584 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Oct. 14, 1911. 
Creasing Big Game. 
Oakmont, Pa., Sept. 16 .—Editor Forest and 
Stream: May I ask if there was ever truth in 
the story of wild horses being captured by 
“creasing”—shooting them at the juncture of the 
spine and skull in such a manner as to stun, yet 
not kill them ? Doubtless you remember it as 
gravely told in books in our boyhood days. 
Such delicacy of aim at an animal moving 
would seem to discount Locksley’s archery in 
“Ivanhoe.” William Wade. 
[Accounts of “creasing” are given in some of 
the books of early Western travel—for example 
Gregg’s Commerce of the Prairies, Vol. II., p. 
208. The hunter’s purpose was to shoot the ani¬ 
mal—usually a horse—through the “crease” of 
the neck so as to stun, but not to kill it. 
Forty or fifty years ago it was believed that 
this could be done, and no doubt at an earlier 
day than that it was done occasionally by the 
early riflemen who used muzzleloading arms of 
short range and of extraordinary accuracy with¬ 
in that range. Many years ago a story was told 
of W. F. Cody (Buffalo Bill) who at that time 
—perhaps about 1865—was working in Kansas. 
As told, the story was like this: 
A black stallion of great beauty was often 
seen on the prairie and many men wished to 
possess it. It was discovered after a time that 
the animal had a drinking place which he visited 
regularly. Cody declared his intention of cap¬ 
turing the animal by creasing it. He watched 
at the watering place for a time and at last his 
opportunity came. He had a fair shot at the 
top of the animal’s neck and at the report it 
dropped. Cody rushed up and tied its feet, but 
when this was done, and he looked at his prize, 
he discovered that it was not breathing. The 
ball had broken its neck. 
Creasing often took place by accident, but we 
know of no definite record of its having been 
successfully done by intention. One of the edi¬ 
tors of Forest and Stream once by bad shoot¬ 
ing creased a mountain sheep which, however, 
got to its feet before the hunter reached it and 
was killed as it was getting away. On another 
occasion his companion, shooting at the breast 
of a buck antelope which stood facing him, 
knocked the animal down, and when the hunters 
reached it, the only apparent wound was a little 
nick in the skin between the horns where the ball 
had hit and stunned the animal. The knife 
killed it, and an examination showed no other 
bullet wounds. In Forest and Stream of April 
9, 1891, a correspondent writing from Nebraska 
over the pseudonym “Old Man,” gave an in¬ 
teresting example of an accidental creasing as 
follows. In the first paragraph he perhaps re¬ 
fers to the Cody incident above alluded to: 
“I suppose that every boy who has read much hunt¬ 
ing or Indian literature is familiar with the marvel¬ 
ous shooting of the long-haired scout of fiction 
who, whenever he wanted a fresh horse, used to 
go out on the prairie and crease an animal out 
of the herds of wild horses which were always 
so abundant in the books—and nowhere else. I 
myself in the course of a somewhat long ex¬ 
perience of wild Western life never saw any of 
this ‘creasing’ done, although I once knew of 
its being attempted by a somewhat loud-mouthed 
and widely-advertised character, who was once 
a resident of this State and is now a showman. 
This attempt was not successful. The man shot 
a little too low and broke the neck of a very 
handsome wild stallion. 
“Instances of accidental creasing of game are 
not very uncommon, however, and I recall one 
case where this helped out a small party of very 
hungry men. 
“There were half a dozen of us, white men 
and Indians, who had for some days been fol¬ 
lowing the trail of a small war party of Sioux 
who had stolen a lot of our horses. Partly by 
good luck and partly by the instinct of our In¬ 
dian allies, we made a cut-off on the Sioux, and 
just before light on the morning of the fifth day 
we overtook them, killed four, and recovered all 
the horses. We lost no men, though we had two 
wounded. 
“When we had started on the trail of the 
Sioux we had taken what food we could lay 
our hands on, but this was not very much, be¬ 
cause we had expected to be gone only three 
or four days. The consequence was that for the 
last two days we had had nothing to eat, and 
we were getting pretty hungry. There had been 
one or two chances on the fourth day of our 
ride to kill antelope, but as we did not know 
how near we were to the enemy, we had not 
dared to fire a gun. 
“When we made the attack everyone hoped, 
I think, that we would capture some food, but 
either the enemy had been as short of food as 
we were or else the ones who escaped had car¬ 
ried off what dried meat they may have had, for 
there was not a morsel of food in the camp. 
“It was pretty evident that we had a choice 
of three courses: (1) to continue hungry, (2) 
to kill and eat a horse, or (3) to kill some game. 
“We started back for the camp, determined 
to starve a little longer before trying horse flesh. 
Jack and I rode ahead, the loose horses driven 
by an Indian followed us, and the rest of the 
party followed the horses. * We had not gone 
more than three or four miles when, as Jack 
and I rose a little ridge and looked across a 
flat, we saw, standing on a little ridge on the 
other side what we took to be a cow elk. Only 
our heads had shown, and we ducked down and 
dismounted at once, while the men behind all 
stopped, understanding by our actions that we 
had seen game. Jack was a good shot and I 
asked him to kill the game, for I did not want 
to take the responsibility of the shot. We 
crawled up to the ridge and looked over and 
saw the cow standing there broadside to us and 
quite unconscious of our prokimity. She seemed 
to be about 200 yards distant and I said so to 
Jack. Pie answered, > It don’t look nearly so 
far to me by the ground and yet she looks smad.’ 
“Jack fired and the elk gave a jump and 
turned around so as to face us. She gave no 
sign of being hit, and we had not heard nor 
seen the ba'l strike anywhere. I said to Jack: 
'You must have over-shot. Try her a little 
lower.’ He shot again and the elk went down 
as if it had been struck by lightning. We 
jumped on our horses and rode over as fast as 
we could, but before we got to her we could 
see that we had been badly fooled. The animal 
in the first place was less than 100 yards from 
where we had shot; in the second place she was 
a yearling and not a cow. Finally she was not 
killed, but only creased, the ball having cut a 
little line between the ears from which a drop 
or two of blood was flowing. I guessed what 
the state of the case was before I got to her, 
and jumped off my horse and on to her head, 
while I cut her throat. She began to struggle 
almost as soon as the knife touched her, but 
we held her head down until she was dead. 
“A little further on we came to a stream 
where there were some willows growing, and 
there we had a feast and disposed of about one- 
haif of the meat of the animal. The remainder 
kept us going until we got back to the camp, 
and we never got a shot at anything else during 
the whole of that march.” 
Capt. L. H. North, of Omaha, Neb., recalls 
the case of a man, Adam Shick, who was work¬ 
ing at the ranch on the Dismal River who shot 
and creased a deer—of course by accident. This 
was in the month of January. When Captain 
North and Shick reached the buck and saw what 
had happened, Shick jumped from his horse and 
seized the antlers of the deer and attempted to 
cut its throat. When the knife touched the deer, 
he jumped up, and Adam and the deer disap¬ 
peared over the bluff into a cedar canon below. 
When Captain North reached the bank and 
looked down into the canon, he saw Adam sit¬ 
ting up about forty feet below, holding an antler 
in each hand.— Editor.] 
Camera Shots. 
Detroit, Mich., Sept. 23.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: lam sending you a few prints. The picture 
of the pointer I made in Georgia last winter. 
It shows very well, I think, the nervous ten¬ 
sion of the dog, as he holds his point. He had 
found the birds while I was some distance away, 
and as I walked toward him, I had to caution 
him to remain steady: he was trembling and 
gradually sank on bis haunches. I had to get 
my camera out of the case, lay aside my gun 
and make the exposure. He still held and I 
put the camera aside, picked up the gun, flushed 
the birds and took another kind of a “ shot,” 
getting my bird. 
The picture of the buzzards I made in Port 
Limon. Costa Rica. These scavengers of the 
tropics are very tame and this particular group 
were near the mouth of a river, where they 
feast on the offal from the fish that are caught 
there and refuse from the slaughter house near¬ 
by. In the distance through the hanging nets, 
can be seen the steamers at the docks. Pretty 
good lens work. 
The picture of the fish swimming I send, 
not for arty artistic or technical excellence, but 
on account of its being something of a curi¬ 
osity. It was made on the Gulf of Mexico, be¬ 
tween Mobile and Tampa. We were sailing 
along over some banks where the water was 
about forty feet deep, and as the Gulf was like 
glass, we could see the bottom and the fish 
swimming about. The captain informed us that 
we might make many voyages and not find 
