FOREST AND 
STREAM. 
[APRIL 14, 1906. 


y A DAY’S BAG IN COLORADO. 
the ‘coon scrambling down in a hurry—but when 
I attempted it I found it very hard on the vocal 
cords to produce such a sound. 
How much reasoning the ’coon does before he 
decides to come down when called in this way 
we will leave our animal philosophers to deter- 
mine. I can say from experience, thoush, that 
he will “come down the tree” when these condi- 
tions are skillfully carried out. 
J. DAnrortH BusH. 
WitmincTon, Del., April 1. 

Spring Shooting in Colorado. 
Denver, Colo., April 2—The ducking season is 
at its height here, and each day finds enthusiastic 
sportsmen with guns wending their way to the 
lakes. 
March 25 Mr. Duckels, Mr. Sartori, Mr. 
Moritz and Mr. Morley went to Sedgwick for a 
day’s shooting. Judging from the accompanying 
photograph luck was with them. They killed 
thirty-one ducks, five Canada geese, one brant 
and a swan. Mr. B. E. Moritz, one of the best 
wing shots in Colorado, saw a large white bird 
flying some distance from him and brought to 
earth 2 beautiful white swan that measured five 
feet from tip to tip. The swan looked enormous 
when held erect, and the report was circulated in 
Denver that an eagle had been killed. The 
quartet expected to return at 2 A. M., but their 
efforts to flag the train were unsuccessful, and it 
was 8:15 that evening before they started home, 
very much disgusted over a wasted day (that 
might have been spent ducking) ; and the poor 
accommodations the station offered for rest and 
refreshments. 
Herman Otto, Ed. Byers and Harry Shemel 
went to Little Seap Lake Sunday for ducks and 
came home laden; killed thirty-five each (the 
limit is twenty-five), but they divided with their 
friends on the train, who were not so successful 
and escaped the law. 
Mr. Threewits went ducking and was unable to 
bring home all he shot. He borrowed a burro 
(called in the West a canary bird), and strap- 
ping the gun and ducks to its back, made a pil- 
grimage to the station with ease and comfort. I 
am indebted to Mr. B. E. Moritz for the photo- 
graph of the “caravan.” 
Mr. Ralph Talbot, one of Denver's most noted 
criminal lawyers, and Mr. Luney went to Platte 
River, between Sedgwick and Sterling, Monday, 
the 26th ult., and were ducking three days. It 
was very warm and ducks were plentiful. They 
saw from 1,500 to 2,500 brants migrating north. 
The Canada geese also saw them and left. Fri- 
day there was not a goose or duck in sight, and 
Saturday Mr. Talbot killed only one brant and 
two ducks. A SoctaL TRAMP. 
Long Island Duck Shooting. 
Orient, N. Y., March 31.—Editor Forest and 
Streanv: I believe in fair play and I am m no 
doubt as to your belief in the same idea. The 
article you published last’ week regarding Long 
Island ducks shows that you are broad-minded 
and not like some people who apply ill names 
to all men who do-no think as they do. To my 
mind “Suffolk County” writes on the Long Island 
duck question very much better than Mr. Brown 
can. One law cannot he made to apply to every 
part of this country and be perfectly fair to all. 
_I am an old-timer, and after nearly sixty years’ 
experience with a gun ought to know something 
about conditions respecting ducks in fall and 
spring, at this the northeast point of Long Island. 
Never truer words were said than “a dead duck 
is wiped out of existence whether killed in the 
fall or spring, and will never lay eggs or hatch 
them again.” 
The Brown law sets no limit to the bag, and 
a man who perhaps does not know just where to 
stop, may kill a thousand birds in one day, pro- 
vided he gets the chance. It would be far better 
to have the time extended with a reasonable bag 
limit than the law as it now stands. In this 
locality we have very few ducks excepting those 
our up-State brothers term “trash ducks.” After 
shooting fifty-eight years I have never had a 
chance to kill a redhead mallard or canvasback, 
Coots, dipper, old squaws and sheldrakes are 
about all we have, and they are a rank lot indeed, 
but we manage to eat or give away all we shoot. 
There is little market shooting hereabouts. 
We Long Island shooters have been called very 
scurvy names, but I doubt not that it has been 
thoughtlessly done, and for one I forgive all. We 
ask a law for Suffolk that will give us from Oct. 
15 to April 15, allowing us to kill trash ducks if 
no others. Uncle DAN. 
ZENITH, Wyo.—Being an old-time reader of 
your paper I congratulate you on the present im- 
provements. I have been pretty well around in 
the world and always found some one who kept 
it, and suppose that its present form will strongly 
add to its world-wide reputation. 
D. T. AHRENBERG. 
The Argali. 
THE magnificent wild sheep, whose_ portrait ap- 
pears on our front cover and which we owe to the 
courtesy of the Director of the Field Columbian 
Museum, is one of the greatest of its kind. True, 
its horns have not so wide a spread as those of 
Marco Polo sheep, but it is quite as large and the 
horns are more massive. 
Living as it does on the high plateaus of cen- 
tral Asia, comparatively few sportsmen have met 
with it, and those who have are Englishmen or 
Russians. 
Mr. E. Demidoff, Prince San Donato, the well 
known author of “Hunting Trips in the Cau- 
casus,” in company with St. George Littledale, 
made a trip some years ago to the Altai and 
Mongolia in search of these wild sheep, and 
wrote an interesting book about them, which, so 
far as we know, covers their habits and the coun- 
try where they are found better than anything 
else. 
Like most of his kind, Ovis ammon is a dweller 
in the mountains, and he who would hunt him 
must be prepared to endure bitter cold, to breast 
steep rock slopes, to watch and wait long for a 
shot, and at last perhaps hungry and cold to come 
late in the night to his camp. But then, if he 
manages to get a fair shot at a great ram and 
kills, how ample is his reward. 
Here is a paragraph from Mr. Demidoff’s book 
telling something of the miseries of sheep-hunt- 
ing: “It was fated, however, that the day was 
not to prove a success. The ascent was dread- 
fully steep and it took us a good hour and a half 
to get near the summit. In the meantime heavy 
clouds had been gathering, and the wind blew 
stronger every moment as we struggled up the 
precipitous cliffs. Presently light became more 
and more dim and a regular blizzard came on, 
covering us up with snow. In less than five min- 
utes everything was white around us, and the 
cold so intense that we were nearly frozen as we 
lay among the rocks waiting for the storm to 
pass. In this dilemma Taba suggested that we 
had better go back to lower ground, there seem- 
ing to be no chance of the weather ciearing up 
that day. Go back! This was easier said than 
done. The descent at places had to be worked 
backward on all fours. Moreover, such was the 
force of the gale that we had to cling hard to 
the rocks in order not to be blown off our feet; 
snow and hail simply blinded us, preventing us 
from securing a firm foothold on the few pro- 
truding ledges. We took a couple of hours to 
reach the horses, and that only thanks to Taba’s 
skill, who somehow succeeded in groping his way 
down in absolute darkness. We returned to 
camp half frozen and thoroughly drenched.” 
This is a cheerier picture which tells of suc- 
cess: 
“It took us a long time to reach the entrance 
to the valley, our ponies stumbling over the 
marshy tableland we had to cross, and only. found 
ourselves among the well known buttresses at 
6:30. Taba had been conceded to me for the day, 
Littledale having taken out with him a hunter 
named Lepet, who, though he was subject to 
eye soreness, yet could see as well as any man 
on our planet, and discover game where tele- 
scopes seemed useless. I left my ‘second horse- 
man’ in charge of the ponies, and started up the 
nullah with Taba. We followed the bed of the 
stream for some time, examining carefully the 
slopes on either side, and stopping now and then 
to spy the lateral ravines, at the bottom of which 
the wily old rams enjoy their siesta, but there 
were no signs of sheep till we had gone almost 
half way up the valley. At this stage, just as we 
had passed a sharp turning, a lot of about fifteen 
rams came into sight, some 500 yards ahead of 
us. Unfortunately the wind kept blowing steadily 
in our backs, and there was no means of making 
a detour without being discovered, So we both 
lay down and waited in the hope that fate might 
alter the direction of the wind. Naturally it did 
nothing of the sort, and as we crawled along the 
stones we saw the whole herd get up, cross the 
stream, and trot up the opposite slope, till they 
all disappeared over the last ridge. I watched 
them the whole way with my glass, and found 
that two or three of them would have been most 
satisfactory trophies. We were now at a loss 

