344 
FOREST AND STREAM 
The Purposes 
The books on trout fly dressing are to blame 
for the prevalent opinion that the purpose of a 
hackle is to represent legs of a fly. It would be 
wrong to say that that is never a purpose of a 
hackle, but it is wrong—“the wrongest kind of 
wrong”—to represent it as the sole purpose or as 
invariably one purpose of a hackle, says a writer 
in the London Field. 
In some of the old books one finds instructions 
for dressings of winged flies with no hackle, but 
anyone who tried any such pattern nowadays 
with moderately shy trout would find them apt to 
be scared by the violence of the fall of the fly on 
the water. The first function, therefore, of a 
hackle is to break the fly’s fall, to let it down 
lightly on the water. And that is equally true 
whether it be a cock’s hackle, or a hen’s, or a 
soft hackle from any of the small birds. 
When the fly reaches the water, another func¬ 
tion, or other functions of the hackle comes or 
come into play. If the fly be a floater, winged 
and hackled at the shoulder only, then the func¬ 
tions are, first flotation, and secondly (and often 
in a very secondary degree) imitation of the legs 
of the fly. Many good fly dressers hold that the 
body is the really attractive part of a trout fly, 
and that in a floater a hackle which is sufficient 
to insure sufficient flotation and is otherwise 
colorless and inconspicuous, serves its purpose 
best. A good cock’s hackle, such as is used for 
floating flies, is extremely sharp and bright when 
held up to the light, and even in the ruddy shades 
lets but little color through. There can, however, 
be no harm, and it is probably safer if the hackle, 
as held to the light, bears a fairly close resem¬ 
blance in color to the legs of the fly which it 
represents. 
A winged floater, hackled all down the body 
with cock’s hackles to represent a sedge—or even 
a similar pattern without wings—is probably 
taken for a fluttering sedge, by reason of the 
“buzz” effect. 
A floater hackled with a sharp cock’s hackle at 
the shoulder only, and without wings, is probably 
the best method of suggesting a spinner spent or 
still living. The wings of the natural spinner 
have an irridescent glitter which is well suggested 
by the extended fibres of a first-rate rusty or 
honey blue dun cock’s hackle. Such a hackle thus 
serves (beyond the purpose of breaking the fly’s 
fall) the double purpose of flotation and of imi¬ 
tation of wings. 
A floater may, especially in the minute sizes of 
fly, be dressed with a soft feather, and may be 
made to float long enough for practical purposes 
without oiling. Here the hackle serves the pur¬ 
pose of flotation and of imitation of wings and 
legs. I have often floated a oo dotterel dun per¬ 
fectly dry over a trout when there has been a rise 
of pale watery duns, and have found it very kill¬ 
ing, particularly in eddies under the far bank. 
The soft tips of the hackle cause it to make a 
far less alarming drag than does a cock’s hackle. 
Semi-submerged, the fly tied with bright cock’s 
hackle at the shoulder only, and a seal’s fur or 
Tup’s Indispensable body of suitable color, rep¬ 
resents a spent spinner often in the most fatal 
way. Here the hackle enables the fly, the body 
of which is waterlogged, to cling to the surface. 
of a Hackle 
Now we reach the sunk flies, and we shall find 
these present still more complex propositions, ac¬ 
cording to the way in which the fly is presented 
to the fish. 
Fished directly up stream, a wet fly (whether 
winged or not) which is hackled with a stiff 
cock’s hackle, has thrown away one of its chief 
advantages, the mobility of the hackle. In fact, 
one is inclined to think that, if a hackle were not 
needed to break the fall, such a fly might best be 
dressed without a hackle. A hen’s hackle, or a 
small bird's hackle, would respond to every move¬ 
ment of the current, and would thus suggest an 
appearance of life in action, which is very fasci¬ 
nating. The Yorkshire hackles and Stewart’s 
famous trio of “spiders,” so-called, are based on 
this theory. What these flies really represent 
cannot always be certainly predicated. Doubtless 
the hackles suggest the wings and legs of hatched- 
out insects, drowning or drowned, and tumbled 
by the current in some cases, and in others they 
suggest some nondescript, struggling subaqueous 
creature. In either case the mobility suggests life. 
However, an up stream wet fly man, however 
keen on that method, does not always cast direct¬ 
ly up stream, but more often up and across and 
occasionally across. When he casts across or up 
and across and holds his rod top so as to bring 
his team of flies as nearly as possible perpendicu¬ 
larly across the current, a new set of considera¬ 
tions arises. The droppers, catching the stream 
more than does the gut cast, are drawn head up 
stream and tail down stream in advance of the 
gut cast. Here soft hackles are apt to be drawn 
back so as completely to enfold the body of the 
fly, with the points of the fibres flickering softly 
beyond the bend of the hook, thus suggesting a 
nymph vainly attempting to swim against the cur¬ 
rent. The top dropper may be dibbing on the sur¬ 
face, thus suggesting an ovipositing fly. Here 
the hackle represents the wings of the natural fly 
in active motion. In these conditions cock’s 
hackles, whether dressed at shoulder only or 
palmerwise^are apt to impart motion to the wings 
and body, and to suggest life in this way rather 
than by their own motion, as do soft hackles. 
The resilience of a first-rate cock's hackle is 
great, and every exertion of it must react upon 
the fly body, which it surrounds, and impart a 
motion which, whether lifelike in the sense of re¬ 
sembling the motions of some particular insect 
or not, at least is sufficient to attract the attention 
and excite the rapacity or tyranny of the trout if 
it does not appeal to his appetite. This was the 
Devonshire theory that produced that priceless, 
but alas! vanishing, strain of Old English Blue 
game fowls. 
We now come to the down-stream methods. 
Here we find the considerations which apply to 
across-stream methods present in even greater 
force—because the resistance of the rod top, 
which holds the line as it swings the flies across 
the current, brings the current to bear upon the 
flies far more strongly than is the case when the 
angler is fishing across and up. For this reason, 
flies for this type of fishing should be dressed 
with a specially “good entry,” so as not to skirt. 
Winged flies should have the wings low and fit¬ 
ting close over the back, and hackled flies should 
have good sharp cock’s hackles, or, if hackled 
with hen’s hackles or soft hackles, should have 
them supported by a wad of dubbing behind the 
hackle at the shoulder, so as to get the maximum 
of work out of them. By the across and down 
stream method the top dropper may be made to 
dib more readily than by any other, thus imita¬ 
ting either spinner of sedge ovipositing. 
To sum up, the fly dresser must think how and 
where his fly is to be used when he dresses it, and 
hackle it accordingly. 
HUNTING THE RUFFED GROUSE. 
(Continued from page 338.) 
think his shot scored, but I credited it to his 
modesty and called it a partnership bird. We 
separated, one going on each side of an alder 
grown ditch. The dog was busily trailing up 
the edge of the ditch, and I walked up a bird 
which had evidently been run out by the dog. 
It flew straight in front of me, and had I missed 
the shot I would have felt like quitting the game 
forever. Two more birds flushed away ahead 
of the dog, and out of range of both guns. We 
crossed a hill and came into a cover of small 
birch, where up jumped a woodcock which I 
killed with a snap shot before Mr. Timberdoodle 
had time to work in his side-step. 
After a short walk we got into a bunch of five 
grouse. The first one to get up within my range 
towered toward the treetops. I shot a gun’s 
length under him and had no chance to get in a 
second .try. A second bird got up in front of 
my companion and he made a good score. I 
walked in under a spruce tree and heard a flush 
over my head. As the bird crossed a small open 
space I killed it. When I went out to pick it up 
the young man shouted, “There comes one over 
you!” The bird was almost as high as the spruce 
trees. I made a clean miss with each barrel and 
could never quite determine why, as both were 
easy shots in the open. The next point was be¬ 
hind a clump of birch trees which stood in an 
open space. The bird flushed before I could get 
around to the side where the dog was, and I took 
a slim chance through the small limbs, as I could 
just get an outline of the bird. I practiced the 
rule to shoot at every flutter if I could see the 
color of the feathers through anything more 
transparent than a wall. To my pleasant surprise 
the bird dropped dead at the crack of the gun. 
On the return trip toward the station I walked 
up a large cock in a thick clump of under-brush 
and killed him with a quick snap shot. On the 
side of the hill as we descended to the railroad 
the setter came to another pretty point among 
some low bushes on the hillside. I walked up 
before him, flushed a bird, and scored a blank 
at short range, but marked it down at the top 
of the hill. The dog pointed him again and I 
smashed its wing with the second shot. It was 
then nearly five o’clock, and we called off the 
hunt, feeling well repaid for the day’s tramp. 
L. C. Ward, of Avoca, la., president of the 
Game Protective Association, is reported to have 
shot a deer on his farm and reported the incident 
to the local game warden, with a view to testing 
the protective law. 
Receipts from the use of National forest re¬ 
sources were greatest in Arizona last year. 
