734 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[May 8, 1909. 
the village, whence a couple of men with wel¬ 
come torches of deodar splinters lighted our way 
to camp by the stream below, where dinner and 
bed awaited me. W. R. Giwbert. 
Cultivating Good Eyesight. 
Louisville, Ky., April 30.—Editor Forest and 
Stream: Your editorial on the use of eyes is 
especially interesting to me because I have been 
experimenting on the subject. 
I first learned to appreciate the value of long 
range eyesight when hunting the prongbuck in 
Wyoming west of the Red Desert. The clear¬ 
ness of my guide’s vision enabled him to detect 
and point out a bunch of antelope at a distance 
which he estimated at five miles. Although on 
account of the great altitude, the atmosphere of 
the country is very rare, I later became dubious 
and believed that the guide had overestimated 
the distance. I then began a series of experi¬ 
ments in a comparatively low country where 
the altitude is half as many hundred feet as 
the antelope country is thousands of feet. 
The culminating test was when I put up a 
sheet of light manila paper about the size of 
the visible area of a prongbuck standing side- 
wise, with a dark brown hayrick as a back¬ 
ground and measured off 5,338 yards. Although 
it was a light-cloudy day in midwinter, I could 
see the mark, requiring some optical strain. A 
farmer who happened along attempted to de¬ 
fine the object, but could not do so without the 
aid of field glasses. He was a healthy looking 
young man, whose occupation is in every way 
best for the eyes. 
My occupation on the other hand requires 
half the daylight hours to be spent indoors. My 
conclusions were that antelope, which are in¬ 
digenous to open uplands, may be readily dis¬ 
tinguished at a distance of five miles, as my 
guide had asserted, and that optical strength 
may be developed pretty much by the same 
methods in which the legs, arms or any other 
parts of the anatomy are strengthened, viz.: by 
care and judicious exercise. 
As you have outlined, familiarity with the 
ground is a potent factor in vision. An un¬ 
usually strong pair of eyes would not have des¬ 
cried the antelope unless their possessor had 
looked long enough to detect changes in the 
relative position of the white specks which is 
all they appear to be against the background at 
that great distance, and had known that there 
were no sheep nor goats on the range and that 
antelope were the only light-colored animals in 
the country. 
Brent Altsheler. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Plainsmen and sailors have good eyes, as a 
rule, but I have often been astonished on prov¬ 
ing, with the aid of binoculars, how well they 
can see at .distances too great for persons accus¬ 
tomed to focus their eyes for yards, not miles. 
I have often been with cowboys who would 
identify cattle or horsemen at great distances, 
or who would point out antelope which to me 
seemed to be inanimate objects, although the 
oculists tell me my eyes are defective only in 
that they are best at long range. Sailors can 
read the name on a ship at distances that render 
the outlines only clear to persons who have not 
trained their eyes for such use. W. M. B. 
Round About the Creseent City. 
New Orleans, La., April 30.— Editor Forest 
and Stream: President Frank M. Miller and 
Attorney Amos L. Ponder, of the Board of 
Commissioners for the Protection of Fish and 
Game of Louisiana, are engaged in an educa¬ 
tional campaign over the State. They will be 
gone ten days and will speak twice a day in 
several parishes (counties) on the game laws 
and the preservation of the great food supply 
of the State. They will deliver illustrated lec¬ 
tures at night when pictures of fish, birds and 
animals will be thrown on a canvas for the 
benefit of their audiences. It is thought this 
method will attract much more attention than 
a mere lecture or address, and will serve to 
impress the lessons desired to be taught on the 
minds of scores of people w'ho otherwise would 
not take much interest in the subject. 
It is the intention of Messrs. Miller and 
Ponder to deliver lectures or addresses in each 
parish of the State, and this work will engage 
their attention for several months to come. The 
game commission has been criticised from many 
quarters of the State, and it is felt that the 
public does not understand fully the objects of 
the commission or what it has accomplished. 
The speakers will answer a number of criti¬ 
cisms and at the same time show the people the 
advantages to be derived from a well conducted 
commission for the protection of game and fish. 
The warden system will be explained and the 
object of imposing a license on hunters and 
seiners. The regular hunters’ license is now $1, 
but Mr. Miller will advocate charging the pro¬ 
fessional or market hunter at least $10, while 
the fee for the pleasure or the casual hunter 
will remain $1. The commission has no au¬ 
thority to raise this license, and it can be done 
only by legislative enactment. He says it is 
but equitable that the man who hunts every day 
during the season and kills game by thousands 
should be charged more than the man who now 
and then goes out with his gun and shoots a 
few dozen birds. 
Mr. Miller is in favor of a closed season for 
the protection of shrimp. He recently offered 
a reward of $10 to the person who would bring 
him a female shrimp bearing eggs from the 
lakes or salt' water streams. The commission 
contends that the shrimp spawns only during 
May and June, while a number of the fisher¬ 
men and fish dealers have asserted positively 
that shrimp spawn every month in the year, and 
they are bitterly opposed to a closed season. 
Mr. Miller offered his reward for shrimp caught 
during April or in January, February and March 
or any other fall or winter month. No one has 
produced such a shrimp and therefore the re¬ 
ward has not been claimed. Some fishermen 
brought in grass shrimp from the bayous and 
shallow water, but this did not meet the require¬ 
ments as to deep water, salt water or lake 
shrimp usually caught for market purposes. 
President Miller reports that during the sea¬ 
son just closed at least 5,000,000 muskrats have 
been killed or trapped for the markets in Louis¬ 
iana. Fie estimates that the number will aggre¬ 
gate 10.000,000 next year. The reason for this 
unprecedented number of these animals in find¬ 
ing their way into the markets is to be found 
in the fact that the demand has been very great 
on account of the fashion among the ladies who 
wear the furs on their hats. It requires two 
skins to properly decorate a lady’s hat and each 
pelt brings to the trapper from fifteen to twenty 
cents. The hunters sometimes trap twenty musk¬ 
rats in a night and it is a paying business for 
many men not otherwise employed. Mr. Miller 
says that the muskrat is a nuisance, as he de¬ 
stroys levees by boring holes in them and he 
also injures corn and other crops. It is claimed 
by some in St. John Parish that the rapid de¬ 
struction of the mink and muskrat has caused 
a tremendous increase in rats and mice and the 
crops are the sufferers. Mr. Miller denies that 
either muskrats or minks kill rats, as they live 
on fish and birds. The alligator is an fuemy 
of the muskrat, but so many people have hunted 
the alligator that the bayous are now almost 
without alligators. All muskrat skins are ship¬ 
ped from here to St. Louis. 
Game Warden T. S. East, of Calcasieu Parish, 
has made the following report of game killed 
during the season just closed: Quail, 35,000; 
ducks, 600,000; snipe, 300,000; doves, 15,000; 
squirrels, 6,000; rabbits, 8,000; rails, 1,000; tur¬ 
keys, 100; raccoons, 2,000; minks, 1,000; opos¬ 
sums, 2,000; otters, 6; deer, 150; papabotte, 
5,000, and brant, 25,000. This is a total of 1,000,- 
156 from one parish of the State, and is perhaps 
the largest aggregate in Louisiana for the sea¬ 
son. F. G. G. 
Spring Shooting. 
Johnson City, Tenn., April 30.— Editor 
Forest and Stream: Linder date of March 20, 
Sandy Griswold reports to this journal of March 
28 the killing of 389 ducks and eight geese. The 
shooting was indulged in by himself and nine 
other sportsmen at different periods immediately 
preceding the date of his letter, which was 
printed under the caption of “Nebraska Spring 
Shooting.” If it is figured that every duck 
killed during the spring flight to the breeding 
grounds means eight ducks less in the hatch¬ 
ing and fall migration, we have a total destruc¬ 
tion that is sad to contemplate, and I trust Mr. 
Griswold regrets it. 
He seems to appreciate good game laws and 
the preservation of game birds; for in this paper 
of April I he has a letter on game protection, 
regretting the scarcity of game and the almost 
total extinction of some species. 
It would seem Mr. Griswold is somewhat in¬ 
consistent. Dick Swiveller. 
“An Afrikander’s Journal.” 
Sandpoint, Idaho, April 2^—Editor Forest 
and Stream: Will you kindly convey to Mr. 
Lethbridge my appreciation of his “An Afri¬ 
kander’s Journal”? I opine that no man can 
read the several papers composing the journal 
without having a better understanding of Africa 
and her denizens. I am pleased, too, that Mr. 
Lethbridge has eschewed all attempt at literary 
style and has contented himself with telling his 
tale in plain English. I feel after reading each 
paper that I have had a talk with the author. 
His article impresses one that way and that is 
the test of good literature. 
May all of the prize winners’ papers be as 
entertaining and instructive as that of Mr. Leth¬ 
bridge. Chas. Stuart Moody. 
