76 
FOREST AND STREAM 
February, 1918 
shoes and rubber hunting shoes with 
leather tops and leather taps on heels for 
wing calks; a few simple remedies includ¬ 
ing plenty of cathartic pills for the In¬ 
dians ; rifle y.hh cleaning outfit and ioo 
cartridges; medium sized wing calks; two 
pairs of binoculars; duffle bag; tobacco, 
raisins and chocolate. 
Some comment upon this oufit is per¬ 
haps necessary. For the Cassiar trip the 
eiderdown sleeping robe is far superior 
to blankets or air beds. The former are 
heavy and cumbersome and the latter cold 
and require considerable labor in pumping 
them up if camps are frequently moved, as 
the case on a Cassiar hunt. In permanent 
Cam/S where it is not cold the air bed is 
excellent. All woolen clothing is warm, 
not noisy in the timber, and comfortable. 
But wool will not exclude cold winds or 
heavy rains so a .poncho or slicker is need¬ 
ed for that purpose. Hunting shoes should 
be as light as possible. There is only one 
rifle suitable for a big game hunt and it 
is that rifle in which the hunter has abso¬ 
lute confidence. I have no complaint of 
either the rifle used or the ammunition. 
When I missed it was my own fault. Two 
pairs of binoculars are advised, one for the 
guide and one for the hunter. They are 
in almost constant use. The Indians pre¬ 
fer a ten or twelve power glass in order 
to distinguish good trophies accurately, 
but for my own use I perfer the eight 
power because it is so light. Good tobac¬ 
co, raisins and chocolate cannot be pur¬ 
chased in Telegraph Creek so such articles 
should be brought in by the hunter. It is 
well to have a good supply of tobacco, for 
a camp that is out of tobacco is about as 
pleasant as a camp 
out of luck. 
The hunter’s li¬ 
cense is a part of his 
outfit and should be 
purchased from the 
Government Agent 
at Telegraph Creek. 
The fee for non¬ 
residents is One 
Hundred Dollars, 
and the license per¬ 
mits the hunter to 
hunt game birds, an¬ 
gle for fish, and kill 
the following b i g 
game native of Cas¬ 
siar : Two bull 
moose, three moun¬ 
tain goats, three cari¬ 
bou, and two moun¬ 
tain rams of any one 
species, but not more 
than three rams in 
all. We did not care 
to kill the limit as 
-we are opposed to 
the w-anton destruc¬ 
tion of game. One each of moose, caribou 
and goat and two rams are enough for any 
sportsman. The better way is to get one 
good specimen of each. A big game tro¬ 
phy has no intrinsic value. It is something 
personal only to the hunter. We had am¬ 
ple opportunity to kill our legal limit of 
each kind of game, but because the law 
gives a limit is no reason the sportsman 
should take the limit. Only as to rams did 
I kill the limit, and neither my brother or 
James Blair killed their limit of them or 
of anything else, or cared to do so. Blair 
is one of the Montana pioneers and has 
probablj' killed more big game in his time 
than all the non-resident hunters visiting 
Cassiar this year have ever seen so he had 
no desire to kill anything and was princi¬ 
pally interested in looking over the coun¬ 
try. Too many hunters consider the li¬ 
cense as merely a permission to kill. It is 
far more than that. It gives them the 
right to enjoy the public domain, to camp, 
to pasture their horses, to use fire wood 
and to get sustenance. It gives rest and 
recreation to all upon equal terms. 
The Weather 
IKEWISE the hunter wishes informa¬ 
tion as to the weather he will en¬ 
counter. I kept an accurate record of 
the temperature during September in the 
territory visited by our party. For the 
first eleven days there were extremes, it 
being frosty and cold in the mornings and 
evenings and quite warm at noon. The 
average was 31° in the morning, 82° at 
noon and 52 0 in the evening. These days 
were clear as the rains had not begun. 
On the twelfth a rain, set in that con¬ 
tinued for four days, followed by snow and 
thereafter the weather was cloudy until the 
end of the month. The extremes of tem¬ 
perature were no longer felt, the weather 
being cooler during the middle of the day 
and at evening. The average for the morn¬ 
ings was 32 0 , at noon 48° and in the even¬ 
ings 39 0 . 
The altitude of course has much to do 
with temperature. As an illustration, on 
Shesley summit at 12 130 P. M., September 
twenty-ninth, at an altitude of 4,150 feet, 
the temperature was 36°. There was plenty 
of snow. At 2 :oo P. M., at the base of 
the mountain, altitude 1,830 feet, the tem¬ 
perature was 49 0 and there was no snow. 
Telegraph Creek has an altitude of 530 
feet and it was much warmer there than on 
the elevations back of the village. 
The Guides 
ETTING along with the guides is a 
very simple problem if the hunter 
knows anything of the nature of 
the Indian and exercises common sense. 
These Indians are simply children in 
education, training and reasoning power. 
The hunter is very unreasonable if he ex¬ 
pects perfection in them. They must be, 
dealt with as children and praise of their 
efforts will stimulate them to their best ex¬ 
ertions. Their shortcomings may be easily 
corrected by shame and the threat to tell 
the facts to the outfitter and to the guides 
of other parties. They dread the derision 
of their own people. 
The hunter should always bear in mind 
that the Indian, from time immemorial, has 
made his livelihood by the chase. His skill 
in hunting is his greatest personal pride. 
The Kaiser can as well be instructed in 
the art of war as the Indian in hunting and, 
indeed, no greater offense can be given the 
Indian than to object to his method of 
stalking, to criticise his quickness of vision 
for game, or to refuse to kill an animal 
deemed by the Indian to be a good trophy 
upon the ground that it is a poor one. 
Should the Indian advise the killing of an 
animal the hunter does not wish the latter 
can, by the exercise of a little tact, get the 
Indian to say that if is not big enough 
and that they “will get better horn tomor¬ 
row.” The Indian can pay the white man 
no greater compliment than to say that he 
“hunts same as Indian.” 
The responsibility for the proper prepa¬ 
ration of trophies for mounting is the 
guide’s. Some guides are disposed to ne¬ 
glect this work, but the careful hunter will 
see that it is not neglected. The scalps 
should be promptly removed from the an¬ 
imal, fleshed out at once, washed in a 
stream if the hair is white and has been 
blood-stained, then thoroughly salted and 
rolled up. They should remain in a roll for 
at least two days and 
be turned over occa¬ 
sional!}' to let the salt 
work in well. Then 
they should be hung 
out daily in the open 
air until dry. Many 
guides show a ten¬ 
dency to shirk this 
part of their work,and 
leave their careless¬ 
ness to be remedied 
by the taxidermist, 
which, in many in¬ 
stances, is impossible. 
Some of the scalps 
brought in by other 
outfits were in a de¬ 
plorable condition, 
even decaying and the 
hair slipping. I saw 
one that had even not 
been salted, and it 
was necessary for 
some hunting parties 
to leave their trophies 
at Wrangell to be put 
in proper condition, if 
that were possible, before sending them to 
the taxidermist. If a trophy is worth hav¬ 
ing it is worth taking care of. 
Upon the return journey the scalps 
should be sewed up in a burlap bag at 
Telegraph Creek and at Wrangell a car¬ 
penter employed to crate all trophies for 
transportation. The necessary documents 
for the export of trophies, including the 
permit of the Government Agent to trans¬ 
port them, should be made out at Tele¬ 
graph Creek and exhibited at the bound- 
Majestic glaciers impend high above the canyon of the Stikine 
