3 
I had no intention of bothering his nest, 
and he had no right to publish me abroad 
as a robber. 
I N the big highland field behind the 
ricefield the corn is up and now grown 
strong past the danger of any crow or 
lark enemies. But a new trouble that is 
difficult to fight now presents itself. The 
deer have found me out ; and the other 
day I saw the tracks of a big buck in 
the field, and found where he had ruined 
perhaps three long rows of corn stand- 
ing next to the woods. His route showed 
that he had deliberately followed one 
row down, cropping off the young stalks 
just below the heart. 
These visitations are due to the fact 
that the woods adjacent to that field are 
very dense. The deer, I think, stay there 
throughout the day. In thosfe thickets 
they can get away from the flies ; and 
though not more than, a quarter of a 
mile from the house, they are quite at 
home. As you know, deer do not mind 
noise ; that is, an old buck will lie serene- 
ly in a thicket and let a negro sing and 
curse a mule within two hundred yards 
of him. Move? Not he. Especially 
when he knows that I am planting corn 
in his front yard. 
It is a hard matter to fence out deer. 
A six-foot fence and the jumping there- 
of hardly gives them enough exercise to 
keep their livers ordered. They can 
make 8 feet — if peas and potatoes are 
on the other side. George Timmons put 
up a 10-foot fence around his potato 
patch, only to have the deer — a whole 
herd of them, led by two big bucks — 
crawl under the zeirc through a deep 
FOREST AND STREAM 
ditch. There is a saying among deer- 
hunters here that a deer can jump as 
high as he has to. I guess some of us 
might surprise ourselves as jumpers if 
the right thing got after us. . . . Some 
planters protect themselves against deer 
raids by “staking.” But I have never 
had the heart to do this trick. I would 
rather give up a few rows of corn or 
peas. ... In my next letter I can tell 
you more about these deer. The does will 
then have fawns, and will travel miles 
to get into growing crops. 
Almost daily I ride round the place, 
keeping a weather-eye on everything, 
and not forgetting, even at this time of 
the year, to behold the SIGNS. At all 
the crossings in the woods, and on the 
damp, sandy roads, there are deer and 
turkey tracks. It is a hard thing to see 
a deer now. The does are in the thickets, 
and the bucks, with budding antlers, are 
very shy. I see where wild turkeys have 
been scratching in the myrtle bushes 
right by the plantation gate. From the 
size of their toenails they were big 
ones. Now they have paired off and are 
silent, though occasionally I hear an 
old gobbler early in the morning. We 
ought to have several fine flocks on the 
place next season. By that time the old 
cornfield buck will have something on 
his head ; and maybe he will be carrying 
it for you. 
January, 1922 j 
W ELL, here we are again ! The year 
has almost half gone, and in an- 
other six months you will be heading 
this way with your gun. ... I must tell 
you of a strange thing that happened to 
me last week. I was riding the little 
mare Kitty, and we had been going 
through some very thick and snaky 
places, looking for strayed cows. As we 
came out into a small open space the 
mare suddenly collapsed. She sank down 
as if everything under her had given 
way. I jumped off, and about that time 
she straightened up. On examining her 
I found her underneath to be covered 
with blood. I imagined that a snake had 
struck her in a big blood vessel, or that 
she had snagged herself terribly. But 
on a closer look I saw that she had sim- 
ply lowered her body in order to scrape 
off the tormenting clusters of deer-flies 
that had gathered on her paunch, and 
that my being on her back had prevented 
her getting off in any other way. 
It has always been a wonder to me 
that our deer, whose very lives depend 
in some degree on their living in those 
places in the woods which are particu- 
larly infested with flies, never seem to 
be pulled down physically by them. 
Bucks are invariably fattest in August; 
and of the large numbers that I have | 
seen killed during that month, very few | 
had any ticks on them. Genuinely wild 
creatures seem to undertsand wonder- 
fully well how to take care of them- 
selves. Tamed creatures, becoming de- i 
pendent upon us, undoubtedly lose much 
of their resourcefulness and their hardi- 
hood. For example, I saw a buck last 
(Continued on page 46) 
RARE FURS OF THE WEASEL FAMILY 
FOR THEIR SIZE THESE LITTLE ANIMALS ARE THE 
WEARERS OF THE MOST EXPENSIVE COATS IN THE WORLD 
T he despised weasel family is the 
one branch of zoology in which 
scientific classifications and fur 
classifications agree. The weasels 
are the bearers of rarest furs, which for 
their size are the most expensive in the 
world and all have more or less similar 
characteristics as to habits and furs. 
Mink. M'easel and Marten, also Rus- 
sian Sable and Japanese Kolinsky — all 
have long slender bodies, very short 
legs, flattened heads and lightning-quick, 
furtive motion. To any one who finds 
difficulty in retaining in memory the dif- 
ferences between the mink and the mar- 
ten, apart from size and quality of fur, 
it helps to remember that the mink’s 
motions are distinctly serpentine ; the 
marten’s are catty. The mink advances 
with a long pulling wriggle of a stealthy 
body, head uplifted to strike like a snake 
and shaped not unlike a snake. The 
marten is equally stealthy but leaps like 
a cat. If you examine the shapes of the 
heads, you will see the marten head is 
more like a cat’s; or a fox’s, than a 
snake’s. Otter, which also belongs to 
BY AGNES LAUT 
this family, but whose fur has been 
considered separately,* and fisher or 
pekan, are five times the size of the lit- 
tle furbearers and their heads are not 
unlike the seal’s. Marten has a bushy 
tail that is priceless, so fine it is often 
sold separate from the fur. Fisher has 
a bushy, beautiful tail like a fox but it 
is never sold separate from the fur ; but 
mink and otter have nothing to boast of 
in their caudal appendages. 
Russian sables only five to eight inches 
long sell all the way up to $700, which 
is — inch for inch — many times the value 
of a silver fox. Hudson sable, which is 
nothing but American marten and ought 
never to be called sable, sold in the 1920 
sales from $201 in Montreal to $460 in 
St. Louis, and from these prices aver- 
ages for different grades ran at $18, 
$32.50, $50 and $91. Fisher, which is 
much larger than marten or sable, 
brought $125 in St. Louis. $236 in New 
York, $148 to $345 in Montreal, while 
mink prices in the same sales rated from 
$19 to $75 and I think in one rare lot 
* Forest and Stream, January, 1921. 
ran to $90. (Incidentally, I may add 
that when camping some few years ago 
on the head waters of Bow River in the 
Rockies, I could have bought from the 
Indians the best mink that ever were 
“minked” at 90c. a skin — which illus- 
trates how much greater a gamble the 
fur trade is for tenderfeet than the 
wildest markets of Wall Street. It makes 
me physically sick to recall that early 
in 1900 when in Labrador I could have 
bought the finest otter for $10, which i 
now sells at $100 plus a pelt. Consider- 
ing these prices and the advance in ■ 
muskrat from 12c. to $7, it isn’t hard 
to explain why fur traders become rich, 
or go stone-broke quicker than in almost 
any other industry except the finding of 
gold nuggets.) 
“If,” says the Canadian Conservation 
Report of the weasel fur bearers, “this 
family could be domesticated, there is no 
doubt that a market for more than $io,- i 
000.000 worth of raw fur annually could ! 
be found.” This for Canada only. The ' 
absorptive power of the American mar- 
ket would reach beyond $10,000,000. i 
