June 12, 1890.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



409 



FISHING RESOURCES OF THE WEST. 



EVERY graduate of a college and every clerk or ap- 

 prentice in a trade is familiar with the old axiom 

 that "the supply will equal the demand." If potatoes 

 are worth one dollar a bushel, everybody will raise pota- 

 toes and offer them upon the market until potatoes be- 

 come worth only fifty cents a bushel. So says political 

 economy. In the economy of nature the reverse is the 

 case. The greater Ike demand for nature's rare and 

 choicest products, the less becomes the supply. Hence a 

 war between man and nature, not altogether uuequal, be- 

 cause while nature is inexorable man is very patient. 

 For instance, the people desire whitefish as food. That 

 was the demand, and to meet it man pushed further and 

 further out into the inland seas, extended the miles of 

 twine, employed fast steam vessels, and in short made 

 the notion of tife palate a matter of business, and worked 

 with all faithfulness to maintain the truth of the old 

 axiom. After a while nature's side of the question came 

 in view. The whitefish began to lessen and to disappear. 

 What does man do, give it up? No indeed. He plants 

 whitefish, humors nature, and to some extent wins the 

 fight. 



That is business. When it comes to dollars and cents 

 ttian is ultimately rational. The shrewd summer resort 

 managers plant lisli also, for that is business. The matter 

 will ultimately resolve itself to this all over the country. 

 America, shame be the word; America, the grand and onc^ 

 trackless, illimitable apparently, the very heart of nature's 

 heart, now belongs no longer to nature, but to man. We 

 may as well accept the fact. The gates have been held 

 too long open, and into the fold with what should have 

 been America's flock, have crowded wolves, swine, beasts 

 and all uncleanlinese. These have begotten and will be- 

 get, and it is one of the features of each such creature 

 that it lias a mouth and a stomach, ready to devour. 

 These make a demand on every resource of nature, and 

 nature will be drained in every easiest way until it is no 

 longer business so to drain her. We will see our game 

 and our fish disappear to the very point of extinction, and 

 then will witness a gradual turning to an easier way of 

 feeding the mouth and stomach of the great unclassified; 

 and after that a gradual struggle on the part of nature, 

 , aided by man's possible business efforts, to build back 

 again to some extent the balance in the ever swinging 

 scales. It will be the market that will destroy our fish 

 and game. It may be the market which will replace 

 them. If not, then nothing. But let us await hopefully 

 the day when the doctrines of the best sportsmen's jour- 

 nalism shall be found sensible and true, and when the 

 people shall act intelligently and for the people's good. 

 The game laws of to-day are a farce, and every intelli- 

 gent man knows that in his heart. Why? Because we 

 have not yet gotten far enough into the artificial day. 

 But it must come to that. 



In the older portions of the country the artificial day is 

 already far along. If it were not for the restocking of 

 streams, for one reason or another, how much trout fish- 

 ing would there be to-day in New England or the Middle 

 States? If it were not for the constant restocking of the 

 Great Lakes, how many whitefish would the vast nets 

 take ten years from now? Study this question in any one 

 of a hundred ways, and you will come to the same an- 

 swer. Go you into what was once the wilderness, seek 

 out the wildest portion of the Rocky Range, and before 

 you have cast your eyes upon the white waters of the 

 Chatna, 4,he San Luis, or whatever favorite water you 

 wish, you will have met a man with a burro-load of trout 

 which he is taking to the nearest market. Not yet the 

 artificial day, but it must come to that. The stomach 

 and heart of man are pitiless, thoughtless, animal. There 

 are few men who think, and there is no man who is un- 

 selfish. 



It would be an unreasonable pessimism which would 

 say that, in all of the great West, world of itself as it is, 

 remain no regions where the angler may meet with suc- 

 cess to any reasonable amount. Such a statement to-day 

 would be not only unreasonable but untrue. Indeed, it is 

 toward the West that the eyes of all sportsmen turn. 

 There are few sportsmen in the West who go to the East 

 for their angling or their outing, but there are many East- 

 ern lovers of the rod who long to prove the newer waters 

 of the newer land. The story of the Eastern waters is 

 not so widely interesting, because there the artificial day 

 has begun. The charm of the unexplored, the breath of 

 the untracked woods, the music of a stream whose tongue 

 is foreign stiJ 1— those are the thoughts that lie closest to 

 the sportsman's heart. What of this, then, lies now in 

 that West of late so fresh and virginal? Much indeed, 

 but not as much as those unacquainted with the West 

 suppose. If with the experience of a man one united 

 the lively sympathies attributed to the feminine nature, 

 he could sit clown and weep as he contemplated the 

 change and havoc which the last few years have wrought. 

 I do not. know much about the South. I wish I knew 

 more of that charming country and its still more charm- 

 ing people; but it has been my fortune to see a little of 

 the North and West, and I do not think that individual 

 experience differs from others when it is said that those 

 regions visited have of late steadily and with alarming 

 rapidity deteriorated in the essential features which make 

 them attractive to the real angler. There is still plenty left, 

 to be sure, in many localities, and there should be nothing 

 in the foregoing statement to hinder or change' the plans of 

 any who seek to wet a line under the widest and bluest sky 

 of all the earth: but it would be folly to say or think that 

 anfF plenty ct.n always exist where the drain upon the 

 supply is so constant and so thoughtless. History would 

 not bear that out, for history within a decade back has 

 seen stream after stream, river after river, lake after 

 lake in the West depleted and depopulated. They are 

 hunting new mascallonge waters already, up in Wiscon- 

 sin. Five years ago the cry was that the fish could never 

 all be caught. Trout streams all over Michigan and 

 Wisconsin have been restocked and re-depleted, once, 

 twice and three times, and only a few are good in the 

 original sense. New bass waters are in demand in Illi- 

 nois and Iowa, and many a man in the Mississippi Valley 

 now takes home a 21b. pickerel, which once he would 

 contemptuously have knocked in the head and thrown 

 away. Citations of run-down waters are not necessary, 

 for the facts are too common. The dawn of the artifi- 

 cial day creeps further and further to the westward. 



Now let us look upon the other side, the past of nature 

 in her struggle with man. A few years ago the grayling 

 was discovered in Michigan, A few years later and it 

 ■was announced that the grayling was practically extinct, 



Upon learning that, the anglers philosophically packed 

 their rods and went fishing for something else. A few 

 years more, which brings to-day, we learn that nature 

 has been at work and has now re-populated, to some ex- 

 tent, at least, the streams which once swarmed with that 

 pleasant little fish. 



If only man would work with nature, and not against 

 her, this noble Western country would always remain 

 full of boundless charm to the lover of quiet ways by new, 

 unfretted waters. We may not hope for that, because 

 there are so few men who think. Our lesson in the West 

 must be severe. It needed a revolution for France to 

 correct the evils that were destroying her. It will take 

 a cataclysm of mournful fact and a change in the whole 

 history of sportsmanship, before tins Western country 

 will be nearly what it once was and should always be for 

 the angler sportsman. Time will prove the truth of this 

 prediction. 



It seems probable that in the West good fishing, vari- 

 able fishing and poor fishing will be the story, until at 

 last the lowest swing of the balance has been reached 

 there, as it has been elsewhere. The West is not what 

 many think. It has changed. Almost one might say 

 that there is no longer any West. All the wild life will 

 go. Can we not all see that; and how can we see other- 

 wise? Then ultimately, perhaps, the people will begin to 

 apply business methods where hitherto only boy's methods 

 have been used, and perhaps then there will be a business- 

 like treatment of one of the simplest questions in the 

 world. But we must first have our lesson. Thanks to 

 the natural magnificence of the vast, indefinite region 

 long known as the West, that lesson has been long de- 

 ferred. For the sake of those who do not like this sort of 

 reading, it may be stated that the lesson is not yet at 

 hand in all severity, E. Hough. 



HINTS AND POINTS ON DUCKS.* 



BY HENEY KLEINMAN. 



r HARDLY see why I should be asked to write any- 

 thing about shooting ducks, for shooting and writing 

 are two different things, and I am more used to shooting. 

 Even if I should work a long time at it, I might forget to 

 set down the very things I would like to, and then again, 

 at best it is hard to put down on paper the little things 

 that you would be careful to do or would do as a matter 

 of course while out for a day's shooting. But I am will- 

 ing to say what I can for the younger shooters, who will 

 probably never have the chances to learn that I have had, 

 since there are not so many ducks as there were in my 

 younger days. 



I have shot ducks ever sinoe I was big enough to carry 

 a gun, and I am now 46 years of age. My father, John 

 Kleinman— I am afraid most of the old shooters about 

 Chicago will remember him better as t; old man Klein- 

 man"— came to this country in early days and settled 

 near Calumet Lake, a long distance, by wagon, from 

 what was then the city of Chicago. The towns of Pull- 

 man, South Chicago and all the suburbs that are now 

 crowding out toward old homestead, were then unknown, 

 and the duck lands that now are worth $1,500 an acre 

 went begging for some one to pay taxes on them, then. 

 There were John Jr., Abe, George, Will and myself in the 

 family, and we all grew up big and stout here on the 

 edge of the marsh. Our father was practical and turned 

 his hand to using the natural product of the soil. This 

 was chiefly ducks, in those days, and almost as long ago 

 as I can remember, father used to haul ducks to the 

 Chicago market, while we boys shot on the marsh and 

 kept the wagon loaded. There never was a ground bet- 

 ter suited for ducks and all wildfowl than this Calumet 

 Lake country. The big lake is only about 6 or Sft. at 

 its deepest and is even yet full of wild celery, though the 

 boats have torn it up a great deal. Wolf Lake, Hyde 

 Lake, and all the many streams and sloughs of the great 

 marsh, helped to make a ground which once simply 

 swarmed with wildfowl, and even to-day the birds show 

 how they love the natural home for them. My home to- 

 day is right on the bank of the Calumet River and that 

 of my brother Abe is just across the road from me. This 

 is in what is now known as Irondale, or Cumming's 

 station. It was right around here that all of us boys got 

 our training in killing ducks, and I may say it was of a 

 very practical sort, for father expected every one of us to 

 do his duty and help out on the regular load of ducks. 

 Nowadays this country is simply hunted to death, mostly 

 by the mill hands and people of that class, and there are 

 so many guns and such, a ceaseless firing, that it is a 

 wonder a. duck or snipe comes near. Later on in my 

 experience I began to shoot in other territory, but all 

 my shooting has been done in the Mississippi Valley. I 

 have hunted on the Illinois, on the Mississippi at New 

 Boston and further down, and later still, on the Kanka- 

 kee. My shooting should therefore be called inland 

 shooting, and what I may say is to be applied only to the 

 country where I have hunted. I do not know it all. But 

 I always liked to shoot, and I have studied ducks a good 

 deal , from necessity and the pleasure of it. 



There are different ways of shooting ducks, which de- 

 pend on the time of year and the country where you are 

 hunting them. The most common ones, or those which 

 are the most practical, might be by jumping the birds 

 out of the grass or other cover, either by boat or by 

 wading; by flight-3hooting on a pass or fly way ; by calling 

 or imitating their natural note, and by decoy shooting. 

 A regular shooter may use any or all of these ways on 

 the same day. He will have to adapt himself to the 

 state of things as he finds them on each day. The way a 

 man must hunt depends largely of course on the sort of 

 ducks he is hunting. No one would think of hunting 

 teal the same way he would bluebills, and the marsh or 

 slough ducks usually need some different way of hunting 

 from the deep water ducks. 



The first duck to fly in the fall is the wood duck. These 

 breed early, and often fly in July. They can be jumped 

 along the sloughs and bayous or shot on"a fly way. They 

 sometimes decoy a little in early morning or evening. 

 The bluewing teal come along about as early as any bird 

 that does not breed here. They get in along this latitude 

 with a good deal of regularity about Sept. 20. You can 

 pot-shoot and jump these birds or sneak on them with a 

 good deal of success. The greatest number of birds I 

 ever killed in one day was of teal. I killed and brought 



♦.Captain Bogardus considered Henry and Abe Kleinman the 

 greatest duck shooters in the world. This article, from Henry 

 Kleinman, make3 the first word ever given to the public by any 

 member of that remarkable family of shooters. 



in 218 and "don't think I was much over two hours in 

 doing it, and I only had 60 empty shells when I got back. 

 I followed one flock around through the grass and rushes, 

 and shooting one barrel on the water and one on the raise 

 I killed and gathered first 22 teal, then 24, then 12, then 

 6, then 14, then 26, then 32, all in a few minutes. I was 

 in a hurry, for I knew other boats were following me. 

 Teal decoy very readily, and they can also be shot on a 

 flyway, and you can call them if you know how. They 

 will decoy in the evening to a chirping whistle, but their 

 regular call is a sort of cackling call. There is a good 

 deal of fun in teal shooting, and the birds are not so shy 

 as many others. 



After the teal in the fall come the redheads and ring- 

 bills. These are deep-water ducks, and are hunted most 

 successfully in this country by the use of decoys, although 

 sometimes you can catch a flyway for them. The mal- 

 lards and all the slough ducks come before the canvas- 

 back and bluebill, and about the same time as the red- 

 heads. The bluebills, canvasbacks and butterballs then 

 come down about the last, about Nov. 1, and they are 

 hunted about the way the redheads and ringbills are, and 

 some of these ducks you can work by just calling them, 

 especially the redheads and mallards. These last birds 

 call better in the fall than in the spring. Mallards also 

 decoy better in the fall, though a good many shooters 

 think that all ducks decoy best in the spring, in the mat- 

 ing season. That depends altogether on the duck. Any 

 duck that is looking for flocks will decoy best in the 

 spring. The mallards are more or less mated here in the 

 spring, and don't care so much for flocks; and so don't 

 decoy so well then. But bluebills decoy best in the 

 spring, and so do pintails, although they are a slough 

 duck. Teal decoy best in the fall. The redheads and 

 canvasbacks and all the flock ducks decoy better in the 

 spring. It will be seen that decoying and calling are 

 two different things. 



In the fall, the mallards, pintails, widgeons, gadwall, 

 spoonbill and the greenwing teal come down pretty much 

 at the same time together. On these, which are all marsh 

 or slough ducks, the flyway, the decoys and the call will 

 be used, and often they will be jumped in the marsh * I 

 always shot these ducks any way I could get them best, 

 or as I happened on to them, and will talk about that 

 later on. 



Among the last birds to come down are the golden- 

 eyes, the sheldrakes and the little mergansers, which will 

 do to shoot at, anyhow, even if the latter two are not very 

 good to eat. 



In the spring the order of coming of the birds is differ- 

 ent altogether. The pintails and mallards are the first 

 birds up. These marsh ducks don't seem to be so certain 

 about the weather as the open- water ducks, and some- 

 times come here in the winter and see-saw up and down. 

 Sometimes they go back further south at night, and push 

 on north again in the morning as far as the ice will let 

 them. Good pintail and mallard shooting is often had in 

 this country in February. About the best mallard shoot- 

 ing was in February in this year, not far from here. 



When the deep-water ducks, like the bluebills, etc., 

 come up, it is pretty safe to suppose that the weather is 

 going to stay open. They don't go back south again. 

 The woodduck comes later than the mallards. The blue- 

 wing teal are up the latest; the greenwing is up much 

 earlier than the latter, and is usually close along with the 

 mallards. 



Every man shoots ducks different from everybody else, 

 and he may even change his own notions sometimes. 

 For instance, I am rather getting out of the notion of 

 liking such heavy guns as I used to shoot, and I now shoot 

 a 12-gauge instead of a 10. For such reason, I find it 

 pretty hard to go to work telling anybody else how to 

 shoot ducks, although my way suits me well enough. 



Now, I am sometimes asked what I think is the most 

 important thing in duck shooting, or what is most essen- 

 tial to success. I believe that the first thing a duck 

 shooter wants to learn is to keep still in the blind. A 

 duck is very quick to see the least motion, although it 

 will very often come close in to a shooter who is sitting 

 perfectly quiet. It isn't the size or goodness of a hunter's 

 blind that will get him close shots, but the way he sits 

 in his blind. If he can't keep from bobbing up and 

 down, or twisting around, he needn't expect much shoot- 

 ing. Some hunters can't help twisting their necks 

 around, and screwing their faces up to see where the 

 ducks have gone to when they draw past. That does not 

 work well. If they would keep their heads down and 

 stay perfectly motionless until just the right instant, 

 they would find the ducks paid no attention to them but 

 would come right in. I have many a time shot in a per- 

 fectly open boat, with no blind, lying flat on the hay in 

 the bottom of the boat, and have killed plenty of ducks. 

 Once I heard of plenty of ducks over on a wet school sec- 

 tion, but the boys said they could not get them because 

 there was no cover and no place for a blind near where 

 they were feeding. I went out there in my open boat, 

 and without any decoys at all I killed 100 ducks the first 

 day I shot. 



I have had ducks light right down by the boat. Once 

 I was eating my lunch and sitting quietly on the boat seat, 

 just within a fight fringe of rice, when a mallard came 

 and lit so close to me I could have struck it with a paddle. 

 We looked square in each other's eyes for a minute, and 

 neither of us moved or said a word. Then I reached for 

 my guu. The mallard seemed to know that its best 

 chance for safety was not in flying, so what does it do 

 but make a big dive and swim straight out for the open 

 water. It came up flying, a long way out. and I barely 

 scratched it down. It may be that part of my luck at 

 shooting is due to my ability to keep still and let the 

 ducks do the work of lighting by themselves. An old 

 Irishman who lived near- here always called me a "witch," 

 and wanted me to give him my hat, which be said would 

 draw the ducks m close; because they would pass by him 

 in his blind and let me shoot them out of an open boat. 

 The reason was he twisted around to watch the ducks 

 and I sat still and let the ducks do the twisting. 



Another thing is about the kind of blind to use. I don't 

 know much about the fancy blinds of an artificial sort, 

 but think each of them might be good under certain cir- 

 cumstances, that is, if it happened to resemble the natu- 

 ral cover of the shooting ground. That is the main 

 thing, that the blind shall look just like the country 

 around it. So you don't want too high or thick a blind. 

 A low, thin blind, with a quiet shooter in it, is better 

 than a thick one witb a twister in it. The blind never 

 ought to be heavy enough to attract attention, and it 



