654 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[April 24, 1909. 
deer and sheep often gathered to “eat the dirt,” 
and that in many places they had gnawed deep 
holes in the faces of the bluffs. I explained this 
to the Youngster who declared that that was the 
'sort of place he wanted to hunt, where one 
could sit down and have the animals come up 
to him to be shot, and where he would have 
plenty of time to make his selection of a head 
and to shoot it. It would be a very different 
thing from a hurried stalk, where a man is 
obliged to crawl, and climb and run, and per¬ 
haps at the last to fire his shot when he is out 
of breath and his blood is pumping through 
his veins at railroad speed. 
Having found the trail, we went back to 
camp, packed up as quickly as possible, and not 
very long after midday found ourselves travel¬ 
ing through the green timber, and a little later 
came out on to the bare prairie and saw in 
front of us the mountains which we wished to 
reach. Long before sundown we had reached 
the old camp, unpacked the animals, turned them 
loose with dragging rope to feed on the rich 
grass, kindled our fire and were once more at 
home. 
I told Baptiste to pack in some wood and 
began to make some bread and told the Young¬ 
ster to take his rifle and go out and take a 
little walk along the base of the mountains to 
learn what he could about the country and 
about the best mode of climbing the hills. These 
rise sharply from the prairie, but were not 
forest-clad nor were there many rocks on them. 
It looked as if it might be possible to ride a 
horse up their sides. While supper was cook¬ 
ing I asked Baptiste whether he knew anything 
about the people who had camped here not very 
long before. 
“Yes,” he said, “I know. They were three 
young men, Englishmen, who came up here with 
two white packers. They were not gone long 
and when they came back they said that they 
had killed many animals. Still they did not 
bring back hides or horns or meat to the settle¬ 
ment; they just told us what they had done. 
Maybe they killed much, maybe little. I do not 
know. I heard one of the white men say they 
fired many shots, but did not bring in much 
meat.” 
I had just looked at my bread, to find that 
it was baking all right, when I heard a shot 
in the direction to which the Youngster had 
gone. He was not in sight, for a swell of the 
ground hid him from us. When he came in 
an hour later he was carrying the ham of a 
sheep and this is what he said had happened 
to him: 
He had walked along slowly toward the west, 
over the rolling open prairie, noticing the hills 
on his right, which seemed reasonably easy of 
ascent, and at the same time keeping a good 
lookout over the prairie ahead of him, when, 
after having crossed three or four swells of 
the prairie, he saw a large animal before him 
in a hollow. As soon as he saw it he dropped 
to the ground out of sight, and then creeping 
forward a little peered at it through the grass. 
Its tail was toward him and it was feeding, and 
for a moment or more he did not recognize 
what it was, but presently it lifted its head and 
looked about and then he saw that it was a 
female mountain sheep. It was quite near 
enough for him to shoot at it, but he was 
amxious to get it—the first sheep that he had 
ever seen—and at the same time was anxious 
not to spoil the meat. He did not wish to 
shoot at its hips and perhaps send a ball through 
one of them, so he waited a little. The animal 
took a few bites of grass and then quite de¬ 
liberately walked away from him, and ascend¬ 
ing the slope on the other side of the little 
draw, passed over the crest and out of sight. 
Then the Youngster picked himself up and ran 
as hard as he could toward the place where the 
sheep had disappeared. When he looked over 
the ridge it was still walking and he had gained 
a good deal on it. Now and then it stopped 
and took a bite and presently for some reason 
or other, turned around to look off away from 
the hills and thus exposed its broadside to him. 
The Youngster is a pretty good shot and under¬ 
stands his gun well, so that it took him only 
a minute to draw a fine sight on the animal’s 
heart and to pull the trigger. It took only a 
step or two and then fell, and in a moment the 
slayer was beside the game and had his knife 
in its throat. She was a young ewe and quite 
fat; a very good piece of meat. This was a 
good beginning for our little trip to the moun¬ 
tains. Ornis. 
[to be concluded.] 
Spring Shooting. 
Phil.^delphia, Pa., April 17.— Editor Forest 
and Stream: Very few sportsmen nowadays 
question the wisdom of laws prohibiting spring 
shooting of wildfowl, but just why January and 
February should be added to the closed season 
is not so easily understood. I refer to proposed 
amendments to the New Jersey law. 
As the law now stands, shooting is allowed 
from Nov. i to March 15 for ducks, with the 
open season for brant and geese extended to 
March 25. This is a decided improvement over 
the old law, which had an open season from 
Sept, i to April 31. It might be well to have 
the season for ducks close March i, and that 
for brant and geese March 15, but I fail to see 
why all wildfowl shooting should cease Dec. 31. 
Some will claim that two months should be 
quite long enough for the open season, and this 
would be true if every day during these two 
months could be counted a shooting day; but, 
as all wildfowlers well know, many days are 
absolutely blank, owing to weather conditions, 
tides and other causes. Adding to this the fact 
that batteries or brush blinds are not used, it 
will be seen that during the average November 
and December no very great slaughter takes 
place. Another thing to be considered is the 
late arrival in Jersey waters of brant and geese 
and also of many ducks. The past winter did 
not see the main flight of brant until the first 
week in December, but as it happened to be an 
open winter, large numbers of both geese and 
brant remained, and during February better 
sport was had with the former than for many 
years. 
I am well aware that the average native 
bay man resents any curtailment of the 
privilege of shooting wildfowl as late in the 
spring as any can be found, but to me it hardly 
seems just to compel him to sit around during 
two winter months and do no shooting, even 
though the bay be filled with fowl. A strict en¬ 
forcement of the law forbidding chasing and 
shooting wildfowl in motor boats would prob¬ 
ably do more good than any other one thing to 
help the game preserve a balance, for where 
batteries are not used, the wildfowl are able 
to find room to eat, sleep and get “educated” as 
to danger lurking near points and sandbars. 
Ocean. 
Killing for Sport. 
Estes Park, Colo., April 12.— Editor Forest 
and Stream: I noticed in your issue of March 
13 an article by Manly Hardy concerning ani¬ 
mals that kill wantonly. From a little experi¬ 
ence that I have just had I should place the 
“polecat” in that class. 
A disturbance called me to my chicken house 
a short time ago at about half-past eight in the 
evening, where I found one of these little ani¬ 
mals having much sport. He had killed four 
of my Leghorn hens and was after more, when 
I put a stop to it with my .22. He evidently had 
intended to run me out of the chicken business. 
His method of killing was to bite a fowl on 
the head, drop it and take the next one. He 
was as quick as a weasel and not much larger, 
spotted, but not striped like a skunk, and yet 
he was as highly perfumed as the larger animal. 
I once had that desire to hunt for sport, to 
kill for the sake of killing, but a lesson was 
taught me some years ago when in Wyoming, 
and in a great game region, which I have never 
forgotten. 
Several of us were out hunting and came on 
a couple of silver tip bears and a cub. Two 
balls were shot into the mother, which was a 
little ahead with the cub. As soon as she was 
wounded—and the wounds were fatal—she sat 
down on her haunches and seemed to gather up 
grass and leaves with' her paw and cram them 
into the wound to check the flow of blood, then 
started on the trail with her cub and her mate 
followed. They kept this up for about a half 
mile when she began to get weaker and was 
going to lie down, but her mate came up and 
seemed to know that if she did that that she 
would never get up, so with his fore paw he 
cuffed her from side to side to keep her going, 
but finally she had to give up and lie down, and 
he took the cub on up the trail, leaving her to 
die. Not one of us could have shot either the 
mate or the cub after that, and it checked our 
love for wanton killing. G. H. Thomson. 
[The “polecat” is the little spotted skunk or 
“civet cat” (Spilogale) , a notorious destroyer 
of poultry. —Editor.] 
Ducks on Lake Worth. 
Palm Beach, Fla,, April 15.— Editor Forest 
and Stream: Talk about tame wild ducks! You 
can surely see them here at Palm Beach. To 
prove it I inclose you a photo taken last week 
of a flock of bluebills in the launch basin in 
front of the Royal Poinciana. This is about 
one-tenth of the tame bluebills on Lake Worth. 
Some of them will take bread out of your hand. 
James K. Clarke. 
Until the rains came last week there were 
a number of serious forest fires in the Middle 
Atlantic coast States. Long Island, New Jersey, 
Virginia, Pennsylvania and North Carolina all 
suffered considerable loss through fires, but as 
the rains were quite general and covered a wide 
area, it is believed the danger from this source 
is past. 
