FOREST AND STREAM 
341 
TO BREED ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOATS IN 
WHITE MOUNTAINS. 
By A. H. Robinson. 
If a movement now being vigorously prose¬ 
cuted shall have anticipated affirmative results, 
New Hampshire will have attractions as a game 
state to present to sportsmen, in which, among 
all the “little republics” east of the Rockies it 
will stand alone and without a rival. 
The proposition, which is now being agitated 
is 'to breed Rocky Mountain goats among the 
White Mountains, - or rather upon Mt. Washing- 
ton as a first habitat, whence as they naturally 
increase in numbers, they will find homes on other 
heights in the Presidential Range, if conditions 
prove favorable. 
The suggested enterprise originated with a 
Federal game authority from Washington, who 
recently visited and examined the mountain re¬ 
gion and pronounced the conditions such as to 
leave no question open about the success of the 
experiment. 
He communicated his views to some influen¬ 
tial gentlemen who became enthusiastic over the 
idea and who, being among the more prominent 
of ardent sportsmen in the state, decided to 
formulate plans to lay the matter before State 
Fish and Game Commissioner Beal and seek his 
endorsement and active co-operation in the 
scheme. 
If they have not already done so their ac¬ 
tion, it is understood, will be a development of 
the immediate future. In view of Commissioner 
Beal’s efficient work in conserving the interests 
of the department which he directs, with his 
record of prompt and sagacious dealing with 
matters of importance, the issue in this case is 
unlikely to be long delayed. 
The Federal official mentioned, explained that 
Mount Washington is the only mountain east of 
the “Big Divide” which offers even a possibility 
of the wild goat raising, for the reason that no 
where else is suitable feed to be found. 
Mount Washington, above a certain height is 
a rocky barren, bearing abundantly the lichens 
which form the goat’s chief article of food. 
There is a higher mountain than Mt. Washing¬ 
ton in the Southern Appalachians, but like other 
heights in the range it is verdure clad from foot 
to summit, a condition which fails to meet the 
approval of the goat species, which lacking tin 
cans and kindred delicacies content themselves 
with the succulent lichens. 
As a game quarry, it was explained, the goat 
is almost without a peer, offering no end of ex¬ 
ercise, excitement and real sport to a sportsman 
giving it chase. When alarmed or pursued its 
methods are direct and simple; it resorts to no 
subterfuges or cunning tricks, it gets to business 
with no delay whatever. It resorts to no de¬ 
vice of “slabbing” a hill or doubling upon its 
tracks, but deliberately makes for the top at 
incredible speed. Thence on, the direction taken, 
remains a mystery to all interested in the chase 
except the goat, unless the pursuing sportsman 
has been sufficiently fleet of foot to keep within 
seeing distance. Unless favored by adventitious 
conditions it is reasonable to suppose that a 
sportsman, however active and expert could 
hardly expect to bag more than several goats as 
results of daily successive trips over Mount 
Washington. 
But it may be well to state that the goat is 
not a species of the goat family at all, but in¬ 
stead an antelope in fact and this explains its 
shy and elusive habits as well as its extraordi¬ 
nary fleetness and endurance. It is thus classed 
and described by a recognized authority: 
Rocky Mountain goat, Haplocerus Montanus, 
a kind of antelope inhabiting the higher moun¬ 
tain ranges of western North America, with a 
thick fleece of long white hair or wool and short, 
sharp and smooth black horns, like those of the 
chamois of which it is a near relative. It is 
the only American representative of its kind and 
not a goat in any proper sense. 
If the goat is to be introduced into the fast¬ 
nesses of the New Hampshire highest mountain 
why not ultimately the Rocky Mountain sheep an 
entirely distinct species from the miscalled goat. 
The Rocky Mountain sheep, so called from the 
immense size of the horns, which resemble those 
of the argali, but are shorter and comparatively 
stouter and not so spiral. The animal in other 
respects resembles and is closely related to the 
argali, of which it is the American representa¬ 
tive. In color it is grayishffirown, with whit¬ 
ish buttocks, like the other wild sheep. I: 
stands about 3% feet high at the withers, and is 
very stoutly built. It inhabits the higher moun¬ 
tain ranges of the western United States from 
New Mexico and southern California northward, 
down nearly or quite to sea-level in the higher 
latitudes and is abundant in suitable localities 
in Colorado. Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, etc. It 
is much hunted for its flesh, which makes ex¬ 
cellent mutton. Like other wild sheep, it is 
gregarious. 
DEER HUNTING IN ARKANSAS. 
By Byrne. 
Last evening I shot a “spike” buck, at about 
seventy yards, with my 5-bore, 13 pound gun, 
charged with 8 drs. of powder and 3 oz. of No. 
3 buckshots, that shoots them closer than any 
gun I have ever seen. 1 can put an average 
of twenty-two No. 8 buckshot in a foot square 
of 40 yards. She shoots larger sizes in the same 
proportion, and when loaded as she was last 
night, she makes the hair fly. But seventy yards 
is a good way to kill a deer dead in his tracks, 
so he rattled off through the bush at a lively 
gait. I saw he was hit very hard, but as it was 
getting dusk, and the White River bottom is 
not by any means a very pleasant place to get 
lost in, and as the ground was strange to me, 
and I was a long way from camp, I con¬ 
cluded to let him go until morning. This morn¬ 
ing I took his trail and found him about two 
hundred yards from where I shot him, hung 
him up, and concluded to “blaze” a trail to a 
lake two miles away. I traveled along, mark¬ 
ing the trees with my hatchet, and when with¬ 
in about four hundred yards of the lake, while 
going along without any care whatever, I saw 
three deer rise up in a patch of green briars 
to my left, about eighty yards away and moved 
diagonally to my right behind a tree top. I 
sprang forward quickly and softly a few steps, 
expecting them to “lope” off in the direction they 
started, but I saw nothing of them. Stepping a 
few paces further, I saw four deer gazing at 
me. Two of them were near breast to breast—• 
a large doe and a yearling—about sixty yards 
away. I brought the old gun to bear on them 
so as to give each about an equal amount of lead. 
The young buck dropped in his tracks with a 
broken neck, and struck with several other shots. 
The doe started off with the others, but soon 
fell behind, and I knew she could not go far, 
but still went out of sight. I took her trail, 
and soon found her dead, not over one hun¬ 
dred yards from where she was shot. She had 
one shot square through the butt of her heart, 
a shot through her back just behind the shoul¬ 
der, her left fore leg broken in three places 
and a shot through her neck. She was very 
fat, and the heaviest doe I have ever seen, 
weighing 146 pounds after disemboweling. 
This proves that the right kind of a shot-gun 
is deadly to deer, and-that a deer can get over 
a good deal of ground carrying a big load of 
lead. The buck shot last evening had a thigh 
broken and four shots through the body, one 
of them through the lungs. He had lived quite 
a time after lying down. 
These incidents prove also how tame the deer 
are here, in these immense White River bot¬ 
toms. The buck I caught a glimpse of just as 
he stepped behind a large tree, about eighty 
yards away. I moved up diagonally about ten 
steps, so as to bring him in sight. When I shot, 
another deer, that could not have been forty 
yards away, bounced off at the report of the 
gun. In both these instances I was walking 
down the wind. I think neither of the deer 
knew anything of me until the report of a gun. 
At least the one I shot, did not, for he had his 
head down eating when I shot. So far as I 
have observed, the deer in the White River 
bottoms, across the river from Arkansas county, 
are not so wild nor so hard to approach as the 
wild domestic hogs occupying the same ground. 
There are large tracts of heavy timber, and the 
best of deer ground over there that, perhaps, a 
human being does not pass over once a year. 
January and February are the prime months 
for sport here. 
WILD TURKEY IN VIRGINIA. 
Clarksville, Va., August 29, 1914. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Accompanied by my little son 8 years of age 
I got on my horse this afternoon and started 
to a field about a mile and a half from the 
house where the squirrels are eating the corn 
very badly. When about half way, we came 
right out of the woods into a small field, where 
there were about forty wild turkeys. I never 
saw such a sight as that before in my life and 
I thought it would be of sufficient interest to 
your readers to record the fact in your columns. 
There are a thousand acres of woods on that 
part of my farm and with the exception of the 
flat land along side the Roanoke River there 
is hardly an acre of cleared land in the entire 
body of woods. I have protected the game on 
the place for the past 10 years and consequently 
it is getting very plentiful. During last spring 
I went to my clover fields about half mile from 
the house three afternoons in succession and 
each time saw deer grazing on the clover. The 
first time there was one; the second time there 
were three, and the third time there were two, 
a doe and fawn. 
JOHN TAYLOR LEWIS. 
