March 19, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
457 
and February, and in the following months are 
preparing for the nesting duties of the early 
summer. He says that he learned his lesson on 
the subject in the hard winter of 1875-76. A 
flock of 200 or 300 black ducks came to an open 
spring and there he shot two or three as they 
■came in and prepared to have great sport, but 
he found the birds to be a mere mass of feathers 
and bones, for the muscles had so shrunk away 
from starvation that it seemed hardly possible 
the birds could fly. Wildfowl shot at this sea¬ 
son in New England bring the gunner very little 
revenue, even if they are not refused by the 
market men. Numbers of birds that have been 
shot along the north Atlantic coast at this time 
have been condemned as unfit for food. 
Edward Howe Forbush. 
From the Game Warden of the Transvaal. 
We printed not long ago a letter to the sec¬ 
retary of the New York Zoological Society from 
Major J. Stevenson-Hamilton, game warden of 
the Transvaal in South Africa, acknowledging 
the receipt of the society’s Decennial Bulletin. 
Shortly after the receipt of that letter Madison 
Grant, the club’s secretary, sent Major Steven¬ 
son-Hamilton a copy of the last volume of the 
Boone and Crockett Club Book, “American Big 
Game in its Haunts,” and has received the fol¬ 
lowing acknowledgment: 
Kirkton, Carluke. Scotland, Feb. 22. 
To the Secretary of the Boone and Crockett 
Club: 
Dear Sir — I beg to thank you most sincerely 
for the beautiful and interesting work on Ameri¬ 
can big game which you have been so very kind 
as to send to me. 
I am intensely interested in the work of big- 
game preservation all over the world, and I do 
not agree at all with the pessimists who call it 
mere “ploughing in the sands,” as I am sure that 
at least so far as the countries with which I am 
personally acquainted are concerned, there is a 
steady, if slow, improvement in public opinion 
on the subject visible. I shall be at all times 
only too happy to hear from your club on any 
mutual subjects of interest, as well as to fur¬ 
nish any information or particulars about any¬ 
thing in my knowledge which may at any time be 
desired. 
I remain yours truly, 
J. Stevenson-Hamilton, Major. 
Yellowstone Park Wild Buffalo. 
Through the courtesy of Major H. C. Ben¬ 
son, superintendent of the Yellowstone National 
Park, Wyoming, we learn that late in the month 
of February, twenty-nine wild buffalo were seen 
on Pelican Creek, and that about the same date, 
Feb. 23, five others were seen on Cache Creek. 
The winter has been a very hard one on game, 
for the snow has not melted at all since it began 
to fall, and has once or twice crusted over, thus 
making it difficult for the elk to reach food. 
About the Mammoth Hot Springs the deer are 
being fed as usual and are doing well. 
Owing to the carelessness of the men having 
them in charge, a large number of antelope were 
allowed to leave the park in December and early 
January and have not yet been recovered. It is 
hoped that with the approach of spring a num¬ 
ber of them will return. 
Again the Woodcock. 
At the close of the last woodcock shooting 
season we printed in Forest and Stream a num¬ 
ber of questions about this bird which gunners 
were asked to answer. We hoped that the re¬ 
plies would give sportsmen useful information 
with regard to this gamy little bird, whose name 
is so familiar, but about which, after all, most 
people know very little. 
The replies to these questions were not as 
numerous as we had hoped they might be, yet 
they give us some information that is useful. 
We print this week a communication from Con¬ 
necticut, where the birds are still more or less 
abundant and breed in considerable numbers. 
Other letters will follow. 
At the present season of the year, when the 
woodcock are about to make their appearance in 
the Northern States, it is well for every man, 
who has the opportunity to do so, to observe 
them as carefully as he may. Each sportsman 
who can do so should keep a record from now 
until the end of the shooting season and see 
what that record tells about the woodcock. 
The questions printed last autumn were these: 
1. Do woodcock breed in your locality, or do 
you see them only during flight? 
2. If they breed, are they numerous or scarce 
in summer? How many nests have you heard of 
in any one year? Give the year. 
3. If they breed, do the home-bred birds dis¬ 
appear before the flight birds come on, and about 
what time do the home-bred birds disappear? 
4. When does the flight begin ? When do you 
src the first of those which you regard as flight 
birds? 
5. How long does the flight last? 
6. When are the flight birds present in great¬ 
est numbers? Give not only date, but weather 
conditions on which the rush so largely depends. 
7. How late do you see the birds? 
8. How did the flights of the autumn of 1907, 
1908 and 1909 compare with the flights of the 
three years before 1907? 
9. Please give any views that you may have 
which will throw any light on the problems of 
woodcock breeding and migration, and the ques¬ 
tion of whether they are at the present time in¬ 
creasing or decreasing in numbers. 
10. Is the colored man of the South a wood¬ 
cock hunter to an important degree? What are 
his methods of capture? 
11. Is the open season'in most Southern States 
too long considering the scarcity of woodcock? 
New York City.— Editor Forest and Stream: 
The questions under the above caption in 
Forest and Stream for Nov. 20 are interest¬ 
ing. My own observations have been made 
chiefly on my country place at Stamford, Conn., 
and in part on my old shooting grounds in West¬ 
ern New York. The answers to the questions 
refer to Stamford. 
1. Woodcock breed in this vicinity and we 
have the migrants also. 
2. “Numerous” is a relative term. I can al¬ 
most always find one by looking for him, but 
there are a great many aphides, ’hoppers, blights, 
bugs and mice to look after during the summer, 
and these keep me so alert that little margin re¬ 
mains for looking after woodcock. During the 
past two years I have known of three nests in 
the same places each year. These happened to 
be near where I was engaged in doing other 
work, and I do not know how many nests might 
have been found. 
3. Home-bred birds usually disappear about 
the time of the moulting season in August, and 
we do not see much of the woodcock again until 
the autumn flight. This disappearance may be 
simply due to the changed habit of the bird rather 
than to departure for a distance. 
4. The main autumn flight of migrants seems 
to be during the time of the last moon in Octo¬ 
ber. 
5. The flight lasts well into November, vary¬ 
ing with the year. 
6. The flight birds are most abundant about 
the last week in October. Weather conditions 
do not appear to have much influence upon the 
rush. I have always felt that the birds depended 
upon their own dates rather than upon the Far¬ 
mer’s Almanac. 
7. I see an occasional woodcock about the 
springs where the ground is open, until Christ¬ 
mas. 
8. The flights of 1908 and 1909 were notably 
larger than the flights for some years previously, 
and a good many more birds were seen about 
the place during the breeding season of these 
two years. 
9. The woodcock have certainly been increas¬ 
ing during the past two years in this vicinity. 
10. I have not done much woodcock shooting 
in the South, but colored men have told me of 
“fire-lighting” them, and getting “a sack full” 
every night in the canefields. I do not know 
how many woodcock there are to the sack full, 
either before or after asking a colored enthu¬ 
siast. One of my acquaintances recently said 
that the increase of woodcock in the East was 
simply due to their changed route of migration, 
and I answered, it was more likely due to the 
effect of restrictive laws in the South. Neither 
one of us knew anything about it, but we had to 
have the argument. 
11. The open season for shooting is every¬ 
where too long, excepting where one does his 
own shooting. Robert T. Morris. 
Tragedy in Flight. 
Corolla, N. C., March 10.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: Although I did not see it, I can vouch 
for the truth of the following occurrence: About 
the middle of December, while Messrs. Sander- 
lin and Austin were working their battery about 
one and a half miles west of Currituck light¬ 
house, Austin rose on a bunch of blackheads and 
killed several of them. At this time there was 
flying over, about eighty yards high and to lee¬ 
ward of the battery, a flock of geese, and at the 
sound of the shots these geese suddenly flared. 
Two of the geese collided or fouled each other, 
breaking the wing of one and the neck of the 
other. They fell close to the battery, were picked 
up and examined, and neither bird had a shot in 
it, nor was the skin broken. There is no doubt 
in my mind as to the truth of these statements, 
I have had about twenty years’ experience in 
gunning and have seen some strange things which 
I do not tell, as I do not care to be considered 
untruthful. C. ' Foulics. 
All the game laws of the 'United States and 
Canada , revised to date and now in force, are 
given in the Game Laws in Brief. See adv. 
