chards and damaging gardens. 
A similar comparison may be true re- 
garding woodchucks. In our country 
they hibernate from November lo late 
March or April and have little to eat 
until the grass starts in April. We have 
fine clover fields which were badly in- 
fested with woodchucks. There was a 
ten-cent bounty and it was our custom 
to trap enough woodchucks in June to 
supply us with money for our Fourth- 
of-July explosives. The July and Au- 
gust money from the same _ source 
bought our percussion caps and powder 
and shot for our old muzzle-loaders in 
the fall. 
I have always had a curiosity to know 
what fish and game really weighed. I 
have weighed dozens of big ’chucks, and 
I never saw one that actually weighed 
over eleven pounds and practically all 
the big ones were under ten pounds. I 
will add that these figures hold very 
close on the red fox. 
Years ago we killed an old turkey- 
stealer which had had a fat living near 
a poultry farm. He was so big that we 
carried him to a farmhouse to weigh 
him instead of stripping his pelt where 
we killed him. I cannot swear to the 
accuracy of the farmer’s scale, but they 
wouldn’t allow the fox but nine and 
one-half pounds. The men who skinned 
him had pulled the pelts from several 
hundred foxes and he declared that this 
was the fattest fox he had ever skinned, 
though not the largest framed. And 
still we hear of 20 and 25-pound foxes. 
In some parts of the country they are 
asking for a closed season on hares and 
rabbits to prevent extermination, and in 
others they are asking federal aid in 
destroying them for the protection of 
hayfields and crops. In some districts 
protected deer are ruining young or- 
In 
others deer are as scarce as moose in 
Florida. 
A cousin of mine from Iowa once 
laughed at me when I caught a horn- 
| pout which weighed about a pound and 
a half, a monster in our streams. 
_ then rebuked me for not throwing him 
| 
' 
_ pounds. 
' than I he might have been killed in his 
He 
back and said that out home they 
caught them weighing 40 and 50 
If he hadn’t been much larger 
tracks for the insulting lie, though I 
later learned that he told the truth. I 
was ignorant, that was all. 
_ Since I began this letter I have seen 
_a friend who has a tame raccoon in his 
cellar and which he says weighed 47 
pounds last week. I am invited to see 
him weighed again. If I should tell the 
‘coon hunters up country that I had seen 
a 47-pound ’coon they would probably 
begin to lose confidence in veracity. 
_ Now to get the meat out of this ram- 
_ bling prelude. 
} 
_ We are all inclined to be narrow- 
| 
| 
| 
| 
minded because of our ignorance. The 
more closely one is confined in a small 
district the more narrow-minded he be- 
comes and the more ignorans of condi- 
tions in other parts of the country. 
When a man rushes into print with a 
sarcastic criticism and denial of state- 
ments made by someone in an entirely 
different region from his own, he gen- 
erally shows not the untruthfulness of 
the statement attached, but instead dis- 
plays his own narrow ignorance of con- 
ditions outside his own little circle of 
experience and observation. This brings 
us to the porcupine discussicen. 
In the country with which I am fa- 
miliar there are plenty, and they are 
pests, damaging crops, camps and pop- 
lar and hemlock growths. I never heard 
of anyone up there who was saved from 
starvation by a porcupine. I can un- 
derstand that in some parts of the con- 
tinent the destruction of a porcupine 
might mean the possible loss of a hu- 
man life, and that it should be protected 
for this reason. Nevertheless I can’t 
see that that is any argument for pro- 
tecting them where they are of no pos- 
sible good or value but do destroy 
enough to warrant a bounty for their 
restraint. The one real benefit of these 
discussions is that they show the differ- 
ences in the same species under differ- 
ent climatic conditions with various 
foods in a different habitat. Let the 
arguments go on, they are instructive 
and interesting. But don’t call the fel- 
low writing from Texas a liar because 
his experiences there are different from 
yours in New England and vice-versa. 
You are both telling the truth from a 
different point of view—probably. 
Dr. F. T. Woopsury, 
Wakefield, Mass. 

Photo sent in by Floyd A. Church. 
An Announcement from Mexico 
DBEAR Forest & STREAM: 
AVING noticed that several papers 
in the United States published a 
notice announcing that the hunting of 
antelope (Antilocapra americana) was 
free within the Mexican territory, I 
hereby take the liberty to ask you to 
kindly advise the press or any other 
party interested in the matter, that the 
hunting of said game is strictly pro- 
hibited in Mexico, on account of its be- 
ing a species in danger of disappear- 
ing. 
M. G. PRIETO, 
Departamento Commercial, 
Mexico. 
Dog Fish Notes 
DEAR FoREST & STREAM: 
12 THE June issue, Ernest G. Bab- 
cock of Battle Creek, Mich., asked a 
few questions about the dog fish. I 
have caught the dog fish on a number 
of occasions, but always in the same 
area. Have had them bite on live min- 
nows, spoon hook, and bass oreno. They 
can fight, and it is mighty hard to 
figure out just what is on the other end 
as they stay down well out of sight. At 
least that has been my experience with 
them. It may be of interest to know 
that the only place I have ever captured 
this fish is in the St. Croix River at Os- 
cela, Wisconsin. By way of caution I 
want to say that these brutes will try 
to chew off the hand that is freeing 
them and when they shut down on any- 
thing they stay shut. They furnish 
great sport to the light-rod angler. 
FLoyp A. CHURCH, 
La Cross, Wis. 

E SRSD EB io Merten UN ne 2 AR asain SY 
The fish are black bass and wall- 
eyed pike. Unfortunately the writer does not have a dog fish photo. 
287 
