496 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[March 28, 1908. 
Adirondack Observations. 
Little Falls, N. Y., March 21.— Editor Forest 
and Stream: Some weeks ago I wrote you re¬ 
garding the scarcity of ruffed grouse and hares 
(rabbits) in the Adirondacks. Hunters from 
Little Falls could not find any of this game to 
brag about in the region along the edge of the 
woods. I have just returned from a snowshoe 
jaunt in the woods. On this trip I found 
swamps which were “alive” with rabbits, and 
every day there were tracks of partridges in the 
snow along my course. 
Last winter a trapper’s line, fifty miles or so 
long, passing through swamps and over ridges, 
had a few rabbit tracks along it. One swamp 
deep in the woods did have many tracks, but 
there were two or three mink sporting through 
that Swamp too, indicating that these rabbits 
•were not growing fat for lack of exercise. An¬ 
other swamp which I visited this trip did not 
rshow one rabbit track when we crossed it. 
The swamp was full of rabbits this winter. 
There is always more or less re-adjustment of 
■animal numbers in the woods. My trapper 
friend, who is probably the ablest woodsman in 
northern Herkimer county, told me that after 
a trapping campaign rabbits and partridges in¬ 
crease along the territory affected by the traps. 
The trapper catches fishers, mink, marten and 
ermines. About seventy-five of these animals 
are taken, which must reduce the number in a 
region very materially. A fisher, for instance, 
travels in a great circle—perhaps thirty miles 
in circumference. No two fishers follow the 
same runway, but their trails cross where the 
animals are at all plenty. The trapper, in the 
course of a winter catches perhaps half the 
fishers along his line. The proportion of mink 
and marten may be less, as they do not wander 
so far, and are less likely to cross the line, 
finding a trap. 
Of course, the destruction of these animals 
saves the rabbits and grouse on which they 
feed. The coming of an ermine to the vicinity 
of a camp instantly affects the supply of mice, 
squirrels and other small animals. In the same 
way the destruction of the other fur-bearers 
affects every swamp and ridge. It seemed to 
me that red squirrels were never more plenty 
in the deep woods than this winter. Of course, 
squirrels are much hunted by the weasel tribe, 
and the weasel’s absence is noted in the wide 
intervals between tracks. Of course, presence 
of red squirrels indicates that birds will suffer 
very much this summer, but over the squirrels 
hang the eager talons and beaks of hawks, which 
increase when food is plenty. 
Perhaps the most marked feature of the 
woods jaunt was the number of fox tracks, as 
compared with last winter in the same locality. 
A year ago the woods contained dozens of the 
foxes. They followed sleigh roads, crossed the 
trails and swept through the swamps, veritable 
red death for the rabbits and partridges. On 
this trip I saw two fresh fox tracks only in 
sixteen miles of woods. Last year there were 
so many that I didn’t think to count them. Of 
course one or two foxes will track up a good 
many acres. My brother, who was on the trip, 
noted where a fox hunted a swamp from side 
to side, crossing a woods trail through the 
swamp at intervals of three or four rods, evi¬ 
dently still-hunting. Yet there was a notable 
scarcity of fox tracks, for all the doublings of 
the ones remaining. The sudden scarcity was 
due to two or three Wilmurt men who baited 
the foxes from a sleigh—three chunks of meat, 
cowheads, etc. — to right and left of the road. 
On these baits were scattered pills of lard con¬ 
taining strychnine. The foxes, of course, ate a 
good deal of the poison, one time and another, 
with the result that three-fourths of the foxes, 
perhaps more, were killed off. This makes for 
the increase of game. 
This was some distance back in the woods, 
say three or four miles from the clearings. 
Along the edge of the clearings rabbit and 
partridge tracks were as scarce as last year. 
Of rabbits there seemed to be none around 
Northwood. An old woodsman who has killed 
fifty or sixty hares in a winter when the animals 
were plenty, told me he had killed just one this 
winter. Other hunters had worse luck 
It seems when calamity strikes squirrels and 
rabbits, for instance, there is always one swamp 
or ridge somewhere which holds several indi¬ 
viduals. From these the surrounding country 
is replenished. Last winter I recall seeing only 
two rabbit tracks till we came to a valley in the 
heart of the mountains. There the tracks were 
very plenty. 
French Louis, of the West Canada Lakes, 
who has long been a whole thorn apple tree in 
the flesh of game protectors, is an authority on 
wild life in his locality. He told me of a 
scarcity of martens, which he thought was due 
to the logging operations in that region. He 
thought Ithat the animals were driven away 
rather than exterminated. Other logging opera¬ 
tions north of the lakes, however, were now 
driving the animals back to his locality, he be¬ 
lieved. 
The subject of animal migrations is very little 
understood among woodsmen—or elsewhere, so 
far as I can find out. Among woodsmen, for 
instance, there is a belief that foxes from the 
Mohawk valley go up into the edge of the big 
woods, while foxes from the edge of the woods 
retire into the depths of the approach of winter. 
One trapper told me that he never found a fox 
hole in the back woods, though they are com¬ 
mon up to the edge of the big woods. In the 
depths, he says, the foxes live and sleep above 
ground. An explanation is that if a fox lived 
in a hole a fisher would find it and eat the fox 
in its own den. There are no fishers in the 
clearings country, and the foxes resort to holes 
with impunity. The effect of this alleged fact 
is that foxes from the forest depths have a 
thick, beautiful prime fur, while the fox of the 
clearings, which is not exposed to such rigors 
of the climate, has a thinner growth of fur. 
Unfortunately, the ways of wild, furred forest 
and field dwellers are little understood outside 
of the ranks of trappers, who mingle with their 
actual knowledge whims and fancies of small 
value to those who would like to know the facts 
about wild life. We all know, for instance, the 
skunk is a very gentle and kindly-disposed ani¬ 
mal. I have no doubt but that most skunks will 
permit themselves to be carried around by the 
tail. What I should like to know is whether a 
skunk merely refrains, out of kindness of heart, 
from covering its insulter with confusion and 
worse, or whether there is a physical reason for 
the skunk’s forebearance. 
Raymond S. Spears. 
Days Afield with North Carolina Quail 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Queer sometimes how the weather will affect 
one’s thoughts; else why should my mind turn 
this afternoon to those splendid days afield, 
while a northeaster is tearing around the tall 
building in the corner of one of the upper 
stories of which I have my office, and when I 
should concentrate my thoughts on exchange, 
discounts, the price of this, of that; whether it 
would be better to extend the credit of- 
or risk losing the business; how we can man¬ 
age to meet all the demands of the day without 
cutting our account at the bank so low as to 
make our concern look to them like “unde¬ 
sirable customers”; whether it would be better 
to hold old So-and-So off a few more days, or 
see if we can get another one of those eastern 
notes discounted? Oh, dear! there are enough 
questions coming daily and hourly which require 
instant answer to at least keep one’s thoughts 
from going afield. But somehow the howling 
winds, the dashing rain, the sweep of the clouds,, 
the hurrying people crossing the square far be¬ 
low me, the wrecked umbrellas, flying hats and 
skirts, have set my thoughts in another channel 
this afternoon, and in spite of me, I am carried 
to those loved North Carolina fields and farms 
and hospitable, homely homes, where for years 
I have been so welcome and so royally treated 
that their owners make me feel I am giving them 
pleasure by tramping over their fields and 
through their woods, and conferring a favor by 
dining with them or spending the night. 
The talk is of tobacco, its growth, its care, 
and most vital of all, its price; of this neighbor 
who had a good crop, and of that one whose 
yield for the season is “sorry”; of how the 
people down the creek, whom I know so well 
and for whom I have genuine affection, lost 
their baby; of how the tall boy, to whom only 
a season or two before I could give a pocket 
knife, has gone West; of the marriages, the 
births and the deaths; the gain in fortune by this 
one. the loss by that. The neighborhood is mine, 
and I am simply one of the neighbors just come 
back for a time, or, better to say, one who 
has simply been away for a little while. 
“What dogs have you got this year, Mister 
George?” 
“Oh, I have that little bitch yet. and one of 
her sons, and another that I bought in Missis¬ 
sippi which I think pretty well of.” 
“Are any of them as good as old Donald?” 
Somehow I draw a little deeper breath at this 
question as I reply: 
“In some respects the new one beats him; he 
has more speed; is certainly handsomer; never 
trots; locates his birds a little better, but-” 
and I smile. “Now, let us be honest and go 
right down to the bone, or if you please, to the 
nerve. Do you love your wife as much as you 
loved, or thought you loved that little girl years 
and years ago in whose eyes you first saw the 
love light and who saw it first in yours? You 
probably did not marry her, she may have 
passed on, or, goodness me, is the mother of 
some other man’s children, a grandmother per¬ 
haps—it does not matter; do you love your wife 
as much as you loved her, or thought you did, 
no matter how it came out? Have you a horse 
on your farm that compares with some one par¬ 
ticular horse that you sometime have owned? 
