OCTOBUR, 1917 
492 F 
Zane Grey has written many fine 
books, but here is the best of them all. 
He has written of wonderful horses 
before, but Wildfire outruns them all. 
He has written often of men and 
women who loved adventure and had 
their fill of it, but here in this story 
of a Centaur community the adven¬ 
tures and passions of his characters 
are as natural in the wild country in 
which they lived as the adventures 
and passions told of primitive peoples 
in fabled Greece. 
Published by 
HARPER & BROTHERS 
Price $1.35—Postage Extra 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Book Dept. Price $1.35 Postpaid 
9 East 40th Street New York 
HERE’S THE BOOK 
YOU WANT! 
This is the one book you need if you are 
going camping or like to read of camp life. 
Written by experts, “The Camper’s Own 
Book” treats the camping subject in a 
thorough and practical manner. 
NOTE THIS LIST OF CONTENTS! 
The Benefits of Recreation. The Camp-Fire. 
“Horse Sense’’ In The Woods. Comfort in 
Camp. Outfits (Suggestions for Hunting 
Outfits). Grub-Lists. Canoes and Canoe¬ 
ing. Animal Packing. What to Do If 
Lost. The Black Bass and Its Ways. 
About Fly Fishing for Brook Trout. 
Pointers for Anglers. The Rifle in the 
Woods. 
PRICE DELIVERED 
PAPER COVER 60 CENTS 
CLOTH COVER $1.00 
FOREST and STREAM (Book Dept.) 
9 East 40th Street, New York City 
OREST AND STREA 
trj'ing to stalk these wariest of all their 
kind, then let us each try and make a 
double and be satisfied. But if you have 
only occasionally had a flock shot and 
would like one now, let us hold our fire, 
which we decide to do. See that old drake 
stretch his neck and swim up and down, 
looking with the keenest of all eyes, and 
turning slowly from us; the birds swim 
together, their heads turned sideways, look¬ 
ing over their shoulders at the blind. I 
nod, and the two pairs of 12-bore barrels 
poke out above the fringe of seaweed of 
the blind. As we raise to shoot, Buff peers 
over the blind beside me. With a whimper 
and stiffened sinews he awaits the report. 
Both shots snap out as one, and into the 
air seven terrified birds spring straight up. 
three of their number falling to our sec¬ 
ond barrels. There are two cripples, one 
of which swims about in little circles, shot 
through the head in front of the eyes, and 
wading off as far as hip boots will allow, 
we each kill our bird. 
Buff by this time has almost reached the 
nearest drifting victims. Watch him swim! 
There is only one breed of dog could catch 
him now, and that the Tolling dog. No 
need to tell him to retrieve. Dropping 
his bird on the sand he plunges in again 
and again until the eighth and last duck is 
safely recovered. Buff takes a roll in the 
sand and a shake, and trotting up to me, 
rubs against my leg, and while he looks up 
into my face, I stroke his wet hair—wet 
only on the outside, for no water ever pen¬ 
etrates to the skin through that otter coat 
—and if he and I were alone I would take 
his honest head between my hands and 
whisper in his ear, “Good boy,” while with 
a funny little growl in his throat he would 
say in his own way, “We did the trick.” 
He always looks for this following a suc¬ 
cessful toll. 
A S a surf dog the Toller has no equal 
and will persevere until at last he 
stems the undertow. One winter 
I feared I had lost Buff on two occasions. 
Shooting from the same blind, I wing-broke 
a blackduck, and giving chase, the dog 
swam after his bird right out to sea be¬ 
yond my anxious sight. The tide had 
turned and I ran along the shore with 
frantic haste trying to locate a boat, past 
Read Head, two miles below, until at last 
I gave it up and sorrowfully returned to 
fetch my gun, which I had left behind in 
the blind. My dog’s few little imperfec¬ 
tions were all forgotten and every cross 
word spoken to him regretted; but to my 
utter surprise and joy, upon reaching the 
blind there lay the game little dog with the 
duck beside him. The distance he swam 
through the ice-cold water by conservative 
estimation must have exceeded three miles, 
and he seemed none the worse for it. 
Upon the other occasion, while flight 
shooting by moonlight up a wide creek be¬ 
yond the bridge, a wing-tipped duck fell 
among the floating, grinding ice-cakes, 
rushing together with the force of the 
heavy incoming tide. Away went Buff 
right into the worst of it, both dog and 
bird disappearing under the floe. It 
seemed ages until his head at last appeared 
in the moon blaze, with the bird safely held 
between his jaws. 
It is well known that ducks will not toll 
to windward. They will come to the dog 
M 
across wind, from the windward, and also 
when there is no wind. Blackducks toll 
with their heads drawn down, bluebills 
with their heads up and necks stuck out, 
butterballs on their tails almost, and all 
the mergansers with heads erect and necks 
straight up. Perhaps the Tolling dog is 
most deadly when shooting ducks before 
they leave the lakes in the fall, and when 
the birds are young. I have seen young 
blackducks swim so near the blind that 
their pads could be distinctly seen beneath 
the water. Bluebills are said to be the 
easiest of all birds to toll, but although I 
have had many fine shots at them in this 
manner, my personal experience teaches 
me that the blackduck tolls the best, and I 
have seen wary old birds in the month of 
January act like perfect fools at sight of a 
well-played dog. They seem to be hyp¬ 
notized, and when once their gaze has be¬ 
come centered upon the dog, will scarcely 
notice moving objects. 
It is as natural for a Tolling dog to retrieve 
and play with a stick or other object thrown 
as it is for a setter to point, or a coach 
dog to follow a team. Most duck shoot¬ 
ers use a stick to toll their dogs with, and 
some a lot of sticks, but the properly 
trained dog needs but one object to work 
upon. 
The history of the Tolling dog, from all 
that I can gather, is as follows: In the 
late sixties, James Allen, of Yarmouth, 
Nova Scotia, secured from the captain of 
a corn-laden schooner a female flat-coated 
English retriever; color, dark red; weight, 
about forty pounds. Mr. Allen had her 
lined with a Labrador dog which was a 
fine retriever. The first litter of pups 
made very large dogs, even larger than 
their parents, and these were splendid duck 
dogs. Several of these bitches were bred 
to a brown cocker spaniel, imported into 
this province from Massachusetts. These 
dogs had been bred throughout Yarmouth 
County, particularly at Little River and 
Comeau’s Hill, and the majority of them 
are a reddish-brown color. Later on a 
cross of the Irish setter was introduced. 
Occasionally a black pup appears, and 
while he makes just as good a retriever 
and water dog as his red brothers, he is 
not so valuable, because he cannot be used 
as a toller. Let us hope that the breed is 
given the recognition it deserves, for a bet¬ 
ter companion or a more intelligent as¬ 
sistant to the wild fowler does not live. 
RIFLE HINTS FOR WING SHOTS 
The first thing to be done when a deer 
starts is to remember that you have a rifle 
in your hand and not a shotgun. The 
number that can be missed, even inside of 
25 yards, with a rifle fired as a shotgun, 
by good shots on quail or woodcock, is 
perfectly amazing. A deer in market or in 
a picture looks quite large, but in reality 
they are a very small mark. Then there is 
around them an immense amount of va¬ 
cancy, and the tendency of a bullet to find 
it is marvellous. —Van Dyke. 
