Dec. 13, 1888.] 



Forest and stream. 



409 



is a very pretty question involved in this case. Defense 

 may seek to evade the Magner case by setting up that 

 they purchased this game in St. Louis, or other point out- 

 side of Illinois jurisdiction. It is to be hoped that this 

 contingency will not arise, for should it not, it will be 

 almost a question only of the Michigan decision against 

 the Illinois decision, in which event our court must of 

 course follow the State decision, and should therefore 

 decide for the prosecution. This is much to be hoped. 

 An example is needed here. 



Mi-. Henry Sloan is a game dealer of this city, but one 

 who- buys no game out of season and violates no la w. 

 Mr. Sloan is a generous and enthusiastic sportsman and 

 a member of the Mak-saw-ba Club. I met him at tiie 

 club grounds a week or so ago, and I may have men- 

 tioned in an earlier letter something of what he said about 

 the Michigan game laws. lie told me that he knew of 

 some game dealers here who have deer shipped to them 

 from Michigan, which is quite against the law of that 

 State. The" consignors evade the law by having the 

 game marked for "Detroit. Mich., "or some other point in 

 the State — while the way lulls read to Chicago. Wiscon- 

 sin game comes into this city marked "Milwaukee,Wis.," 

 and billed through in the same way. Violations of State 

 laws hi this way are constant. The great bulk of the 

 venison sold in this market comes from Michigan and 

 Wisconsin. 



Mr. J. M. Law, of Cincinnati, one of the Ohio State 

 Fish and Game Commissioners, was lately down at the 

 English Lake club grounds, in Indiana. He says that they 

 have more quail in Ohio this year than at any time for 

 twenty-five years. This is due to the rigid enforcement 

 of a very rigid game law. Mr. Law reports that they 

 collected $700 in "fines in one township during the past 

 year. Under the provisions of the law 7 , these funds so 

 raised are applied to further prosecutions. The Ohio law 

 is a holy terror, and I should be glad to see it published 

 for other States to copy. It has, however, the defects 

 found in all game laws, and I believe I know law enough 

 myself to throw a house and lot through some of its 

 strictest clauses. The Granger legislator is a willin' 

 creature, if you get him headed right: but he can't write 

 English close enough to hold water. He isn't built that 

 way. 



The general tone of the Granger element of legislative 

 bodies, however, is against game laws and against the 

 clubs who buy and preserve tracts of land for shooting 

 purpose. Chicago capital, ever generous, ever enterpris- 

 ing, and never doing anything by halves, lias purchased 

 thousands of acres of Indiana lands, which are worthless 

 for agricultural or mineral purposes, and annually ex- 

 pends thousands of dollars among the natives of Indiana. 

 What does glorious and noble-minded Indiana do in re- 

 turn? Why, she sets about, and at the last term of the 

 assembling of her mighty wise men enacts a law which 

 states that no person can acquire title against trespass to 

 any overflowed lands! In other words, the duck marshes 

 bought up by our clubs are not private property, and 

 any one can shoot on them who chooses. That is a gen- 

 erous and praiseworthy step toward game protection, is 

 it not? 



The Tolleston Club will perhaps be in the lead in abolish- 

 ing spring shooting in this section. I hope the others 

 will follow, so that on all the marshes, for a term of 

 at least a year or two, the ducks may not be disturbed 

 during the spring. Let this be done, and some feed be 

 put out on the marshes, and 1 for one believe with Mr. 

 Taylor, the English Lake superintendent, that it will be 

 only a question of high water to bring the ducks back 

 again in as great abundance as ever. The third year 

 this English Lake country had as good shooting as ever 

 in its history. Eight years ago, during a low- water time 

 like this of late, there were no ducks, and everybody 

 thought the end had come. I do not think the end has 

 come. Under the usual natural conditions the marshes 

 below Chicago, extending down into Indiana and the 

 center of this State, are the finest natural home for the 

 wild ducks in the world. Give them a dog's chance and 

 rthey will come there. 



A great many geese nest on the Kankakee marshes. 

 Mallards and teal hatch each summer in sufficient num- 

 bers to make a regular flight of their own. Singularly 

 <enough, at the end of August these ducks, more especially 

 ithe mallards, leave and go north. It is thought that 

 ;they bring numbers of other ducks down with them on 

 rtheir return. Woodducks hatch in exceptionally great 

 numbers near English Lake. 



I have received several letters bearing upon a casual 

 imention, made in a late issue of Forest and Stream, of 

 the canvas blind used by Fox Lake duck shooters. I 

 should be glad to write to each gentleman separately, but 

 believe that will not be necessary, as I intend in a week or 

 itwo to make full mention, not only of the canvas blind, but 

 also of a number of other blinds and similar contrivances 

 used by the members of our different d uck clubs. Some 

 of these are very ingenious and effective, and I believe 

 will be interesting in the description. They were so to 

 me in the seeing, at least. 



Dec. 7.— Shooters are beginning to turn their attention 

 to smaller game than ducks. An occasional ruffed grouse 

 is brought in, and a few quail are killed in Indiana. 

 George and Ed. Klehm, florists, of State street, returned 

 yesterday from a four days' hunt in central Indiana. 

 They bagged sixty-seven rabbits, five quail and three 

 ruffed grouse. I got a few squirrels and rabbits near the 

 Cumberland Lodge Wednesday last. The Diana Club, of 

 the Kankakee, claim they have a few mallards left on 

 the river yet, but nobody is bringing in any ducks. 

 Word from the once famous Sangamon says they have 

 had no ducks this fall. Two experienced hunters worked 

 a day last week on the Hennepin Club grounds and only 

 got one duck. Yet no better duck country lies out of 

 doors than those Illinois bottoms. A Kankakee River 

 hunter claims to have word (yesterday) that there are 

 still plenty of ducks in Michigan. How is this? 



I wish some one would tell me why it is that everybody 

 feels privileged to beg ducks of a shooter, if he happens to 

 get any. Last week I started into the city with twenty -two 

 ducks. They vanished gradually under requests of dif- 

 ferent sorts, till when I got within ten miles of home I 

 had only fourteen left. At Englewood, as I was waiting 

 at the station for a train, I was approached by a well- 

 dressed man, who wore a plug hat and parted his whisk- 

 ers in the middle. He- looked at the birds a moment, and 

 then said, "Ah, my man, give me one of those ducks, 

 won't you?" Now, I don't suppose I looked very distin- 

 guished. My friends tell me that I should not, even in 



my wildest and most sanguine moments, consider myself 

 -justified in being proud of my beauty. But I don't like 

 to be called "my man." because I am not anybody's man 

 but in y own . I didn't know what to do about this fellow. 

 I wanted to kill him, but I was afraid he had a family. 

 At length the hidicrousness of the affair struck mej and 

 1 laughed, and handed him the mallard he coveted; "I 

 like you," I said; "you've got more nerve than anything 

 I ever saw. If ybu think this duck is the kind of diet 

 your nerve needs, why take her along, and God bless you!" 

 He took the duck, too. In common with most shooters, 

 I like to give game to my friends; but fellows like the 

 above ought to remember that it costs about $8 a day to 

 go duck bunting here, and that ducks are consequently 

 worth about $8 , apiece. I don't doubt many shooters 

 have had their eyes opened by the freedom with which 

 comparative strangers will "tackle" them for game. 



The Mak-saw-bas have a big pigeon shoot down on their 

 grounds to-morrow. E. HOUGH. 



RIFLES FOR ALL-AROUND WORK. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



I read with interest the communications on all-around 

 rifles in your issue of Nov. 8, but beg leave to pursue the 

 subject a little further and ask for more light. 



Conceding as I do to "Iron Ramrod" a greater know- 

 ledge of the various points of the modern rifle than I am 

 likely ever to attain, it is possible that his practical ex- 

 perience with large game is limited, and that he looks 

 upon the shooting of deer and bears with the eye of a 

 Massachusetts sportsman. I did, once. I hunted all over 

 that State long ago, and still knew nothing to speak of 

 about bears. 



Since those days times are changed. I see that they 

 hunt red squirrels now in the old Commonwealth. I do 

 not blame them, but in the old days nobody that was any- 

 body ever thought of shooting these creatures for sport. 

 Gus Hilton and I shot some for breakfast one cold morn- 

 ing, over back of Bald Mountain, in Piscataquis county, 

 Maine: but then we had nothing else to eat. That was 

 thirty years ago this month. Then I recollect killing a 

 few about seventeen years ago, for my Thanksgiving 

 dinner. Pork and red squirrels, with hunger sauce, was 

 the menu, and deuced glad 1 was to get them. There 

 wasn't a turkey within many miles, and as for plum 

 pudding! 



I should not be surprised to find myself shooting red 

 squirrels yet for sport. The game is going fast, and if 

 this sort of thing keeps on, we shall one day come to 

 regard the bat as a game bird. There is a fair supply of 

 them left. 



No one can teach me anything of the advantage to be 

 gained by putting a bullet in the right place. The diffi- 

 culty is to get it there. A man walks into a gun store 

 and'buys an outfit. He takes all the sportsmen's papers, 

 belongs to a rifle club, makes a capital score at the tar- 

 get, and has the theory of bear killing to perfection. He 

 packs his possibles and starts, full of anticipation, on his 

 first trip to the haunts of the deer and bear. Give him a 

 Ballard rifle, ,32-cal., with 165 grains of solid bullet, and 

 he is ready to guarantee instant death, by planting the 

 missile in the brain of the biggest bear in the North 

 Woods. It does not occur to him that he has, after all, 

 only mastered the most rudimentary points in the varied 

 acquirements which go to make up the qualifications of 

 a skilled hunter; or that the feat of putting a bullet in a 

 bear's brain will be much facilitated if the animal be 

 previously chained to a post. Well, when he reaches 

 the home of the bears, what does he find? Not the bears 

 — not often, that is— though a good guide, well paid, 

 may find them for him ; but he finds just what he has 

 often read of in Forest and Stream, but of which, 

 nevertheless, he had formed but slight conception, a 

 dense, dank, mossy, swampy, impracticable wilderness — 

 impracticable that is, for the tenderfoot, without good 

 guidance. Well, when he has fallen over a few scores 

 of fallen logs, smirched his hunting toggery in a "burned 

 piece," been lost in a few swamps and wormed his way 

 through some miles of cedar brake, and seen but the 

 track of a bear on the river bank, and the white flags 

 of a few deer in the dim distance, and when the new 

 rifle is beginning to lose the brilliancy of its polish, he 

 comes to a like conclusion with "Sparrowgrass," after a 

 three months' sojourn in the country, following a fife- 

 time spent in town, and says to himself that "some pre- 

 conceived ideas have to be abandoned." 



J have passed many years in regions where the bear is 

 not uncommon, and 1 have never yet known a bear to 

 be shot in the brain, unless it was up a tree or fast in a 

 trap. People expect too much of the bear, when they 

 imagine that he is going to sit up and look at them long 

 enough to draw a fine bead on his left eye. The bear, as 

 a rule, knows very well how to take care of himself. So 

 does the deer; and although there is an occasional ex- 

 ception, these but prove the rule. 



Now, only last week, my friend Konan was going into 

 camp after dark. Close to the road was what he sup- 

 posed to be a stump, though it looked like a bear, yet 

 kept perfectly still. He did not move the rifle from his 

 shoulder, but passed on, though the stump looked so 

 much like a bear that he noted the spot, and the next 

 day passed it again, when to his surprise and mortifica- 

 tion there was no stump there. The bear knew that it's 

 safety lay in keeping still. Had it been daylight it would 

 not have been in that place. 



I once jumped a bear in some briers which bordered a 

 wood road, and within six feet of me. I did not fire, 

 having only a fishing rod. Had it been a .32cal. rifle 

 with any ammunition in common use I still should not 

 have fired. I would rather a dozen bears should go free 

 than to get one "wipe" from the paw of a wounded one. 



I have known two good deer hunters to shoot at sepa- 

 rate bears (standing shots) in a berry patch and within 

 sixty yards. The bears got away. On returning one of 

 these men started a deer and shot it between the eyes. 



I have known no hunters who preferably pursued the 

 bear with the rifle alone. All use the trap if possible. I have 

 known bears killed in all sorts of ways, and my conclu- 

 sion is that they are very uncertain in their habits. Only 

 if a man understands them, and wants a bear, he will 

 generally get one in some Avay, most probably unsports- 

 manlike. 



Your correspondent in Elizabeth, New Jersey, does not 

 believe in the possibility of a good all-around rifle. I 

 doubt it myself, yet not so very long ago the best sport- 

 ing authorities scouted the idea that the breechloader could 



ever be made practically useful, and Colonel Hawke 

 believed religiously in the flintlock. 



The best all-round gun I know has shot and rifle barrels 

 side, by side. Its weight is its only objection. But if a 

 bullet of .32-cal. can be made which will answer as well 

 as a .44 or a i50 for snap-shooting in dense covert at large 

 game, then one step will be gained. I still doubt the effi- 

 ciency of the 165grs. ball of that caliber, and if some one 

 who has used explosive bullets would give his experience 

 we might learn something. "H. P. U." ought to have 

 some ideas about it, and some of those fellows who are 

 always experimenting might try a few on some worth- 

 less animals. Kelpie. 



Central Lake, Mich., Nov. ai. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



I quite agree with "W. W. B." (in your issue of this 

 date) that the .22-cal. rifle, with the 15-45 C. F. cartridge, 

 is a most excellent weapon for hunting small game, as I 

 well know from experience: but when it comes to shoot- 

 ing ducks at a range between 150 and 200yds., with the 

 wind blowing, (and that was the proposition laid down by 

 "N. Orleans") I think he will find the 45-grain bullet too 

 fight, and that the wind will carry it wide of its mark. In 

 calm or comparatively still weather that cartridge works 

 (in a good rifle) like a charm, and comes within the range 

 indicated by "N. Orleans;" but it stands little chance in a 

 gale of wind in shooting over that distance. It is as much 

 as a 115-grain bullet, backed by twenty grains of powder, 

 can do to hold its own under such circumstances. 



Again, as for the presentable appearance of the game 

 shot with the .32-cal. bullet advocated by me under the 

 conditions given by "N. Orleans," the fact is, that less 

 mutilation results from the use of a single bullet of that 

 caliber than from an ounce of No. 4 shot fired at fairly 

 close quarters. The bullet does its work effectually, it is 

 true, but (except in rare cases) with less exterior mangling 

 or disfigurement than shot fired from a chokebore at from 

 20 to 40yds. Of course, I would not be understood as ad- 

 vising the use of .32-caliber rifles for duck shooting under 

 ordinary circumstances, but under the peculiar conditions 

 referred to by your correspondent, "N. Orleans," I am 

 still of opinion that he will find a .32-cal. rifle the most 

 satisfactory weapon. Louis Bagger. 



Washington, D. C. 



BULLETS. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



I noticed a communication from Mr. Roosevelt relative 

 to the Keene bullet. I have never seen one of that name, 

 but last year came across the description of Lord Keane's 

 cross-cut bullet, and after endeavoring to obtain a few 

 without success, I adopted the following plan. Taking a 

 loaded .40-82 cartridge, which is the caliber I am most 

 attached to, I fixed it in a vise and with a common scroll- 

 saw quartered the bullet as far as the shell. These I used 

 on deer and elk in Wyoming and Montana this fall and 

 their performance was entirely satisfactory. In no case 

 did. they fail to open and in some cases split, tearing the 

 flesh around. I consider them superior to express bullets 

 and the small cut does not interfere with any parts of the 

 gun, while the short time it takes to prepare a quantity 

 is greatly in favor of this method. I have even done this 

 way with .22 cartridges when using them against prairie 

 chickens and sage hens. R. H. W. 



Philadelphia. 



MICHIGAN'S NORTHERN PENINSULA. 



LAKE LINDEN, Mich., Dec. 1.— The deer hunting sea- 

 son in the peninsula is closed and the merciless 

 slaughter has ceased. This season the woods swarmed 

 with hunters, many of whom came from the Middle 

 States. Many came, too, not only for sport, but to supply 

 a ready market for venison. They would come in par- 

 ties numbering as many as thirty, with camping equip- 

 age, rations, etc., and woidd make deer killing a regular 

 business. As a member of one party from Indiana was 

 heard to remark: "We've got through harvesting, and 

 venison is worth fifteen to eighteen cents a pound down 

 our way, so we thought we would come up here and kill 

 some deer. There are twenty-seven of us here, and we 

 want to get one a day apiece." His sanguine expecta- 

 tions were probably not fulfilled , as a well informed sports- 

 man judged that there were at least three hunters to 

 every deer running in the woods. They were so numer- 

 ous that most of the land-lookers and lumbermen wisely 

 decided to vacate the woods during the siege, for fear of 

 being taken for deer by some of the "green 'uns." 



As the Mackinaw & Marquette passenger train -was 

 coming along one day Jast week, a two-year old doe 

 bounded out from the woods at a point south of Indian 

 River and ran along ahead of the tram for some dis- 

 tance. It finally stopped short, as if to meditate which 

 side to jump to, and was struck by the pilot of the loco- 

 motive and thrown from the track. On being picked up 

 both its hindlegs were found to have been broken. 



State Game Warden Wm. Alden Smith reports that 

 during eighteen months about 900 convictions of violation 

 of the game laws have been made, and that the fines more 

 than defray the expenses of his 189 deputies. 



An explorer for iron ore in the southern part of Ontona- 

 gon county has discovered what he terms an ink spring. 

 The liquid, which bubbles from a crevice in the side of a 

 rocky hill, is of a blackish hue. and when applied to 

 cloth or to the human skin leaves an indelible stain. 

 Though a very small stream he traced its course for over 

 a mile, and noticed that it was death to all vegetation, its 

 tracks being perfectly bare, while the earth is stained a 

 deep blue-black to a depth of several inches. Given in- 

 ternally to a dog it produced instant death. 



A hunter who had been out with a party in quest of 

 deer and bear, relates a singular incident connected with 

 his experience in the woods, which occurred a few weeks 

 ago. He came upon a beaver dam in course of construc- 

 tion, and spied a large beaver gnawing down a tree near 

 by. He shot it, and on examination, found the animal 

 dead from its effects. Just as he was going to depart 

 with his prey he saw another hi the water, and, moving 

 about five paces away in order to get a better shot, fired 

 four times, but without success. On looking back to 

 where the dead one was, to his astonishment it was gone, 

 neither could the most diligent search disclose its place of 

 concealment, and he arrived at the conclusion that some 

 of its comrades must have carried it away under his very 

 nose. Laube. 



