April 2, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
535 
masters in the art of sneaking. I have found 
many a cripple self drowned by holding on to 
a sea weed stalk in the shoal water on the flats 
of Great South Bay, but here there was no sea 
weed, and what became of these birds is a 
mystery to this day. 
At noon the next day Dave and I set to work 
thatching over a little dinghy with grass and 
reeds, and that afternoon we crossed the Sink 
to the marshes on the shore side in quest of 
black ducks. We went up a small creek and 
hid our boat in the tall grass, setting out a 
dozen decoys in the middle of the creek. Just 
as the sun was setting, the birds began to come 
into the marsh, and I got a few shots, killing 
five. 
One day we varied our sport by a trip to 
Cobbs Island Bay for geese, but were unsuccess¬ 
ful. With varying luck day succeeded day, each 
one seeming shorter and more complete in its 
enjoyment than the one before, and it was with 
heavy hearts that we set out in the launch one 
afternoon to begin our journey home. We bade 
good-bye to Conover and Dave with • keen re¬ 
gret, drove to Nassawadox and took the evening 
express train for New York, a fund of fond 
memories for future musing in our minds and 
our bodies thoroughly refreshed by ten days in 
the sunshine and fresh air. 
Before closing this article I want to tell those 
who think they cannot afford such a trip just 
what it cost, for the sum total is a small amount 
to pay for a ten-day vacation and all the at¬ 
tendant benefits. License, $10; ten-day return 
ticket, $14; Pullman berth, two ways, $4; wagon, 
two ways, $2; ten days with Conover, including 
guide and board, $50. Eighty dollars in all, and 
' how many people throw that amount away on 
dinners, the theater or flowers, people who say 
they cannot afford a shooting trip. I recom¬ 
mend such a trip as an investment that will pay 
larger returns than any savings bank in the 
world. Edwin Main Post. 
Liberating Turkeys. 
San Francisco, Cal., March 19.— Editor Forest 
and Stream: It is anticipated that within a short 
time California sportsmen will have a new game 
bird in the wild turkey. Although this bird is 
not a native of California, it .thrives in Arizona, 
New Mexico and Mexico, and there seems to be 
no reason why it should not do well here. A 
few of these birds were brought here from 
Mexico some time ago and have been reared 
at the State grounds near Hayward. They have 
thrived and last October more than 100 of them 
were taken to the national parks in the moun¬ 
tains of the State and liberated. Four dozen 
were liberated in the Yosemite Park, three dozen 
in the General Grant National Park, in Tulare 
county, and two dozen in the San Bernardino 
Mountains. The parks are large and well 
guarded, affording the birds an excellent place 
to breed unmolested, and they seem to have 
adapted themselves perfectly to their new sur¬ 
roundings. Although the birds were reared on 
the State farm and had never roosted more than 
three feet above the ground, they took to the 
high trees as a roosting place as soon as liber¬ 
ated. The turkeys live principally on acorns, in¬ 
sects and grasshoppers and where liberated will 
find an abundance of feed. A. P. B. 
Mauled by a Bear. 
Victoria, B. C., March 15.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: We had examined Jim Christie’s scalp, 
had seen the plainly marked scars—horseshoe¬ 
shaped, like a grizzly’s upper jaw on one side, 
ragged and long on the other, and on the top 
straight across like a knife slash—the scars that 
had allowed his skull covering to drape his neck 
like a cape during the terrible hike to camp. We 
had looked at his lower jaw which had hung 
down against his chest; we had seen the mark 
of the bear’s tusk in his arm and in his thigh. 
And then Jim Christie said, in a matter of fact 
• t 
TWO VIEWS OF MR. CHRISTIE’S INJURIES WHILE HE 
WAS IN THE HOSPITAL AT VANCOUVER. 
way, for he is a man of the silent places who 
imagines nothing: “The queer part of it to me 
is the fact that the old cuss charged on me and 
then he didn’t use his paws. I never heard tell 
of a silver tip acting that way before.” 
A bit more pow-wow about the surgery, the 
kindness of Dr. Hasell and Dr. Jones and the 
nurses at the hospital where Christie has been 
treated and then he told us—without embroidery 
or fancy work of any nature—the story of an 
adventure with a grizzly bear, the like of which 
does not exist in the annals of bear hunting. He 
talked straight ahead in the same undramatic 
manner that the average man would use in re¬ 
lating to a sympathetic companion how his rheu¬ 
matism had spread from his small toe to his left 
shoulder blade. The story contained the expla¬ 
nation of the fact that Christie has been for 
months almost a nervous wreck and that he was 
sent from Dawson, Yukon Territory, to the 
Jubilee Hospital in Victoria, B. C., to be put 
back into working shape again. 
Christie came from Carman, Man., where he 
has relatives living now, and went into the North 
in 1898. He never worked for wages; he pros¬ 
pected in summer and trapped in winter all over 
the North and he learned the country as a child 
learns the A, B, C’s. Some of the time he acted 
as guide for Government parties, and it was on 
one of these trips that he met Agnes Dean 
Cameron’s party away up on the headwaters of 
the Mackenzie. On another occasion Christie 
took a geological survey outfit across the un¬ 
known north from Dawson to Edmonton and 
then came down to Carman to visit his folks. 
Meantime he had struck up a palship with George 
Christfield, and when he went back north he and 
Christfield grubstaked and lit out for the Rogue 
River, setting up camp at a point about 350 miles 
east of Dawson in the heart of the wilderness. 
During these years of his apprenticeship to 
the North Christie had learned much about the 
silept places, had trapped much and hunted much 
and a grizzly bear was about as fearsome a thing 
to him as a bat is to a plow horse; that is to 
say, something unpleasant to be brushed aside. 
Christie held this attitude toward grizzly bears 
when he struck out over a light snow about the 
middle of last October along the course of the 
Rogue River to look up the trapping possibili¬ 
ties. Two years before a horde of lynx had in¬ 
fested the country and small furs were scarce. 
The first day out Christie shot a moose and hid 
it in a ground cache to be called for later. He 
explored up river for two suns and then circled 
back toward camp. His trail led him across his 
out-track and he decided to have a look at the 
cache. When he got within sight of it he found 
a pack of timber wolves hard at work excavat¬ 
ing, and he took a shot at one of them. It was 
this shot which missed that saved Christie’s life. 
For two days he had packed his magazine rifle 
through the scrub without having to use it, and 
when he missed the wolf he noticed that the 
sights had slipped down. He stopped at once 
and adjusted them properly, dropped his pack 
and snowshoes and went on to the cache. When 
he got there he learned what had attracted the 
wolves. 
The earth about the cache was thrown up and 
rooted about as if a dredge had been at work, 
and leading from the cache straight over the 
river across an open bar was a trail as big as 
a house. Christie knew as soon as he saw it 
what had happened. Grizzly tracks a foot long 
were plain in the snow all about and the mark 
made by the moose’s body dragging in the snow 
formed a path like a city street. Christie needed 
that meat and the longer he looked at the empty 
cache, the sorer he got. Finally he decided to 
punish Old Nosey, to teach him to kill his own 
moose and leave other folks’ meat alone, and it 
was this decision that got Christie into trouble. 
A brief examination of the trail showed that 
the track was fresh, had been made within the 
hour, in fact, and sure that he would come 
across the bear in a very short time, Chrstie set 
out to follow the trail. As it turned out after¬ 
ward the grizzly could see him crossing the river 
and was lying in wait for him in the scrub above 
the opposite bank. The wolves had undoubtedly 
been pestering him and he was in a very nasty 
frame of mind. 
