696 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Oct. 30, 1909.' 
From what can he gathered, it is safe to say 
that the game commission and its policies are 
very much more popular now than they were a 
few months ago. The masses of the people are 
now comprehending the commission, and they 
are realizing the good it has accomplished. A 
large number of farmers over the State realize 
now that the preservation of the birds means 
thousands of dollars' to them in the way of 
destruction of boll weevil, bugs and insects, as 
well as noxious weeds. The illustrated lectures 
which President Miller has given in many of 
the rural parishes (counties) are productive of 
a great deal of good from an educational stand¬ 
point. Attorney Ponder has also delivered 
many addresses in various portions of the State, 
and the people are beginning to realize some¬ 
thing of the scope and importance of the com¬ 
mission. But the commission is not without its 
enemies in Louisiana, especially among several 
of the police juries or county commissioners 
who want to collect the license tax for hunting 
and fishing. F. G. G. 
In the North Woods. 
Little Falls, N. Y., Oct. 25. —Editor Forest 
and Stream: A hard storm o £ rain and hail 
and some sleet swept over the Adirondacks 
about the middle of October, and the ripe leaves 
of the wilderness were cut from the twigs, leav¬ 
ing the limbs nearly bare and opening up the 
underwood to the sunshine again. Till this hap¬ 
pens, still-hunting in the wilderness is a matter 
of luck more than skill, and the best of the 
hunters are often unable to kill deer. 
The tenderfeet and novices who went into 
the woods as soon as the season opened came 
out after their week or ten days of futile wan¬ 
dering with most dismal reports of the number 
of deer in the woods. Unable to read the 
ground, they could not find tracks of deer; in 
fact, bare ground tracking in the fluff of fallen 
dry leaves is most difficult, if not impossible. 
However, good hunters, a few more of whom 
were compelled to go in in September and early 
October, reported that deer were very plenty 
and that there were lots of beechnuts. 
A good beechnut year, usually the years of 
odd numbers, means that deer are found on the 
hardwood fiats and ridges. In an off year they 
are found in the swamps, thick burnings and 
in other dense places where they eat moss and 
lichens, nibble browse and even gnaw a little 
bark now and then like porcupines. When in 
these places they are hard to kill and legitimate 
still-hunting is often fruitless. 
This year, however, good hunters began to 
kill deer as soon as the nuts began to fall. The 
deer were on the beech ridges, and even while 
the leaves were on the hardwoods, and had 
scarcely turned in the undergrowth, especially 
on the witchhopples, deer could be seen far 
enough to make it worth while to hunt the 
ridges and flats which were comparatively free 
of undergrowth. 
There were lots of deer. Last winter w r as 
an open one. The hard rains which froze and 
made a crust so hard that deer could gallop on 
it allowed them to travel as well as on bare 
ground. They could and did browse on the 
tops of mountains, on the flanks and wherever 
there was anything to eat. There was no in¬ 
centive for a deer to wait to be driven from 
the shelter of a yard through deep snow to 
green brush on which they must feed. More¬ 
over, the rocks covered with lichens were laid 
bare by the rain and heat from the unfrozen 
ground beneath. The deer had plenty to eat. 
Some were in splendid condition in the spring, 
even fat. 
Not many deer were killed illegally this sum¬ 
mer. I have not heard of any. The presence 
of game wardens constantly traveling about 
from place to place alarmed and restrained the 
men who ordinarily have killed deer out of sea¬ 
son in the past. Fishermen heard a few shots 
at night, but it is agreed that jacking and lick¬ 
killing is less frequent than ever before. Some 
hunters never will stop the practice. The hard¬ 
est localities are such remote settlements as 
those in the Piseco country, up the West Can-* 
ada, and at some places where summer visitors 
take chances. 
Woods roamers easily discover the localities 
where summer hunting is practiced. Thus one 
September, before the season opened, my brother 
and I tramped a hundred-odd miles through 
the woods, camping by brooks, little lakes and 
following dim trails if any at all. In the edges 
of the clearings we found deer scarce, then 
would come a pocket where deer were plenty, 
perhaps for a space five miles wide. Then as 
we came down to some frequented lake the 
tracks would thin out for a few miles, then we 
would see deer for a few miles, then along a 
Stillwater there would be a few deer. In the 
heart of the wilderness was a great circle ten 
or twelve miles across where deer were very 
scarce, indeed. Just where one wou’d expect 
deer to be plenty they were most scarce. The 
reason was a lone woodsman and trapper, a 
year-round woods dweller. 
1 hus there are zones of illegal killing and 
places called “pockets” by woodsmen where deer 
are not disturbed sometimes for years. Woods¬ 
men flock from locality to locality. Thus for 
a few years the hunters from Northwood and 
vicinity used to drive as far back as they could 
go. They would start at 9 o’clock in the even¬ 
ing and not reach their camp till late the next 
day. All of them seemed to think they must 
get as far as possible from home to find good 
hunting. This happened for several years. One 
fall a party broke down half way to their desti¬ 
nation. They had to stop over night, while one 
drove out to get another wheel. Whi'e wait¬ 
ing the men went hunting. Before dark they 
had three, deer which they killed in hearing ot 
a main highway. Other hunters followed suit 
in a' year or two. This fall two men slipped up 
to a little old spruce pulp camp five miles from 
Northwood and shot two deer in four or five 
days and were surprised to find that hunting 
was good almost in sight of home. The deep 
forest has many pockets of deer. The favorite 
hunting grounds are within a radius of three 
or four miles of the camps. Beyond these little 
circles lie untramped woods in which the deer 
are seldom disturbed by the hunters. I once 
saw more than sixty deer in ten days in one 
pocket not five miles wide; of course I prob¬ 
ably saw several deer two or three times, and 
yet I had a shooting acquaintance with more 
than half a dozen big bucks. 
Bears are growing more numerous. There is 
little or no trapping and not much more shoot¬ 
ing of them. They are on the beech ridges now. 
They began to climb the beeches while the nu 
were green and soft inside the burrs. The 
bit off long branches and when they had half 
dozen or so clusters on the ground they climbe 
down again and ate the nuts, burrs and al 
This was after the choke and black cherrio 
were ripe. . j 
The bears have been increasing slowly hi 
steadily for at least ten years. Several wer 
killed around Wilmurt last fall and Burt Conk 
lin kills three or four a year now, while a fe\] 
years ago he was killing only one or two, i 
any. He saw four at once last fall. Most bear 
are killed late in the fall after the leaves ar 
down. Probably more than ever will be kille* 
this year, now that the season for bucks ha 
been extended into middle November. Ther 
does not seem to be any place better than an 
other for bears. They are scattered all througl 
the woods except in berry and cherry time 
then they are around burnings and in old deal¬ 
ings. Hunters say they go to rocky places whei 
they are not feeding. Even when there an 
beechnuts they are so scattered, for beecl 
ridges and flats are numerous, that seeing then 
is the event of a decade. 
1’here are more partridges this year than last' 
but they have not recovered from the scarcity 
of two years ago. Nobody knows whether 
woodcock were plenty or not. The October- 
November season was too late for north of the 
Mohawk River. The woodcock are practically 
all further south by the first of October. The] 
law is not' fair in this respect for Adirondack 
bird hunters. ' * 
The hunters’ license law offers an opportunity 
to punish game law transgressors by having 
those convicted deprived of the right to hunt 
for a term of y^ears as well as suffering fines. 
Such a provision would be especially salutary 
to woodsmen and visitors who do not mind 
fines, or who are willing to take long chances. 1 
It would make some of the guides, too, think 
twice before taking chances. 
An innovation which may have far reaching’ 
consequences is the introduction of bloodhounds 
into the Adirondacks. The New York Central 
has a pair of big pups at Utica and a few weeks 
ago, when a drink-crazed man jumped from a 
moving train near Tuppers Lake junction, a 
hound was taken to the scene and the man 1 
found. Attempts to use hounds in following 
lost people are becoming more frequent. I saw 
a suggestion in a new-spaper the other day that 
if game wardens could have bloodhounds they 
would easily trace down the illegal deer hun¬ 
ters who jack deer and kill them at licks. Half 
a dozen bloodhounds, trained to sniff out veni¬ 
son and follow venison killers would do more 
to strike fear into the hearts of game butchers 
than forty game wardens who labor under the' 
difficulties of tracking the men whose bloody 1 
work they can find on dozens of Adirondack 1 
lakes and stillwaters. 
I saw the work of a bloodhound* after a mur¬ 
derer at this city- one night. The hound fol-' 
lowed the trail for some distance in spite of 
the tracks of dozens of men and boys. The 
work, the detectives told me, wms sure on fresh 
tracks which were not covered by other trails. 
In the woods such conditions are found where 
game law breakers work. I would like to see 
it tried. 
Raymond S. Spears. 
