FOREST AND STREAM 
665 
Live Notes From The Field 
Being Reports From Our Local Correspondents 
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GAME AND FISH CONDITIONS IN NORTH 
CAROLINA. 
Hendersonville, N. C., October 3, 1915. 
Editor Forest and Stream : 
The trout fishing in our streams is practically 
over for the season and now we begin to look 
o' er our guns and rifles to see they are in proper 
condition before the opening days for deer and 
other game. I am told deer are plentiful in cer¬ 
tain sections of our mountains and also in the 
rough parts bears have increased. Then there are 
some turkeys and ruffed grouse. 
There seems to be conflicting reports as to 
partridges (quail) but I have seen covies rise 
from the side of trains in passing through fields. 
Personally I think they are quite plentiful. The 
best quail or partridge shooting is undoubtedly in 
Clay County, the extreme of our western North 
Carolina counties. A good shot can make a 
limit bag there any day in the open season. 
The County Seat is Hayesville, 16 miles across 
the range of mountains from Murphy which is 
the terminus of the Murphy branch of the So. 
R. R. Murphy is 123 miles west by southwest 
of Asheville, N. C. There are two trains a 
day each way. 
I have done less fishing this year than last, 
having spent the summer too far from the trout 
streams to reach them by railroad- On my re¬ 
turn home I had a little sport part of a day. 
The weather was very warm and I reached the 
stream too late for the morning fishing and left 
it to early for the evening fishing, having to take 
train home. 
There is a bit of very promising water I have 
for years cast my flies on as I passed back down 
the stream, having fished up-stream from above 
this stretch of water and taken no trout nor 
taken a rise. The mountain comes right down to 
the brink of the stream, and the bank rock 
shelving off into the water dark and. rather quiet 
next to the rocks, but current midstream, a long 
pool and next to the rocks. The sun does not 
reach this water till up in the day. So this time 
I decided I would give this water a fair show 
and fish it up-stream. It was careful work, first 
because I did not want to step into a pot-hole 
or sink waist-deep in sand and get stuck there 
alone, and too, because I did not wish to dis¬ 
turb the water and frighten any fish that may 
be hid away by the rocks. When eighty yards 
and over below I saw that a trout took some¬ 
thing on the water and this made me doubly care¬ 
ful. When within casting reach of the lower 
stretch of the pool, I cast out until little by little 
my line was long enough, by drawing it off, the 
reel with my left hand, knowing if a trout was 
there he was watching my flies as they sailed 
over the water without dropping on it. I do this 
on likely water and get good results by so doing. 
I finally let the flies settle and float back towards 
me, taking in the slack with my left hand. And 
the first drop on the water brought a 9 inch 
trout to creel. I kept him from going up to 
disturb others and eased myself a little further 
and again the same method and a 13 inch trout 
was the result, and he did put up a noble fight 
without avail. Then another shift up so as to 
reach with some thirty feet of line the extreme 
upper end and a 12 inch trout was the result. 
As a rule up-stream for good trout is my usual 
experience and here I demonstrated it. 
I should like to add that most of the trout I 
killed that day were on a fly I tied of a new 
pattern, the body being of the long silky hair of 
a collie dog’s tail. Ernest L. Ewbank. 
THE CHANCES OF GOOD SPORT IN 
NEBRASKA. 
By Sandy Griswold. 
NEW YORK reader of the Forest and 
Stream writes me to know about our open 
quail season out here and what the pros¬ 
pects are for a good ten days’ shoot this fall, and 
something about our quail generally. In reply, 
I would say, that we have a sort of an apology 
for an open season on quail in this state,—the 
first two weeks in November, which means almost 
no open season at all, and for one we would 
just as leave see the bird protected perpetually. 
And yet, at that, there is much that is untenable 
in the sentiment over this bird as well as the 
laws protecting him. While a grand bird and 
one of large economic value, it is not the sports¬ 
men who decimate his ranks in this state, nor 
the hawks, nor the owls, nor minks, coyotes, or 
weasels, either, but the winter weather. Where 
the gunner gets one bird, the cold and snows get 
their thousands. Primarily this is not a quail 
state, and never was. as I (have observed many 
times, but will become one, I think with the en¬ 
forcement of good laws, and the thicker settle¬ 
ment of the country. The wind breaks, or arti- 
fical groves, that are springing up so plentifully 
all over the state of Nebraska are rapidly making 
fine cover for the quail, and in the course of a 
few more years, the state, I feel, will be one of 
the most favored habitats of this royal little 
game bird there is in the coufftry. 
With the exception of an occasional intensely 
cold winter, like that of last year, during the past 
fifteen years the birds have multiplied in a won¬ 
derful manner, and with a continuation of this 
thrift Nebraska will surely become one of the 
best quail states in the union, but it will be hard, 
on account of our independable winters, to keep 
it so, if sufficient cover is not forthcoming. 
The birds love to hang about the outskirts of 
our artificial groves, where the grass grows tall 
and much of the shrubbery holds it leaves until 
late in the winter. When flushed, the whole bevy 
turns around and makes for the center of the 
grove, where the grass is the tallest and the 
bushes thickest. But even here there is a fair 
field for the gunner. The trees are not numerous 
enough to hamper the shooter in the least, and 
the undergrowth is too stunted to interfere with 
his view ahead. Hence the shooting is just about 
as satisfactory as it would be in the open, and yet 
there are plenty of opportunities offered to test 
the cleverness of the best shot living. Most of 
my readers, of course, are familiar with the 
sport, but there are many who are not fully 
educated and will not be until they endeavor to 
connect their line of sight over the gun with a 
rosewood flash through a maze of almost the 
same color. Vastly is the difficulty increased by 
the downward curve of the line when the bird 
comes curling down over or through the tops 
of the low, thin box alders and darts through 
the opening below. At other times it shoots 
straight upward long enough to lead you to think 
you have caught its direction, and then, having 
cleared the top of the brush, it scurries away on a 
horizontal line that has gone glimmering among 
the dream of interlacing tendrils and fluttering 
brown leaves before you can come anywhere near 
covering it. But you will fare better among the 
dead leaves and grass on the floor of the grove, 
where your bird lies hiding scarcely a foot from 
the nose of your dog. 
But be as quick as you can. the little whirring 
blot of brown often fades into the russet canopy 
before you can possibly shift your gun upon it, 
but oftener you get a clean, open chance and are 
tolerably certain of making a kill. Again the 
bird curls back over both you and dog in the 
most exasperating way, and on such occasions 
only the eye of faith can aid you, and there 
must be no dust in that, either. In this grove 
shooting, however, a double is a rare achievement 
indeed, unless made on the first flush, when the 
birds are going straight before you, and you have 
the pick of the whole bunch. Where the birds 
scatter and the dog is standing singles, you are 
never disappointed if you drop but one out of the 
brace that may unexpectedly take wing. 
However, I would say to my New York friend, 
that the prospects are fairly good this fall, es¬ 
pecially in the wild and tangly canyons up along 
the Niobrara, where there are always quail if 
they are anywhere. Chicken, too, are very plenti¬ 
ful in this particular section of the state. 
