March 30, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
401 
The snow kept falling very softly, but at night¬ 
fall Ben came up, and the fox was hanging from 
his shoulder. On another occasion it would be 
two or three foxes, but always at least one. 
“Yes,” continued the hunter’s son, “father al¬ 
ways allowed that he would have a black fox 
some day. You know they are worth four or 
five hundred dollars, for the Russians always 
have a standing offer of that price for a fine 
specimen. Father was trying for one to get 
mother a new silk dress and some more jewelry 
from New York. 
“Of course, you can never tell by the noise a 
dog makes what kind of a fox he is after. One 
day down in the marsh old Rove started a fox. 
Father was over at Grant’s Swamp with the 
cutter and I ran down toward Lake Champlain 
near an old farm house. I soon found out that 
it was a black fellow that Rove was after—just 
as black as a cat. In fact, at first I thought it 
was a big Tom from the old barn. The snow 
was falling very fast and spoiling the trail. The 
old dog couldn’t get his scent half the time and 
would root about in the snow like a pig up to 
his long ears, trying to find it, but it was of 
no use. He couldn’t follow any longer. There 
is where I could beat the dog. I could see the 
path of the fox in the deep snow, even if the 
dog couldn’t. So, I took after the fox myself 
and left the hound to his own devices. 
“The snow was pretty wet and it stuck to the 
fox’s brush and weighed him down so that I 
soon got pretty close to him. 1 hen he put for 
the hills and I after him, but could not get 
within safe shooting distance; besides, I feared 
that the caps on the old gun were wet. 
“Father was not very long in sizing up the 
situation. He drove the mare at a hot old clip 
along the Dibble Hollow road and caught the 
fox with a load of BB’s right out of the old 
cutter, for we often hunted in that way. 
“This fox was a perfect beauty, and his cap¬ 
ture sort of made father get over the loss of 
his first black fox. He had been hunting par¬ 
tridges and gray squirrels all one afternoon one 
fall and finally decided to go home, as he had 
as many as he could lug. So he fired his two 
charges off and sat down to rest himself a minute 
before starting. Just then, right out of a little 
bunch of bushes, a splendid black fox stepped 
and walked up within fifty feet of father. 
The creature knew that he had the old gentle¬ 
man foul, for he actually seemed to make fun 
of him in his own foxy way. He rolled on the 
leaves, scratched dirt and sat upon his haunches 
just like a dog for fully five minutes, until father 
made a motion toward his gun, when the fox 
was out of sight in a minute. 
“That little shooting-iron of yours isn’t so 
slow. It’s mighty handy not having to tote a 
great eight-pound gun over these hills and rough 
country. I never saw anyone before who could 
do anything with a revolver hunting, but father 
used to tell of his brother, John Cheney, out 
Newcomb way, who once had a pistol. He 
always took it with him trapping, and he killed 
panthers and deer with it, too, lots of them. 
Why, the stock of that old pistol was all marked 
and scored to tell all the kinds and numbers of 
animals he had shot with it. Some city man 
gave him a lot for it, and I guess it is in a 
museum at Albany. 
“Some day next winter, if I live, I am com¬ 
ing down here and have one more good old 
hunt. I’ll tell you boys where all the runways 
are and sort of impart to you what I have 
learned about fox hunting; that is, our sort of 
fox hunting. My son tells me that they hunt 
foxes down South on horseback with a pack of 
hounds running along ahead of them. 
“It certainly is fun to start the dogs going 
on a fine day when there has been a light fall 
of snow and hear their music sounding from 
mountain to mountain. Yes, boys, don’t let the 
good old sport stop when I and the other old 
fellows are gone. The foxes are here for us 
all, and I hope that you will be on hand to take 
those lessons of mine, won’t you?” 
Helping Game Propagation 
By A. J. YOUNG 
1 AM a farmer. I reside on the sunset slope 
of the Ozark Hills where a few acres of 
well-tilled ground, a generous supply of bacon 
in the smokehouse and an unbroken range for 
hunting deer and turkey would have supplied 
every want and satisfied every ambition known 
to the native Missourian in days past, but un¬ 
happily for me, my farming is of a mental 
nature, the supply of bacon comes from the city 
and the unbroken range is long since fenced by 
the man who desires to become rich pasturing 
cattle where deer and turkey once roamed at will. 
However changed these conditions may be, 
there still lingers in my mind recollections of 
days long since gone by, and to a greater or 
less degree I have tried in an artificial way to 
recoup the ravages of commercialism and re¬ 
habilitate the soil with some of its virgin virility. 
No one has as yet succeeded in getting a 
monopoly of the air. The open dome of heaven 
still furnishes the royal highway for countless 
thousands of ducks, brant and geese in their 
pilgrimage from the warm waters of the gulf 
to the sedges and marshes of the North. 
In the early days there were thousands of 
acres of unbroken prairie interlaced with streams 
and pools which furnished an ideal resting place 
for the weary wildfowl, so that every spring and 
fall these places were literally covered with every 
sort of duck and shore bird known to the hunter. 
Now that the cornfield has replaced the prairie 
and pastures encompass the streams, these rest¬ 
ing places are no more visited by the wander¬ 
ing flocks, but their flight has taken a Western 
trend where conditions are more primitive. 
There is scarcely a farm to be found where 
an artificial pool or lake ranging in size from 
one acre to ten could not be made. The one I 
have in mind, and one which I often visit in the 
hunting season, covers less than ten acres. An 
embankment of earth twelve feet in height with 
a stone riprap was dhrown across; tlie:mouth :of 
a ravine in one corner of a . pasture. 'A row ^of 
maple trees and willows ; were'planted ; a,rpund 
the edge of the lake, and wild rye sown; in the 
shallow water. This lake is stocked with bass 
and crappie, and is a delightful fishing resort 
in summer. During^he duck season it furnishes 
all the sport necessary to satisfy the duck hunter. 
A square-ended scow floats upon its bosom, yet 
this unpretentious craft is handy when a wounded 
duck must be retrieved. 
Just below this lake is an abandoned field of 
two or three acres grown up to briers and 
thickets. Around its edge the owner annually 
sows a patch of wheat, buckwheat or kaffir corn 
and leaves the same unharvested to feed his 
feathered friends during the winter. 
While this method of game protection and 
game propagation can never restore the primi¬ 
tive conditions of fifty years ago, it can and 
will work wonders. I inclose herewith a photo¬ 
graph showing the lake which I have described, 
its scow, three beautiful mallards, their captor 
and his faithful dog which I call “Campbellite” 
because he is so fond of the water. 
POSSIBILITIES OF SPORT ON AN ARTIFICIAL POND. 
