
Mr. Blazier feeding young antelope on a bottle 
J/Alberta Man Catches and Raises 
Young Antelope 
DEAR FOREST AND STREAM: 
JN reference to your antelope article 
in the December number of your 
magazine, I might add that there are 
still a good many antelope in the semi- 
‘desert country between here and Medi- 
cine Hat. A few years ago the Gov- 
ernment and the C. P. R. employed 
‘Chas. J. Blazier, of Brooks, Alta., an 
‘old antelope hunter to catch some. He 
could catch them alright, but few of 
them would stand shipment. They 
finally gave Mr. Blazier a permit to 
_eatch young antelope, which he raises 
on a bottle and gets tame enough to 
ship. He has been successful in shipping 
bottle-raised antelope to a lot of places 
‘in the United States and Canada. Some 
of them went to the New York Zoo and 
“some to the Wichita Preserve. 
If you care for accuracy, I believe 
you will have to give Chas. J. Blazier, 
of Brooks, Alta., credit for being the 
first man successfully to raise ante- 
lope on bottles, and also for being the 
most successful raiser and shipper of 
antelope to date. 
Mr. Blazier is uneducated and can’t 
write magazine articles. If he could, 
the papers would be full of his suc- 
cess. 
Thirty-eight is not an unprecedented 
number. Blazier caught about that 
many himself, and he and his wife 
| raised them without help. . 
; VAUSE FOSTER, 
Beynon, Alta. 
. . ea ee, 
_ Another Reader Disagrees with 
Mr. Pyle 
‘DEAR FOREST AND STREAM: 
NOTICED an article concerning 
crows in the February issue of For- 
EST AND STREAM, written by B. H. Pyle, 
of .Awood, Ind. 
nf * is experience as a taxidermist would 
‘seem to justify his contentions con- 
cerning a crow diet. 
ica". 
Let me relate a few first-hand facts 
I have observed in regard to the 
destructiveness of crows. I live in a 
rather sparsely settled county of north- 
ern Pennsylvania where crows are very 
plentiful, in fact, a large number win- 
ter here, and by close observation of 
their habits and diet, have come to the 
conclusion that Mr. Crow is not as bad 
as he is pictured, for the following 
reasons: First, I have noticed that 
when sowing or tilling the ground in 
the spring, great flocks of crows will 
follow the plow to eat grub wire worms 
and other destructive pests. Secondly, 
crows dispose of carrion readily; I 
will, however, admit Mr. Pyle’s conten- 
tion that they are destructive to grow- 
ing crops, young corn particularly. 
Mr. Pyle states that a mother crow 
lays from fifteen to twenty eggs, or 
an average of fifteen birds per nest. I 
think he is mistaken. During the past 
five years I have taken particular pains 
to obtain all the crows’ nests I could. 
I had 43 at one time last summer. In 
no nest did I observe more than seven 
eggs. Four to five is the general rule. 
Possibly the difference in location 
would have something to do with the 
difference in the number of eggs. 
I would advise Mr. Pyle, however, to 
climb the next tree in which he spies a 
crow’s nest and carefully count the eggs 
or young crows as the case may be and 
inform FOREST AND STREAM readers as 
to how many there were. 
LEO GAVITT, JR. 
Jonestown, Pa. 
Concurs with Austin Spencer 
DEAR FOREST AND STREAM: 
AVING read Mr. Thompson’s story 
in the November edition on the 
shooting qualities of Mounted Police, 
also Mr. Austin Spencer’s reply in the 
February issue and being an extensive 
reader of your magazine, I wish to com- 
pliment Mr. Spencer on his words of 
criticism in reference to Mr. Thomp- 
son’s remarks. He certainly gave you 
some authentic information on the sub- 
ject and I am heartily in favor of the 
way he answered and replied to same. 
Having been raised among the haunts 
of the wary moose, in the Hudson Bay 
district, I am very familiar with the 
type of animals on which the R. N. W. 
M. P. have been credited with wasting 
ammunition or lead. In reply to same, 
may state there has never been, to my 
knowledge, any of that said named force 
turned out of headquarters with the 
command “get your man” that was not 
able to hit any reasonable target at 
a hundred yards with a revolver and 
400 yards with a rifle; and in almost 
every case they are expert shots. Prob- 
ably Mr. Thompson might have mis- 
taken some movie actors regaled in the 
uniform of the R. N. W. M. P., who 
indulged in the pleasure of shooting 
game out of season; but I wish to add 
to Mr. Spencer’s last repartee and state 
that such reflections upon a force of 
police whose moral standing has been 
above reproach for many years, are 
unwarranted and not in accordance 
with the ethics of true sportsmanship. 
WALLACE E. SMITH, 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 

After the antelope have become old enough to eat hay 
