Feb. 26, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
339 
THE TOP RAIL. 
A correspondent in North Carolina sends the 
following: 
“Farmers who are properly approached will 
generally invite the stranger to hunt and will 
often go with him, but they resent, and very 
properly, too, cases of trespassing and rudeness 
at the same time. William Robbins, who has a 
farm near Raleigh, is one of them. The other 
day he heard shooting not far from his home, 
and going to the place found a stranger blaz¬ 
ing away at the birds. As Mr. Robbins ap¬ 
proached, the man took no notice of him, and 
paragraph from the Polk County Enterprise, a 
Texas paper: 
“The two Wiggins boys, Bill and Dick, came 
back to Knox, Polk county, on the 27th, from 
their annual hunt in the big thicket and report 
excellent luck; game more plentiful than in 
former years and the weather was ideal. They 
brought in two bears, an old one and a young 
one, both fat; two deer and a panther. The 
panther measured 7 feet 2 inches from tip to 
tip. The first thing they killed was the panther. 
They had three of Hiram Knox’s hounds, and 
they were so hot after the panther they made 
him take a tree, and when he turned for the 
tree he caught up seven or eight feet, and the 
big hound, Mitchell, caught him to pull him 
down; but he had such sharp claws he stuck 
to it and the hound dropped off and the panther 
went on up about twenty-five feet higher, when 
Bill with his .33 special—and no better piece of 
gun metal was ever carried on a hunter’s 
shoulder—cracked down on him and got him 
the first shot; but Dick killed the big bear, two 
further down the river Paul Daggy landed an 
eleven-pound steelhead salmon with ordinary 
light fishing tackle.” 
In time J. P. T. read it as he sat in his office 
in Boston suffering from his first attack of fish¬ 
ing fever. He oiled his typewriter and tested it 
in this wise: 
“Now, tread we a measure, 
And drop we a line.” 
Then, seeing that it would not balk at jingles, 
he rattled off the following: 
List to this tale of a fisherman bold, 
Who played to win, yet was fairly sold 
By a fish that swam with nary a fin, 
And with ne’er a scale to his hairy skin! 
(Poetic license demanded here 
To be strictly correct as to scale, I fear 
I’d have to admit that on me’s the beer. 
Since many a scale adorned the tail!) 
N’importe! Can you match this fisherman-feat? It 
Will surely be “going some,” to beat it. 
The first attack of “the fever” does not inspire 
me to write verses, but then, different fishers are 
House in which Kit Carson’s wife died, in 1867. Two miles south of Las 
Animas. Last year the walls fell into the Purgatoire River. 
Plouse in which Kit Carson Died at old Fort Lyon. 
when the intruder was asked if he had permis¬ 
sion to hunt he replied he did not need it. Mr. 
Robbins thereupon intimated that this was not 
a very genteel sort of thing to say, whereupon 
the man said he wanted it understood nobody 
could say he was not a gentleman and that he 
had a gun which he could use. Mr. Robbins 
drew his revolver and told the man to drop the 
gun, which he instantly did and stood tremb¬ 
ling. He begged Mr. Robbins not to prosecute 
him. but the latter said he never prosecuted 
people for such a thing as this, but took other 
steps, and then told the man he intended to give 
him a genteel kicking, which he did with a will, 
pointing to the road to Raleigh. The man asked 
if he could take his gun, to which Mr. Robbins 
replied he could, and that he was not afraid 
of him or the gun either. The fellow took the 
gun and lost no time in making for the road. 
Nobody here has been able to locate him, but 
the story got out through one of the farm ser¬ 
vants.” 
* * * 
The county editor seldom wastes time and 
space on flowery descriptive matter when a 
plain paragraph will serve as well. It is not 
often, however, that one of them says so much 
in so few words as is found in the following 
shots, though. The bear hit old Jip a clip 
that put her out of business, but think the hound 
will recover from the wounds. Had plenty of 
fish and game of all kinds. Bill is eighty-six 
and Dick is eighty-four, and never owned a 
pair of glasses and have no use for them to 
this day, and have never lost a tooth. Bill’s 
hair is just now beginning to turn gray. The 
boys do not think they will go again this fall, 
but are counting on a bigger hunt next year 
and have Hiram Knox go with them and take 
all his hounds. The big bloodhound, Mitchell, 
is a man trailer, but can run down any deer in 
three hours and cut his hamstrings.” 
* * * 
The following story was sent to the Seattle 
Post-Intelligencer by its Castle Rock corres¬ 
pondent : 
“While fishing for salmon trout in the Cow¬ 
litz River, across from this city, recently, Guy 
Beebe, a veteran fisherman, felt a strong pull 
and thought he had hooked a monster salmon. 
He let the catch run some distance before trying 
to check it, but finally succeeded in landing it, 
when to his surprise he found that instead of 
a salmon he had hooked a large muskrat. The 
rodent was killed and skinned, and the fisher¬ 
man went on with his fishing. A short distance 
affected differently, just as my neighbors regard 
my actions each according to his own way of 
reasoning. In one thing they all agree, however, 
and that is that the appointment of a commis¬ 
sion to examine me may save them all a good 
deal of trouble later on. All of which bears on 
the subject of the fishing fever. When the first 
attack is felt I overhaul my fishing tackle. If 
the next one.comes on while there is snow on 
the ground, I get out a favorite rod and prac¬ 
tice casting on the snow—hence the wise nods 
and the tapping of foreheads by the neighbors 
who are not fishermen. As to those who are, 
they content themselves with telling me how 
much further they can cast a fly than I can; but 
they do not offer to prove it. 
This practice casting on the snow is not a bad 
idea, after all. Of course fresh or soft wet 
snow is best, for if it be frozen or there is a 
crust, a good line will soon be ruined. One can¬ 
not cast far or well, for in recovering the for¬ 
ward cast there is no pull on the line, hence a 
high back cast is impossible, but it shows one 
how much his wrist needs exercise, and it is a 
pleasant pastime for one who loves a rod. On 
the other hand, bait-casting on the snow is ex¬ 
cellent practice. 
Grizzly King. 
