78 
FOREST AND STREAJVr 
February, 1919 
AL CAN GET THEM 
To the Editor of Forset and Stream; 
A L is my pal. He is an old man. A1 
must be sixty-five years old but he 
still likes to fish and sometimes he catches 
a few. One Saturday he caught three 
bass and Hicker and I got not one strike, 
which proves conclusively that A1 is a 
great fisherman. 
It happened that I arrived in my home 
village Friday night, Nov. 8th, with the 
thought of going fishing Saturday upper-, 
most in my mind. I found A1 and he 
told me that he had just three minnows 
in his live box of the variety known in 
our locality as stone-skips. I believe they 
are better known as sand perch. 
“What you want is stone-skips,” A1 
had told me; so Saturday morning I 
started out with minnow bucket, light 
split bamboo rod and line equipped with 
the tiniest hooks I had in my possession, 
in search of the wily stone-skip. My 
efforts were rewarded with any amount 
of shiners and chubs but not one stone- 
skip did I succeed in capturing. Then 
and there I made a mistake; I doubted 
ATs judgment and decided that chubs 
and shiners would answer my purpose. 
We started fishing at about two o’clock 
— Al, Hicker and I — in a deep hole 
formed at the junction of the large and a 
smaller creek. Al hooked on a stone-skip, 
Hicker a shiner, and I a chub. Al and 
Hicker were on a point at the north side 
of the small creek and the east side of 
the large creek. I was on the south side 
of the small creek at its mouth. 
Al caught a small bass in a short time 
and soon after caught another of about a 
pound and a half weight. Then he 
wanted one of us to use his last remain- 
ing stone-skip, which, of course, we re- 
fused to do: he put it on his hook and 
made another cast and almost immediate- 
ly had another strike. He missed this 
one but retained his minnow which was 
badly lacerated. 
“That’s a pike,” remarked Al. “I 
didn’t let him have it long enough. Watch 
me get him this time.” 
The badly crippled stone-skip ,was 
taken again. Al let him take out the line 
until he stopped; he started again and 
stopped, and on the third run Al made a 
mighty heave with his old cane pole. 
In spite of all the years Al had fished 
and as many fish as he has caught, he 
still becomes very much excited when he 
hooks a big one, and resorts to primitive 
methods. Such was the case on this oc- 
casion. With the pole clutched firmly in 
his right hand and the butt lodged 
against his stomach he pulled the line in 
with his left hand and held jt in his 
mouth until he could reach out to pull in 
some more. In this manner the fish 
which proved to be a four-pound, six- 
ounce small mouth bass, was led in to 
LETTERS 
QUESTIONS, 
AND ANSWER 
shore and hauled up on the bank where 
it promptly dropped off the hook and 
flopped back into the water. 
Hicker was wearing hip boots and 
standing in the water just where the fish 
flopped in. Of course Al had made fran- 
tic efforts to regain it but in vain. Hicker 
grabbed at the fish as it went into the 
water and by great luck succeeded in 
getting one finger under its gills and 
threw it back to a safe distance on the 
bank. 
As the stone-skips were all gone and 
we had failed to get any strikes on the 
other minnows, we decided to go home. 
The large fish was put on the scales at 
the general store and as mentioned before 
weighed four pounds and six ounces. 
Al said “We will call it a five-pounder” 
and if you were to ask him about it now 
he would tell you that he caught a five- 
pound small mouth bass. 
Donald C. Collom, Pennsylvania. 
A PRESERVE OF THE PRONGHORN 
To the Editor of Forest and Stream: 
V/OUR editorial and the communication 
^ from Geo. Bird Grinnell (December 
number) interest me greatly, for the rea- 
son that I am one of the survivors of 
the day in Wyoming Territory when the 
antelope (1873-6) covered the Laramie 
plains and the Medicine Bow ranges in 
herds of thousands, and when the valley 
of the Yellowstone in Montana was un- 
inhabited by white men but still the 
habitat of the beautiful antelope. 
While “Civilization” has pre-empted 
nearly all of the old ranges and criss- 
crossed and bisected them with railroad 
tracks and brought schools and churches, 
it seems to have neglected a duty it owes 
to God and to mankind, for had it been 
what the name implies it would have 
made a demonstration that would leave 
a brighter page in history. 
In the early 70’s while in camp in 
Western Nebraska one day I saw slowly 
threading his way along a grass-grown 
trail that had been used by generation 
after generation of his sires, a bull buf- 
falo. He was totally blind, his old hide 
was full of gore marks and in some 
places hairless, giving it the appearance 
of being tanned. 
Several of us, afoot, followed him and 
soon stood within a few feet of him. He 
knew we were there and stood quietly 
with his old nose a few feet from the 
ground while, with his stubby and well- 
worn tail he tried to drive a swarm of 
flies from his scabby back. 
“What’ll we do with him, fellers,” said 
Bowleg Robinson — “kill him?” 
“Not by a damned sight,” replied an- 
other of our party, “leave that to some 
lavender-legged skunk from the zone of 
civilization east of the Missouri River.” 
So the veteran of many battles was 
allowed to go his way with his rotten 
and worthless hide, possibly to be gored 
to death by Texas cattle that were being 
driven upon the splendid range. 
To me it seems almost a miracle to 
hear that there are any antelope left, 
even in Western Oregon. If, as reported, 
there are several thousand head, it is 
not too late to protect them, and I sug- 
gest a vigorous campaign with both State 
and Federal authorities, led by Forest 
AND Stream and its large family of lov- 
ers of nature and out of doors. 
The man who kills a protected animal 
in Yellowstone park goes to the peni- 
tentiary, if caught, consequently the 
crime is seldom if ever committed. Why 
shouldn’t there be a reserve for the 
dwindling herds of the beautiful prong- 
horn? There is plenty of range left for 
a government preserve, and it can be 
made as safe for this fine animal as 
Yellowstone park. 
William Francis Hooker, New York. 
AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION 
To the Editor of Forest and Stream : 
T O say that I am an interested reader 
of your magazine would be putting 
it rather mildly. I c|n hardly wait for 
each issue to come out. I would be will- 
ing to pay four times the price if it was 
published four times a month. 
I am one of those unlucky fellows who 
gets the call of the forests and streams, 
and gets it hard too, and often; but on 
account of pressure of business am often 
denied the privilege of answering the call. 
There is a bunch of kindred spirits 
with whom I have gone to our camp up 
on the Rangeley Lakes in Maine when- 
ever I could possibly get away, for the 
past fifteen years. Many of us take 
Forest and Stream, and I assure you 
that when we can’t be there ourselves, 
your magazine is an excellent substitute. 
I am much taken with the picture on 
your letter heads and front pages of the 
Forest and Stream. Many a wild deer 
hunt, or hour-long tussle I have had with 
the “big one” on my line, while sitting by 
my fire of an evening, my eyes staring 
into that picture, but my heart far away 
up among the spruce clad hills, following 
fancy’s elusive ways, after the wily ones, 
until my head droops in slumber and I 
crawl off to bed without once turning to 
