Dec. 20, 1913. 
FOREST AND STREAM 
793 
(Continued from page 791.) 
past the shanty resembled a cyclone, vocifera¬ 
tions, oaths, and abusive shouts from the daunt¬ 
less pursuer, attested the fact that he had stum¬ 
bled most unexpectedly on this creature of the 
Dark Ages and, in interrupting the latter at its 
rubbing post on the corner of the building, had 
received a decidedly warm welcome. For several 
seconds the sound of tumult raged within a few 
feet of my head. Then the uproar began to 
diminish and I knew that Curly must be chasing 
the monster across the marsh. 
Presently, doubled up with laughter, I rolled 
out of the bunk and lit the lamp. The sound of 
approaching footsteps caught my ear. Not many 
minutes afterward Curly’s disheveled figure hove 
in the doorway. 
Had he been in battle with half a dozen dra¬ 
gons he could not have appeared more thoroughly 
war-staired or exhausted. His blanched face was 
tense; his eyes staring; his hands still gripped the 
axe with a ferocity of purpose. And mud! Lit¬ 
erally he was plastered with it from head to 
foot; and even as he stood in the doorway it 
dripped from his clothing and lay on the floor 
in little puddles resembling fresh black paint. 
“Fer the love of hiven, why didn’t ye come 
out and help me?” he gasped; then in a different 
tone, “Look at me! I’oim ruined—what would 
me woife say ter me now! Bejabbers I loike to 
drown meself in a pond-hole chasin’ after that 
beast of purgatory!” 
“What was it?” I asked. 
Curly regarded me pityingly. 
“What was it?” he echoed. “A'int I jis't after 
tellin’ ye it was a beast of purgatory?” 
The more I questioned, the hotter waxed his 
indignation. 
“Oim goin’ home,” he cried. “Oi’ll not stay 
here anyother minute. It’s no dacent place fer a 
white man, nohow!” 
He fired the axe into a corner, and seizing 
a stick out of the woodbox, commenced to scrape 
the mud off his clothes. In the middle of his 
task he paused, listening with absorbed attention. 
“Did ye hear that?” he whispered in an awe¬ 
stricken voice. 
Loud and familiar, a great noise, a forlorn 
bawling and braying and he-hawing filled the 
spaces of the marshland. Then gradually a light 
of intelligence dawned on Curly’s face. He leaped 
to the door. When he turned around he was 
eagerly searching the floor for a missile to throw 
at my head. 
“Mules!” he shouted, “mules belongin’ ter the 
brick yards, by the siven divils! And ye knew 
it all the toime, ye practical jokin’ wretch!” 
Migratory Birds 
Editor of Forest and Stream: There is one 
feature of the National Government regulation of 
migrating game shooting which, it seems to me, 
will perhaps have a large development in the 
future. If the United States Government seeks 
to regulate the killing of migrating birds, is it 
not inevitable that the fair proposition of a 
National hunting license will be made, and ap¬ 
proved by sportsmen generally? 
I think that the need of such a National 
hunting license will be found greatest down the 
main highways of the migrating ducks, especially 
down the Mississippi River. There is, of course, 
more duck killing down the coasts and down the 
Mississippi Valley than in other localities—the 
basin and coast lines are “localities.” 
In this connection, I quote the following 
“Provisions” price list from the Memphis News 
Scimitar of December 5, 1913: 
“Rabbits, per dozen, $i.25@2.oo; squirrels, 
per dozen, $2.oo@2.25; wild ducks, teal, dozen, 
$3.oo@3.5o; mallards, dozen, $4.oo@4.5o.” 
- Tn the advertising columns, I quote the fol¬ 
lowing: 
“WANTED—TO PURCHASE. 
FEATHERS ! FEATHERS ! FEATHERS ! 
We want to buy all kinds of new and old 
feathers, for which we will pay the highest cash 
prices. 
Write for price list to . 
Also: 
Wanted—Hides, Wool and Feathers at Top 
Market Prices. 
Some years ago, I ran across this feather 
business down the St. Francis River, but for 
some reason I missed its significance. There 
were shanty-boat feather hunters in the Missis¬ 
sippi bottoms, and on one boat the end of the 
cabin was heaped with pillows jammed full of 
wild duck feathers—a score or more of the pil¬ 
lows. I have forgotten how much they brought 
a pillow, but I think $5.00. 
In view of the feather market and the mar¬ 
ket for wild ducks by the dozen, it would seem 
that it is inevitable that some strong measures 
must be taken to protect the migrating birds on 
such waters as the Mississippi. The state laws 
do not apply to the Government waters—naviga¬ 
ble waters—in fact, even though there are spor¬ 
adic attempts to prevent bird killing in such 
places as Reelfoot Lake, and other bodies of 
water down the Mississippi Bottom. 
The efficiency of government officials, com¬ 
pared to that of state officials is seen especially 
in the liquor traffic, and the new migratory bird 
legislation has some features in common with the 
liquor or excise legislation of nation-wide appli¬ 
cation, speaking from the legal viewpoint. 
It would appear to me that a National hunt¬ 
ing license, for navigable waters, including rivers, 
lakes, bays fresh and salt, and enforced by an 
efficient body of well-equipped men, would bring 
the hunters properly under authority of the Gov¬ 
ernment. 
I am not at all in favor of the conglomerate 
of state licenses—which are so questionable from 
so many viewpoints—but a National migratory 
bird hunting license would have none of the par¬ 
tiality and unevenness so apparent in state license 
acts. 
The splendid work of Mr. Burnham with the 
American Game and Protective Association 
proves very clearly that all this question of game 
protection is National, rather than state or local. 
The wild turkeys of Arkansas belong just as 
much to Tennessee and Texas and Colorado as 
to Arkansas. They are really, as well as nomi¬ 
nally, National birds, yet the butchering of those 
birds by a few local hunters is not stopped be¬ 
cause the State of Arkansas has no true knowl¬ 
edge or spirit to move it to do right for “for¬ 
eigners” as non-residents are called. 
Of course, we cannot look very far ahead 
in such matters, but it would seem to me that 
where game is widely distributed, as the ruffed 
grouse, or the wild turkey, or quail, or Virginia 
deer, or mountain sheep, the question of migra¬ 
tion ought to be very broadly interpreted. 
If it is granted that the wild turkeys of Ar¬ 
kansas are National, then the wild turkeys of 
Tennessee and Missouri are National, and as the 
states discover in actual practice, enforcing the 
game law locally is practically impossible as a 
local proposition; as a Federal proposition it be¬ 
comes simplified and certain. For the sake of 
the wild turkey supply in Pennsylvania, the birds 
of West Virginia, Kentucky and Arkansas should 
be equally well protected. 
The spread of wild game from a well sup¬ 
plied center is inevitable. It is a “migration” of 
game that carries deer from the Adirondacks 
down into the Mohawk Valley. There are nu¬ 
merous instances on record in which quail, wild 
turkeys, grouse (prairie chickens, especially) 
have migrated across long trails. 
National protection of wild ducks, geese, and 
certain other birds is but a step, as we all must 
see. Another step is the National licensing of 
boundary line hunters. A third step is absolute 
prohibition of the sale of “National birds,” and 
so on, until at last it is seen that the wild birds 
and mammals of the Rocky Mountains are just as 
much the property of Maine and Massachusetts 
as the National Yellowstone Park, or the giant 
redwoods of California. 
Raymond S. Spears. 
Little Falls, N. Y., Dec. 7, 1913. 
Raised Around Forest and Stream Campfire 
Stuart, Fla., Dec. 8 . —Editor Forest and 
Stream : It has been some years since I have 
intruded in the brotherhood of the rod and gun, 
and trouble with sight made it doubtful for a 
long time if my voice ever again, figuratively 
speaking, would be raised in the campfires of the 
Forest and Stream. At last, to avoid the snow- 
blindness of each winter spent in the northern 
states, I came to Stuart for a permanent location, 
because of its location at the junction of the 
south and the north forks of the St. Lucie River, 
and the St. Lucie Sound, connecting with the 
Atlantic Ocean by the St. Lucie Inlet and the 
Indian River; I not even dreaming of the fishers’ 
and hunters’ paradise I was coming to. The day 
after my arrival three of us went out trolling 
in a motor-boat and caught two cavillys of four 
and six pounds weight, and four of the spotted 
sea trout, of four pounds each. The next day 
we were taken out to the ocean inlet, and caught 
bluefish and mackerel. Saturday afternoon I was 
initiated into fishing for striped bass, or sheep- 
head, as they are called here. I went down on 
the railroad dock near the bridge of the Florida 
East Coast Railway, and found two young men 
dock and catching striped bass by the dozen. On 
inquiry about bait, I was told to “go to the fish 
market and by a dime’s worth of shrimps, and 
each with a hand line fishing by the side of the 
you will have bait enough to catch all the sheep- 
head you can carry.” I came up town and with 
another party walked along the beach north of 
town, and we got several hermit crabs, and one 
soft white crab, and then we caught a few fiddler 
crabs and went down to the dock, and each soon 
caught three striped bass of over four pounds 
weight each, and we quit and came up town. 
Monday morn I picked up three soft white crabs 
with some hermits along the north beach and 
went down on the dock, and with a line, made of 
a fine wire, eight feet long, fastened to a man¬ 
grove pole six feet long at one end, and a large 
hook at the other, on which I put a soft crab 
about two inches long, and dropped it down by 
the side of the dock. The line had not straight¬ 
ened out before the hook was taken by a large 
bass which was soon landed on the dock, then 
taken home, and the yardstick held by its side 
to measure its 24 1-10 inches, and the fish was 
not even weighed, but dressed and a part cooked 
for dinner. After dinner, when the head was shown 
to an old resident here, he pronounced the head 
a record one and gave me fits because the fish 
was not weighed, that its exact weight could have 
been ascertained. One-half mile from the town 
of Stuart is the small cabin, where Grover Cleve¬ 
land and Joseph Jefferson used to live when they 
slipped away from their friends and came to the 
St. Lucie to enjoy its unrivalled tarpon, jewfish, 
bluefish, pompano, grouper, red snapper, and its 
superior striped bass fishing. 
While if wildfowl were desired, the arms and 
bayous of the river harbored ducks by the thou¬ 
sand, and across the river, eight miles from Stu¬ 
art, droves of deer, and large flocks of wild tur¬ 
keys have been seen even this fall, and there 
