveniences of 
life. It is perfect folly for such people to attempt in a 
short time to harden themselves to the frontier life, so 
that they may endure its hardships with the same indif- 
ference as the hunter or trapper who lives that life all 
the time. I have run across sportsmen who have had 
their hunting trips spoiled by attempting “to rough it” 
too much. If you are accustomed to living well and in 
comfort it would be wise to recognize the fact that you 
are a “tenderfoot” and act accordingly. The object of a 
hunting trip in the West for the average .sportsman is to 
obtain diversion and acquire health. Alb the roughing it 
one requires is the vigorous exercisej the fresh air, with 
an occasional dip in ice cold water, wffiich is conducive to 
health ; the rest of the hardship it is well to leave out as 
far as possible. 
My experience has led me to add tO’ a hunting outfit the 
oftener I go out, rather than depleting it. The first time 
I really saw an up-to-date outfit -was in 1902, when I en- 
gaged as my guide Edward Sheffield, of Idaho. I joked 
him about all the things he was taking along and called 
him a “tenderfoot.” He replied that “he had had all the 
roughing it he wanted in his time, and those who really 
knew what it was generally wanted a camp as comfort- 
able as possible.” I experienced during that trip and a 
subsequent one I took this fall -such comfort, combined 
with good sport as I never had before. 
In conclusion, I w’-ould advise ta'king an emergency case 
supplied with all the ordinary remedies. I have known 
the time when such a thing has proved extremely useful, 
and I have also knov/n of sportsmen who have had their 
sport ruined because of the want of some simple remedy. 
E. F. Randolph. 
All communications for Forest and Stream must he 
directed to. Forest cmd Stream Pub. Co., New York, to 
receive attention. We hen>e no other office. 
North Carolina People are Happy* 
Raleigh, N. C., Nov. 24 . — Editor Forest and Stream: 
'The partridge shooting season has now been on almost 
a month. I predicted weeks before it opened that plenty 
of birds would be found, and the result proves this was 
an accurate statement. Some of the birds are not fully 
grown, and the other day some of my farmer friends 
declared they thought it would be a capital idea to have 
the close season extended to Dec. i. In fact, they asked 
me if I would not try to get this matter attended to by 
the Legislature, through the Audubon Society, which is 
now so powerful in North Carolina. The fact is, that 
the good shooting really does not begin until December, 
the weeds now being very rank and stiff, making it hard 
on dogs. This year a heavy freeze came much earlier 
than usual, and the woods are more open than is com- 
mon at this time of year, but in the blackjack and post- 
oak scrub the leaves hang on until the spring. The fall 
has been very dry and the birds are quite largely along 
the streams. Where there; are rivers the partridges are 
remarkably smart, taking care as soon as flushed to fly 
across the stream. This is the case around Moncure, 
where the Deep and Haw rivers unite and form the Cape 
Fear. A friend tells me that the birds anywhere near 
these streams make a practice of going directly across 
as soon as flushed, so there is only one crack at a covey. 
I have known birds to do this near Raleigh also. 
A gentleman who was out last week a few miles north 
of Raleigh tells me he found eighteen coveys during the 
day, which is a very good number. He found some birds 
not grown, as I have already stated. Mr. Robert Baldwin 
and Mr. Charles Hervey, of Raleigh, went down on the 
Carolina Central Railway, between Hamlet and Wilming- 
ton, near the South Carolina line, and found good sport, 
getting ninety-six birds in two days, besides other kinds 
of game. I want to recommend that section to sports- 
men. It is on the Seaboard Air Line, and Hamlet is a 
good point to start from, as one can go out on the road 
toward Maxton or Gibson or up a little ways toward 
Charlotte, and get back in the evening, though a better 
way still is to get acquainted with people out in the coun- 
try, go to their homes and rough it. This is the best 
way not only to get acquainted with the people but to 
get the best results as to game. Of course, hunters from 
the cities will miss some comforts, but what do they care 
for that, so long as the sport is good and the people 
clever? I had a talk with Mr. Charles H. Gattis at 
Raleigh, the district passenger agent of the Seaboard Air 
Line, about this matter, and he said that if people would 
w'rite to him he would be glad to show them where they 
could get good shooting. A number of letters from peo- 
ple up north have already come tO' me about these 
matters. 
Mr. Neill Spence, of Raleigh, tells me that during his 
life, which has not been a long one, he has killed 700 
wild turkeys. He usually hunts along the Cape Fear 
River, south of Raleigh, now reached by a new railroad, 
and last week out of eight shots he killed seven turkeys. 
He goes out with a dog, any time in the day, finds the 
turkeys, scatters them, then waits about two hours and 
“yelps them up,” as the hunters say in this country, using 
a “yelper” for this purpose. By the way, an old mam 
named Draughan, who lives- at Fayetteville, makes the 
best turkey yelper I ever heard, and also makes calls for 
other kinds of game very cleverly indeed. 
T. K. Bruner, secretary of the State Board of Agricul- 
ture, and Herbert Brimley, the curator of the State 
Museum, left a day or so ago for Newberne and vicinity, 
to get some shooting at ducks and geese at Lake Ellis 
ond the other lakes to which reference was made in 
Forest and Stream some months ago. It was in one 
of these lakes that Mr. Brimley had some exciting ad- 
ventures with big alligators. In one of them is a colony 
of cormorants, of which mention has also been made. 
Near this point is a stream known as Slocum’s Creek, 
much affected by hunters. A devoted sportsman who 
came up from there to-day, declared that yesterday 
there were fourteen gasolene boats in the creek (by 
count) and that the gunners were so excited that they 
would shoot if they even heard the “honk” of a wild 
goose; as a result having scared all the game away. The 
lakes are on land which is private and very closely pre- 
served, and so the pot-hunter cuts no figure there, only 
invited persons getting a chance at the fine sport to be 
had. Governor Glenn and the writer will get there later 
in the winter, having been specially invited some months 
ago. 
Thece has- only been one cold soell this season so far, 
during which the temperature fell as low as twenty 
degrees here. It lasted only a day, but many ducks and 
geese came into the sounds near the coast. There was a 
little flurry of snow at the same time. In several of the 
sounds wild celery has been set and wild rice planted, but 
Currituck Sound, the headquarters of the ducks and 
geese, is the one where the bottom for miles is covered 
with celery, which these birds love so well. In some of 
the inland lakes rice has been planted, and this attracts 
ducks very freely. 
For some reason or other an unusually large number 
of bear are being killed this season, particularly in the 
eastern counties, the dense swamps, which are a tangle of 
bay bushes and all sorts of semi-tropical growths being 
the lurking places of these beasts. I have heard of more 
than 200 being killed in eight or fen counties already. 
Many deer are being killed also, mainly in that section, 
but some in the mountains. 
Speaking about partridges, I want to say that very 
good shooting will be found in Johnston county, around 
Smithfield, where the people are very sociable and livO.^ 
in good style, as they have always been used to doing. 
That county has always been a good point for partridge 
