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Forest and Stream Letters 
A Letter From an Old Forest and 
Stream Reader 
DEAR FOREST AND STREAM: 
Ipde apie your Sportsman Ency- 
clopedia and I surely appreciate it. 
It is a valuable book and I thank you 
for sending it to me. I am an old fol- 
lower of FOREST AND STREAM, born 
August 27, 1839, and have hunted 
every year since I was 15, shoot with- 
out glasses, can stand on my pins all 
day and finish with the boys. I lived 
from 1875 to 1878 on the Halifax River 
in Florida and during that time en- 
joyed splendid shooting. The little 
town of New Britain, now Ormond, 
at that time was a hunter’s paradise; 
no end to the game, no markets and I 
kept everybody in meat for three years 
and never charged them a penny. The 
bear were so thick that between the 
sand ridges their tracks were so 
numerous that you couldn’t follow any 
one; like a flock of sheep. I killed sev- 
eral, among them one of those King 
bears, the largest of the black species. 
It weighed 600 lbs. on a pair of plat- 
form scales. I killed eleven deer with- 
out a miss and all shot through the 
neck or head. I hunted five winters, 
from ’65 to ’69, in the Smokies which 
were full of game of all kinds. I made 
two hunts in the Cumberland moun- 
tains, shot five times in two days, kill- 
ing three buck deer and two wild 
turkeys. My last day there was the 
last day of the year 1899. I made a 
double, the left barrel on a buck and 
the right one on a wild turkey, shoot- 
ing his head off. I wrote your man 
Hoffer at that time telling him about 
it and he wrote me saying that I was 
the luckiest fellow that ever lived. In 
a recent issue of FOREST AND STREAM 
a man signing his name P. Appledoorn 
wanted to know what became of the 
wild pigeons. The Smithsonian Insti- 
tue, Washington, D. C., have a glass 
case showing a flock of wild pigeons 
and a statement saying that the market 
hunters were responsible for their dis- 
appearance. In their migration one 
immense number came to Maine, the 
earliest I ever saw them was one year 
in March and they ran into a big snow 
storm. I saw one flock that was so 
long that neither end could be seen. 

My uncle killed some that had green 
grapes in their craw. That immense 
flock nested in the big cedar swamp of 
Maine, quite a good many nested in 
New Hampshire. All during the fifties 
my father baited and netted with my 
help every year taking them alive, 
keeping them in a corn barn that wouid 
hold several hundred. They were most 
ravenous, and when I went in to feed 
them they would alight on my head, 
shoulders and the pan, all eager to get 
the food, not in the least afraid of me. 
Mr. Samuel B. Dow 
Past Grand Commander, Knights Templar 
Knoxville, Tenn. 
I still have in my possession that net 
that we sprung over them. 
In 1860 I went west and one of those 
immense flocks lived in Michigan, an- 
other one in Indiana, another in Ken- 
tucky, and another one in Tennessee. 
I know what became of the last two 
big flocks; they were drowned in the 
Gulf of Mexico, one in the spring of 
1870, and one in the fall on their 
migration south in 1878. In May, 1870, 
when IJ was spending the winter in 
Texas, I left Galveston May 1st, cross- 
ing the Gulf to Brasheur City, twenty 
miles below New Orleans. 
The song 
birds were migrating and as I sat on 
deck watching them, many came to 
the vessel, one alighting on my knee. 
I put my hand over it; it had been in 
the water, but had strength enough to 
arise. I saw many that could not leave 
the water and so were drowned. The 
captain came to me saying “I see you 
are interested in the birds, you ought 
to have been with me on my last trip. 
We steamed for miles through dead 
wild pigeons, the water in places so 
covered you could not see the surface, 
in other places there would be a clear 
space where the fish had devoured 
them. The captain said “we steamed 
through millions, and millions and 
millions.” There’s where one of the 
immense flocks disappeared to, and in 
1878 your paper told of the last great 
flock going in the same way. I remem- 
ber your paper offering a reward of 
$1,000 for two wild pigeons and none 
has ever been seen or heard of since 
1878. 
Ss. B. Dow, 
Knoxville, Tenn. 
Rattlesnake, Squirrel and Rabbit 
DEAR FOREST AND STREAM: 
LIFETIME of association with wild 
creatures teaches an observer many 
things. One gets to know the meaning 
of their calls, whether expressing fear, 
joy, or curiosity. This knowledge prob- 
ably saved the writer’s life on one 
occasion. 
I had been hunting squirrels early 
one morning and had bagged all I re- 
quired for one day, and was amusing 
myself strolling through the beautiful 
woods watching the antics of the wild 
life all about me when my attention 
was directed to the distress call of a 
gray squirrel. When I located him he 
was head down on a large pecan tree 
about ten feet from the ground, tail 
over back, fussing for dear life at 
something he had found at the base of 
the tree. So intent was he on his find 
that my approach was unnoticed by 
him, though I had moved within ten 
yards of the tree on which he was 
hanging. For some time I stood there 
trying to locate the cause of his dis- 
tress. Finally I discovered a very 
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