Oct. iS, 1913. 
FOREST AND STREAM 
499 
with them on, especially in rough hunting 
country. 
A friend of mine—a minister, too, by the 
way—informs me that a rattler was killed on 
one of the keys last winter that measured nine 
feet in length. He did not see the snake, but 
he saw the photo of the reptile and its slayer 
and so vouches for the truth of the statement. 
The largest rattlesnake skin I have ever seen 
was eight feet in length and was on exhibition 
in a barbershop at Ft. Pierce. The largest one 
I ever saw “in the flesh” was seven and one- 
half feet long, had seventeen rattles and a but¬ 
ton and was killed by my brother sometime in 
April, 1908, 
The last few years have been red letter ones 
for rattlers in this vicinity. Whether there has 
been an unusually large crop of them, or 
whether the settling up of the country, draining 
of swamps, clearing of hammocks, etc., is forc¬ 
ing them out of their old haunts I cannot say. 
I have no particular love for the rattler and 
care not how soon he is numbered on the list 
of extinct wild life. 
I had some great sport shooting wood¬ 
chuck They are very plentiful, and the farmers 
of New Lenox always hail my coming with 
joy. 
I enjoyed some fairly good bass and 
pickerel fishing at Laurel Lake, Lee, Stock- 
bridge Bowl. Richmond Pond and Onota Lake, 
Pittsfield. At Laurel Lake I had the pleasure 
of seeing Dr. Baldwin, of Lee, land a 5 j 4 -pound 
small-mouth black bass. It surely was a beauty. 
It is not so many years ago when one was 
able to catch some fine bass and trout in the 
Housatonic River, but to-day there is no fishing 
here to speak of, because the water in this river 
is polluted. I understand there is a law pro¬ 
hibiting the different factories along this river 
from emptying their refuse into the river. Can¬ 
not this law be enforced? 
Yachts Change Hands. 
The Hollis Burgess yacht agency has sold 
the 30-foot Lawley-built cruising sloop Athlon, 
owned by Harry H. Walker, of the Eastern Y. 
C., to a member of the Boston Y. C. The aux¬ 
iliary yawl Samoset, owned by Carlton M. 
Woods, of Brookline, Mass., to Harry P. Wil¬ 
lett, of Wakloboro, Maine. The 25-foot Lawley- 
built sloop Carina II., owned by Leland T. 
Powers, of Brookline, Mass., to William Foggett, 
of Princeton. The Herreshoff 21-foot raceabout 
Gadfly, owned by Russell G. Fessenden, of Bos¬ 
ton, to a member of the South Boston Y. C. 
The sonder boat Beatrice, owned by Cornelius 
A. Wood, of Prides’ Crossing, Mass., to a New 
York yachtsman. Class Q sloop yacht Scape¬ 
goat II., owned by Walter P. Keyes, of the 
Boston Y. C., to W. P. Inness and C. S. Breese, 
of Boston. The sonder boat Chance, owned by 
Cornelius A. Wood, of Prides Crossing Mass., 
to George E. E. Carroll, a prominent member of 
the South Boston Y. C. The sonder boat Badger, 
owned by B. B. Crowninshield, of Boston, to 
C. F. Sterling, of Dorchester, Mass. The 57- 
foot waterline Herreshoff sloop yacht Doris, 
owned by S. Reed Anthony, of Boston, to a New 
York yachtsman. 
The following sales have been made through 
the office of Stanley M. Seaman : 
The 8o-foot twin screw power yacht Igloo 
sold for James K. Stewart, of Chicago, Ill., to 
Dr. F. T. Rogers, of Providence, R. I. Igloo 
was designed and built by the Electric Launch 
Company, of Bayonne, N. J„ for Mr. Stewart 
at a cost of about $25000. The yacht arrived 
from Chicago about ten days ago and is now in 
Providence. 
The 70-foot twin screw power yacht Lady 
Jone, sold for John F. O'Rourke, of this city, 
to James C. Brown, of Shamokin, Pa. She is 
fitting out and her owner expects to take her 
south for the Florida winter season. 
The 40-foot launch Moonahonis, sold for B. 
Thomas Potter, of Providence, R. I., to Louis 
de Forest Downer, Mantaloking, N. J. 
The 46-foot auxiliary sloop Lounger, sold 
for H. W. Dobbins, Jr., to Dr. W. H. Lawrence, 
Jr., of Summit, N. J. 
The New York Y. C. 30-footer Nirvana ex 
Ibis, sold for Arthur G. Hill to John A. Ten 
Eyck, of Bridgeport, Conn. 
The auxiliary sloop Shawara, sold for R. T. 
Patterson, of Philadelphia, to John C. Ketcham, 
of Glen Head, N. Y. 
A Vacation in 
By HENRY 
HIS year I spent my vacation—Aug. 1 to 
Sept. 7—among the Berkshire Hills, at New 
Lenox, Mass., and the surrounding country. 
It is an ideal place, being rugged and beautiful, 
and one can roam about and indulge his love of 
forest and stream to the fullest extent. This 
season conditions have been very favorable for 
the partridge, and hardly a day passed that I 
did not, in my roamings through the woods, 
flush a number of them, sometimes there would 
be a dozen in a flock, and I noticed the young 
were strong and almost full grown and appeared 
healthy. I also flushed any number of wood¬ 
cock, and in one place of about three acres, 
consisting mostly of alders, interspersed with a 
few wild cherry trees, one morning I put up 
forty-one woodcock, actual count. They 
whistled past me in every direction. I do not 
believe they had been disturbed' this season. 
I went through this patch of alders several 
times in the course of five weeks and always 
found plenty of woodcock. It is rather marshy 
where these alders are and a fair sized brook 
runs through this patch. 
Along the Housatonic River I saw several 
flocks of ducks. Some flocks contained over 
twenty. I also saw seven woodduck here. What 
impressed me very much was the great quantity 
of highholders; never before did I see so many 
of these birds in that section of the country. 
Back of the house where I was stopping is a 
large tract of pines, and toward the latter part 
of August these pines fairly teemed with high¬ 
holders—there were hundreds of them. Pheas¬ 
ants are not so plentiful as I have seen them in 
other years. I saw a few, although some of the 
natives informed me that there are more this 
year than last. One chimney on our house was 
occupied by a number of chimney swifts, and in 
my room I could hear them most every night. 
Sometimes their chatter would wake me during 
the night, and it seemed to me as though they 
were quarreling about the best place in their 
nests. 
Deer are very plentiful, and I have en¬ 
countered them very frequently. One morning 
while walking along the edge of a wood and 
a patch of oats (I was after woodchuck and 
carried my .25-20 Winchester rifle), I was 
startled by a buck which jumped up out of the 
oats, about twenty feet from me. After trotting 
about thirty feet, this fellow stopped and 
turned his head, but I had in the meantime 
quickly stepped into the bushes, and not seeing 
the Berkshires 
G. PLATE 
me, he hoisted his flag, and if ever a deer ran, 
this one did. I found his bed under a small 
apple tree in the oats. All indications pointed 
to the fact that he had been camping here for 
some days. Three days later I tried to again 
surprise him, and, if possible, take his picture; 
but I failed to see him, although he had been 
there earlier in the morning. 
Nothing will be more plentiful this year 
than rabbits. I saw them everywhere, and they 
were almost tame. A family of them lived in a 
stone wall about ten feet from our house, and 
I spent many a pleasant hour during the late 
afternoon watching their antics. Red squirrels, 
too, are abundant; but I did not see very many 
gray squirrels—not as many as I have seen here 
in former years. I imagine their food supply 
will be rather scarce this year, there being no 
chestnuts. Toward the end of August I heard 
raccoon most every night, and the boys were 
talking of hunting them. 
I found most of the brooks dry, with the 
exception of a few deeper holes. Even Parker's 
Brook—considered one of the best in that sec¬ 
tion. and never before known to have run 
dry—was in the same condition as the other 
brooks. One day while walking through, or 
along, Parker’s Brook I came to a hole, the 
dimensions of which were about five by four 
feet and about a foot and a half deep, I counted 
five trout, all about of uniform size—eight 
inches. These trout could not hide from me 
because the water stood in a smooth basin in 
solid rock. Could they have been put there by 
some one? The fish looked rather thin and 
there did not seem to be very much life in 
them. In most of the other holes I noticed 
quite a number of fingerling trout. During tlTe 
last week in August we had some very heavy 
and protracted rains, but thousands of trout 
must have perished during the long continued 
drouth. 
The other day I received a letter from one 
of the boys, Wheeler Shepardson, Mountain 
road, New Lenox, and he apprised me of the 
fact that he had great luck shooting ducks on 
Sept. 16, and he also stated that on the night 
of Sept. 20 he and some of the boys went rac¬ 
coon hunting and got two old ones. Wheeler 
Shepardson has what is considered one of the 
best ’coon dogs in that section, and he also 
possesses one of the best foxhounds around 
New Lenox, a thoroughbred. I have seen this 
hound drive a fox the best part of a day. 
