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SIBERIAN GAME IS PLENTIFUL American Soldiers in the Bleak Northeast Find Plenty of Good Sport There werent many things in Siberia that filled any of the Amerikanskys with a passionate desire to burst into unrestrained cheers Most of them however had a good word to say for the small and big game hunting that can be found anywhere in Siberia It is a hunters paradise One gets a good idea of the plenitude of game by visiting the markets marketsThe The Vladivostok markets for example are ns plentifully supplied with pheasants and partridge as the markets of American cities are supplied with chicken There are more than one hundred stalls In the big Vladivostok market In front of each stall hang twenty to thirty brace of the small partridge known iu Siberia as rabchik or hazel hen ten to fifteen brace of Mongolian pheasant four or five brace of black game and scattering stocks of deer bear boar rabbit wild duck and wild goose In midwinter hazel hen sold for fifty cents a brace pheasant for a dollar a brace mallard duck for a dollar a brace and a wild goose for 120 When I last visited the Vladivostok market the Chinese proprietor of one of the shops attempted to sell me a magnificent golden eagle frozen for twentyfive rubles or three dolars at the then rate of ex ¬ change I asked him what I should do with it after I had bought it He explained with an air of pained surprise that I should eat it If my mouth had happened to be watering for golden eagle I think 1 could have beaten him down to twelve rubles rublesLess Less than an hour afoot from Vladivostok there is better shooting than most of the Amerikanskys ever expected to see in their lives Down along the harbors edge ope can get mallard black duck teal and with a little luck goose An hour inland one is sure of picking up a bag of pheasant hazel hen or black game even without the assistance of a dog And across Amur Bay there are boar bear leopard deer and tiger to say nothing of a pro ¬ fusion of small game Amur Bay can be crossed in a launch iu nn hour The boar the bear the leopard and the deer can be found easily Parties journey across the bay and get good bags The tigers require more work A tiger hunt calls for a week or more of trampng usually but if the hunt meets with success no effort will have been too great The Amur tiger is the biggest cat in the world and his skin the most magnificent The Vladivostok menagerie has some gorgeous living specimens measuring more than ten feet in length Early lengthEarly last winter a British lieutenant colonel drifted into a gathering of Americans Britisli and Canadians and asked in a somewhat bored voice whether anyone cared to shoot a tiger He was ac ¬ cused of spoofing which lie indignantly denied Caretul questioning elicited the information that four tigers had descended on a village only an hour away from Vladivostok by automobile had slaughtered a horse a cow and two pigs and were even then lurking in the thickets on the outskirts of the village The hunters went forth They found no tigers but they found tiger tracks and a dead horse and a dead cow both handsomely clawed and the remnants of the two pigs In short the skeptics who thought there were no tigers within an hour of Vladivostok were convinced of their error errorOut Out in the bay there are salmon and in all Siberian lakes there are salmon giant salmon mas todonic salmon salmon of such proportions that the mere sight of one of them would be sufficient to make an American fisherman examine his tongue in a pocket mirror and telephone the doctor to come right over and see what ailed him Throughout the winter the frozen fish are stacked up like cordwood in front of the shops in the market When a purchaser appears the fish dealer gets out his bucksaw and saws off the requisite amount of salmon For weeks after the Amerikauskys arrived from the States doughboys sat in clusters on the docks at the end of the harbor hauling in mackerel as fast as they could toss their lines into the water and allowing as how Siberia wouldnt be half bad if they could only get some real fishing It seems likely that if the doughboys had been hauling iu four foot salmon they would have been remark ¬ ing to each other that salmon fishing was all right in its way but that they couldnt really enjoy themselves unless they were catching whales K L Roberts in Saturday Evening Post
