Dec. 14, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
753 
and as it came over me, I trimmed its head off 
as neatly as a man could have done with an 
axe. Luck? Of course, but may be too the god 
of sport was making up for my lost year, 1911. 
Di returned again, and we went out into our 
road and down about 200 feet when a bird rose 
off to our right and went up over the hill. I 
shot twice, long chance shots that did nothing 
but give me the joy of noise and kick and the 
smell of burned powder. 
I shoved in new shells and went forward 
perhaps twenty feet, when suddenly the air was 
full of birds. A covey in the road got up. 
There were birds on every side, and I couldn’t 
choose. My gun kept going off, but no birds 
fell, until at last I saw one big fellow wilt, and 
I knew that one shot had not been a miss. He 
fell a little, recovered, and went sailing off. I 
saw where he lit, followed him, and Di first stood 
him and then brought him in. I went back and 
hunted around, but could find no birds to show 
for those two first wild shots. 
Two birds had gone up on a bench and I 
followed them, jumped one and missed it twice, 
saw where it lit, jumped it again, and missed it 
again. I was up in the air, so I sat down and 
waited until Cathryn caught up to me. We ate 
a sandwich as a way of cooling my nerves and 
then started for our second bird. We went back 
to where the first one had ristn and just a few 
feet beyond Di stood. I stepped aside to get 
a view beyond a little oak, and as I did so the 
bird rose and went straight away on the level, 
an open shot. I shot and missed, but I jumped 
and shot again, and that time the bird came 
down. I sent Di in' to retrieve, and when he 
had brought the bird out, lie stood almost imme¬ 
diately above us to the left. I handed the bird 
to Cathryn and stepped up on a stump and said 
to Di, “Go in.” He worked around for a 
minute or two and no bird rose. Then all at 
once I saw a rabbit slipping away. The old 
gun cracked and we gathered in Mr. Bunny and 
went on. I hunted around quite a while, but 
could find no more birds, so we decided to renew 
acquaintanceship with our old road. 
We reached it and went on for a couple of 
hundred feet when a bird rose. I dusted him, 
but he sailed on out of sight. Telling Cathryn 
to stay in the road, I went down below, and as 
I did so, she jumped three birds above. I took 
a long shot at one and missed. She said she 
knew where two had lit, so I came up and went 
in by the place she showed me. Di stood, one 
rose, and I dusted him, but he, too, sailed and 
sailed, but did not stop. I felt pretty bad about 
those two shots, for I hate to cripple a bird 
and not get it. However, they were out of 
reach, so we went on. A rabbit jumped up and 
I downed it, and presently another jumped up 
and I downed it. But as I was going toward 
the place where it lay, a bird rose above me, a 
big yellow fellow, quartering off to the left. 
With a background of gray rock and scrub oak 
he made a beautiful picture, and when the gun 
cracked, the day was done, for the fifth bird 
had fallen and home and supper awaited us. 
I looked at my watch when we started in, 
and it was 1 o’clock; when the last bird was 
being retrieved, it was 3:20, and it was just 5 
o’clock when I took off my coat in the kitchen 
at home. Tod. 
Snow Saves the North Carolina Woods. 
Raleigh, N. C., Dec. 3.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: The autumn had been extremely dry 
up to the falling of the first snow recorded in 
the State for many a long year on Thanksgiving 
day, the average fall being something like three 
inches. Quail, though certainly more abundant 
than in several years, have kept in cover near 
the streams on account of the drouth, and so 
far not a great number have been killed. They 
are well grown and in fine condition. For some 
reason Thanksgiving day, which as a holiday 
'has not been observed in this part of the coun¬ 
try for a longer period than say thirty years, is 
for some unexplained reason chosen as a sports¬ 
man’s day, and any sort of a dog and any sort 
of a gun is counted worth while this one day 
in the year; and no matter what the weather, 
sportsmen and near sportsmen take the field, 
these ranging all the way from the gentleman 
with a $250 gun to the negro with a $1 musket; 
the dogs ranging all the way from the high-bred 
setter and pointer to the “bench-legged fice” to 
be found at so many negro cabins. Unless a 
negro’s dog chances to be “er houn’,” the odds 
are that the negro does not know his breed, and 
if he is asked what sort of a dog it is. the 
reply will very probably be “jes’ er dawg, Boss.” 
But the snow was a mighty good thing, and 
it did what hundreds, of men, in fact thousands 
of them, could not do, for it put out the fires 
in the big woods, not only in the swamps in the 
East, but in the great Vanderbilt preserve, which 
the writer described so fully after a visit in 1899, 
and in other parts of the high mountain region. 
It seems safe to say that up to the night before 
Thanksgiving, when the gracious snow came, at 
least $500,000 worth of timber was destroyed in 
this State. The drouth had made the woods 
like tinder, and they were ready for a fire. 
Detectives, representing both Mr. Vanderbilt and 
the United States Secret Service, have been busy 
in Pisgah Forest, making investigations as to 
the cause of this fire. Three years ago George 
Vanderbilt, the owner, not only of that great 
forest, but of many thousands of acres of high 
mountain land in original timber, deeded to 
North Carolina all his forests, which are over 
3,000 feet above sea level, and so these high 
forests are a public domain so to speak, and 
very naturally will pass into the great Appa¬ 
lachian forest reserve. 
In the Pisgah Forest, in 1899, there was ten 
times as much game without doubt as there was 
in the region round about; and deer, grouse, 
etc., could be seen any time in the writer’s tramp. 
Of course these have increased, for the wardens 
have been careful. There have before been 
some bad fires in Pisgah Forest, notably in the 
great valley known as the “Pink Bed” (on ac¬ 
count of the immense areas in rhododendron), 
and it has been said pot-hunters started some 
of these fires in an effort to drive out some of 
the deer. The very plain charge is now made 
that the last great fire was set in a long line 
for this very purpose, so as to force the deer 
outside of the boundary in order that the pot¬ 
hunters could shoot them, and it is this phase 
of the question which the detectives are work¬ 
ing on, not only in the immediate region, but 
for some distance around, and the result of the 
investigation will be of very great interest. 
There have been extensive fires in the Lin- 
ville Falls region where there are some grand 
forests, and there, too, the snow came as a 
savior of the woods. Fred A. Olds. 
Deer Hunting Accidents. 
Albany, N. Y., Dec. 3 .—Editor Forest and 
Stream: In the Game Bag and Gun department 
of your issue of Nov. 30 you print three contri¬ 
butions which give the impression that the “buck 
law” has failed to accomplish its primary pur¬ 
pose of conserving human life, and its secondary 
purpose of conserving the deer supply. Mr. 
Whish refers to a wide awake newspaper which 
set a correspondent at work compiling a list of 
accidents. Mr. Whish’s precise language is: 
“When deer hunting ended the record was eight 
hunters killed and twenty-four wounded.” He 
adds that he made careful inquiry about these 
figures and found that they were correct in the 
opinion of practical woodsmen. 
The reader would instantly think, although 
Mr. Whish does not say, that eight deer hunters 
have been killed. As a matter of fact there was 
only one fatal deer hunting accident, and the 
victim of that one “was not mistaken for a 
deer.” But to show you how accurately the cor¬ 
respondent of the wide awake newspaper de¬ 
scribed the situation, let me quote from dis¬ 
patches sent to his newspaper under date of Nov. 
16 and 27: 
Dispatch of Nov. 16: 
Doctor Henry S. Foltz, 
of Cortland, went hunting 
with J. J. Gillette. Dr. 
Foltz wore a heavy gray 
beard. * * * Gillette 
had mistaken the bushy 
beard for a gray squirrel 
* * * and received a 
charge of shot in the face. 
Your Gloversville correspondent has perhaps 
unwittingly helped along what looks like a con¬ 
certed effort to impress the public with the 
wrong idea that there has been a great slaughter 
of does. I am glad to note that he says that 
the shooting of a hunter for a deer was a rare 
occurrence in his neighborhood, but he quotes a 
number of unnamed persons who saw a large 
number of dead does in the woods. The only 
man mentioned by name is quoted as saying that 
he saw no fewer than five dead does rotting in 
the woods. One of our field force interviewed 
the man, and we have a signed statement from 
him that he saw only two does. A man in Canas- 
tota wrote to a local newspaper that in ten days 
in the woods he had seen twenty dead does. We 
understand that a private association has offered 
him $100 if he will prove this statement. 
A single season is no test of a law, but the 
results so far, if not conclusive, are at least 
extremely encouraging. 
John D. Moore, Commissioner. 
Dispatch of Nov. 27: 
Dr. H. S. Foltz, of Cort¬ 
land, who has a red beard, 
was mistaken for a deer 
and shot in the face by his 
companion. 
