970 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[June 22, 1907. 
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DIAGRA*M SHOWING THE HALFBREED AND INDIAN METHOD OF HUNTING WHITETAIL DEER. 
was finally struck, and before long we were 
rumbling on our way. 
Arrived at Poplar River we found it frozen 
over, but our Indian was afraid to risk his team 
on the new ice, so there was nothing for it but 
to carry our tilings across and make the rest of 
our way on foot. At the agency Mr. Patch, 
the storekeeper, very kindly allowed us the use 
of a horse and wagon to bring in our outfit and 
we managed to get ourselves and belongings 
safely housed before dark at Mr. Dan Mitchell’s 
hotel. Here we were comfortable and enjoyed 
a good supper, eating so ravenously that we 
should have blushed for shame had it not been 
for the unostentatious manner in which Dick, 
the cook, kept filling our plates and coffee cups. 
He had had a long experience as officers’ mess 
cook in the old campaigning days and had seen 
hungry men before. He gave a graphic account 
of how Gall came in, in January, 1881, camped 
in the willows opposite the agency, and after a 
perfunctory show of resistance surrendered to 
Major Ilges. 
We both felt a little chagrined at what we 
considered an ignominious finish of our boating 
trip—the last mile of it on foot—but when, next' 
morning, a stranger came in and reported that 
he had crossed the river on the ice we consoled 
ourselves with the thought that we had not given 
up our travel by boat until the ice forced us to 
do so. We even recalled with satisfaction, hav¬ 
ing seen, a week or so earlier, the boat of our 
former heroes, the “Bismarck Pioneers,” tied 
to the bank and dismantled, and flattered our¬ 
selves-that ours had been the last boating party 
of the season. 
Poplar River is evidently, a translation of the 
Riviere aux Trembles, Quaking Asp (Aspen) 
River, of the French, though the latter name is 
now applied only to the most easterly branch 
of it. Lewis and Clark named it the Porcupine 
River. The French name is a correct translation 
of the Sioux, or Assinniboin, Wag-cinca wakpa, 
so that as there are at lea-st three kinds of poplar 
in this region within the distance we traveled, 
the present English name is not very distinc¬ 
tive. 
Mr. Tyler left for Idaho on the evening train, 
while I stayed on a few days longer to see some 
of the Indians and brought our upper Missouri 
trip to what seemed a fitting close by attending 
the wedding of a great granddaughter of David 
D. Mitchell, a partner of the American Fur Com¬ 
pany, with whom, seventy-three years before, 
Maximilian and Bodmer had traversed' this same 
stretch of river. 
1902 there were plenty of sheep, while buffalo 
were killed along the southern edge of the bad¬ 
lands country as late as 1896. Some say the 
deer have died of disease. This, no doubt, is 
to some extent true. We saw three dead deer, 
all whitetails, and it is said that the epidemic 
is confined to that species. Others attribute the 
destruction to the Indians and the breeds, and 
still others to the large parties of whites that 
come from the railroad towns such as Glasgow, 
and drive the timbered points in parties of 
twenty to thirty, and the Indians also employed 
these tactics to some extent. The timbered bot¬ 
toms are so limited in area that the deer are 
forced, by this method, to leave the cover, and 
with good shots posted at the openings and run¬ 
ways this system is very destructive. 
They say that five years ago, when these drives 
took pHce, the deer could be seen “jumping in 
all directions-,” they were so plentiful, and that 
the falling off'in numbers has come since that 
time. 
' Now, the Indians have always been in this 
country, and it is a well known fact that of late 
years, and particularly on the Fort Peck Reser¬ 
vation, they have found it difficult to get passes. 
Then, too, the deer have probably always had 
their diseases and epidemics, so I should say 
that their rapid extinction is due to the great 
number of .hunters who- have slaughtered them 
by destructive methods and to the almost total 
absence of any true sentiment in favor of game 
protection on the part of the majority of he. 
citizens. Sheep, deer and beaver, all are going 
Those who recall the interesting “Floating on 
the Missouri,” . by Appekunny,. published in 
Forest and Stream in 1902, will realize to what 
an extent the game has been decimated since 
that day. There is to-day no such array of game 
a§ he describes, though we were told that only 
five years ago there were a good many deer, and 
I have it from another reliable source that in 
the same way, and unless there is a marked 
change in the near future I fail to- see how the 
game can hold out much longer. 
While at Poplar I one day visited an intelli¬ 
gent halfbreed who had just killed a large 
whitetail buck within four or five miles of the 
agency. His method was to hunt through the 
willows on a gentle horse, and having found 
the fresh track of a buck to start off in a semi¬ 
circle, to the right of the direction the animal 
had taken, riding at a walk until he had once 
more come upon the track or passed around in 
front of the deer. If the former, the semi-cir¬ 
cular maneuver would be repeated, as often as 
necessary, until he found he had gotten beyond 
where the deer had stopped. Then the hunter 
would complete the circle, and if he did not 
cross the track leading out he would know he 
had ridden completely round the deer and would 
continue in smaller and smaller circles, until 
he finally saw his game and. got a favorable 
chance to shoot it. The horse must not be 
allowed to stop, but must be kept on a slow 
walk, the theory being that the deer supposes 
him to be merely walking by, and as loose stock 
are familiar objects in the timber, they cause 
no alarm; in fact, this manner of hunting seems 
to be a rather common one with the Indians. 
They say you can do the same thing on foot, 
but “you must keep agoing; you must not stop.” 
White hunters often act upon a modification of 
this principle, but it hardly seems possible that 
a man could walk several times round a deer if 
there was any air stirring. In his “Natural His¬ 
tory,” Pliny, the elder, refers to the hyena in 
these words: “It is said * * * that by certain 
magical influences it can render any animal 
immovable around which it has walked three 
times,” and I should think that any man who 
could walk three times around a whitetail buck 
might be able to get him. 
A rather surprising fact, and one which I be¬ 
lieve has been pretty generally ignored, is that 
moose were not uncommon at one time near the 
mouth of Milk River, though this is a country 
of treeless plains, except for the scantily wooded 
river bottoms, and far from anything that could 
properly be called a timbered regio.n. (See 
Maximilian, French edition, 1841, p. 127.) 
The Old Guard. 
I am proud that I can answer “Here” to the 
roll call for the Old Guard—one of the very 
oldest. I received my first number of Forest 
and Stream in August, 1874. More than 1,700 
numbers of the paper have been issued since 
then. More than 20,000 pages, every one of 
which contains matter of interest, entertainment, 
amusement and information pertaining to. the 
subjects of which it treats. There is not a man 
who has been a reader of the paper who has not 
been made a better sportsman, better citizen, and 
a man of broader views toward his fellow men 
by the clean teachings which have always filled 
its pages. Many of us have almost unconsciously 
been taught the great lesson that no man has 
any right to destroy or take more than his share 
of anything that might contribute to the needs 
or to the pleasures of his fellow men. 
The paper has educated thousands of its 
readers into the class of nature lovers, thus open¬ 
ing to them a new field of -innocent enjoyment. 
Thousands of articles that have appeared in its 
pages are too valuable to be lost and should be 
preserved in book form, and I hope some day 
to see four large volumes entitled, “Good Things 
From Forest and Stream, Vol. 1.—The Sports¬ 
man Tourist”; “Good Things From Forest and 
Stream, Vol. 2.—Natural History”; “Good Things 
From Forest and Stream, Vol. 3.—Game Bag 
and Gun”; and “Good Things From Forest and 
Stream, Vol. 4.—Sea and River Fishing.” There 
is enough good matter to make a thousand pages 
for each volume. We will want it to read when 
all our enjoyments have to be those of retro¬ 
spection. We want it to hand to our children 
and to our grandchildren. It will make a book 
that will last for a hundred years. 
O. H. Hampton. 
