Cl 6 
[April 16, 1910. 
> 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
The true remedy would be to put a prohibi¬ 
tive tax on cur dogs, just as they are discrimi¬ 
nated against in the matter of importations, and 
further empower any landowner to kill at sight 
any self-hunting dog found on his premises. No 
owner has any right whatever to turn his dog 
loose on an entire community, and in the older 
countries, where human rights are more thor¬ 
oughly known and better observed, such action 
would not be possible. 
In my opinion, under present conditions, 
money devoted to public game preservation is 
literally throwing money to the dogs. 
Hampshire. 
Quail Supply Decreasing. 
Raleigh, N. C., April 2 . —Editor Forest and 
Stream: At last the work of mounting a 
notable collection of ducks, geese and swans 
from the North Carolina waters for the State 
Museum has been finished, and it makes a fine 
group, filling a case twenty feet long and eight 
feet high. 
Gilbert Pearson, the secretary of the North 
Carolina Audubon Society, and Herbert Brim- 
ley are jointly preparing a work on the birds 
of North Carolina, to be issued by the State 
Agricultural Department, as a companion to the 
admirable book on North Carolina fish issued 
two years ago. The book will be specially illus¬ 
trated and is to be made both attractive and 
valuable. 
The next Legislature will be asked by many 
sportsmen and farmers to enact a law stopping 
the killing of quail anywhere in the State for 
two years. They are becoming so scarce in a 
number of sections that protection is necessary. 
Never before has this matter attracted so much 
attention. The quail have learned new habits 
in many sections of this State. The quail fly 
further, take more to trees when flushed, and 
stay in thick cover along little streams when¬ 
ever possible. 
Chatham county continues to hold the pre¬ 
eminence as the rabbit-county of the South, 
and perhaps of the whole country. For some 
reason many people in Chatham call the rabbit 
“sand-horse.” Maybe it is because they play 
in the sand, particularly on moonlight nights. 
Raleigh is now being called by visitors the 
city of squirrels. They are here, there and 
everywhere, and can be seen in the porticos 
and even in the corridors of the capitol, in the 
grounds of private homes, running along the 
fences, on the telegraph wires, particularly on 
heavy cables. In one box in Capitol Square 
two screech owls have taken up their quarters, 
and all day long the face of one or the other 
can be seen, sometimes both. The squirrels run 
up and down the tree and all over the box, 
frequently peeping in, but never daring to enter. 
William J. Andrews noticed that an awning 
which since autumn had been pulled up above 
a window of his house, seemed to be sagging, 
and let it down. There fell out six baby 
squirrels. He found the mother had cut much 
of the awning to pieces to make a snugger bed 
for her babies and had added leaves and some 
loose cotton. Before Mr. Andrews could col¬ 
lect all of her babies, she had taken one in 
her mouth and dashed up a tree with it. He 
took the five little squirrels to the Museum, 
and there they are in a box. 
Fred A. Olds. 
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 sum¬ 
mer? How many nests have you heard of in any one 
year? Give the year. 
3. If they breed, do the home-bred birds disappear be¬ 
fore the flight birds come on, and about what time do the 
home-bred birds disappear? 
4. When does the flight begin? When do you see 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 greatest num¬ 
bers? 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 question of whether they are at 
the present time increasing or decreasing in numbers. 
10. Is the colored man of the South a woodcock 
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? 
In South Carolina. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Some information concerning woodcock in 
South Carolina may be of service in your in¬ 
quiry. 
Late in February, 1899, I came down the Wac- 
camaw River from Bucksport where I had been 
snowbound for several days. A snowstorm, un¬ 
paralleled in severity and in duration for that 
region, had raged from Friday of one week until 
Tuesday of the next. Birds perished by thou¬ 
sands. A string of dead turtle doves more than 
a qilarter of a mile' long stretched across a field 
at Bucksport. All classes of birds suffered ex-, 
cept partridges and wild turkeys. 
Arriving at Georgetown just about dusk with 
the remains of the snow and slush over every¬ 
thing, I saw a bird fly across the street of the 
little town with a negro boy in pursuit. The 
bird came down and the boy finished it with a 
stick. Other boys were chasing other birds with 
always the same result. The birds were too 
weak to get away. On inquiring what birds 
those were—for it was too dark to see plainly— 
I was told they were woodcock. A visit to the 
leading cold storage market- confirmed this and 
the dealer told me he had refused to buy the 
birds, because they were too poor for market; 
that they had been brought down to him in 
wheelbarrow loads at intervals during the after¬ 
noon. 
This was the first information I had of the 
disastrous flights into which woodcock are 
forced by the freezing of their feeding grounds 
up the rivers, for five rivers come into George¬ 
town. A condition somewhat similar exists 
around Charleston. It appears that woodcock 
never go to either place to feed, but merely to 
escape rough weather higher up, for they in¬ 
variably get thin in flesh in a few days, even if 
they arrive in good condition. 
Many woodcock breed in South Carolina all 
along the great swamps that fringe the Santee, 
the Savannah, the Peedees and their tributaries. 
Nests have been discovered the last week in 
January, but as a rule they nest in February. 
The Waccamaw affords the ideal range for 
woodcock. This stream, which rises in Lake 
Waccamaw, in Columbus county. North Caro¬ 
lina, runs for 200 miles mainly parallel with the 
coast and empties into Winyah Bay at George¬ 
town. For the greater part of its course it 
flows through the county of Horry—pronounced 
O-ree, with accent on last syllable—less than one- 
tenth of which is under cultivation or ever has 
been under cultivation. Hence the conditions 
are closer to primitive than almost anywhere 
else. There are swamps along Waccamaw, eight 
or ten miles long and several miles wide, afford¬ 
ing on their margins and in the secluded islands 
that rise here and there inside perfect cover and 
splendid feeding ground for woodcock. 
In the old dead days, when I exulted in my 
marksmanship like unto the heathen that slaugh¬ 
ter game, I used to spend many a golden day 
after woodcock along these swamps. I have 
bagged above forty in an afternoon, and twenty- 
five was a fair evening’s work. They are there 
yet. I do not hunt any more and for several 
years the woodcock have hardly been molested 
at all. The negroes in that region do not hunt 
woodcock. 
I took one of New York’s famous lawyers up 
Waccamaw, but he got so busy shooting par¬ 
tridges he would not stop for woodcock, al¬ 
though he shot a few. One of the city’s lead¬ 
ing financiers also went up there and admitted 
he had the time of his life. 
The natives hardly know the woodcock at all 
and hence any outsider that went in would have 
to find his own way to the woodcock grounds as 
I did. 
Since I have been in charge of the game of 
South Carolina we have not had the means at 
our disposal to make anything like a study of 
the nesting birds, nor has any record been kept 
of birds migrating from the North. There is 
little trouble to find evidence of the nesting all 
over that large territory which includes about 
two million acres of land. 
The whole region is a network of rivers, 
creeks, branches and slashes. During the sea¬ 
son the birds are invariably in fine condition. 
The open season is from Sept. 1 to Jan. 15. 
Woodcock feed on the higher ground at in¬ 
tervals through the swamps. These swamps have 
a growth of -cypress and gum, black gum and 
tupelo. When the water rises above the tus¬ 
socks the woodcock make for the larger islands 
and congregate there. This is when the sport 
is prime. Tom Pinner, my factotum, whose 
superior as a woodsman does not exist, had been 
on a ten or twelve day trip over to the big 
swamp across the river, looking for bear signs. 
In coming back he crossed Waccamaw and came 
into a nearby swamp through a creek. The 
water was rising fast and Tom came in at night 
to report that next morning I could get all the 
woodcock shooting I wanted on the long island. 
Next morning we waded in, the water hardly 
ever. reaching above our knees, and made some 
two miles in fair time. As the border of the 
island came into view, a pair of woodcock were 
flushed a little out of range. They went over 
the sparkleberry bushes that fringed the island 
and came down in the straw beyond. We began 
skirting the island and every now and then got 
a bird which our retriever, a Gordon setter, 
handled in fine style. After making a complete 
circuit of the island, -we shoved in through the 
sparkleberry bushes and began hunting in the 
broom. The shooting was fast and furious. 
