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FOREST AND STREAM 
warn 
A FULL GAMESACK 
Is possible if birds are plentiful, 
if your hand and eye are working 
smoothly, and if you are using 
THE RIGHT KIND OF LOADS 
SHELLS LOADED WITH ANY 
SPORTING POWDER 
ARE THE RIGHT KIND TO USE 
SPEC FY FOR 
POWDERS 
ACCEPT NO OTHERS 
FISHERMEN NEEL) DIXON’S GRAPHITE 
* lTp?^^s^§4kJqrig^o[ ferrules, tangling of line 
and is good for reels? 
free sample and booklet P-52. 
JOSEPH DIXON CRUCIBLE CO. 
JERSEY" < 
Get 
N. J. 
Bolt 
nece 
Sam Lovel's Boy. 
By Rowland E. Robinson. Price, $1.25. 
Sam Lovel’s Boy is the fifth of the series of Danvis 
books. No one has pictured the New Englander with 
so much insight as has Mr. Robinson. Sam Lovel and 
Huldah are two of the characters of the earlier books 
in the series, and the boy is young Sam, their son, who 
grows up under the tuition of the coterie of friends that 
we know so well, becomes a man just at the time of the 
Civil War, and carries a musket in defence of what he 
believes to be the right. 
FOREST AND STREAM PUBLISHING CO. 
I 
. ■ 
1909 MODtfEL 
Simplest lock on earth—no cocking levers, bars or pash rods— 
cocks direct from toe of hammer; coil main sprinr works direct 
on hammer—not around a corner—hammer falls 1-2 inch com¬ 
pared with 1 inch in other guns, making a very fast lock, that 
works like oil, with a quick, clean, sharp, snappy pull. 
Catalog FREE—18 grades, $17.75 net to $900 list. Remember we 
make dainty little 20-gauge guns. 
ITHACA GUN CO., Dept. No. 25, 
Ithaca, N. Y. 
[Dec. 18, 1909. 
locks, engravings, weights and gauges, etc. Each of the 
several grades of their guns is illustrated in attractive 
fashion, the grain and color of stocks and fore-ends, the 
varied, beautiful engravings peculiar to the different 
grades, and the steely colors of breech, barrels, etc., 
being reproduced with wonderful fidelity to the originals. 
The parts of the guns, hammer and hammerless, are 
also shown in illustrated detail. Much valuable general 
information is included in the work. Send for copy as> 
per address above. 
’COON HUNTING IN MISSOURI. 
A “change of scene” is a physician’s favorite 
prescription for nervous troubles, and it means 
California or Colorado; or if it is an eminent 
specialist, it may mean the Mediterranean. But 
there is a restlessness that comes at this time 
of year that does not yield to a sight of sway¬ 
ing palms or gawdy geraniums, or to the blue 
of an Italian sky or the beauty of Parian 
marble. The only cure is a change of scene that 
brings to view the long sweep of a Missouri 
hillside under a full moon, a dark daub below 
showing where the big timber follows the 
“branch,” and a half dozen men standing in the 
shadow of the brush perfectly still, harkening 
the cry of the hounds on a hot trail somewhere 
down in the middle distance. A rail fence 
slinks away into the dark at one side, and be¬ 
yond it a clump of persimmon trees rustle in 
the frosty breeze. It is such a picture as this 
that brings content at the close of a long sum¬ 
mer of anticipation, and to any one who has 
ever learned to distinguish a “tree bark” from 
a mongrel yelp, it is as necessary to a real 
fall as is Thanksgiving Day or heavy-weight 
underwear. So declares a writer in the St. 
Louis Republic. 
Good ’coon-country is easy to find in almost 
any part of Missouri—big timber along a little 
creek, with possibly a cornfield behind and a 
persimmon patch adjacent. We had six hounds, 
each with a distinctive voice, and his own • 
peculiarities and eccentricities. There was Spot, 
a black dog with a big white spot on the left 
shoulder, the first out and the last in, a tireless 
worker, but of a garrulous nature, and he pro¬ 
claimed poor scent with the same fervor that 
filled the other dogs when “burning it up” be¬ 
hind a lagging ’coon. However, his tree hark 
was infallible, and meant “meat on the table.” 
Nero had a good nose, and his rather choppy 
hark was only heard on the home stretch. 
Topsy was yellow and white, fine-mouthed and 
a good trailer. Joe and Dan were young dogs, 
working well, and Big Dick was the flower of 
the bunch. He was a veteran of many hunts, 
and would leave the trail for neither fox nor 
’possum. He had a long, deep bawl, and knew 
all the tricks any ’coon ever devised; and when 
he had treed, would stand at the tree and talk 
to the ’coon as if it were the last hunt he ever 
expected to have. 
With the dogs behind it, a ’coon shows the 
proverbial wisdom of a serpent. The ordinary 
stunt of a hotly pursued ’coon is to “tap” a 
tree. It goes up one side of a tree a number 
of feet and then jumps off on the other side 
and goes on. This always gives the coon an 
advantage, for the dogs, of course, stop and 
declare the race over by giving their tree bark. 
The tree bark differs in different dogs, but to 
a trained ear is unmistakable. The fact that 
the tree bark is uttered with the head up. look¬ 
ing into the tree, makes it easy to be distin¬ 
guished from the bawl with the head down 
trailing the scent. When a ’coon has been 
treed the' experienced dog begins at once to 
circle the tree, and if it has only been tapped 
the scent is picked up again and the race 
goes on. 
There is no music in the world like a pack 
of hounds in full cry, carrying a ’coon around 
the hill when the frosty echoes of a moonlight 
night make it sound like fifty dogs instead of 
six. 
On the night in question the dogs had 
worked a trail sometimes hotter and sometimes 
very cold until after midnight, and found it so 
mixed up that we knew it must be more than 
one ’coon. Trees had been taoped and there 
had been back-tracking, but still the dogs kept 
on until about two o’clock, when we heard 
Spot’s infallible tree bark, and then one by one 
