Nov. 18, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
743 
Sing Hey, The Fretful Porcupine. 
Sullivan County, N. Y., Nov. 9 . —Editor 
Forest and Stream: Last Wednesday I passed 
a place in the edge of woodlands where several 
wild grape vines grew. These were covered 
with fruit and I expected to find some creature 
feeding upon them. However, there was noth¬ 
ing of the kind wished for, but I noticed two 
large objects in a tree, which retained a portion 
of its foliage. One of these proved to be a very 
large nest of some sort, but the other puzzled 
me. It was absolutely motionless as I backed 
about in the bush, making a good deal of noise. 
At last I saw a bushy tail on one side and made 
out where the head should be. Thinking that I 
had a large ’coon to deal with—I have a friend 
who is very fond of roast ’coon—I fired a shot 
at this head, and down came a thing like a sack 
of potatoes. Upon inspecting this prize, it 
proved to be a very large and extremely fat 
porcupine. In many years I have seen but two 
of these animals in this part of the country, and 
these were quite small. So am having this one 
carefully skinned. I am afraid, however, that it 
will be difficult to cure the skin in such a way as 
to hold the hair and quills. They shed very easily. 
Porcupines are queer beasts and often very 
annoying in a camp in the big woods. They 
are very fond of salt and will gnaw anything, 
even an ax handle, which may hold a trace of 
salt from sweaty hands; in fact, they gnaw al¬ 
most any wood and make a great racket with 
their powerful incisors or front teeth. Four 
porcupines kept me awake the best part of the 
night in a deer hunter’s camp. This camp was 
half sunk in the ground, built of logs with pieces 
of plank to serve as door and small window. 
Two porcupines would begin at the same 
moment, one at the door and the other at the 
window, and the row they make on a quiet 
August night was astonishing. We killed two 
to secure a little peace, but in half an hour two 
more turned up and renewed the performance. 
There was also a large colony of wood mice in 
the cabin which played a game of tag over our 
bodies, and from whom it was impossible to 
secure our meagre provisions of stale bread and 
cheese. We were horribly weary from tramping 
and fishing in a very rough country and felt 
worse next morning. We lay about smoking 
our pipes until it got good and hot about ten 
o’clock a. m., then started on an eight-mile 
tramp through the brush to the main camp, 
accompanied for a portion of the way by at¬ 
tentive green-headed flies, which thirsted for 
our blood and got some of it. We caught lots 
of trout, but refrained from returning to that 
place. It was bush-whacking sport anyhow, 
all rotten logs and fallen trees in primeval 
woods. Lots of big deer in that country then. 
I found the trails of several real big bucks and 
many does. 
I seem to be losing my porcupine, running 
away from the subject. Wish I knew how to 
keep those quills in. There must be a million 
of them. 
The heft of the migration has passed. I saw 
one flock of robins and cedar birds yesterday, 
also a number of smaller things with feathers. 
Saw two very large brown owls, which will be 
very destructive if not killed. They were very 
shy, but I might have scored with a small bore 
rifle. I covered several hundred acres of wood¬ 
lands without finding grouse. 
Theodore Gordon. 
Dogs at Large. 
Hendersonville, N. C., Nov. 9 . —Editor 
Forest and Stream: I have been told that there 
is a law in Germany prohibiting dogs from be¬ 
ing out at all seasons, and if a dog is found off 
its owner’s premises, except when in leash, the 
dog is at once killed. Can you tell me if this is so? 
In this (Henderson) county, the owner is 
liable to both fine and imprisonment if his or 
her pointer or setter is found off the owner’s 
premises at any time, except in January and 
February. In this county there may be as many 
as twenty or twenty-five pointers and setters, 
all told, and something like four thousand curs 
and hounds and dogs of high and low degree. 
Five of our young men have appealed to the 
State Supreme Court to set this law aside on 
the ground that it is unconstitutional, in that 
only owners of setters and pointers are held 
liable. The case is to be taken up this month, 
and I will report the finding of the court. 
We have had frosts and a little rain, so the 
leaves will soon be down and deer hunting and 
shooting generally at its best. Meanwhile, the 
coloring of our mountain forests has been 
beautiful in the extreme. I said to a friend the 
other day that I wished the many persons kept 
close in the large cities of the country could see 
these beautiful colors as shown in our grand 
forests. If an artist could paint such pictures 
as I have seen, in all their detail of colors and 
locations, there are many people who, seeing 
his pictures, would not believe them at all 
possible. They would doubt even as the country 
man, who, seeing a camel for the first time, and 
after walking quite around it so as to get it 
well in his mind, simply said to the man nearby, 
“Thar ain’t no sich animal.” Maples, black- 
gum, sourwood, white poplars, many kinds of 
oaks, beech and birch, all deciduous, all blend¬ 
ing together with the pines, rhododendrons and 
mountain laurel or kalmia. Yes, we certainly 
have had a wealth of colors, but soon all the 
leaves of the deciduous trees will be down, and 
the evergreens only left till another spring is 
ushered in. 
The call of the wild is pulling at me strongly, 
and I am soon going to answer to the call if all 
be well. ' Ernest L. Ewbank. 
[Certainly dogs are not permitted to roam at 
will in Germany. In our own country there are 
at least two States in which any citizen may 
shoot stray dogs in the close season, but this is 
seldom done, as the law is not favored by dog 
owners, although the public would be glad to 
be rid of roaming curs. 
In many places it is unsafe for an unarmed 
pedestrian to pass along country roads, as from 
every house one or more dogs rush out and at¬ 
tack him, and if he defends himself, the owner 
of the dogs, who seldom bestirs himself to call 
them off, considers it his duty to chastise the 
offender or “have the law on him.” There are 
thousands of such dog-infested public roads 
within a few miles of New York city, and other 
thousands of curs that are not savage by nature 
but which undoubtedly become so through en¬ 
couragement, which pass their time roaming 
nearby woods and fields or waiting for passers- 
by. Only one in every hundred, perhaps, is 
protected by license, the rest being outlaws, and 
they act the part. 
The law provides that such dogs may be shot 
by any one, provided they are found outside the 
jurisdiction of town or village authorities, but 
this entails numerous complications; for the 
killing of a dog, however worthless, raises a 
great hubbub and usually brings the nearest 
constable and arrest, though the shooter may 
be well within his legal rights; so the traveling 
public, long suffering but patient, swallows its 
wrath and complains to the nearest official, who 
promises immediate relief in the summary dis¬ 
patch of the offending canine, then forgets all 
about the matter until some one else is injured. 
Thereupon the “official dog-catcher” is ordered 
to make away with the dog, he reports three 
attempts and as many failures, and the incident 
is closed. 
We do not refer to hunting dogs, but to the 
common run of mongrels, which, useful per¬ 
haps in guarding homes, are neither confined to 
private property nor prevented from disputing 
the public’s right of way on State highways, 
terrorizing women and children and even men 
who, while not afraid of dogs, dislike to be set 
upon by them.— Editor.] 
More Trophies. 
Washington, D. C., Nov. ii. —Editor Forest 
and Stream: Packed in great iron-bound boxes 
and hogsheads, nearly a thousand trophies of 
the spectacular hunt which Paul D. Rainey is 
conducting in Africa, have arrived at the Smith¬ 
sonian Institution. Many more specimens are ex¬ 
pected within a few weeks. All of the big skins, 
approximately 400 in number, have been re¬ 
shipped to a firm in Rochester, N. Y., to be 
tanned. The small skins and birds will be tanned 
and mounted at the Smithsonian, under the di¬ 
rection of Gerrit S. Miller, the curator of ani¬ 
mals. There were eleven great boxes and six¬ 
teen hogsheads in the first consignment, and it 
is expected that the trophies will far outnumber 
those sent to the Institution by Colonel Theodore 
Roosevelt. In speaking of the Rainey hunt, Dr. 
Miller declared that it was one of the most 
spectacular ever engaged in. Mr. Rainey has 
with him a complete moving picture outfit, be¬ 
sides several plate cameras. He is an ardent 
photographer and is making moving pictures of 
the fight put up by lions and other animals, when 
they are brought to bay by his selected bear 
hounds from Mississippi and Airedale terriers. 
The party is blazing its own trail much further 
into the jungles, it is said, than did the Roose¬ 
velt party. Edmund Heller, an expert naturalist 
and taxidermist of the Smithsonian, who ac¬ 
companied Colonel Roosevelt on his African 
hunt, is also preparing all the specimens of the 
Rainey party. • Raleigh Raines. 
