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Forest and Stream Letters 
The Live Decoy versus the 
Artificial Goose Call 
DEAR ForEST & STREAM: 
URING several seasons of wild 
goose hunting we have always felt 
that we were handicapped if we did not 
have one or more live decoys. But after 
one experience this fall I will always let 
the live decoy take second place if I can 
have Carl, the champion manipulator 
of the goose call. 
Carl and I were leaving camp on the 
afternoon of the fourteenth, so decided 
to try our luck at the early morning 
shooting. We had barely gotten located 
in our pits, when two other hunters 
with two live decoys came out of the 
brush and began digging pits within 
five hundred yards of us. 
Their live decoys were wonders at 
calling and kept up a continuous honk- 
ing. Naturally we did not feel very 
optimistic as to our ability to cope with 
such competition, but as we were all set 
for the morning, decided to stick it out. 
Our hopes were not raised any by see- 
ing two geese come in, circle our pits 
and leave us to alight on the sand bar, 
within two hundred yards of the other 
fellows’. 
Finally three geese came up the river, 
circled out pits, then circled our oppo- 
nents’, and alighted on the bar about 
three hundred yards from us and only 
about two hundred from the others. 
Their live decoys were doing their work 
wonderfully well and kept up a con- 
] tinuous conversation with the visitors. 
‘Then Carl got busy with his goose call 
and for over an hour he coaxed and 
pleaded with those geese. And they 
finally, step at a time—back and forth 
across the bar—turned their tails to the 
live decoys and slowly, oh! so slowly, 
walked in among our shadow decoys. 
‘This was the most exciting time I have 
ever spent in several seasons of hunt- 
ing geese on the Mississippi. 
_ And I repeat, give me Carl and his 
Boose call, and you may have all the 
_live decoys you want. 
i WALTER E. Murpuy, 
Cincinnati, O. 
A Cross Bred Prairie Chicken? 
DEAR FOREST & STREAM: 
AM inclosing photo of a prairie 
chicken and a cross, no doubt half 
grouse and half chicken. 
This cross was shot on the marshes 
west of Hancock, about 15 rods off. The 

as SS 
other bird which was with it, flew about 
ten rods further and lit, which we again 
jumped and shot and which proved to 
be a prairie chicken. 
I hope this may be of interest to my 
fellow readers of Forest & STREAM. 
BEN HALES, JR., Hancock, Wis. 
Kingfisher and Water Snakes 
DEAR ForeEST & STREAM: 
T SEEMS to me that Mr. Rhead is 
quite unduly pessimistic about the 
kingfisher. What little direct evidence 
I have seen is opposed to the idea that 
this bird eats any trout. This direct 
evidence is a report on the examination 
of the fish remains in two kingfisher 
nests. The direct evidence is further 
supported by many theoretical consid- 
erations. The trout is not at any time 
a surface fish. When it is feeding at 
the surface it makes a separate excur- 
sion from its den on the bottom for 
each morsel. The nearest it comes to 
staying at the surface is when it lurks 
under a log in some quiet pool. Most 
of the kingfishers do their fishing in 
streams which do not contain trout or 
in which the trout are not common. 
There are at least two minnows 
which are found in all trout brooks; 
which are evident in larger numbers 
than the trout, and which habitually 
swim in the upper part of the water 
and out in the open pools. These fish 
are the chub and the black-nosed dace. 
The dace is a little fellow and is found 
as far up stream as the trout goes, far- 
ther than any other fish. The chub 
does not go quite so far up stream and 
there are some pools in the dense woods 
where kingfishers are hardly ever 
seen, which have in them only black- 
nosed dace and baby trout (fish less 
than a year old). A casual glance into 
one of those pools will show dozens of 
dace, but it takes keen vision and much 
patience to see a troutlet dart from a 
log to the shelter of a stone or to see 
another poised under the bank. 
In the case where the two nest holes 
were dug out after the young had left 
and the trash at the bottom of the nest 
studied, it was found that the bird had, 
in each case, brought home only one 
species of fish. In one case it was the 
fat-head minnow, a very abundant min- 
now of the pools in streams about as 
swift as those which harbor trout, but 
a little warmer than the trout prefer. 
No trout remains were in the other nest. 
I hope that the one hundred eighty 
kingfishers that were trapped in Cale- 
donia Creek were sent (at least their 
stomachs) to the Biological Survey at 
Washington for a study of their food. 
My personal belief is that at least one 
hundred and seventy of them had eaten 
no trout, not because they do not like 
trout but because there are so many 
other fish easier to catch. The earliest 
lesson the young trout learns is con- 
cealment. Before the egg sac is ab- 
sorbed the little fish-to-be creeps-down 
between the gravel. 
swim it begins to hide under or behind 
something where it can see. 
As soon as it can 
283 
ee 
