652 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Oct. 27, 1906. 
and one perch, all of which he left in the grass 
beside the tent. Then I went to sleep, and 
nodding violently enough to capsize my camp 
chair, concluded to turn in. Taking up a 
lantern, I saw something moving in the short 
grass, and holding the light close, found an 
enormous water rat struggling along with an 
eel. It did not seem to mind the light, and 
thinking one eel more or less would not be 
missed, I followed the rat and saw it disappear 
into a hole in the bank. Coming back, I told 
my friend, who investigated, only to learn 
that every eel, and the perch, too, had been 
stolen. He was furious. He took several 
billets of wood and hammered them into the 
rat-hole, then turned in, satisfied that the thief 
was bottled up for good. Next morning a 
fresh opening appeared alongside the sticks. 
This friend of mine is such a sound sleeper 
that, when he turns in, no one knows when he 
will turn out of his own accord. One morn¬ 
ing I awoke, and finding him still asleep, al¬ 
though it was late, cast about for some means 
of bringing him back to earth. His fishing 
rod, standing against the tent pole, furnished 
the instrument. Sliding the click on, I turned 
the reel-handle sharply, then lay down and shut 
my eyes. He lifted his head, opened his eyes 
and looked around. In a moment he was 
asleep again, and I repeated the operation. This 
time he sat up, looked out of the tent, then re¬ 
garded his reel steadily and suspiciously, shak¬ 
ing his head, as if to say, “I give it up. I 
thought I heard that reel click, but I must have 
been dreaming.” 
at 
There is a little place in. New York city where 
the founder of the business, and his sons after 
him, have long made a specialty of grinding 
and repairing fine edged tools. They are Ameri¬ 
cans. One day a customer took a sheath knife 
for them to grind, complaining that it would 
not keep an edge, although he had paid a big 
price for it. The veteran grinder said this 
fault was found in nearly all American knives 
of its kind, the metal of which is too soft. 
Why, then, should our hunting knives, su- 
called, not be made of harder steel, or tempered 
more highly? Is it the fault of the raw material, 
or of the workmanship? We Americans dislike 
to admit the truth of any statement of this sort, 
but this is not the first time I have heard the 
assertion that our knife blades are too soft, and 
when such statements come from experts of 
vast experience, one is compelled to accept them 
as the truth. 
But what has the foreign manufacturer to 
offer us? Nothing that can be called a sheath 
knife: We can choose between a large clasp 
pocket-knife and an affair fitted with a guard 
so that it sticks niore than half its length out of 
the sheath and is not only of no use in cutting 
anything, but will catch on limbs and bushes 
until finally lost. 
The man who knocks about the woods wants 
a knife which will be handy for all-round use. 
He may expect to employ it some day in 
dressing big game, but more often it will be 
kandy in cutting kindling for the camp-fire, 
dressing fish and squirrels and whittling for 
amusement. The handle must be no longer than 
'S absolutely necessary, and the blade should 
also be short; in fact, the relation of the two 
aiust be equal to that of the large-size clasp 
tfflife, but without its weak hinge, and fitted 
with no devices that will prevent it from going 
down easily into a simple sheath until only an 
inch of the handle protrudes. It need not fit 
this sheath tightly, for after this gets wet it will 
take proper form and shape and hug the knife 
snugly enough. 
s? 
Among my acquaintances there is one who, if 
he lived in' Russia, would be an anarchist, but 
whose vaporings on the way the world's affairs 
YOUNG BARN OWL. FULLY GROWN. 
should be conducted are often wasted on street 
corner audiences. But while he raves against 
monarchs, he is opposed to shooting game. He 
justifies his fondness for fishing on the plea 
that fishes suffer no pain when hooked. One 
day while returning homeward from a fishing 
trip he found an English sparrow that had 
flown into a large hoopnet left on shore to 
dry, and in its struggles had become so en¬ 
tangled in the meshes that it was exhausted. 
This touched the heart of my friend, but the 
only way he could reach the bird was by crawl¬ 
ing into the long net himself. This he did, but 
in releasing the sparrow it flew about wildly, 
and in catching it he started the hoops to rolling, 
the net finally twisting and capsizing in such a 
way that the humane one was hopelessly caught 
and had to yell lustily for help. 
Whether or not fish feel pain from the prick 
of small single hooks is an open question, but 
when treble hooks in pairs or more are used, 
and a fish becomes entangled in these and mutil¬ 
ated, there can be no question whether or not 
its injuries are felt. 
Did you ever, when using a wooden minnow 
and in landing a good-sized bass, get these 
hooks entangled in the net and swear and per¬ 
spire for twenty minutes? Meanwhile the fish 
in its struggles makes matters worse by flopping 
about until one is almost in despair. I thought 
of these things the other day when I saw in a 
tackle display a lot of single-hook minnows in¬ 
stead of the now all-too-common trebles. Men 
who declare they will not use treble hooks as¬ 
sert that they catch equally as many fish on 
singles—some say more. What is your ex¬ 
perience? 
* 
A man I know is very fond of rifle practice, 
and on Saturday afternoons he warns every¬ 
body in the family not to go into the back yard 
without first informing him, and retires to the 
basement with his rifle and a lot of .22 caliber 
cartridges. There he has his private range, and 
by opening the rear door of the basement and 
placing the target against a stone wall at the 
foot of the yard, he has a distance of 25 yards. 
He is fond of rest shooting, and his rifle is fitted 
with a telescope sight, so that in this practice a 
ten-cent piece is big enough for a bullseye and 
-seldom will la shot stray so far away that a circle 
the size of a quarter will not cover it. 
“One day while I was practicing,” said he, 
“our cat came down the walk in the yard and sat 
down in the sun exactly in line with the target. 
I was shooting at rest and the crosshairs just 
missed the top of her head. I waited a few 
moments, thinking she would move away, but she 
did not, and I estimated how far the bullet would 
actually miss her skull if I should press the 
trigger, and thought an inch about the distance. 
I then held the crosshairs on the bullseye down 
in the j r ard, watched Puss closely to see that 
she did not rise suddenly, then fired. 
“That old cat jumped about four feet, and when 
she came down she looked all around the yard 
trying to discover what it was that gave her 
such a start. She could not see me—or at least 
another person could not have, seen me, looking 
from the sunlight into the dark basement—and 
I rather think she took the hum of the bullet for 
some sort of a new-fangled bumblebee, for it 
just grazed the fur between her ears. And she 
was still trying to puzzle the thing out, cat fash¬ 
ion, when I fire,d again. That settled it, for 
although the second bullet did not pass so near, 
she took it for granted the bumblebee was com¬ 
ing back again, and went around into the front 
yard, waving her tail up and down in the funny 
jerky way a cat has when she is angry or worsted 
in a scrap.” 
* 
A correspondent living out west sends me a 
newspaper clipping which relates how an eagle 
tried to carry off a ‘little girl near Chamberlain, 
S. D., last week, and was making a very fair 
start when the child’s mother appeared on the 
scene, and swatted—I can’t think of a better word 
—the eagle with a broom until the 18-months-old 
youngster was dropped. Now, a girl of that age 
is likely to weigh 30 pounds or more and be 
somewhat awkard to carry. Anyway, I don’t be¬ 
lieve the story—do you? Grizzly King. 
