248 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Feb. 16, 1907. 
THE TOP RAIL. 
“A great many persons claim the wolf is as 
cunning as the fox,” said Mr. A. J. MacLeod. 
Hudson’s Bay factor at Flying Post, ‘‘but he 
is not; he is merely cowardly. I had an argu¬ 
ment with a gentleman on the train, on my way 
to New York, he claiming that the wolf ap¬ 
proaches and in some respects equals the fox 
in shrewdness and cunning. There was one old 
fox near the post that I had tried in every way 
to catch, but always failed.” 
Mr. MacLeod chuckled heartily, and I fancy 
this was over the memory of the final taking off 
of Bre’r Fox, since he employed the past tense 
in referring to that sly old rascal. Then he 
went on to say that he tried hiding a baitless 
trap in the snow near the baited one, covering 
the second and even a third trap with leaves, 
etc., until he, exasperated, was almost at his 
wits ends, for all of these the fox religiously 
avoided. At last Mr. MacLeod tried another 
experiment, placing the tempting bait on the 
ground with an empty trap, carefully set, just 
over it. In another place he set a second trap 
in the same way, and with impatience waited 
the coming of another day. The fox visited both 
traps during the night, and in each case he be¬ 
gan to dig in the snow some two feet away 
from the trap, approaching it so that at the last 
the bait fell into the cutting, leaving the trap 
across its end, and he backed out in good order. 
“I never fully appreciated split bamboo as a 
material for fishing rods,” said an angler who 
lives on the St. Lawrence during the warm sea¬ 
son, “until last fall. On my way home on the 
train I had no trouble in stowing my personal 
belongings under the berth in the sleeping car, 
but the case containing my two bait-casting rods 
was too long to stow away. I could not leave 
it in the smoking compartment because it was 
occupied—the train being crowded-—so I left the 
case in the angle of the passageway around this 
room. Next morning in passing I noticed that 
the case sagged in the middle, and found the 
grooved wood form broken in the center, as 
though a sudden lurch of the car had caused 
some one to lean too heavily against it. I 
hardly dared look at the rods, so certain was I 
that both were smashed, and held my breath 
while taking them out of the canvas case. The 
pine form came out in two pieces, but neither 
rod was injured in the least; not even the varnish 
was scratched. Imagine the terrific strain these 
slender tips went through!” 
* 
“ 1 here is a way of loading shells for a choke 
bore so that it will give a pattern similar to 
a cylinder bore,” said a young enthusiast, “and 
it don’t call for ‘spreaders,’ either.” 
"Yes, I know.” cut in a veteran top rail 
orator. “We all know about that. But I bet 
you don t know how to load a gun so it will 
turn a live wild gobbler into roast turkey and 
cranberry sauce. You don’t believe me! Well, 
I can take you to a man who tried it—at least 
he loaded for roast turkey and cranberry sauce. 
Got the idea himself and didn’t let anybody in 
on it. He just took an old Queen Anne musket, 
put in five fingers of powder and wadded it 
down hard with pieces from the lining of his old 
coat, and then he poured in a tumblerful of nice, 
hard, red cranberries, and wadded them there 
ever so carefully. 
“Well, turkeys were gone to nesting that 
morning, and so this fellow come along back. 
He saw a stray yellow dog trying to rustle a 
little grub. ‘I’ll let him have my cranberries 
right off the fire,’ says the man, and he fired at 
the stray dog. 
“Now, if you don’t believe me, I can show 
you the gun, so you can see what a funny look¬ 
ing thing an old musket is after it has exploded 
at the breech and blown a man’s two hands off. 
And if you don’t believe it then, you can see 
for yourself that all he's got left in the shape of 
hands is one thumb. And he’s got the yellow 
dog, too, as fat and lazy and well satisfied a dog 
as you’ll ever see. Why, you can load a gun so 
it will do anything.” 
The “exchange” advertisements in the daily 
newspapers are not always wanting in humor. 
Here is one for example: An advertiser who 
has a large burglar-proof safe, but no use for 
it, wishes to exchange it for a salt-water fishing 
outfit, and a dentist who is short on guns, but 
apparently long on time, is willing to do pro¬ 
fessional work in exchange for a good “ham¬ 
merless breechloader.” 
Speaking of this term, it is singular how long 
the custom of calling guns breechloaders to dis¬ 
tinguish them from the older type has held out. 
Twenty-five years ago, when one referred to a 
gun, he might have used the term with good 
reason, for the old type was not so uncommon 
that a mistake might not have been made, but 
to-day a muzzleloader is in reality a curiosity 
to the younger sportsman, and if a middle-aged 
man tells his young friends that he shot his first 
chipmunk with a flintlock they look upon him 
with almost as much awe as they do in the case 
of one who is credited with having shot bison. 
There are places where old Kentucky rifles are 
common to-day. I have talked with men con¬ 
gregated together to shoot for quarters of beef, 
not one of whom has any faith in what he calls 
breechloaders. Years will go by ere these men 
hang their old gaspipes on the ancient hooks 
above their fireplaces and take to tlie fixed 
metallic cartridge. Thus it is that the manu¬ 
facture of Kentucky rifles goes on apace. The 
slender stocks, the side lock and nipple, the 
hickory loading rod—all are fashioned . as of 
yore, but the barrels are different. It may be 
that a few' local gunsmiths may now and then 
turn out a barrel like the old-timers, but modern 
machines work rapidly which those of other 
days did not, and with, the reduced prices on 
muzzleloaders, a gunsmith could not pay ex¬ 
penses on a rifle turned out in the old way. 
It 
“These Mackinaw coats are all right for keep¬ 
ing out the wet,” said a deer hunter, “but they 
don't fit. Why, this coat is so loose about the 
shoulders that it bothers me when I throw up 
my rifle to shoot. And yet it is my size and 
there wasn’t any other that fitted me any better. 
It’s all right every other way, but it’s too loose 
around the chest.” * 
“You shouldn’t mind that,” observed the 
guide. “It’s made that way so it will fit all right 
when you get your big buck and want to have 
yourself photographed along with him.” 
* 
An item from Greenwood Lake (N. J.) ap¬ 
peared in a New York morning paper. The 
“special correspondent” stated that a certain 
fisherman, while trolling on the lake that same 
morning, hooked and landed a water-logged 
wallet which was found to contain some seventy 
odd dollars, together with a wedding ring and 
a lady’s diamond ring appraised at $250. 
I read back to make sure that the catch was 
made in a manner allowable by the New Jersey 
game and fish laws. Yes, there it was, trolling. 
I wrote to a guide I know at Greenwood Laket 
“How thick is the ice on the lake?” 
“Eighteen inches,” he answered; “the clearest, 
blackest ice you ever saw. Pickerel are biting 
fine. Come up and get a mess.” 
“Not interested in ice fishing for pickerel. 
Will come Saturday if you can take me out 
trolling for pocket-books,” I replied. 
George wrote in reply: “The fool that wrote 
that pocket-book story cut forty holes in a cove 
where there never ain’t been any pickerel and 
used pork rind for bait. He was long on 
sarcasm and short on fish when he got back to 
the hotel. All he got was a pair of frozen ears. 
If you come, bring a pail of salt-water killies— 
the pickerel take them when they won’t take 
nothing else.” 
Let me propound a piscatorial query while in 
this season of angling inactivity the “ardent ad¬ 
vocate of the artificial lure” reposes restfully 
in his armchair before the imitation log fire and 
dreams of other days. It is this: Why is it 
that reading an angling yarn recalls to “mind 
many tender recollections of similar waters where 
the finny denizens of the placid pools rise to 
take the gaudy artificial fly?” It being borrowed, 
I quote part of the above. 
If any one of my friends has been present at 
department store bargain sales, and is therefore 
in possession of a $1.98 Civil War carbine, he 
may be cheered by the news that the Govern¬ 
ment of Roumania wants 240,000 small arms and 
has advertised the fact extensively enough to 
attract the attention of second hand dealers from 
the Bowery to the Pacific. Just send specifica¬ 
tions to Inspectoratul Militar General Scolar, 
Bucharest, Roumania, and state what you are 
willing to accept in trade in case the general 
does not wish to pay cash. 
Frank Schablowsky must have been born under 
an unlucky star, for when he caught a fish the 
other day from the deck of the Angler, down off 
Sandy Hook, it surprised him so much that he 
fell overboard. The captain sent men to pick 
him up, and they found him still clinging to his 
rod, not so much because it was a rod as that 
it was better than nothing at all. And on his 
hook was a codfish that was about the smallest 
one taken in a long while. 
Grizzly King. 
