1242 
knows ? One thing I can bear witness to: when 
properly cooked they are as good as tenderloin 
of sole. Also what a person does not know 
won’t hurt him. The other buyer, it is said, has 
been making experiments for the Fisheries Com¬ 
mission, or perhaps Government and State were 
working together with a view of utilizing if 
possible the millions of pounds of shark flesh 
wasted every year. Not only that but by open¬ 
ing a market and so causing a decrease in their 
number, to save annually the billions of pounds 
of other fish that sharks feed on. Even the 
meanest of the shark family destroys daily near¬ 
ly its own weight in shrimps and fish. With 
sharks so numerous that there is profit in catch¬ 
ing them at a cent each, what must the total of 
their depredations amount to? It cannot be fig¬ 
ured. It is not even possible to estimate the 
quantity. 
There is some demand now for shark skins 
for use as emery paper—a case of the substitute 
being better than the original. Tanned, the skins 
make most excellent leather which is waterproof 
and nearly as durable as alligator hide. I do not 
see why the beautifully marked skins of leop- 
A MONG the various odd jobs being performed 
by the United States Government is the rid¬ 
ding of different portions of the country 
of certain animals whose depredations are in¬ 
jurious to the farmer. Field mice, ground squir¬ 
rels, prairie dogs, jack rabbits, coyotes and 
wolves are all being looked after in one place 
or another, with varying degrees of success. 
A division of the Bureau of Biological Survey 
of the Department of Agriculture has for its 
duty the destruction of noxious animals, and 
maintains in the field a large force of men con¬ 
stantly engaged in this work. It is my impres¬ 
sion that the last Agricultural Appropriation 
Bill provided $250,000 or $300,000 to be devoted 
to such protective effort, which is under the 
charge of Dr. A. K. Fisher, one of the Division 
heads of the Bureau, who has systematized the 
work so that it is very effective, and accomp¬ 
lishes very evident results. 
A large part of the work is directed against 
those rodents that destroy the ranchman’s grow¬ 
ing crops, or the grass on which the cowman’s 
herds should feed. This can be carried on ef¬ 
fectively for animals that hibernate only at cer¬ 
tain seasons of the year. At other seasons, at¬ 
tacks are made on the camps of the jack rabbits, 
and vast numbers of them are slaughtered. It 
has thus become necessary that man, who killed 
off the hawks, owls, coyotes, bobcats, and badg¬ 
ers, which are the natural enemies of the harm¬ 
ful rodents, should now come to the front and 
himself at considerable cost fight the species, 
doing the work that their natural enemies would 
have performed more effectively and cheaply if 
man had known enough to allow them to do it 
without interference. 
Coyotes are notorious for their injury to 
herds, by killing sheep, calves, and an occasional 
colt. Sometimes they also spread disease, as in 
the case of the epidemic of rabies which for a 
year past has involved certain territory in North¬ 
ern California, Nevada and Utah. 
The big wolves are not now very plentiful, 
but there are still enough of them to cause much 
loss, and the destruction caused on a cattle 
range by a family of wolves will amount to 
thousands of dollars annually. 
FOREST AND STREAM 
ard sharks should not make as handsome belts 
as snake skins. Sold under the name of “sha¬ 
green,” shark skins for years have been used as 
covering for sword hilts, jewel boxes and card 
cases while many a boss butcher has his best 
knife made so it will not slip, by a handle cov¬ 
ered with this same shagreen. 
With the Fisheries Bureau saying in its bul¬ 
letins, “Sharks are fine eating, go to it”; with 
sharks’ livers in demand for their oil, which is 
as good as that of the cod; with commerce de¬ 
manding more of their skins to be made into 
shagreen and the Chinese bidding high for their 
fins, it looks as if the days of safety for the 
wolves of the sea are numbered and that soon 
they must hustle to keep out of danger a lot 
more than now. 
Whoever would have thought that war in Eu¬ 
rope and preparedness ip America would reach 
out to threaten the sharks of the ocean? Yet 
such is the case and lucky the sharks who are 
able to wear their own skins undisturbed, in¬ 
stead of having them form part of the weapons 
of war in use on the battlefields of the world. 
Strange, isn’t it? 
I recently traveled for some weeks through a 
country where many horses and cattle range, and 
every night I heard the coyotes yelling from the 
hills about our camps. I did not, however, see 
a single one. What interested me much more 
than the coyotes was the howl of a wolf which 
I heard one night—the first wolf I have heard 
in several years. That there are wolves in the 
country I was in is well known, though how 
many there are no one has any idea. On the 
other hand, even a very few wolves, if left 
alone for a little while, will rapidly increase, and 
an example of this was shown in an incident of 
which a Cheyenne Indian told me as having hap¬ 
pened not long before. The young man is named 
George Braided. He talks good English, is in¬ 
dustrious, has a good ranch and a number of 
horses and some cattle. He is a good cowhand 
and formerly worked on the roundup. 
George told me that one day last spring he had 
earned $100, by killing wolves. On that day 
he killed two old ones and ten pups. He had 
been watching for the wolves for some time, fol¬ 
lowing their tracks and looking for them from 
the hills, and had finally located the den. At 
what seemed to him the proper time, he started 
out to make his killing. One of the old ones he 
shot with his rifle early in the day, and later 
found the other old one and killed it. Then he 
went to the den, which was located in a deep 
hole dug out under a ledge of rock. He could 
tell that the pups were there, and, of course, he 
knew that by this time—in May—they were 
pretty well grown. His description seemed to 
show that they were about as large as six 
months old setter pups, and, of course, they were 
pretty strong. To get at them, it was necessary 
for him to crawl into the den and get his hands 
on them. Luckily the hole was large enough so 
that he could get back to where they were. He 
started in, and one may imagine that the mass of 
ten pups of this size crowded together at the 
end of a hole would be more or less confusing. 
However, he went at it in systematic fashion and 
got hold of one pup after the other and knocked 
each on the head, until finally he had them all. 
The pups were pretty desperate, and he was al¬ 
most bitten on two occasions, but at last his job 
was done and he gathered together his results 
—two old ones and ten young. For each of the 
old ones he received $10, and for the pups $3 
apiece. This gave him $50, and the added boun¬ 
ties from the cattlemen, which he had not yet 
received, would make up the hundred dollars. 
Three or four days before I saw him he had 
killed another wolf—with a rope. He was rid¬ 
ing over the divide and the wolf jumped up out 
of a little clump of brush and ran off over the 
smooth, rolling prairie. George had no gun, but 
he greatly wanted the wolf and happily his horse 
was a good one. He took down his rope and 
chased the beast, and after a cast or two caught 
it about the neck. The wolf tried to bite the 
rope, but he dragged it and soon choked it to 
death. He told me that he believed that this was 
a young, but half-grown, wolf. What its sex was 
he did not notice. George has thus made for 
himself a reputation as a wolf hunter in his im¬ 
mediate neighborhood, and he is now keeping 
one or more Scotch staghounds for a friend, 
which he expects to train on wolves. 
In certain portions of the West the loss to the 
cattlemen from the depredations of wolves and 
coyotes has been and still is very serious, and 
the loss to big game in certain of the national 
parks, notably the Yellowstone Park, is import¬ 
ant. To absolutely exterminate wolves and coy¬ 
otes from a very sparsely settled country, where 
food is abundant, is almost impossible. Some 
people are quite successful in their efforts to de¬ 
stroy wolves, while others never seem able to 
catch one. 
Two hunters employed last winter in the Yel¬ 
lowstone Park, and recommended, I understand, 
by Vernon Bailey, of the Biological Survey, are 
said to have been very successful; so also are 
two men who were killing wolves and coyotes 
on the Crow Reservation and the Cheyenne Res¬ 
ervation, in Montana; but notwithstanding all 
this the wolves seem to hold their own. 
G. B. G. 
IS MOOSE CALLING SPORTSMANLIKE? 
Editor Forest and Stream : 
We will soon be reading of the experiences 
of sportsmen who are lucky enough to be able 
to go moose hunting, and no doubt the accounts 
will be flavored with descriptions of the skill 
of their guides in calling moose within shooting 
distance. 
Now, I have hunted moose myself for a num¬ 
ber of years, and have been fairly successful, 
but as the result of my own experience, I have 
arrived at the conclusion that calling moose is 
not really sport. It shows marvelous skill on 
the part of the guide, and is an accomplishment 
that commands admiration; but how about the 
man for whom the calling is done, and who does 
nothing but lie in ambush to assassinate the 
lordly monarch of the woods when he comes 
unsuspectingly within short range? If a man 
calls his own moose, well and good. He de¬ 
serves his reward. But the other fellow has 
nothing particular to boast over. 
Probably I will be classed as a crank, but for 
one I would like to see this topic taken up by 
real moose hunters and discussed from all stand¬ 
points. New Brunswick. 
M. . L. Alexander has been appointed by the 
Governor of Louisiana to be the Commissioner 
of Conservation of the new department of con¬ 
servation created by the legislature of that state 
during its last session. The department of con¬ 
servation supersedes the former conservation 
commission of Louisiana, which was composed 
of three commissioners. 
KEEPING THE WOLVES DOWN 
THIS IS ONLY ONE OF THE 
GOVERNMENT’S MANY ODD JOBS 
