656 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Oct. 22, 1910. 
The Shooting in Newfoundland. 
St. Johns, N. F., Oct. 10 .—Editor Forest and 
Stream: I give herewith a paragraph from the 
Herald, showing how the partridge shooting is 
still holding out. 
T. C. Fitzherbert and Harold Harvey spent ten 
days shooting at Peter’s River. Mr. Fitzherbert 
brought down 120 birds and Mr. Harvey eighty. 
They report birds scarce and the weather was 
also disagreeable, being very foggy. Mr. Fitz¬ 
herbert is an excellent shot and seldom missed 
a bird. He had ample practice in the old coun¬ 
try, however, often firing as many as 10,000 
cartridges a year. Harold Hutchings and Gus 
Herder spent twelve days shooting on the Cape 
Shore grounds. They found partridge plentiful, 
and both being good shots they killed enough 
to send all their friends a brace. Mr. Alexan¬ 
der, a sportsman from the south of England, 
traveled up Gander Lake as far as Little River 
and found deer numerous. He saw over a hun¬ 
dred stags, but they were not very large. He 
secufed two fine heads which he intends taking 
to England with him. 
There are several prominent American and 
English hunters at present on the barrens in 
quest of caribou. Among others are Sir Thomas 
Esmonde, nationalist member in the House of 
Commons. Sir Thomas had the misfortune to 
lose all his outfit and a considerable sum of 
money in the log cabin at Spruce Brook, when 
it was burnt, but he felt no embarrassment, as 
numbers of brother hunters all over the country 
tendered him guns, ammunition, clothes and all 
kinds of hunting requisites in such quantities 
that he was almost glad he lost his stuff by acci¬ 
dent—he was the recipient of such whole-souled 
hospitality. 
The Earl of Kingston and Sir Robert Harvey 
arrived this morning. They are also going after 
caribou. 
The nephew of Lord Balfour, of Burleigh, 
accompanied by an artist friend, are in the in¬ 
terior, going over the same ground traversed by 
J. Guillie Millais. They intend using their ex¬ 
perience for literary purposes, and will illustrate 
it with pictures made on the ground. 
Caribou are reported very plentiful near 
Howly; also in Fortune and White Bays. A 
snow fall on the hills near the Topsails will 
probably hasten their annual southern migra¬ 
tion which is about due now. 
W. J. Carroll. 
Skunks A-Plenty. 
Berlin, N. Y., Oct. 15 —Editor Forest and 
Stream: The night air in our little settlement is 
laden with *an odor ‘‘much stronger though no 
sweeter than roses,” owing to a plague of skunks. 
1 he heavy snows of last winter gave the animals a 
practically closed season, and they took advan¬ 
tage of it to multiply on the face of the earth. 
They invade our hen roosts and cellars, dining 
on chickens and whatever ohr larders contain. 
Last night a bee keeper found one industriously 
at work at the entrance .of one of his hives. 
As the law permits their destruction during 
the close' season when they are destructive or 
become a nuisance, they are being trapped or 
shot. 
My neighbor tells me that he saw three be¬ 
hind his stable yesterday morning. Another 
heard a noise in his cellar and discovered two 
feasting on a birthday cake. One climbed a 
pair of outside stairs and made a call on an 
upper floor. 
A few nights ago a skunk perched on the 
walk in front of one of our stores.' He was 
shot at four times without effect, and then a 
bright genius poked him with a long pole. The 
animal responded at once, and profusely, and the 
perfume clings round there still, or rather yet, 
for a skunk’s odor is anything but still. 
A little later, when the fur is prime, the little 
beauties will be cashed in, for traps are being 
purchased and an extensive trapping campaign 
planned. Sandy. 
African Hunting Club. 
It is understood that Messrs. Hugh H. Wheat- 
ley and W. N. McMillan, who own large ranches 
in British East Africa, not very far from Nai¬ 
robi, recently met here with the purpose of try¬ 
ing to organize an African Hunting Club for 
big-game hunters. The two estates, which ad¬ 
join, cover about 50,000 acres of land—a tract 
large enough to form a big preserve. They are 
for the most part wholly in a state of nature and 
contain large quantities of game. During his 
recent African trip, Colonel Roosevelt hunted 
and killed game on this territory. It is purposed 
to have the new organization international in 
character, and Mr. McMillan is said to have 
given his town house at Nairobi for a club house. 
There is already, we believe, an African hunting 
club made up of men who have killed game in 
Africa. 
Teal Abundant. 
Omaha, Neb., Oct. 6. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: Great jacksnipe shooting is now being 
enjoyed ~by many Omaha gunners on the flats 
below Arlington. They are also plentiful on the 
big oozy meadows near Waterloo and above 
Gretna. John Ellis killed forty-one birds along 
the Little Papio, south of McArdless Mills, re¬ 
cently. 
There were more bluewing teal killed on the 
Fillmore county ponds during the past month 
than for twenty years. Con. Young, Sam Cald¬ 
well. Stockey Heth and Frank Haskell all killed 
the limit on the Ayleshire waters one evening 
in two hours’ shooting. 
A flock of nineteen swans settled on Cutoff 
Lake last Wednesday and remained there for 
hours. Sandy Griswold. 
The Utah Duck Disease. 
Fred W. Chambers, State Fish and Game 
Commissioner of Utah, writes from Salt Lake 
City as follows in reference to the duck disease 
referred to in our last issue: 
During the past ten days the irrigation ditches 
have been closed and the sloughs and ponds 
supplied with fresh water, as also some of the 
canals, and conditions among the ducks seem to 
have changed for the better. 
I do not believe that if a person were to eat 
a portion of a duck that was diseased, it would 
injure him in any way, but this is only my opin¬ 
ion. The State Dairy and Food Compiissioner 
has prohibited the sale of ducks here this sea¬ 
son, as he feared that should any ducks be eaten, 
an epidemic caused from same might spread 
among the people. 
Shooting Accidents. 
New York City, Oct. 8. —Editor Forest and 
Stream: I read Sept. 24 your interesting edi¬ 
torial entitled, ‘‘Warning” and the one on the 
same subject which followed, Oct. 1. 
I quite agree with you that the experienced 
hunter, by cautioning the young men who per¬ 
haps are going out for the first time, and who 
are full of the excitement of the chase, may do 
much good and prevent many accidents. Yet, of 
course, such advice would not prevent them all. 
As long as human nature is what it is, as long 
as most people are careless, heedless and happy- 
go-lucky, men will shoot each other by accident, 
will pull their loaded guns out of boats and 
wagons by the muzzle and will put the loaded 
guns in such positions that they may be acci¬ 
dentally discharged. 'Most of us, in our earlier 
or later days, have been guilty of acts of care¬ 
lessness for which we really ought to have been 
condemned to death. I once came near killing 
one of my nearest relatives, and once narrowly 
escaped being severely wounded by another near 
relative. These acts of carelessness differ only 
in degree from the shooting of another person 
by mistake for a game animal. 
We used to hear of an Irishman who, shoot¬ 
ing at an animal about which he was uncertain, 
declared that he had aimed “so as to kill it if it 
was a deer and miss it if it was a cow,” but 
this was an exceptional hunter. 
Accidental woundings of one hunter by an¬ 
other when two are in company occur nowadays 
with extraordinary frequency, but they are no 
new thing. To-day hunting grounds are few and 
of small extent, while hunters are many and 
crowd into sections where game is found. It is 
natural enough that men should shoot one an¬ 
other. 
Yet more than a hundred years ago—as you 
no doubt recall—precisely this thing happened in 
a region where white men and hunters were ex¬ 
tremely scarce. It was during the return of 
Lewis and Clark’s expedition down the Missouri 
River, just after the canoe party had passed the 
mouth of the Yellowstone, and well below the 
mouth of the White Earth River, which enters 
the Missouri'from the north, that they stopped 
to take the meridian altitude, but found them¬ 
selves twenty minutes too late. The journal 
says: 
“Having lost the observation, Captain Lewis 
observed on the opposite side of the river a herd 
of elk on a thick sandbar of willows and landed 
with Cruzatte to hunt them. Each of them fired 
and shot an elk. They then reloaded and took 
different routes in pursuit of the game, when 
just as Captain Lewis was taking aim at an elk 
a ball struck him in the left thigh, about an inch 
below the joint of the hip, and missing the bone 
went through the left thigh and grazed the right 
to the depth of the ball. It instantly occurred 
to him that Cruzatte must have shot him by mis¬ 
take for an elk, as he was dressed in brown 
leather, and Cruzatte had not very good eye¬ 
sight. He therefore called out that he was shot 
and looked toward the place from whence the 
ball came, but seeing nothing, he called on Cru¬ 
zatte by name several times, but received no 
answer. He now thought that as Cruzatte was 
out of hearing, and the shot did not seem to 
come from more than forty paces distance, it 
must have been fired by an Indian; and not 
