Turkeys in South Dakota. 
Omaha, Neb., Aug. 21. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: I have just read Mr. Grinnell’s all too 
brief article on “The Western Range of the 
Wild Turkey” in Forest and Stream, and as I 
am an old turkey hunter will make an observa¬ 
tion or two. 
The query whether wild turkeys ever got as 
far West as the Black Hills I am unable to 
answer; I do know, however, that no longer 
ago than 1894 they had found their way as far 
as the foothills this side of the Black Hills in 
South Dakota, and consequently it requires but 
1 slight stretch of the imagination to believe 
hat they got into the hills themselves. 
I was camped on the Lake Creek marshes that 
fall, duck shooting, and on the third of Novem¬ 
ber Alfred Reshaw, a young halfbreed Sioux, 
who was one of our camp helpers and guides, 
filled a twenty-one-pound black and tan turkey 
n the scraggy pine hills along White River 
wenty miles north of our camp and forty-five 
Dr fifty miles this side of the Black Hills. He 
•tilled the bird flying from out of a bunch of 
ive which he had jumped from a patch of 
ground cherries on one of the bluffs. He knew 
what the birds were, as he and his brother had 
tilled several the previous winter in the same 
ficinity. 
As forty or fifty miles is nothing more than 
i good day’s run for a wild turkey, I firmly be- 
ieve that these birds were formerly frequenters 
)f the Black Hills. 
Two days later Alfred, the late George W. 
Icribner, of San Francisco, and I went to White 
■liver where the Sioux had killed his gobbler, 
end although we hunted assiduously for hours 
ip and down on both sides of the river, we 
ound no turkey. We did find plenty of sign, 
lowever, in almost every rose thicket and among 
he dried ground cherries from which Alfred 
lad flushed his birds. We found fresh tracks 
end fresh droppings, showing that the birds had 
ieen there after the day the Sioux made his kill. 
Along the White River in this particular re- 
;ion are extensive fastnesses well adapted to 
he fancy of wild turkeys, low scraggy acorn- 
bearing oaks, deep arroyos, with numerous 
prings, thickets of plum, crab and grape, rose 
ields, ground and choke cherry patches and 
nany vegetable growths on which the birds feed 
n the fall and summer. The White River is 
Iso full of rainbow trout and the wilds along 
ts tortuous shores are a favorite habitat of the 
•intail grouse, the badger, coyote and skunk, 
ts early as the middle of November the pintail 
rouse in this region turn almost as pure white 
s the ptarmigan of lower Alaska, while but a 
ew miles further down in Nebraska, even as 
ar north as the Charles Metz shooting lodge 
nd game sanctuary, on Raccoon Lake, the birds 
-while they turn very light in color—never get 
• holly white. 
Mr. Metz tells me that the crop of grouse, 
oth pinnated and pintail, is unusually satisfac- 
bry this summer all about the Lugenbeel 
marshes, a name I bestowed upon the locality 
a quarter of a century ago. The Lake Creek 
ducking grounds are magnificent mallard grounds. 
I have seen as many of these wildfowl at a 
single glance of the eye, rising from the celery 
beds on these grounds, as many an ardent ducker 
has seen in his whole life. They are at Lake 
Creek to-day, every fall and spring, in the same 
fabulous numbers almost as they were fifteen 
and twenty years ago, and I make a trip there 
every October. These marshes are on the Pine 
Ridge Indian reservation, and while a permit 
from the commandant, Major John Brennan, is 
necessary to camp and shoot there, a State 
license is not required. It is a good thing to' 
have along, however, for on the seductive ex¬ 
plorations, that are always inviting one hence, in 
the wondrous region of both bad and good lands, 
one is apt to stray off the reservation. 
Alfred Reshaw—correct spelling of the name 
Rickard—is the son of a full sister of old Sitting 
Bull. She married Joseph Rickard, a quarter- 
breed, who died several years ago, and who left 
his family a several thousand acre cattle range 
and a comfortable modern home—the only frame 
dwelling within a radius of sixty miles—situ¬ 
ated on a commanding rise overlooking the 
thirteen miles of marsh land stretching away to 
the west toward the agency. Mrs. Reshaw—a 
kindly old woman, well up in the eighties—still 
lives at the old home on Lake Creek. 
I have killed many turkeys in the mountains of 
West Virginia, in the Kettle Hills below Lan¬ 
caster, Ohio, on the An Sable in Michigan and 
on the Big Piney in Missouri, but have never 
seen any save a dead one in the markets in 
Nebraska. I killed a twenty-nine-pound gobbler 
on the old grayling river, the Au Grey, a tribu¬ 
tary of the Au Sable, in 1877 when I was with 
the Hockhocking Hunting Club on a deer hunt. 
Sandy Griswold. 
Birds in Trouble. 
Grand Saline, Tex., Aug. 13.— Editor Forest 
and Stream: In the early eighties my older 
brother and I were out looking for the calves 
in the woods. The calves had strayed a little 
further from home than usual, and it was get¬ 
ting dark, when we came upon two thrushes 
hopping around a small tree, making a very 
curious conglomeration of alarm notes, quite 
unusual for this most charming of all the song¬ 
sters. As boys often do, we began to chase 
the little fellows round and round the tree, but 
we could not induce them to fly away, and 
thought we would catch them in our hands. 
About this time I saw a black snake lying 
near the root of the tree on the ground. The 
snake seemed perfectly rigid and had the ap¬ 
pearance of having been dead for several days. 
I took a small stick and hit the snake with it, 
when to my surprise it became a very lively 
snake. The wrinkled, shriveled condition which 
it showed before being struck with the stick, 
and which led me to believe it to be dead, dis¬ 
appeared as if by magic, the snake resuming 
its normal shape and size, and it proceeded at 
once to wiggle in the attempt to escape. 
At the moment of the transformation of the 
snake, the birds seemed to have been released 
from some spell, and immediately took flight and 
went their way, rejoicing. We killed the snake. 
I have heard of frequent instances of what 
seemed to be cases of birds having been charm¬ 
ed and captured by snakes, and I have always 
been more or less skeptical about the hypnotic 
power of snakes. 
One Sunday afternoon I was passing through 
a small woodland when I came upon a cardinal 
grosbeak suspended in the crotch of a small 
limb of an oak bush. The bird had evidently 
in fast flight become fastened in the crotch, as 
if someone had caught it and placed its neck 
between the limbs. It had not been dead long, 
as it was warm when I found it. As to how 
long it had been imprisoned between the limbs 
I was unable to guess, and I pictured to my¬ 
self the tragedy and the motive or accident 
which led up to if. 
I took the beautiful little fellow down and 
gave it a burial by digging a hole in the ground 
with my jack-knife. After having smoothed its 
beautiful plumage—for it was in midwinter, at 
which time these birds wear their most gaudy 
attire—and admiring its beautiful outlines I laid 
it away with a feeling of sadness. 
An Interested Reader. 
Squirrels a Nuisance? 
Saginaw, Mich., Aug. 12.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: I guess we will have to come to the 
conclusion that the fox squirrel is a nuisance 
in the city. Saginaw has been thoroughly stock¬ 
ed with fox squirrels, as several hundred of 
them were brought in from Texas two years ago. 
For a while they seemed to do no damage 
and the novelty of having them around as they 
became very tame was pleasing. In the winter 
time they are most sociable and cunning, but 
of late they have become marauders. Not only 
do they devastate the pear trees, take all the 
nuts and go for the apples and other fruit, but 
they have learned to like the taste of young 
birds. A robin cannot nest anywhere near the 
squirrel tree without the eggs being thrown out, 
and if the sguirrel happens to find a nest where 
there are young birds, it will kill them. Yes¬ 
terday in my yard a squirrel was noticed at a 
bird’s nest: soon it came down the tree with 
two young birds in its mouth. Notwithstanding 
that it was chased, it crossed the yard, holding 
on to the birds as a cat would a mouse, ran 
up a tree and disappeared in its nest with the 
two young birds. Soon it came down again and 
made another attempt to get into the bird’s nest, 
but was driven off. 
I have covered the trunks of my fruit trees 
six or eight feet from the ground with stove¬ 
pipe iron. At first the squirrels did not know 
what to make of it, but they soon learned to 
take a run and jump, landing on the tree above 
