Sept. 25, 1909.] 
when it gave way to low wet treeless savannahs 
and marshes, interspersed here and there with 
ponds where the waterlilies, flags and saw grass 
seemed to struggle for supremacy. 
During this trip we saw sights seldom seen 
outside a zoological garden. At the head of 
Sebastian River great flocks of gannets arose 
from the cypress trees and whirled about in 
the air above us in a dense mass. Various 
species of cranes flew along, uttering their harsh 
grating cries, and hundreds of curlews, egrets 
and other water birds stood about on cypress 
knees and fallen trees or flapped noisily away 
through the thick bushes. A pair of eagles 
screamed at us from their nest in a tall pine 
nearby and a couple of sandhill cranes annoyed 
us by flying along just out of gun shot. 
We spent that night pleasantly, discussing on 
hunting lore and on the wonders of the Penin¬ 
sula State until sleep overcame us. Next morn¬ 
ing we scattered out for the hunt. Quail were 
calling and all nature seemed astir. I had gone 
only a short distance when crash! crash! some¬ 
thing went through the palmettoes off to one 
side, and I looked up in time to see a deer 
lisappear in the undergrowth. How I did wish 
for a rifle. 
I soon fell in with two of the party. They 
rad a covey of quail scattered and the dog was 
•vorking fine. We got up quail by singles and 
loubles and expended nearly all the ammuni- 
ion we had along. I think I killed more quail 
hat day than I ever did in one day before. I 
ame very near stepping on a coral snake, too, 
hat day. These snakes are curiously marked 
vith bands of red, yellow and black and are 
aid to be very poisonous, but I never knew of 
me attempting to bite anyone. One often runs 
cross snakes when hunting in this country, 
lostly the gopher, blacksnake and moccasin and 
nee in a while a rattler. The moccasin is per- 
aps the most lazy of all, will hardly get out 
if your way and can scarcely be provoked into 
triking. I have seen a hunter step directly on 
ne without its attempting to strike. Not so 
'ith the rattler, however. He is not so docile, 
nd if you have a crippled bird flop into the 
almettoes or into the hole of a gopher turtle 
will be well to investigate thoroughly before 
raching in after it. It is needless to take un- 
ecessary chances. 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
495 
I have said that if this country was made ex- 
ressly for the quail hunter there could be few 
nprovements wished for so far as the topog- 
iphy was concerned, but this does not apply 
> the great ridge of yellow sand which begins 
Brevard county and extends south through 
e counties of St. Lucie, Palm Beach and 
ade. This ridge is of peculiar formation and 
,1 it most of the pineapples of the East Coast 
e grown. In its wild state it is thickly cov¬ 
ed with scrub oak and hickory, dotted here 
id there with clumps of spruce pine and the 
tire growth often covered over with a mass 
vines which form an almost impenetrable 
ngle. This ridge is fairly alive with quail, 
it owing to the conditions named one can 
II but few. Father and I have secured sev- 
al good bags off this ridge. I remember one 
Ot taken at a quail here just at dusk. The 
ail got up and zigzaged through the scrub in 
bewildering manner. I took a shot at it and 
a lucky chance brought it down. I was 
further surprised when going to pick it up to 
find three birds instead of one. 
The little dog over whom most of our shoot¬ 
ing was done was taken by a singular disease 
soon after the hunting season was over and died 
despite all our care and attention. Another dog 
we brought from the North also suffered a like 
fate. The Florida climate, healthful as it is 
to man, seems to have a deadly effect on dogs, 
especially those imported from the North. 
C. A. V. 
Game in North Dakota. 
Galesburg, N. D., Sept. 19.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: The shooting season opened in North 
Dakota Sept. 7. Reports from various parties, 
who were out on opening day, indicate that 
chickens are scarce and weather conditions make 
hunting hard, it being hot and dry and the growth 
of grass and cover very hard on dogs. It ap¬ 
pears that ducks have nested in numbers in the 
A\ 
’V 
1 
\ 
*-*1. 
A 
A BLANK DAY. 
From the Chasseur Frangais. 
various sloughs which have been abundantly 
filled with water all summer. Also they are 
tamer and more numerous this year on account 
of the law against spring shooting. I met a 
hunting party on the train this morning that 
had been hunting at Erie, eleven miles south, 
and three men and two dogs had secured eigh¬ 
teen chickens in two days’ hunting in country 
which is usually very good. 
There is one clause of the game law here 
which is not sufficiently enforced. It provides 
that hunting dogs shall not be allowed to range 
at large from April 1 to Aug. 15, but so far as 
I can learn few dogs are ever tied up in this 
period, and I assure you a couple of hunting 
dogs running loose in the fields in summer will 
kill young birds and destroy nests enough to 
make an appreciable difference in the game 
supply. A good big dog tax, say six to ten 
dollars, would be a blessing to the game and 
the State. 
Anyway, North Dakota is looking lovely these 
days and will continue so to do for a couple 
of months at least. J. P. Whittemore. 
The Farmer and the Game. 
Groton, Mass., Sept. n .—Editor Forest and 
Stream: The editorial in your issue of Aug. 
14, entitled “The Farmer and the Game,” de¬ 
serves more than passing consideration; it 
opens, in fact, a vast field for discussion re¬ 
garding the desirability of new methods in con¬ 
serving and increasing the supply of game birds. 
Despite the increase of restrictive laws and a 
better observance of them, it is a familiar fact 
in most parts of the country to-day that the 
supply in general continues to diminish, and 
certainly does not increase except in sporadic 
instances. This diminution progresses under a 
system, the effect of which seems to be to 
make “everybody’s business nobody’s business”: 
a system which has failed to show the farmer 
the value of game birds as a commercial asset, 
and consequently to arouse his personal inter¬ 
est in intelligently preserving and increasing 
them. 
It is still very generally considered un-Amer¬ 
ican to post land, and an even worse offense to 
lease the shooting privilege. Yet, unfortunate 
as it may at first sight appear, in a settled 
country it seems inevitable that the early 
privileges of the general public to wander at 
will must be curtailed; and it is but a step from 
posting in defense of one’s interests on the 
land to selling some of the advantages which 
naturally accrue therefrom. So far as the 
hunter is concerned, this curtailment may not 
prove to be the hardship it might at first appear 
to be, for an increase of game on posted areas 
will give him better shooting on unposted lands, 
and in many cases will provide him with em¬ 
ployment bringing returns which he would 
never otherwise have realized. 
Extremely radical theories have been ad¬ 
vanced of late in this connection, some of 
which go so far as to contemplate practically 
the entire abandonment of our present restric¬ 
tive system. Such action would be a virtual 
acknowledgment that, except on wild lands, 
game can be preserved only on tracts specially 
controlled for shooting purposes. To such a 
proposition few American sportsmen would be 
willing to accede; yet most would probably be 
in agreement on one important point, which 
Forest and Stream emphasizes in the editorial 
referred to: That the individual landowner 
must be encouraged to take a personal interest 
in preserving and increasing the game on his 
own property, and that, to effect such a result, 
his natural desire for profit must be reached. 
Once give landowners a pecuniary interest in 
the welfare of the game, and the problem of its 
preservation in numbers is a long way toward 
solution. Then what is now everybody’s busi¬ 
ness, and hence nobody’s, would become the 
special care of the landowner, and would re¬ 
ceive such attention as it never has and never 
can receive from the general public acting in 
an ineffective way through an insufficient force 
of game wardens. And in making this state¬ 
ment, it is in nowise intended to display the 
good which has been and is being accomplished 
by present methods; it is merely intended to 
suggest that the present system of simply 
guarding the remnant from complete destruc¬ 
tion by man might well be modified and sup¬ 
plemented by encouragement of individual 
landowners to take active measures looking to- 
rl 
