FOREST AND STREAM. 
[March 2 , 1907. 
328 
THE TOP RAIL. 
A friend sends me the following information 
about the popularity of setter dogs in the Middle 
West: 
“The rabbit season is practically over here in 
the Central West. Never before have there been so 
many gunners out after the little cottontail. 
Beagles have had a great winter of it. Only 
two heavy snow storms have served to bar the 
running of these short-legged and music-tongued 
little fellows. Breeders of beagles are increas¬ 
ing in number every year. Sections that never 
knew them previously are now devotees of the 
sport of following them. And mentioning beagles 
calls to mind that breeders of shooting dogs are 
now attaining a quality in the western produc¬ 
tion that has never been seen before. Kennels 
are growing in size and their owners are report¬ 
ing splendid sales. Setters seem to be the 
leaders, for prairie shooting means hard running 
and none too many birds. Out in the chicken 
country the past fall I saw but three pointers to 
ten times as many setters.” 
* 
A correspondent in the hills of South Dakota, 
where the chickens are thickest, writes me that 
the winters of three years past have been very 
favorable to the feeding of the birds. He de¬ 
clares that they have not gone down all winter 
into the more thoroughly tilled farming sections. 
The corn fields and stubble of the farming lands 
close to the breeding places have been ample to 
supply them with all they need to eat. We may 
yet have something of a late winter blizzard 
for at this writing. Feb. 13, the sun is out, snow 
is gone and the air feels like spring. A few 
lenient winters mean earlier nesting seasons and 
a larger number of matings. The work of war¬ 
dens and sportsmen will keep the sooner down 
and game will increase. The chicken season is 
open too long in some localities and yet they 
seem to thrive. 
1 he ease—I might almost say the grace—with 
which Italians and Sicilians carry arms is won¬ 
derful. When a number of them are arrested 
and searched, every conceivable weapon that can 
be tucked away under their clothes is brought to 
light, and often the collection is almost complete 
enough to stock a small pawnshop. But while 
the witnesses of a search of this sort need not 
be astonished if a few dozen knives and re¬ 
volvers are disclosed, it is possible to exaggerate 
even in this, as a Pittsburg reporter did the 
other day when he stated that two wagonloads 
of weapons were taken from twenty-five Italians 
who were brought into jail to cool their natur¬ 
ally warm blood. And it was cold in Pennsyl¬ 
vania, too, at that time. 
* 
As society is now organized, every man has 
a large number of fair-weather friends in addi¬ 
tion to the few who are good and true. Still, 
even at that, there are various degrees of fair- 
weather friendship. Some friends of this kind 
will remain steadfast if they apprehend no harm 
to pocket or purse, or no bodily discomfort. In 
the hunting field, the best opportunities for test¬ 
ing the true or false friend frequently occur. If 
a bird rises so that he flies toward a friend of 
the shooter, if said friend strenuously objects to 
the flight of shot taking his direction, he can 
be set down as a man who is hopelessly selfish, 
who cares nothing for his friend’s pleasure, and 
who is ignorant of the best modern sportsman¬ 
ship, or who knowing it, violates wantonly its 
tenets. However, encouraging advancement here 
and there is being made in that which is 
genuinely altruistic, as the following clipping, 
taken from a local paper of Albany, Ga., will 
pleasingly show : 
“A large number of people attended a dove 
shoot on the plantation of Mr. A. P. Vason, 
northwest of the city, recently, and several of 
them were more or less injured by stray shot. 
One gentleman was struck on the ear, while 
others w:re struck in different parts of the body. 
Mr. Rawlins McKinney caught a shot in the 
flesh of a thumb, but by dexterous carving with 
a pocketknife he forced the pellet out. Mr. 
LeRoy Brown was struck just below the eye, the 
shot passing into the flesh. A score or more of 
the hunters are rubbing sore thighs and shins 
that were stung by the shot that were flying 
promiscuously through the air. All the wounded 
men have to be thankful that they were not 
struck in the eye or in some other tender spot.” 
* 
In the river bottoms of Mississippi, recently 
overflowed, the deer, compelled to seek safety 
on the small ridges, have been butchered by 
market hunters who are ever alert and eager to 
take advantage of the helplessness of game, par¬ 
ticularly when the backwaters enable them to 
hunt and carry away the. meat in their pirogues. 
For these men are not fond of the back-breaking- 
work of carrying their deer overland, even if 
they were sufficiently energetic to hunt for it on 
foot. 
This is the season when every sportsman who 
can go over his favorite shooting grounds now 
and then should take note of the condition of 
the quail, and if it seems advisable leave food 
for them. A little forethought in this, as in 
other matters, will bring satisfactory returns in 
lusty birds next autumn. 
K 
Recently, in running through some old files 
of Forest and Stream, I came across many in¬ 
cidents of dog and gun which threw bright side 
lights on the tenets and usages of sportsmanship 
of the past. In a volume of 1882—now about a 
quarter of a century ago—one editorial note had 
to do with the misfortune of a man whose sanity 
was under consideration by a commission de 
lunatico inquirendo; and one important fact, relied 
upon as strong evidence of mental chaos, was 
that he had paid the immense sum of $50 for a 
deg. At the present day, a man who had the 
audacity to 1 offer such a small sum for a good 
dog would be adjudged by acclamation as of un¬ 
sound mind, with vicious tendencies. In another 
item, the case of an Arkansas duck shooter was 
considered. He had, in a pot-shot at ducks, killed 
15, and wounded 35 more which escaped. This, 
of course, was properly denounced by Forest 
and Stream ; but there was a host of duck 
shooters at that day who considered such 
slaughter as being on the highest pinnacle of 
good sportsmanship. At the present day, such 
a deed, in many States, would be the preliminary 
to a heavy fine, with the penitentiary looming 
portentously near. We may thus fecilitate 
ourselves on onr great advance in sportsmanship 
of to-day. Our sportsmanship at the present 
day may not be flawless, but compared to that 
O'f past years it is of snowy purity. 
“Do you know of a dead sure way to start a 
good fire with your last match?” asked a sports¬ 
man of his guide. 
“Not a dead sure way, exactly,” answered the 
guide. “But I know a way that I’d be willing 
to count on.” 
“No, but a dead sure way,” persisted the 
sportsman; a dead sure way to start a fire with 
your last match.” 
“Well,” inquired the guide, flaring up, “what 
is a dead sure way to start a fire with your last 
match? that’s what I’d like to know.” 
“Why—let me see—why, you put some powder 
on a dry piece of birch bark and start it that 
way.” 
“But suppose you ain’t got any birch bark nor 
any powder. How’d you start that fire with 
your last match?” demanded the guide, now 
grown angry. 
“Say, what would I be doing starting a fire?” 
countered the sportsman. “What would I be 
starting a fire for? Just tell me that, will you? 
What does a man pay a guide $3 a day for?” 
“What for! Why, to take along plenty of 
matches. Who’d expect anybody but a man 
from the city to go rambling around in the bush 
with only one match?” 
And after the dust had settled, it was found 
that the bag containing the expedition’s supply 
of matches had been lost somewhere on the last 
portage. 
The hill introduced in the New York Legisla¬ 
ture by Assemblyman Glynn, of Rochester is to 
amend the present law relating to what may not 
be done on Sunday by striking out the word 
“fishing,” so that, should the amendment be 
passed, fishing on Sunday will not be a violation 
of the State law. At present it is enforced in 
one county and not in another. It is the general 
belief that fishing is not a boisterous or noisy 
pastime, therefore if any person wishes to pass 
his one leisure day on the water, why object? 
It is not anticipated that Mr. Glynn’s bill will 
be opposed. 
A correspondent has shipped the following 
clipping to me by freight, with the terse com¬ 
ment “where the truth is unknown.” It was 
given to the press by a humor-loving citizen of 
Cumberland, Md.: 
“John Savage, a miner in the Enterprise mine, 
at Buck Hill, a suburb of Lonaconing, this 
county, was very much astonished recently, he 
says, when, in breaking a lump of coal, a live 
frog jumped out of it and hopped around his 
feet. 
“Savage says the hole in the lump in which 
the animal may have snoozed for centuries was 
not large enough to allow any room for exercise. 
Many other miners say they saw the discovery. 
The frog measured 6 l / 2 inches. It lived for 
some time after it was released.” 
Grizzly King. 
