8 5 6 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Dec. i, 1906. 
THE TOP RAIL. 
Many a good story is told while sportsmen 
rest on the top rail of the old fence; and this 
reminds me of one good old Jack White told 
me years ago, for it had to do with the top rail 
of an old worm fence. Jack was hunting when 
he noticed a very peculiar cloud coming up, and 
as he was cyclone-wise, he made for an open 
field where there was nothing that could fall on 
him; thinking, he said, that if the wind increased 
too much, he could lie down behind a sapling 
and hold on to it. On came the cloud, circling, 
rising and dipping, and for a time Jack was 
scared, and scared badly, for he was fond of that 
neck o’ woods, and not anxious to be picked up 
and dropped in another county, perhaps without 
his gun. But after things quit falling and the 
cyclone went its way, Jack’s equanimity re¬ 
turned. 
“And where do you think I found myself?” 
he queried. “On the top rail of the highest stake- 
and-rider fence in the neighborhood!” 
» 
Here’s another one in which a fence played a 
part, as one often does in hunting. Up in Sulli¬ 
van county there is a man who spent a whole 
day hunting, and at nightfall he was returning 
homeward empty-handed when he found a rabbit 
in a snare and still kicking. He released it and 
was about to dispatch it with the back of his 
hand when it occurred to him that he could not 
say he shot it, as no shot-marks would be found 
to corroborate his story. So he tied a string to 
one of the hind legs of the rabbit, tied the other 
end to the fence, backed away twenty yards and 
fired. 1 he shot cut the string and bunny ran 
away. Such a good joke on himself was too good 
to keep, and he told it at the village grocery, 
little thinking that it would be handed about, 
until now% if you want to anger him, the mere 
mention of the yarn opens the old sore. 
« 
In Sullivan county another story is told which 
had to do with a man who was picking black¬ 
berries when he saw a black bear coming his 
way, nose to the ground, and, as he thought, 
following his trail. He put the bucket down 
hurriedly, and selecting a handy tree, made for 
it with the intention of shinning up to a nice, 
strong limb, prepared to stand a siege. Along 
came the bear, head down. It passed the half- 
filled berry bucket without seeing it, passed the 
tree without taking notice of the man’s scent, 
and went on down the path until it was out of 
sight. 
“Now,” thought the man, “is the time for me 
to beat it for home;” but when he moved, as 
if to climb down from his lofty perch, he found 
that in reality he was sitting on the ground with 
his arms and legs wrapped around the tree 
trunk. Excited. Next. 
When John Enright made his great cast of 
152 feet with a salmon fly on Harlem Mere at 
the recent tournament, reporters for the daily 
press were hot after particulars. An angler 
spent half an hour explaining all the details to 
a reporter, and when he finally turned away the 
reporter stopped him and asked, “And did he 
use a half-ounce weight, too?” 
Said an old sportsman, “This bird is a ruffed 
grouse in New York state and a partridge in 
New England, while in the South it becomes the 
pheasant. In New York city, however, it is ten 
dollars, no matter whether you are buying or 
selling.” 
When yarns are being spun one hears a good 
deal concerning the curious antics people go 
through when highly excited, but very little is 
said about the man who “gets scared after it is 
all over.” And the latter, not being so con¬ 
stituted that he can faint, as a woman often does 
after a fright, generally keeps his own counsel, 
and often is given the credit of being cool and 
“nervy” when the fact is that his knees are ready 
to bump together for mutual support. 
»e 
Give me for a companion in the backwoods 
the man who “gets cold feet” after he has with 
apparent coolness tackled a situation requiring 
courage and mastered it. You can depend on 
him, even though he may confide to you at the 
camp-fire that night that he is still scared. 
Sometimes a man is justified in being scared 
after a thing is all over and he takes sober 
thought of what might have happened, par¬ 
ticularly when the lives or safety of other per¬ 
sons depended on his judgment and action. 
Now comes another man who says that Pacific 
coast salmon will rise to the artificial fly. James 
N. Mackin, of Seattle, Wash., has sent me a 
copy of the Seattle Post-Intellingencer, dated 
Oct. 28, containing the following: 
“The experience of Russell Ploman, proprietor 
of the Antlers, in the Olympic Mountains, while 
fishing on the Quiniault River recently, tends to 
confirm the contention of a few sportsmen that 
the salmon of the Pacific coast will rise to the 
fly. * * * Mr. Homan put in the greater part 
of the summer camping a t different points in 
the Olympic peninsula. 
"While camping on the wild and picturesque 
Quiniault, Mr. Homan enjoyed what he describes 
as the finest fishing he ever had. He says that 
he killed four or five salmon, which averaged 
fifteen pounds each, with the fly. They struck 
hard, and gave him a great battle. 
“Dolly Varden trout were numerous and they, 
too, dispelled the commonly accepted idea that 
they will not take the fly. Two or three years 
ago, a Chicago sportsman, who was fishing in the 
Skykomish River, which flows into Hood Canal 
from the hub of the Olympics, reported that he 
hooked a monster Dolly Varden with a fly. The 
story aroused a heated discussion, the consensus 
of opinion being that it was a very unusual oc¬ 
currence, as the Varden lies close to the bottom 
of the stream and is inclined to be sluggish in 
comparison with the beautiful rainbow.” 
* 
I know a guide who is fond of scouting 
around in the brush, watching bears and learn¬ 
ing their habits, and in this way he came to 
know just where and when he could put his 
finger on a bear if one was wanted. It happened 
that he met a party of discouraged hunters who 
lamented their inability to find bears in a place 
where they were said to be abundant. He de¬ 
nied that bears were scarce and asserted that he 
could get one that day if necessary. Argument 
led to a wager of a large sum, and he won it 
before dark by bringing his bear to camp, then 
sold it to one of the hunters. 
* 
On a recent morning I talked with a patrol¬ 
man whom I knew and who is one of the Cen¬ 
tral Park squad. We were commenting on the 
abundance of squirrels and their splendid con¬ 
dition, when he said that early the previous 
morning he had found two of the squirrels dead 
on one of the walks. If I were to say that the 
very people who believe they do all in their 
power to protect dumb animals from man’s 
cruelty are responsible for the death of a large 
number of the Central Park squirrels, I would 
probably be abused roundly. Still, this is true, 
in a measure. Said my friend, the patrolman: 
“The trouble is that so many feed the squirrels 
with soft nuts instead of hard ones like hickory- 
nuts that they don’t ‘rustle’ for their own food, 
but fast part of the time because they have got¬ 
ten out of the habit of foraging, and gorge 
themselves when their friends give them pea¬ 
nuts. The result is, they get indigestion and 
die, or their teeth get so long they cannot crack 
hard nuts as when their teeth are kept in normal 
condition.” 
I have heard sportsmen say they would not 
shoot one of these half-tame squirrels for any¬ 
thing, yet they feed them cooked peanuts, and 
it is astonishing how many of these a squirrel 
will eat before it takes to hiding them under 
leaves or burying them for future use. A steady 
diet of roasted nuts is too much for them, ap¬ 
parently, and they suffer torture at the hands 
of their human friends, who think they are do¬ 
ing the right thing by feeding them anything at 
all they will eat. 
It is astonishing how tame these little rascals 
become and still they will not submit to hand¬ 
ling. One day one of them that knows me, or 
at least recognizes me as a friend, climbed up 
to my overcoat pocket and peeked in at the sack 
of pecans reposing there, but was not quite satis¬ 
fied that it was safe to climb down into the 
pocket in order to help himself. He did ascend 
to my shoulder, however, and sat there until I 
had secured a pecan and held it at arm’s length, 
when he made his way to it, pried it from be¬ 
tween my fingers and sat on my sleeve and ate 
it, then returned to my shoulder to beg for 
more. The slightest attempt to stroke its head 
or back, however, put it instantly on the de¬ 
fensive, and I have yet to find one that will 
not either run or fight when touched. Even 
an old gentleman who passes many hours every 
day in the park, and whom hundreds of squirrels 
know as a friend that never fails them in good 
weather and bad, and on whose shoulders the 
squirrels will sit and munch nuts without fear, 
says that they resent petting, and in this they are 
still wild. Their long teeth are ever-ready to 
close on the fingers that would imprison them, 
even for a moment, and although they are 
prisoners and pets in one sense, they will not 
tolerate the signs of affection a favorite dog 
accepts with unmistakable pleasure. 
Grizzly King. 
