122 
times the fellows pfot niir \eind and were 
pone. 
Ent we were destined to have luck. 
Following' along Bass Creek, which was 
frozen over in spots, and up over a 
slight rise, where the cover was again 
very heavy, we came upon a young bull 
feeding in the swamp below us. He 
could not have been more than a two- 
year-old, as he had hut the merest sign 
of horns. So we circled around, crossed 
the creek twice and came into the swamp 
from the other side. By this time we 
had seen tracks that would indicate a 
hunch of se^’cn moose had gone into the 
swamp. There was not a breath of air 
stirring and the crackling of ice on the 
creek and the single note of the whiskey- 
jacks were the only sounds. Joe spoke 
to me in a whisper, “They in here all 
right.” And they were — four bulls about 
a hundred yards from us, two of them 
with nice heads. 
I was just in the act of stepping when 
I caught sigh of them, and true to form 
I wasii't paying enough attention to the 
operation. IMy foot went “plump” into 
a bog-hole up over the top of my shoe- 
pac and of course, the two big bulls 
heard the sound. T ca'iuld hear Joe cuss- 
ing me under his breath, but I fired at 
the biggest one ^vl 1 o loomed up like a 
lake freighter. He turned and the whole 
lot of them sped np the slope. T got my 
second shot in just as the big one went 
over the top and I knew I had hit him 
that time. Joe was not so sure, for he 
shook his head doubtfidly. We hopped 
over the bad places of the swamp to the 
spot where the moose had been feeding. 
There was not a sign of blood and Joe 
smiled and said, “No good — better sell 
your gun.” 
I was almost at the point of figuring 
out a price for it when we did see blood 
and a lot more of it at the spot where 
my secotid shot had reached him. We 
looked over the ground a bit and sat 
down on a log. I said, “Joe — shall I 
keep the gun or sell it?” and he replied 
intelligently, “Aha,” so I knew just what 
to do. After ten minutes of deliberate 
stalking, 'we proceeded to trail our 
wounded moose. The sky was beginning 
to gray some then and as we had already 
walked about seven miles through pretty 
had country, I was for giving up the 
tracking until the next morning. But 
my friend the Indian u'as just getting 
limbered up and had no more intention 
of stopping than he had of joining the 
Polish army, so I plodded on behind. 
Soon we crossed the old tote-road and 
knowing we were pretty near camp, I 
felt better. At this point Joe remarked, 
“He not far now,” and he was right 
again. A quarter of a mile farther on 
was the twelve-hundred pounds of meat 
and the nice head that had constituted 
a big bull moose an hour before. The 
spread was about 48 inches — not as 
much as I had thought at first. But I 
patted the .303 and decided to keep it. 
Back in camp, we found Mac and the 
hoy and supper waiting, and between 
thawing out my hands and chewiilg 
moose-steak, I managed to let the others 
know of fny good fortune. Before the 
four days Were up, Mac got a nice head 
FOREST AND STREAM 
and shot a fine buck deer, the latter in 
a snowstorni the last day. But the point 
is, don't judge your bet by your pile of 
chips. See that that extra ace is in the 
draw. Ralph \V. Andrews, Minn. 
TROUT IN MICHIGAN 
Pear Forest ami Stream: 
I HA\’E just read H. S. Larch’s ar- 
A tide “Michigan Streanis” in January 
Forest .\nd Stre.vm and feel that I must 
take some exceptions to his letter. I, 
too, am heartily in favor of propagating 
and protecting the brook trout. I have 
resided on the banks of the Sotith Branch 
of the Au-Sahle ri\'er all my life and 
have fished the stream more or less every 
season for the past thirty years. ’Tis 
true that trout in this stream are fewer 
than in former years, hut I cannot alto- 
gether l)lame the fishermen for the pres- 
ent condition. 'I’he number of fishermen 
coming to this stream 1 think are fewer 
now tban in former years. True, there 
are a couple of club-houses and a few 
cottages on the stream but they ate 
really private summer homes, none of 
which cater to the tourist. 
There is one cottage, however, at the 
mouth of the South Branch that caters 
to the transient fisherman but their ac- 
commodations are limited and the few 
who frequent the place would not mate- 
rially effect the fishing. 
1 have run the stream from Roscom- 
mon to the jnouth and I have never seen 
fisherhien in such numbers that would 
cause me nmch alarm. I don’t think 
that fishermen are entirely to blame for 
the depletion of the stream, hut rather 
the obnoxious fish — the ricnnai'i brown 
trout, the rainl)ow and the pike, (let 
rid of these cannibals and the trout will 
increase. 
Only last season while fishing Robin- 
son creek, a tributary of the South 
Branch, a brush-covered stream only a 
few feet wide, I had the unusual e.xpe- 
rience of catching a 22-inch rainbow 
whose gut was filled with small brook 
trout. Ducks, too, protected by federal 
law, destroy more trout in one winter 
than all the fishermen in two or three 
seasons. 
From my own observations the trout 
needs protection from evils other than 
mere man or boy with hook and line, 
\vhether he fishes with fly or bait. 
D. E. Matheson, 
Michigan. 
THE FUR-BEARERS OF 
FLORIDA 
i^car Forest and Stream: 
O northern trappers and hunters it 
would seem to be an impossibility 
for the fur of any animal from Elorida 
to have any marketable value, but an 
accurate account of all the sales of Flor- 
ida furs would give a money value that 
would be surprising. 
There are no muskrats in southern 
Florida, as they can not live in any sec- 
tion where the alligators are pentiful. 
so the fur list Is confined to panther, 
bobcat, lynx, black bear, raccoon, 
Mardi, 1922 
skunk and opossum, and, the nlosf Val- 
uable (T' all, the otter. 
South of the 27th parallel of north 
latitude, the settlements are confined to a 
strip near the Atlantic Coast, in that por- 
tion east of the Kissimmee River and 
Lake Okeechobee ; with a settled belt of 
a few miles in width along the south 
shore of the lake, and its former outlet 
to the (iulf Coast, the Caloosahatchee 
River; also the unsettled portion of some 
millions of acres, consisting of a surface 
of flat woods, ponds, small lakes, swamps 
and sawgrass prairie, broken by a few 
settlements along the drainage canals of 
the Everglade region. This is the home 
of the above-named fiir-bearers, of which 
the raccoon is the most plentiful, fol- 
low'ed by the opossum and then the 
skunk in numbers; 
The cabbage pahil is the ideal habitat 
for the faccDoU, which hilds U home ill 
the hollow trees, and in the erowns of 
them, while the berries of the palm fur- 
nish the cooiis with a large Supply Of 
food. On the coastal islands pttd along 
the inlets where the salt waters ebb and 
flow', the shores are lined with mangrove 
trees, to the roots of which oysters atid 
other shell-fish fasten and live, ahd fur- 
nish a change of diet for Mr. Coon at 
low tide, if there is a grove of orange 
or mango trees within a mile or so of 
his home, he goes to it and selects the 
trees bearing the sweetest fruit. He 
destroys so much fruit by biting and 
sucking the juice that the owners of the 
groves, in desperation, place fish poi-, 
soned with strichnine along the paths the 
coon takes, and by this means kill them 
off by scores at a time of the year when 
their hides are valueless. 
While there are a number of w'hite 
men who trap every winter in what is 
known as the back country, and have a 
r'cry profitable business for a few 
months, getting the fur-hearers in traps, 
they also get a large number of furs with 
hounds that tree the coons, opossums 
and bobcats in the daytime. One often 
sees the coons upon the palm trees near 
the banks of the streams while passing 
by the shores in boats ; but the great bulk 
of the Ek)rida furs is marketed by the 
Seminole Indians, who move from one 
part of the trapping ground to another 
as fast as they can clean up the furs. 
They often come to the towns with an 
o.x-team and wagon, with furs worth 
several hundred dollars, which they will 
not sell to dealers here, but some person 
whom they trust wdll ship their furs to 
some northern market for them. 
T have seen a load of furs, w'hich had 
dozens of otter pelts, at least one-fonrth 
in number of the load, and some of the 
otter pelts w'ere the largest I ever saw. 
They also bring in quite a number of the 
skins of the large diamond-back rattle- 
snake, which are sold for good prices to 
the winter tourists stopping in the towns. 
Such snakes are scarce now, as I have 
been hunting in the woods and fishing in 
the ri\'ers, ponds and lakes of this sec- 
tion for o\’er eight years and T have 
never seen but one diamond-back rattler 
in the woods, and one on the Dixie 
Highway, that our car ran over some 
25 miles south of Stuart. The fur busi- 
