Sept. 29, 1906.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
497 
All the game laws of the United States and 
Canada, revised to date and now in force, are 
given in the Game Laws in Brief. See adv. 
A Day with the Grouse. 
BY RUPE BARMBY. 
For days the heat had been lessening, the days 
perceptibly shortening, and the sunshine exchang¬ 
ing its brilliant glare for the more mellow and 
subdued glow so peculiar to the autumn' sea¬ 
son. Tree and shrub and air and sky, all were 
speaking in a language which knows of no de¬ 
ceit of a great change, gradually but surely tak¬ 
ing place. Summer was slowly dying into au¬ 
tumn, and another seed time was at hand. 
Closely and constantly I had been studying 
these ever changing symbols of the year’s ad¬ 
vance. Surely there is nothing more interest¬ 
ing and fascinating than the changes of the sea¬ 
sons as they come and go, familiar though they 
may have become! They are as the shifting 
scenese of a great drama. 
Finally the wind set in to blow a gale from 
the northwest, which lasted throughout the en¬ 
tire day; but at sundown it abated, and was 
followed by a calm. The evening was clear and 
cold, with the stars shining in all their brilliancy; 
and as I prepared to leave the editorial sanctum 
for home, having finished the following day’s 
copy for the press, I could not but stop for a 
moment to admire them. 
“There’ll be a heavy frost, to-night,” I mused, 
“and what a day to-morrow will be for an out¬ 
ing in the woods, with the air like champagne, 
and the foliage at the height of its glory! The 
grouse are reported uncommonly plentiful, too, 
this year. Wonder if I couldn’t spare the day, 
to go after them!” 
Just at that moment, the door opened, and a 
familiar form stood- at the portal, peering ques- 
tioningly in through the dim light. "Judge 
Davis! Come right in, and sit down! Yes, I’m 
still here. Have a chair!” and the gas was again 
lighted, and my guest prepared to make himself 
comfortable. 
To make a long story short, he had come to 
propose a grouse hunt for the following day, 
together withj a third companion, Cephas Hale, 
a prosperous .merchant of the place, and as the 
reader may well imagine, I was not slow in 
adding my htearty approval to his plan. Until 
late into the night we sat together, talking over 
former memorable days afield, and at length 
parted with plans arranged, and with many 
pleasurable anticipations for the morrow. 
Even before sunrise we were up and away, with 
guns over our shoulders and the dogs racing 
joyously beside us; and for the time politics and 
law, and business and journalism, engrossing 
though they may be, were forgotten and laid 
aside, and we gave ourselves up entirely to the 
pleasures of the day. Like a trio of boys, back 
in life’s heydey once more, we trudged along, 
enjoying to the fullest the gorgeous splendor of 
nature all about us, and the untrammeled freedom 
which was to be ours for the entire day. 
Soon the edge of the cover was reached, and 
the hunt began in earnest. The doa's took to 
quartering back and forth with a will, and we 
followed after with guns ready for use, should 
occasion arise.. We had chosen for our outing 
a stretch of pine woodlands, interspersed here 
and there with birches and hardwood growths, 
where plenty of cover, together with an abundant 
supply of feed was to be had; always a favorite 
resort with us. 
It was amusing to note how thoroughly so 
sedate and dignified an individual as the judge 
could become engrossed in the diversion to which 
we were devoting ourselves. Every movement of 
the dogs was followed with the closest scrutiny, 
and with e.ach hurried retreat of a frightened 
song bird from before their path, he would start 
as though a full bevy of the quarry was about 
to burst away before us. If there ever was a 
man who hunted with all his' senses it was he, 
and this in a large measure doubtless accounted 
for the success which always attended his out¬ 
ings. 
Hale, on the contrary, was the very reverse, 
always lost in revery; and should occasion arise 
to shoot with dispatch, as in thick cover, seldom 
got further than making a desperate pass at ad¬ 
justing his eye glasses before the bird was well 
out of sight. But his good humor was boundless, 
and his patiende admirable. 
For the time nothing of note occurred, and we 
worked our way further and further into the 
cover, until at last we came out upon an elevated 
plateau, from which we could look off to see 
ourselves surrounded on every hand by the wav¬ 
ing green pines stretching as far as the eye could 
reach, like a limitless sea of emerald. 
But from here we descended into a country 
cut up with many gullies, all thickly wooded, 
such cover as cannot but thrill the true hunts¬ 
man’s heart with delight, and here our luck 
changed for the better. No' sooner had we en¬ 
tered these favored precincts than a brace of 
birds flushed directly before the judge, who 
dropped them both in fine style, to the infinite 
satisfaction and delight of Hale, who could not 
sound his praises too highly for the skillful feat. 
And we all three of us had occasion not long 
after to appreciate the irony of it all, too, when 
the same opportunity presented itself to Hale, of 
displaying his marksmanship. “Bang! Bang!” 
went both barrels of his gun in quick succession, 
while his glasses flew the full length of their 
cord, and he staggered some three or four rods 
down the hill, like a drunken man, before he 
could recover his equilibrium, from their dis¬ 
charge. The birds meantime sailed hastily out of 
sight, while we burst into a roar of laughter, 
the disappointed marksman joining as heartily as 
we. He never failed to- relish the humorous side 
of a ludicrous situation, even though the fun was 
at his own expense. 
But not to weary the reader with a detailed 
account of the incidents of the day, in brief, we 
continued on thus, meeting now and again with 
moderate success in our quest, until at length 
the waning of the day turned us homeward, and 
we sought the edge of the cover again. 
Just as we were about to emerge from among 
the pines, and reluctantly abandon the hunt as 
being over until another day, of a sudden a 
bird scurried away before us with rumbling 
wings, taking us quite' unprepared, and startling 
us not a little. The judge’s gun came quickly 
to his shoulder, nevertheless, and its almost im¬ 
mediate discharge followed, but the situation had 
disconcerted his aim, and he scored a miss. A 
like fate fell to my lot, too. though I had fired 
with more deliberation, pulling both triggers in 
quick succession. And (hen. lo and behold, to 
our utter astonishment and dismay, with a non¬ 
chalance which bordered upon the bravado, Hale 
deliberately brought up his piece, and scarcely 
taking an aim, drooped the departing bird at the 
first shot, just as it was about to round a thick 
clump of pines and disappear from sight. 
We could scarcely believe our eyes, at the 
smlit, and the marksman himself was undoubt¬ 
edly the most astonished of us three; but if so, 
he kept his own counsel, and played his part ex¬ 
ceedingly well. To (his day, we have never 
heard the last of that famous shot, for if ever 
anything happens to be said in any way in dis¬ 
paragement of Hale’s marksmanship, he invari¬ 
ably refers to the time when he “wiped our eyes” 
for us. and “showed us how the thing should be 
properly and correctly done, when one really un¬ 
derstands the hang of it.” 
Cats as Game Destroyers. 
Having indulged in considerable motoring this 
past summer through (he country of Long Island, 
I believe 1 have discovered one of the causes—if 
not the principal cause—of the scarcity of small 
game hereabouts in recent years. 
All gunners know, the destructiveness of the 
domestic cat when allowed to roam at large, but 
very few, I think, realize the number -of such 
cats that exist on small game. We have all oc¬ 
casionally met cats when off in the woods or 
fields at great distances from houses, but it re¬ 
mained for the search lights of my machine to 
reveal the great number of such animals at large. 
During the past month, August, every even¬ 
ing I went out I saw from three to half a dozen 
cats hunting along the country roads, some of 
them half a mile or more from the nearest house, 
and the wonder is that we have any small game 
left in the more thickly settled districts. 
Some idea of the destructiveness of these 
animals may be gained from the statement of 
.an engineer in one of the city’s pumping stations, 
which is located near a swampy piece of wood¬ 
land. He told me that in one week the cat had 
at the station brought in eight half grown rab¬ 
bits. This probably did not represent its en¬ 
tire kill for that period. 
Personally I have never known a cat to capture 
a quail or woodcock, but I do know of their 
catching young rabbits and many kinds of small 
birds, and have no doubt they succeed in captur¬ 
ing some of the former. I have often found 
where quail have been destroyed close by a 
house, and believe it to be the work of a cat and 
not of a fox. 
As all gunners are interested in this question 
of game and its preservation, and as another gun¬ 
ning season is rapidly approaching, I believe some 
concerted action should be taken and would like 
to hear from brother sportsmen their experiences 
in this line and what they consider would be a 
good remedy. I myself believe in shooting every 
cat found in the woods. In some States I under¬ 
stand there is in force a law licensing cats, but 
such a law is not nearly as effective as a charge 
of shot. 
Most of us who have lived in country dis¬ 
tricts, know that a cat that once acquires a taste 
for young chickens or rabbits will be satisfied 
with nothing else, and eventually becomes a rene¬ 
gade and outlaw, and is as hard lo approach as 
the wild variety. 
Some years ago when I hunted hounds more 
or less I killed several of these tramp cats that 
seemed to be half again as large as their tamer 
brothers. One in particular I remember well, a 
large tawny yellow tomcat that could in a fair 
fight whip any farmer’s dog in the neighborhood, 
and would boldly walk into a dooryard, seize 
a young chicken and run off with it. All sum¬ 
mer and early fall the farmers of this neighbor¬ 
hood had been annoyed by it and many were the 
times they tried to shoot it, but the average 
farmer at best is a poor gunner, and by the time 
he procured his gun and loaded it the cat would 
be securely hidden away' in some patch of brush 
and safe for the time being. I visited the neigh¬ 
borhood early in November, having with me a 
pair of good hounds. Sending them into a brush 
patch near my friend’s house they soon opened 
in full cry and we climbed onto convenient 
stumps to secure a better view. In a few minutes 
the chase headed our way and we strained our 
eyes to catch a glimpse of the rabbit, as we sup¬ 
posed it was. My friend was the lucky man and 
I watched him as his gun slowly followed the 
object, but I was not prepared for what followed 
the report of the gun. Seizing his hat and throw¬ 
ing it into the air he comenced to yell like a 
Comanche Indian, at the same time executing 
a war dance on the top of the stump. Not 
