716 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Dec. 6, 1913. 
. 
Minnesota Fishing 
By ROBERT PAGE LINCOLN 
Written from Mound, The Lake Minnetonkas, Minn. 
T HE autumn this year in Minnesota has 
been one fulfilling our greatest anticipa¬ 
tions; fact to tell it has been one of the 
brightest that lies within my recollection, and as 
yet we have had no really severe weather. To¬ 
ward the latter part of October we had some 
rather brisk, snowy days, but Indian Summer 
quickly followed, and we are now enjoying the 
aftermath of the garnering season. It has in¬ 
deed been a gracious season, and if it casts its 
shadow before, I doubt very much whether we 
will have a hard winter as foretold by the learn¬ 
ing-pregnant weather-prophets. The muskrats 
have built inordinately large houses this year, 
which seems to point to some disturbance out of 
the ordinary. Large houses have always meant a 
bad winter, not figuratively, but literally, as has 
been proven many times within my own recollec¬ 
tion. The muskrats have now returned to their 
old haunts. Several years ago, during the very 
hot summers, when the swamps all dried out, the 
muskrats, led by a never-failing instinct, took 
the cue and emptied their numbers from adjacent 
swamps into the Minnehaha Creek, and swam 
down the creek to the river. The result was 
that very few remained in the swamps, but this 
year I note a number of houses, five of them in 
one tiny swamp, with hardly enough water in it 
apparently to fill a large-sized tank It has been 
a source of wonder to me how these muskrats 
would exist in the winter, for certain it is that 
the entire mass, the swamp, will be frozen as 
tight as a drum, from surface to the bottomest 
bottom. Then how will the enduring rats keep 
themselves? What a problem indeed? But I 
doubt very much whether they will have a chance 
to fight it out, for, considering the vast num¬ 
bers that prey upon them, there is hardly a 
chance of any existing even through the early 
part of the rigorous season. Despite the fact 
that the law says, do not trap muskrats and mink 
till the first of December, there are men who by 
this time have in their possession as many as 
sixty, or seventy, hides, both inclusive. Also the 
law says that no houses shall be chopped into, 
and yet there is not a house remaining intact in 
the spring. It is a shame that these animals, so 
persistent, should not be better protected, in the 
face of their fast decreasing numbers, but the 
fur market needs the hides and there are always 
men ready to take them, in spite of the warning 
■of the law. 
The birds have now practically flown south, 
save those endurable ones who stay with us the 
year around. I note in my walks, the juncoes, 
the snowbirds (on rather more invigorating 
days), the nuthatches, the downy woodpeckers, the 
creepers, now and then a robin, the bluejays, the 
shrikes, the dominant chickadee, and a few scat¬ 
tered members of the snipe family. On sunny 
days they are out full force, and ihen it is’that 
I hear the voice of one or two warblers, making 
the still autumn air pregnant with that remini¬ 
scent music I so lately heard, wherever I went. 
All birds are busy these days digging out in¬ 
sects from the dead trees: and what a thorough 
job thej r make of it One will hear their tapping 
everywhere; it is a comfort indeed to know that 
they remain with us through the long, and hard, 
winter, performing, each, his laudable task. 
There are many of us who would not miss the 
birds till we failed to hear their voices, and then 
undoubtedly another thought would come upon 
us. What would any woodland be without some 
bird-note, some industrious feathered chorister, 
all day long picking insects from the trees. The 
work of the birds in this respect is incalculable. 
Our insectivorous birds should be given the best 
of protection by all; it should be an'esteemed 
duty, for surely there is no better way of show¬ 
ing our vast appreciation of this natural perfec¬ 
tion than in giving them a firm helping hand. 
It is with great dismay that I note that trees 
around the suburbs of great cities inevitably die 
out, sometimes by the hundreds. In the country 
I hardly ever note so many dead trees, in any 
one place. What is the reason? As a rule it is 
simply answered. The borers have gotten the 
upper hand. The boy rowdies with their air- 
guns, twenty-twos, and shotguns have killed off 
the insectivorous birds or kill them as fast, prac¬ 
tically, as they come. Such industrious birds as 
the downy woodpecker, the nuthatch, the creep¬ 
ers, the tomtits, cannot be found, and their work, 
at insect destructiveness, marks them down as 
one of the greatest friends of mankind. It is 
lamentable that so many boys are allowed to go 
abroad, with guns, and so promiscuously carry 
on their work of killing the innocent. Such 
ruthlessness does not belong to this apparently 
civilized day but to a day of barbarism. We can 
well agree with the man who has said that the 
boy is one of the most murderous creatures that 
live. Remembering my own boyhood days I do 
not doubt it a bit. For then I was no better 
than the rest of them, and can appreciate what 
parents should do, in teaching their children the 
beauty of living things, and the wrong of the 
opposite, especially in this absolutely useless 
sense. When we have boys abroad with guns 
thus killing off the flower of the land, we are 
still far from protection, and sanity. The stress 
in the commercial world may cause us to partial¬ 
ly lose track of the boys, but we should certain¬ 
ly not place a gun in any immature hands, with¬ 
out first knowing what goes on after that gun 
comes into use. 
Mild days, with just the right tafig to the 
atmosphere, the sun shining down, sometimes out 
of cloudless skies—these have been true autum¬ 
nal days, and most fitting to the remembrance. 
To wander a-field has been in every sense a 
luxury, open to the most glittering, and golden, 
of fancies. That the hunter has been well re¬ 
warded goes without saying; reports coming- 
down from the north prove that numbers of the 
deer family have sacrificed their lives to the val¬ 
iant game-getters, not to mention certain guides, 
and innocent wood-wanderers, who have been 
mistaken for squirrels, and woodchucks. How¬ 
ever, we can appreciate the state of conditions 
surrounding the valiant; some of them even now 
have drawn down ten years sentence for man¬ 
slaughter in the first degree. They deserve it—■ 
every bit. Any man who will shoot at anything 
moving, in the woods, without first finding out 
what it happens to be. and turning it over some 
time afterward discovers -that it is a man, should 
receive ten years sentence, and should be glad to 
get off as easy. It makes a very good example 
for others to remember. I presume some must 
be put up as examples, before a shudder of fear 
will creep through the hunting ranks. I wonder 
what enjoyment there is to wander in the great 
north woods, the suspicion held within you eter¬ 
nally that you are going to be shot any moment 
for a chipmunk. The gaudy raiment some of 
these hunters wear is the limit. The only thing 
some of them lack is a flag-pole on top of their 
heads, with a glittering brass ball on the end of 
it. Even so, some of them narrowly escape be¬ 
ing potted for porcupines. Valiant hunters! 
Think how much whiskey has been consumed in 
the north, this hunting season! Think how many 
have not gone out hunting at all, yet have been 
in the north woods, and who bring home deer 
they have shot. Valiant hunters! 
Good bags of ducks have been brought to 
the big cities from the outlying country; espe¬ 
cially from up around Litchfield, close to my old 
hunting ground. It is comforting to say that 
prairie chickens have been abundant this year. 
Robert Page Lincoln. 
The Rusty Pen 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
My Forest and Stream’s correspondent’s pen 
is nearly rusted out from disuse. This neglect 
comes perhaps from old-age laziness, not from 
any lack of interest in the F. & S., for we look 
for its appearance as eagerly as in the years gone 
by. An old friend who comes in to read it, said 
that it was like good wine, “it improved with 
age.” I answered yes, and it is superior to old 
wine, for it can be used (read) over and over 
again with pleasure. 
On the 15th, of the present month, upland 
bird shooting ended for this season, unless we 
call “Wilson’s snipe” upland birds. 
This season’s shooting has not been a very 
satisfactory one for there is not, away from the 
brushy foothills, one dove or valley quail where 
there were twenty, five years ago. The cause of 
this is over-shooting, out of season as well as in 
season, and a total disregard to the county law, 
which forbids shooting from the public highway. 
Duck shooting down on the club preserves is 
reported as good for this time of the year and 
from the specimens that we have sampled the 
birds seem to be in good flesh and flavor. The 
Federal law will sadly interefere with snipe 
shooting here in southern California, as it ends 
the open season on these birds Dec. 15, and snipe 
do not arrive here from their winter feeding 
grounds until February, that is, in any considera¬ 
ble numbers. There are, of course, a few snipe 
that loaf about the low grounds and the Jap’s 
celery fields all winter, but in not such numbers 
as to make it attractive to those who want to 
shoot fast and often. 
There is a tendency among our gunners to 
use smaller bore-guns and longer barrels. No 
barrel under 30 inches is the talk here now, and 
many are using 28 gauges. I had the Ithaca Gun 
Co. make me a special 5 lb., 28 gauge, the right 
barrel modified and the left barrel full choke. 
While I have done some good work with it, T 
am for every day use wedded to the what is 
now the heavy 20 gauge. My 12 bores are too 
heavy artillery to lug around and they are hang¬ 
ing up on the walls of my “den” as wall pieces, 
ornamental but no longer useful. 
For some months from now on I shall turn 
my attention toward the cotton-tail rabbit and 
to that impudent “cuss,” the fruit destroying and 
song-bird enemy, the blue-jay. He is a “jerky 
flier,” and it takes strong hitting to bring him 
down. 
There is a strong movement here to have 
the adjacent mountain territory set apart as a 
large game preserve. Standstead. 
Pasadena, Cal., Nov. 18, 1913. 
Eastern manufacturers are looking to the 
northwest for hardwoods for the manufacture of 
clothespins. Birch is particularly wanted. 
