734 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[May 7, 1910. 
storage of water, the amendment permits the 
use of lands for “all other improvements there¬ 
on necessary and incidental to such purposes. 
Now, many of these dams as specifically men¬ 
tioned are to be located away back in the forest, 
many miles from any railroads, navigable water¬ 
ways or roads; located, in fact, by a fortunate 
coincidence where they will be most helpful to 
the lumber companies in floating out logs. Heavy 
machinery, tools, cement, etc., will not be trans¬ 
ported to the site by pack basket as supplies now 
must come in. Roads will be among the im 
provements necessary and incidental,” and un¬ 
less things change faster than they have in the 
past, these roads will be the kind the joy riders 
and lumbermen want. 
Every man familiar with the situation knows 
that the only reason a single tree worthy of the 
saw or good for a handful of pulp is now alive 
in all this Adirondack country has been com¬ 
mercial inaccessibility. Nothing except the labor 
of getting it out has saved one desirable tree. 
Had the cost of lumbering been low enough, 
everything marketable would have disappeared 
many years ago. Even the dried out denuded 
hills of Central New York, where flood and 
drouth hold alternate rule and abandonment of 
the baked land is the only move ahead of 
famine, would be greener than these Northern 
mountains. What is to be an Adirondack Park 
could by this time have been had without money 
and without price, for it would be abandoned to 
the State as a burned desolation of rock and 
sand upon which no man would pay taxes. 
The State is committed to the policy of re¬ 
gaining possession of nearly all of the wooded 
land within the blue line for a forest preserve. 
This policy is favored not only by the platforms 
of both political parties, but individually by a 
very large majority of their members. This 
land is desirable in proportion to the timber that 
is on it and is of value for nothing else. It 
does not look like a profitable plan for the State 
not only to destroy what it cannot restore—a 
forest soil thousands of years old, well timbered 
—but to spend millions for either multiplying 
the market value of lands it does not own, al¬ 
though committed as a buyer in the immediate 
future or to facilitate and assure their prompt 
deforestation. But this is just what is proposed 
in this plan for highways at public expense 
across the forest preserve. 
Instead of now building roads across public 
lands to connect private holdings on which lum¬ 
bering operations are either in full swing or 
eagerly awaiting such flavors, why not wait a 
few years and build any that may some time be¬ 
come necessary for public service on the de¬ 
forested land adjoining of which there will be 
four times as much as of unlumbered forest? 
If the desire for roads through the woods comes 
from such influential quarters that it must be 
gratified, we can at the least by a not very long 
delay save big strips of growing trees as well as 
the expense of cutting them down. 
It is urged that roads be built so that “the 
people of the State may go and see the beauties 
of that region.” The beauties of this region 
exist now only because of the absence of roads. 
If a man is to see any of them, he must come 
before the roads. It is hard to find any com¬ 
mon people who favor such roads except a few 
who wish to work at their construction. Auto¬ 
mobile roads are favored by some of the rich, 
and that such roads shall be everywhere of ex¬ 
tremely easy grade is very much desired by lum- 
berrrfen. Roads are wanted that will permit the 
use of traction engines or locomotives to haul 
log sleds, each doing the work of thirty teams 
such as have been this winter hauling logs over 
roads kindly built by the public and used chiefly 
for lumber traffic in a country whose streams 
are disfigured by big unused steel bridges where 
it would seem not more than about two inhabi¬ 
tants, men, women and children, could cross them 
except by going out of their way. 
The people do not want roads built in viola¬ 
tion of the constitution, and they can amend it 
whenever safe methods for lumbering the forest 
preserve become possible. Some kind of lum¬ 
bering will be undertaken in the future, but it 
is not time now to hand over the few protected 
spots to lumbermen, nor will it be until the 
present cutting of Adirondack forest at a fatal 
rate and by destructive methods can be checked 
and regulated. David Carl. 
A Good Set for the Coyote. 
Eureka, Cal., April 20 .—Editor Forest and 
Stream: Here is my private method of taking 
the coyote aside from digging him out in the 
spring time when the bitch is heavy with pups: 
Secure a pole six feet in length and sharpen one 
end and place the other end in the ground. 
Make the pole perfectly smooth so that a ring 
will slide up and down without danger of catch¬ 
ing. Over this pole place a ring large enough 
to work easily. To this ring is attached a chain 
and to the chain by means of a collar is fastened 
a small common house cat. Outside the circum¬ 
ference of the circle, which the chain permits 
the cat to reach, are placed a number of steel 
traps. These must be carefully hidden, as the 
coyote is very suspicious. 
You must now get on your horse and trail a 
scented meat drag in different directions. When 
the coyote comes skulking along he follows this 
scent trace until he comes in sight of the cat. 
At once he loses his caution and makes a dash 
at the cat, for a cat or a weasel is a special 
delicacy of the coyote. The cat in turn, follow¬ 
ing its instinct for safety, rushes up the pole. 
The coyote in his eagerness races around the 
pole through the brush until he steps into a trap. 
Then, to be sure, he forgets the cat and trots 
off through the brush, dragging after him the 
trap to which is attached a light clog or chunk 
of wood. This, sooner or later, becomes fast¬ 
ened in the brush and his coarse, scraggy pelt 
will soon'be sweating in the trapper’s bag. As 
there is no place for the cat to sit upon, as the 
end of the pole is sharp, the cat soon comes 
down and the bait is ready for the next coyote 
that hits the trail. 
I can vouch for this particular set, as I have 
caught as many as seven coyotes at one setting 
and the cat was still safe and sound. Particular 
care must be taken in bedding the traps, as the 
slightest taint of the man odor will cause the 
coyote to sheer off, and your work and traps will 
set and keep setting. 
If a cat cannot be had, chain a squirrel to 
the pole, but the cat is better. 
Henry S. Peterson. 
The Forest and Stream may be obtained from 
any newsdealer on order. Ask your dealer to 
supply you regularly. 
Hunting in Iowa. 
I have hunted in most of the States from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific, but never found a place 
where the general shooting was as good as in 
Northwestern Iowa in days gone by, says John 
G. Smith, in the Register-Leader. At one time 
buffalo, elk, deer and now and then a stray ante¬ 
lope could be found roaming over the prairies 
in Northwestern Iowa. The beautiful whooping 
or white crane and the sandhills were to be seen 
in every direction. Hundreds of trumpeter swans 
built their nests near the small lakes and ponds. 
Thousands of Canada geese nested near and fed 
in the few scattered grain fields. Tens of thou¬ 
sands of Hutchins, snow and white-fronted geese 
and an occasional barnacle or wavy-winged goose 
dropped down to feed and rest on their way 
north and south, while once in a while a true 
brant would alight in some slough to feed while 
on his way to his Southern home. Northwestern 
Iowa was never the breeding place of the brant, 
the snow, Hutchins, white-fronted or barnacle 
geese. Most of these birds breed in the Yukon 
country in Alaska and parts of British America. 
It is said that in parts of the Yukon country, 
where the birds breed, they will build their 
nests so close together that a person can step 
from one nest to another, and that where they 
build, some seasons are so short that the young 
birds do not get old enough to fly before the 
cold weather is upon them, and the young birds 
freeze to death. I think that is the reason that 
some seasons we have no young birds. Quite 
a good many of the deep water ducks, the can- 
vasbacks, redheads, bluebills, mergansers, buffle- 
heads and scaup ducks breed in Northwestern 
Iowa, but most of them breed in British America. 
The shoal water ducks, the mallards, pintails, 
American widgeons, gray ducks, black mallards 
or dusky ducks, blue and green-winged teal, 
woodducks, divers and mudhens or coots breed 
by thousands near every lake, pond, slough and 
river in Northwestern Iowa. Northwestern Iowa 
was the home of the pinnated grouse or prairie 
chicken. A few scattered sharp-tails were to be 
found with the prairie chickens. I do not think 
that they ever nested here, but worked in with 
the prairie chickens when the prairie chickens 
were on their way South. The sharp-tails are 
more of a Northwestern dry country bird than 
the prairie chickens. 
Forty years ago every spring and fall thou¬ 
sands of the plover tribe were to be found on 
the burnt prairies. Often times flocks of hun¬ 
dreds of golden plover, great flocks of Eskimo 
curlew or doe birds, dozens of the great Ameri¬ 
can godwit or spikebills could be seen in the 
months of May and October, and the sicklebill 
curlew’s whistle could be heard in every part of 
the prairie during the summer season. The 
sicklebill is the largest of the plover tribe. The 
avocet was seldom found in Iowai. It is the 
only bird of the snipe tribe that has a turned 
up bill. Its plumage is very distinctly marked 
black and white. The bird is about the size of 
a doe bird. Near the open ponds were great 
numbers of winter and summer yellowlegs, and 
all of the snipe trifye, while the festive jacksnipe 
punched his long bill into the soft, wet ground 
in the marshes in search of his favorite food. 
At one time woodcock were plentiful enough 
in the wet, springy, brushy places near the Des 
Moines River that a good shot could kill twenty- 
