974 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Dec. i7, 1910. 
a falls. Our path skirted the swamp and then 
turned up the hill. We felt our way in the 
dark down the other side to the outlet of Bals- 
frone. After much maneuvering, Louis got 
through to the lake, one hundred yards from 
our campsite. 
“This site was at the top of a high knoll. 
Louis put up the tent and boiled the tea. I had 
a tent stove along and Louis set it up. 
“Balsfrone Lake is high and big. It is ever 
changing. Our knoll supported many huge 
red pines. One day we climbed the highest 
mountain; another visited a deserted lumbering 
village; another made a try for ducks which 
we found in great quantities; another watched 
the deer crossings; and evenings and early 
mornings explored bays and bogs, calling for 
moose. I became stronger and stronger. We 
feasted on partridge and corn beef hash, and 
later on a deer I shot. 
“One cold afternoon we paddled to a little 
island, over which we thought some deer might 
try to cross the lake, and took up our stand 
among the evergreens. The sun was warm and 
we lay on some bushes bent over until the sun 
got low, then paddled slowly toward a cove 
about a mile away, Louis calling. Ducks flew 
by, sometimes dropping to water with a great 
splash, sometimes flashing away. Then Louis 
let out a ripper, and sure enough, a black patch 
showed for a minute beside a thicket on a sandy 
shore a quarter of a mile away. There was the 
moose we were after, but he was not ours yet. 
Slowly he faded away, while we paddled like 
fiends after Louis had called again. 
“The bull was to the left, on the other side 
of a point. We could hear him smashing about, 
and then all was still. The wind was blowing 
from left to right and we knew the bull would 
go down wind to get our scent, which would 
take him back into the woods and around a 
bay which lay to the right of the point. Louis 
called again, and then we paddled rapidly but 
silently into the bay to get there first. Sud¬ 
denly we struck on a rock and nearly fell out 
of the canoe. Back paddle and then forward, 
but we were almost too late. There in the 
shadow two hundred yards away, over the water 
and the beach, at the point of the bay, was our 
moose. He stuck his head out for an instant 
as he stood by a large red pine. I caught a 
good glimpse of his horns before he withdrew 
his head. I saw a patch of black between the 
pine and a dead sapling leaning against the 
pine. The space was only about four feet wide 
and partly covered with bushes, but I had my 
chance and I took it. 
“Louis was very angry at first, as he wanted 
the moose to come out on the beach, but as I 
raised my rifle he steadied the canoe. I took 
careful aim and my ivory front sight stood me 
in good stead. Crack! Out came my moose 
as though pursued by forty devils. In an 
instant he reached the center of the beach and 
stood facing us. I missed the second time, as 
the canoe moved slightly. He turned, facing 
down wind. I missed again. He turned at the 
shot and faced us, and this time I planted a .33 
squarely in his chest, and as he turned, labor¬ 
ing and blundering, into the woods, I fired again, 
cutting some hair off his rump. 
“Louis paddled to shore. The trail was clear 
for a space, great tracks and much blood, but 
it was dusky in the woods. About 200 yards 
in there was no blood that we could see, but 
Louis saw a track under a root and went on. 
while I stopped by the last pool of blood and 
hunted for more. In half a minute I heard 
Louis call, ‘Hurry up,’ and as I ran toward him 
he called again, ‘Come quick.’ And I did, burst¬ 
ing out into a bog where there was a little lake, 
and between, me and the lake was the moose, 
with Louis a few feet away, apparently stuck in 
the mud. The moose had lain down, but had 
risen on his fore feet and was trying to stand 
up. His hair bristled along his massive neck 
and he was snorting. I landed another bullet in 
the neck to make sure, and the bull dropped. 
“I shook hands with Louis. In the west 
through the trees a red patch of sky showed 
clear, then faded. A star twinkled and reflected 
in the lake. A fish splashed. A duck flew 
somewhere near. A breeze sighed through the 
trees. And I felt both glad and sorry, mostly 
glad. 
“We had a little work to do, which we did 
quickly, and then we left him for the night. 
After a few more days we brought him out, and 
there he is, no longer savage or dangerous, but 
powerful in the lessons he taught and in the 
benefit that came to me during my search for 
him.” O. A. C., Jr. 
Mallards and Teal. 
Omaha, Neb., Dec. 9.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: An old St. Louis duck hunting com¬ 
rade of mine writes to know if I have noticed 
how the wild duck family is dwindling down to 
mallards and teal, and my answer is that I have. 
Many times recently I have called the attention 
of local sportsmen to this fact, and now I put 
the same question to your readers. It would be 
interesting, indeed, to hear from as many of the 
old wildfowlers as possible—interesting to learn 
if they agree with me and my friend in the be¬ 
lief that the wild duck family is rapidly dwind¬ 
ling to the two species above mentioned. 
Out here in Nebraska it has become so that 
the fall flight of birds from the North is fully 
nine-tenths mallards and greenwing teal. Of 
course the local crop of bluewing teal is always 
large here, and has been so for years, but I do 
not include the bluewings with the autumn issue 
from the North. 
Of course in the fall a good many widgeons, 
bluebills and spoonbills come in here and many 
ruddies, but the number is woefully attenuated 
when compared with the countless hordes that 
used to visit us, and the bulk of the bags made 
now is composed of mallards and greenwing 
teal. While comparatively few canvasbacks and 
redheads come down this route in the fall, they 
are here in fairly good numbers through the 
boisterous spring time. Those that come in the 
fall arrive late, linger but a day or two, and 
there are many more redheads than canvasbacks. 
My St. Louis friend sees an ominous sign in 
the dwindling of the duck family to mallards 
and teal, and a stronger one in the fact that 
these birds are now being killed by thousands, 
simply because they are the only species there 
is to be killed. Consequently he urges that some¬ 
thing be done before it is too late for the con¬ 
servation of the mallards and teal exclusively. 
He tells us how, before the War of the Rebellion 
—which is going back a long way—the sloughs 
and ponds of Missouri and Arkansas were 
literally overrun by millions of these grand birds 
all through the winter months, but now they 
have very few. 
At Big Lake, Arkansas, in the winter of 1894, 
a single pot and market hunter killed and sold 
9,000 mallards and from that point alone 120,- 
000 were shipped to the St. Louis market, and 
from other points in the State numbers that defy 
computation. He wonders at their survival and 
apprehends now, when they seem to be about 
the only species left in anything like their old 
plentifulness, that with the incalculable increase 
of the men who shoot, and with our improved 
guns, they must, in not so many more years, 
become absolutely extinct. Time was when the 
skies in Eastern Missouri were darkened for 
hours each day in the spring and autumn by 
enormous flocks of wild pigeons, with billions 
in every flight, but they disappeared as by magic 
some years ago, and there is none so wise as 
to tell us where they went. 
The passing of the wild pigeon, he adds, how¬ 
ever, was not regarded by the farmers as a 
calamity, but as a good riddance, because when 
they appeared in the fall in such startling num¬ 
bers they robbed the hogs of the acorns, beech¬ 
nuts and other mast. On the other hand the 
mallard does not rob anybody, for he feeds on 
the cresses and other aquatic plants and grasses 
which grow in the sloughs, bayous and lagoons. 
While this is largely true here in Nebraska, the 
mallard is a great corn eater, but he only re¬ 
sorts to the fields in the late fall, after the corn 
has been husked and hauled to the granaries, 
and when he is driven there by the ice locking 
the lakes and ponds, and of course does noth¬ 
ing in the way of impoverishing the farmer. 
Sandy Griswold. 
Why the Farmer Objects. 
In trying to show that landowners do not ob¬ 
ject to sportsmen, a prominent Massachusetts 
man says in the Boston Globe: 
“I am not a property owner, but I have talked 
with farmers a great deal on the subject and 
have hunted over this part of the State, and have 
never got in wrong with anyone yet. If in going 
over a farmer’s land I found it was posted, I 
immediately looked him up and told him I did 
not know it was posted, and if any damage was 
done I was willing to pay, but never have I 
found one who would accept a cent, all saying 
it was all right and to go ahead and hunt all I 
wanted to. And I have had orders written to 
pass me if held up by game wardens. 
“There are a lot of so-called sportsmen who 
let down the bars into a field of grain and tear 
down walls to get a rabbit, and tramp all over 
everything, helping themselves to apples, chest¬ 
nuts, walnuts, pumpkins, squashes and other 
things in the fields. 
“Many of the farmers have tried to convince 
these would-be sportsmen that a wrong was 
committed, only to be insulted, and I know of a 
case where the farmer was invited to come out 
in the road and be thrashed for his pains. Now, 
we all know that no true sportsman does any, 
of these things, but the rough and rabble do, and 
can you blame the farmer for posting his lands 
under these circumstances? 
“Why does not the State when issuing hun¬ 
ters’ licenses appoint each holder of one an 
officer to help game wardens stop these abuses?” 
