818 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Nov. 19, 1910. 
In the Branding Corral. 
The scene in the branding corral, shown on 
the front cover of Forest and Stream, will call 
up old time memories to many an outdoor man. 
The picture was taken long ago, and the corral 
was in the Shirley Basin, which in old times 
was one of the great game countries of the'West. 
In the mountains back of the ranch, great herds 
of elk still roamed, and a few mountain sheep 
lingered on some of the higher peaks. In the 
quaking aspen ravines, mule deer rested, and in 
late summers and early autumns the broods of 
dusky grouse roamed through the timber feeding 
on the little red huckleberries and were rarely 
disturbed, save now and then by the bears which 
also were looking for berries. 
Down in the basin were many herds of ante¬ 
lope, and often the mule deer worked down 
through the ravines, and were sometimes jumped 
far out toward the lower land. A mile west of 
the corral was a lake where, in spring and 
autumn, great flocks of migrating wildfowl 
paused to feed and rest, and during the sum¬ 
mer, pintails, shovelers, little teal and mallards 
reared their broods not far from its shores. 
It was a pleasant place to visit on a hunt in 
summer, nor was it without its attractions in 
winter, except during the fierce storms which 
so often raged, and during which it was im¬ 
possible to be abroad, partly because of the wind 
and cold and partly because when such winds 
blew and the snow was drifting, it was hardly 
possible to see two yards before one’s face, and 
there was great danger of getting lost. More 
than one man has perished in such a storm. 
On the other hand, during the heats of sum¬ 
mer, people have stood in the door of the house 
near this corral, and watched hundreds of elk 
march down a hogback on their way to the lake 
to bathe. 
The men shown in this picture have most of 
them passed on. Over most of the land once 
occupied by the herds of half wild cattle, these 
herds and those who guarded them have dis¬ 
appeared. Yet they still live in tradition, and 
in the periodical literature of to-day we read 
stories of cowboy adventure which speak as if 
the old-time cowboy still existed. 
Turkeys in the South. 
Wild turkeys are said to be more plentiful 
in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains 
than they have been for years and the reports 
received in this city indicate that there will be 
fine sport in Perry, Franklin, Fulton, Juniata 
and Mifflin counties. 
Perry county has been the home of the wild 
turkey in this section for a long time, and it is 
said there are many of this great game bird in 
the woods of that county. The Kishioquilas 
Valley, is also said to have many of them and 
the hunters will go after them in force.—Phila¬ 
delphia Press. 
Harvey G. Stahl shot two fine wild turkeys 
while hunting near Garrert. One, a young gob¬ 
bler, weighed sixteen pounds. Other hunters 
have been bagging many of the birds. 
A number of Allegany county hunters have 
permits to hunt across the line in Pennsylvania, 
where the game is plentiful. —Baltimore Sun. 
Transplanting American Game Birds. 
From advance sheets of “American Game Bird Shooting.” 
It was between the years 1885 and 1895 that 
the greatest interest was felt in trying to restock 
the covers, of the Middle States with bobwhites 
imported from the South. They were turned out 
in large numbers, but, as I have said, did not in¬ 
crease the numbers of local birds because it did 
not occur to sportsmen to stop shooting. A few 
men paid for the birds in any locality, and the 
general public turned out and killed them all, 
very often without so much as saying “thank 
you” to the men who had paid the bills. 
But bobwhite was not the only native bird 
which sportsmen tried to introduce on the Atlan¬ 
tic coast. Efforts have been made at various 
times to introduce the pinnated grouse of the 
Mississippi Valley to the old home of the heath 
hen. This might easily have been done, and 
could be done to-day, provided only the birds 
were introduced into game refuges where abso¬ 
lute protection would be assured them. The 
birds formerly submitted readily to confinement, 
bore railway journeys well, and speedily adapted 
themselves to new conditions. 
While most of these attempts have been for¬ 
gotten or remain only as tradition, we have for¬ 
tunately a record of one of them. This account 
is from the pen of N. H. Bishop, well known a 
generation ago as a traveler and canoeist, and 
was printed in Forest and Stream in Decem¬ 
ber, 1874. R tells the introduction of the 
pinnated grouse and two species of Pacific coast 
quail in Eastern Maryland. The essential parts 
of his letter are as follows: 
“About five years since a resident of Phila¬ 
delphia sent to Dr. F. J. Purnell, near Berlin, 
Worcester county, Maryland, a few pairs of 
prairie chickens and a covey of both the valley 
and mountain partridge, or quail. Dr. Purnell 
has an estate of 1,500 acres lying along the banks 
of Newport Creek, which stream flows into Sine- 
puxent Bay, on the eastern shore of Maryland. 
Since the war this estate has been worked for 
the doctor by his tenants. Much of it is wood¬ 
land and salt meadows. The partridges were for 
some time kept confined in the house and then 
were set at liberty. They soon disappeared, ex¬ 
cept one pair, which returned daily to the kitchen 
door to be fed. For some cause the pair went 
to a neighbor’s house, on the same estate, and 
for some weeks were fed from the kitchen door. 
This pair of birds nested in the garden near the 
house, and raised a brood of young birds. The 
covey left their old quarters, and were heard 
from but once after their departure. A person 
reported that he saw the covey of ‘California 
quad on the other side of the creek.’ This was 
two years since. It is now supposed that these 
partridges have been shot by gunners or have 
died from natural causes. 
“The prairie chickens adapted themselves to 
their new home with but little trouble to the pro¬ 
prietor of the estate. Their nests filled with 
eggs were found along the fences of the fields 
near the meadows. The birds became tame, visit¬ 
ing the cattle yards, and feeding near the build¬ 
ings of the farm. They multiplied rapidly. A 
law was passed by the Maryland Legislature pro¬ 
tecting them from gunners. The birds seemed 
to like the large salt meadows of the estate, and 
exhibited but little fear of strangers. Unfortu¬ 
nately for the birds a number of terrapin hun¬ 
ters from New Jersey ascended the bay and 
river in their small vessels. Seeing these tame 
birds on the meadows, the Jcrseymen commenced 
a war of extermination upon them, which soon 
resulted in the destruction of almost the entire 
lot. A workman on Dr. Purnell’s estate in¬ 
formed me that he had seen eighteen prairie 
chickens in the cornfield near the house in No¬ 
vember of the present year. It was the only 
covey left by the Jersey terrapin hunters, who 
came up from Chincoteague Inlet. The same 
gentleman who sent these fine birds to Dr. Pur¬ 
nell is about to send down from New Jersey 
the ruffed grouse, called in that State and Penn¬ 
sylvania, the pheasant. There are no ruffed 
grouse on the peninsula.” ; 
In Forest and Stream of Nov. 25, 1880, C. S. 
Wescott reported that a half grown prairie 
chicken had been brought to John Krider, of 
Philadelphia, for mounting, the bird having been 
sent from lower Delaware or Maryland with a 
lot of quail to a Philadelphia game dealer. The 
bird w r as not preserved. Mr. Wescott believed 
— and no doubt he was right about it—that this 
was a descendant of the birds liberated in Mary¬ 
land about 1869 by Dr. Purnell. If this is true 
it would seem that these birds had survived and 
bred for a period of ten years, indicating that 
the conditions were then very favorable in that 
locality. 
About the year 1870 a number of birds are 
said to have been imported from the West and 
set free on Long Island, where they did well, and 
reared broods, but finally disappeared. Within 
two or three years after that the late Shepard 
F. Knapp, of New York, long a member of the 
Southside Club and an enthusiastic sportsman, 
told me of having seen on Long Island two 
prairie chickens that had recently been killed 
somewhere near Islip, L. I. 
In the year 1874 a number of sportsmen 
strongly urged the restocking of certain barren 
areas in New Jersey with pinnated grouse, which 
had been exterminated there not very long be¬ 
fore. Their idea was to import the birds from 
Illinois, where they were then numerous. 
That same year there was talk and correspond¬ 
ence in England and in the United States as to 
the desirability of importing the pinnated grouse 
to England and attempting to establish them on 
the Scotch moors. The price put upon the birds 
seems to have prevented any action in this direc¬ 
tion. Dealers asked £2 5s. per pair for the 
birds, but later Charles Plallock succeeded in 
finding an animal dealer who agreed to furnish 
100 pairs at £1 10s. per pair. To-day many 
sportsmen would be glad to close with an offer 
such as this. 
Mr. Brewster, in the work already quoted, 
tells of an importation of these birds turned out 
in Massachusetts. He says : 
“In the early spring of 1884 or 1885, six pairs 
of prairie hens brought from Iowa were liberated 
by Robert B. Nesbitt, of Cambridge, at various 
points along Concord avenue, between Belmont 
and Concord. He tells me that he was after¬ 
ward informed — on somewhat questionable au¬ 
thority, however — that several of these birds 
reared broods of young that season. I can vouch 
for the fact that a year or two later an adult 
male spent most of the spring in a grain field 
near the village of Carlisle, Massachusetts, where 
(Continued on page 836.) 
