2B0 



[Oct. 16, 1890. 



river in his duck boat. The fish was a large one, over 

 seven pounds. Billy Mussey was on the river that day, 

 and when he saw the Doctor's fish he said, "He must 

 have made an awful fight for you, didn't he. Doc ?" 



"Oh, no," replied the worthy Doctor, "he didn't fight 

 none. He choost come ow-et." 



"When . I looked at that spoon and line," says Billy, 

 "I didn't doubt a minute that he did 'choost come ow-et.' " 



Ed. Howard was down from Fox Lake yesterday. He 

 said thousands of blue bills were in, but nobody could 

 work them. They were out in shallow water, over a bog 

 where one could neither wade, walk nor push. Plenty 

 of snipe also, but in equally bad country. The water is 

 too low, the lowest for years. 



It is surmised that the dryness on Cumberland marsh 

 is caused by the ditching operations below there during 

 the past year. E. Hough. 



Game License —The Wyalusing, Pa., Roelcet comes 

 out with this proposition: "Fanners who have suffered 

 greatly from the invasion of an army of hunters upon 

 their premises each and every season have long been 

 looking for some certain remedy to diminish their num- 

 ber, All day long during the season and often out of it 

 the crack of the shotgun is heard, untd it has become a 

 positive nuisance; all large game has become extinct and 

 small game will soon follow suit unless s-peedy relief is 

 furnished. By the time a farmer has his fall work fin- 

 ished the fellow who does no work has killed and rnark- 

 keted what little game was on his land, and should the 

 farmer fancy a game dinner the chances of his getting it 

 are very slim. The Rocket wishes to propose a remedy 

 which we believe would be certain in its effects. It is to 

 license the hunter and in this manner: Let a special 

 law be made for this county requiring the authorities of 

 each township to charge e«ch person hunting in its limits 

 a certain sum (say $5 or $10 per year) for the privilege, 

 and let the proceeds go to the school fund of the town- 

 ship, making the proviso that owners could hunt upon 

 their own premises. Upon the payment of such license 

 give the party a permit to hunt for the year, which he 

 would be required to exhibit to any of a certain number 

 of persons, to be called game wardens, appointed to look 

 after the license system in different parts of the towu 

 ship. If any person was caught hunting without a licpnse 

 certificate, let the fine double the license fee— one-half 

 to go to the warden for making the arrest and one-half 

 to the school fund. Daily or weekly permits might also 

 be issued at a figure that would pay "the school district to 

 strangers coming iu for a short hunt or to others. It is 

 our purpose to endeavor to get a law to this effect intro- 

 duced and passed at the next session of the State Legis- 

 lature for a trial in this county. Under such a law our 

 game birds would multiply, once more become plentiful, 

 and those who hunted would be willing to pay for the 

 privilege, and the school treasuries of the different town- 

 ships would receive a very substantial benefit. Of course 

 it would bear down on the chap who is too lazy to work 

 and wishes to make his living < ff his neighbors — and as 

 tor the ones who hunt for fun, let them pay for it. 



Birch Bark for Camp-Fires.— Chicago, HI.— Let me, 

 through your paper, say a word to the fraternity of 

 sportsmen in connection with the subject of camp-fires. 

 Nothing in the whole range of camp vexations is so vexa- 

 tious as the oft-repeated failure to start a fire with damp 

 wood or leaves, or in a rain. We have tried it and speak 

 feelingly. During the past summer our camp was in a 

 locality where birch bark is to be found, and this solved 

 the problem. No more "blue air" ejaculations are neces- 

 sary in the early dewy mornings, when the stock of 

 matches is decreasing daily by the score. Birch bark, 

 whether old and water-soaked or new and fresh from a 

 standing tree, if torn into shreds and used as kindling will 

 start a cheerful fire in high wind and heavy rain , pro- 

 vided the match is kept dry till the flame touches the 

 birch bark. Our experience with birch bark last summer 

 was most happy, and we desire to give our fellow sports- 

 men the benefit of the discovery, but do not claim it as 

 original. It is an Indian practice, but never before the 

 summer of lb90 did we see it in use; and we think it 

 deserves wider application. — H. H., Jr. 



Snibe and Bay Birds.— Norfolk, Va,, Oct. 12. — A 

 telegram from our club at Currituck on Saturday tells us 

 that golden plover and yellowlegs are. still plentiful there, 

 a large bag having been made on Friday last. An old 

 gunner fmrn the sound yesterday told me that he had 

 never seen more ducks and geese at Currituck in his life 

 than he saw Saturday at this season of the year. We 

 expect good shoot 'ng this fall, as the food is very jilenti- 

 ful. Our bags of bay birds have been truly wonderful 

 this season. Six of our members went down yesterday 

 for bay birds and English snipe. Will let you know what 

 they do. Our duck season opens Nov. 10 Quail axe 

 abundant this season almost everywhere in Virginia and 

 Carolina,— J. B. White. 



St. Louis Coon Dogs.— St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 10.— Dur- 

 ing the full of the moon, the latter part of this month, a 

 grand coon hunt will be given by the King's Lake Club, 

 in the vicinity of its preserve in Lincoln county. Major 

 Dave Carutb, president of the club, is now busily engaged 

 making preparations for the affair; and all who know him 

 know that nothing will be left undone. The night- 

 prowlers are said to be plentilul around about King's 

 Lake, and there is every prospect that the hunt will re- 

 sult satisfactorily. — Unser Fritz. 



Massachusetts.— Nashua, N. IL— Let your Boston 

 correspondent who wants Thanksgiving shooting go to 

 Needham, where he will find fair supply of quail, grouse 

 and rabbits. Let him leave the cars at Newton Upper 

 Falls, then follow the track over the river, then strike in 

 to the left. Tnere is poor shooting about Nashua. — J.S.J. 



CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 



CHICAGO, Oct. 9. — Nothing very stirring has been 

 happening among the •wildfowl in this vicinity as 

 yet this tall. Some few marsh ducks are reported in at 

 Fox Lake the last few dayB, but not many have been 

 killed there so far. No very big reports come in from 

 the Illinois P^iver as yet, though the northern bird< are 

 scarcely clue there yet. A party including Messrs. Mc- 

 Farland. Gammon, Davis, Walser and others go down to 

 Hennepin club grounds this week and we may hear some- 

 thing from them. 



On the Kankakee a singular state of affairs has pre- 

 vailed all fall. None of the club marshes have any water 

 lo amount to anything except the Mak saw-ba, where 

 the marsh is now and has been in very good shape. 

 Messrs. Sharp, Watson, Mussey, 'Dicks, Cox, Kinney, 

 Organ, Brown. Crane, Holden, Buechner, and others 

 have been down at Mak saw-ba lately and have had very 

 fair average luck at snipe, and have killed a good many 

 woodd ucks and teal. The first ducks that seemed to be 

 travelers, however, are reported on this marsh for last 

 week. 



The Little Calumet is not high this fall, and Tolleston 

 marsh is reported too dry for shooting. The weather has 

 been too warm and fair to expect any shooting on the 

 Grand C ducnet, which only looms up during cold and 

 windy weather. 



The little party mentioned earlier is back from Horicon 

 marsh, Wisconsin. Ben Dicks reports 34 snipe, Percy 

 Stone 12 snipe and 15 ducks, Fred Donald 23 ducks and 

 W. W. McFarland 14 Kuipe and S ducks. It seems that 

 the ducks are not even at Horicon. 



Snipe shooting has been generally good this fall. Duck 

 shoocing will probably not be very good. Upland shoot- 

 ing, at prairie chickens and quail, has been exception dly 

 good all over the State of Illinois this season. Quail have 

 never been more abundant of late years. For instance, 

 Dick Turtle and Hetfield killed 100 quail in two days last 

 week around Saybrook and Harpster, of this State. They 

 also killed about a dozen chickens. These two have killed 

 about 100 chickens this fall, but they made their first hunt 

 shortly after Sept. 1, and a week or more before the legal 

 season opened. A great many shooters availed themselves 

 of the flimsy excuse that the clei'ical error which made 

 the date Sept. 15 was not the will of the people, who in- 

 tended it to be Sept. 1. 1 do not quite understand a 

 reasoning like this. I said a good many shooters availed 

 themselves of it. 1 should qualify that by saying I heard 

 a good deal of talk of that sort down in the central part 

 of the State, where the law was openly violated; but this 

 is the only case in which I know of a Chicago sportsman 

 who shot before the 15th. It was unquestionably a wrong 

 thing to do, altogether wrong. In c ise of doubt, the only 

 thing to do is to give the birds and the law the benefit of 

 the doubt, and this I believe the Cuicago boys have very 

 generally done. It is the country shooters who most 

 generally violate the law, although they do not shoot so 

 steadily as the market shooters. The men of this city 

 can not afford to fall in wbh such practices, or to condone 

 them, or to lend their own < ■xauiple to them. No one 

 man's wish ought to make the law, or does make it. If 

 there is doubt in that one man's mind, he should consider 

 it the more sportsmanlike to give the birds, and not him- 

 self, the benefit of the doubt. 



There is on foot here a plan to make up a shooting 

 party to take a cabin-boat trip down the Mississippi to 

 New Orleans, starting in the latter part of this month, 

 and stopping as the shooting suggests. The party is not 

 yet made up. 



Indiana quail season opens Wednesday, a week from 

 yesterday. The birds are unusually abundant along the 

 Kankakee and the Tippecanoe, and, in fact all over the 

 northern part of the State. Upland shooting is having a 

 great vogue out here now. 



Oct. 10.— The following, from the Whatcom Reveille 

 (Wash.), is reprinted to-day in a city paper here: "Frank 

 Denehie says that in the Olympic Mountains are a hun- 

 dred hunters waiting fur the snow to drive the elk down 

 from the high peaks. They are working for a Denver 

 firm, which pays $60 for every elk head with antlers. 

 One hunter has 800 bullets ready for the noble game. 

 The elk are gone from the creek bottoms of Dakota. 

 There are but a few places in Montana and Idaho where 

 they can be found, so that the hunters have come from 

 all over the West to be in at the extermination on the 

 Olympic peninsula. The carcasses will be left to rot on 

 the ground. This ought to be stopped. Common car- 

 riers should be prevented from receiving elk heads for 

 transportation under a heavy penalty. Doubtless the 

 late Legislature would have attended to the matter had it 

 be^n apprised of the meditated slaughter. With proper 

 game laws this peninsula will be the Adirondack region 

 of the West." 



Let the next Legislature attend to it. It will have a 

 hard enough time to prevent that region from becoming 

 like the Adirondacks. 



Oct. 11.— Tilings are running along smoothly here, but 

 with no very startling news in the way of game this 

 week. Next Wednesday the quail season opens in Indi- 

 ana. A great many quail have been killed along the 

 Kankakee, out of season, for the past couple of weeks. 

 The birds are plentiful in northern Indiana, as has been 

 stated earlier. One farmer near Mak-saw-ba Club says 

 he has ten bevies located. 



Mr. Geo, T. Farmer does not find wild geese numerous 

 on Cumberland marsh this fall, and will go with a party 

 of friends to Noith Dakota after the honkers, Mr. Far- 

 mer will do well to take his flock of tamed wild geese and 

 half-breeds along with him. With these for decoys he 

 might have considerable sport. 



Dr. J. W. Hutchinson, familiarly known as "Doc 

 Hutch,'' will also be among the fowl shooters who try 

 Dakota this fall. There will be a wave of high pressure 

 barometer strike Dakota about when Doc Hutch gets 

 there. 



Mr. "Slick" Sharp is working for a position as star in 

 the snipe-shooting act. Last Saturday he bagged forty- 

 eight jack snipe at Mak saw-ba marsh. This is beside 

 the bag of thirty three credited to him earlier. Dr. Buech- 

 ner got twenty-three jacks last Saturday, and I believe I 

 have mentioned the twenty-one that Billy Mussey got 

 one day the week before. The birds are in tine condition. 



It's all Mak-saw-ba news no >v, for they've got all the 

 water. But while near Mak saw-ba it would not do not 

 to mention Dr. Buechner's big wall-eyed pike, which he 

 caught on a spoon and handline while floating down the 



The Massachusetts Fish and Game Protective 

 Association held its regular monthly meeting and din- 

 ner at the American House, Boston, Tuesday evening, 

 Oct. 9, 125 members being present. The Committee on 

 G-tme Importation reported favorable progress in their 

 work of stocking the State with game. They have or- 

 dered 300 sharptail grouse, 30 dozen California mountain 

 quail, and 30 dozen valley quail as the first consignment 

 of birds to be let loose. Large numbers of birds are to be 

 planted on NmusIiou and Great islands, also in the public 

 park in the city of Lynn, which promises to make special 

 legislation to protect them. It was voted to hold the 

 next annua) dinner of the Association on Thursday even- 

 ing, Dec. 11, thereby giving an opportunity to have a 

 regular game dinner, before the close season begins in 

 this State. Mr. John M. Forbes was elected an honorary 

 member and the following gentlemen members of the 

 Association: Myron J. Fen-en, Henry W Clarke, Robert 

 Woodman and C. A. Coolidge. Fourteen were proposed 

 for membership, to be acted on at the next meeting.— 

 Richard O. Harping, Secy. 



Nebraska Quail. — I am now in Adams county, Neb., 

 and I am happy to say that I find quail shooting here 

 much better than th.p chicken shooting in Iowa. This 

 has been a great year here for quail. The season has been 

 long, dry and free from storms, and as a consequence 

 they have bred well, many pairs bringing forth two 

 broods. My brother and I were out this morning looking 

 over the ground, and got up two bevies of fifteen to twenty 

 each. On our way home we could hear them calling in 

 all directions. They say chickens used to be quite plenty 

 here: now, one could not be found, I believe, in a half 

 day's hunt with a good dog. Why is it? In my opinion 

 the market slaughterer and the chicken hog had some- 

 thing to do with it; and still you talk with some of these 

 same men and they will deny it. I may get time to 

 write up a day's shoot, which may be of interest to your 

 readers.— Wm. H. Steele. 



Connecticut Snaring. — "Coll" Richardson, of Square 

 Pond, in Ellington, was brought before Justice of the 

 Peace R. J. Leonard recently, at Ellington, charged with 

 violating the game laws. The case was worked up by 

 one of W. C. Fielding's detectives for the Connecticut 

 Association of Farmers and Sportsmen for the Protection 

 of Game and Fish, of Hartford. The detective captured 

 Richardson setting snares and taking partridges from his 

 snares the day before the game law was off. Attorney 

 Charter defended Richardson, while President A. C. Col- 

 lins, of the Connecticut Association of Farmers and 

 Sportsmen for the Protection of Game and Fish, appeared 

 for the State. Justice Leonard found Richardson guilty 

 and imposed fines on three counts, making the "circus" 

 cost Richardson about $40. 



A Chicago Lion.- Chicago, Oct. 8.— The male lion of 

 the pair presented to Lincoln Park last year, by a Chicago 

 street car magnate, died to-day. The lion was popularly 

 supposed to be a job lot, and died from sheer old age. 

 He bad been in a stupor for days, only rousing himself at 

 meal times, and no one knows just when his sleep became 

 de^th. The lioness, which was his mate, shows signs of 

 great grief and uneasiness.— H. 1 



WHEN THE BASS BITE BEST. 



TXTHEN the north is breezy and cord and clear, 

 * Lifting the low blue hills in sight; 



When the waters are dimpled beyond the pier 



And clouds sail idly over the mere. 

 Oh, that is the time for the bass to bite. 



When boughs grow bare and apples fall 

 With every flaw from the windy west, 

 When the frost is white on the orchard wall 

 And the lake frowns blue at the passing squall, 

 Oh, that is the time when the bass bite best. 



When paths are blind with a drift of leaves 

 And nuts lie thick in the yellow grass, 



When barns are bursting with garnered sheaves 



"■Ru-perunt horrai"— -full to the eaves, 

 Oh, that is the time for the wary bass. 



With a silver shiner far below 



Tugging away at a silken thread, 

 In a cove where quiet currents flow 

 And purple shadows come and go, 



And a hit of a blue sky overhead, 



Too soon the western hills grow black 



With lone pines looming above their crest 

 In silhouette— too soon alack! 

 Do far bghts glimmer to guide us back, 

 For that is the time when the bass bite best. 

 Watkins, N. Y., Sept. 20. M. M. Cass, Jb. 



HALF-HOURS IN THE SIERRA NEVADA. 



I.— A TUSSLE IN THE DARK. 



THE locality of the incidents noted in these jottings is 

 in the vicinity of the summit, where the old Washoe 

 grade crosses the Sierra, The road crosses at an eleva- 

 tion of 8,000ft, above sea level. Directly west of the pass, 

 and about one and a half miles distant, lies Echo Lake, 

 three and a half miles long and one mile wide. West of 

 this again, about yOOyds. , and connected with Echo by a 

 small stream, lies Upper Echo. This little gem of a lake 

 is about one-half the size of its neighbor, and is studded 

 with small islands, covered with more or hss timber. On 

 one of these islands the scribe has in half-ownership 

 with a friend a log cabin with a complete housekeeping 

 outfit for three men, and two good boats. 



Here for a few happy weeks each summer, "the world 

 forgetting, by the world forgot," my friend and I turn 

 ourselves loose and become boys again; and the old 

 youthful zest for innocent outdoor pleasure permeates 

 every fi ire of our beings. Here little things, unnoted in 

 the daily walks of life, acquire an air of interest to our 

 rejuvenated minds. Some few of these little things I 

 intend to recall in these papers, and hope to enlist the 

 reader's sympathy with my love of nature and her ways. 



This California Alpine basin lies over 200ft. higher 

 than Lake Tahoe and about six or seven miles south of 

 that body of water. It was scooped out of the moun- 

 tain's brow by the irresistible force of the glacier's mighty 

 flow in the silent ages of the past. And to-day its gran- 

 ite sides glisten with the polish left by the impact of that 

 mighty instrument. The terminal moraine of this dead 

 giant lies at the outlet of the lower lake, and the greater 

 portion of it has been carried into Lake "Valley, 1,500ft, 

 below. Huge boulders can there be seen, smooth aa 



