892 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[June 4, 1891. 



COOT SHOOTING IN IPSWICH BAY. 



OUR camp at Annisquam Point, a narrow strip of land 

 running out into Ipswich Bay, is within 20yds. of 

 where we keep our boats, and everything necessary for 

 our gunning expeditions during the months of October 

 and November. 



The point being within easy distance of our place of 

 business it is convenient to slip down tliere at night quite 

 frequently, and provided we do not oversleep, 3 o'clock 

 next morning finds us in our boats; B.nd with half an 

 hour's rowing we are out on the bay, our decoys set, 

 gTins laid handy, loaded with 1-Joz. of No. 3 shot and a 

 couple of hundred more shells in our gunning box, for 

 the coots may come solid, and we intend to be ready for 

 them. Here is a pair coming now! But they sheer oE 

 and set their wings to the next fellow's decoys. Out 

 shoots a 'stream of fire and down comes coot No. 1 — per- 

 haps! Intent upon watching this operation we did not 

 see the single one light near our decoys; but now we see 

 him and he gets a charge of shot and is under water at 

 the flash! Up he comes again and is moving off, but a 

 straightaway shot stops him for good. He is taken in, 

 and now business begins in earnest, for we find that this 

 is their feeding ground, and they are coming right and 

 left, singles, threes, fours and dozens! 



Now then, look out for that black line coming in from 

 sea. They don't appear to notice the decoys, but they 

 see the boat and up they rise and over our heads, all scat- 

 tered. We let them pass a little, for the best we can do 

 now is to take one with each barrel, and down they tum- 

 ble, spat! spat! One is on his back, but the other is only 

 winged and so under water like a flash. 



We pick up the dead one and hurry back to our decoys. 

 By this time it is bang! bang! bang! all around us, for 

 they are coming fast. Here are a dozen white wings fly- 

 ing straight along the shore. We keep down close, all 

 ready for them, but they are coming by too far off; no, 

 they see the decoys, turn half round and with wings set 

 come over the decoys with a rush. 



The first barrel knocks out four, but we see we have 

 missed with the next. No! he is hit, he falters, sets his 

 wings and faUs dead. But now we have something to 

 attend to nearer the boat. Two of our coots have their 

 heads up and are considering whether to dive or try to 

 fly, but a couple of charges of No. 8 across their necks 

 settles the question; and so it goes on for an hour or two, 

 when the cream of the fun in over, although we could 

 have a shot now and then all day. 



We count up and find we have taken 31. It is now 11 

 o'clock, time to go ashore and get dinner, and maybe we 

 are not as hungry as bears. 



Now these coots, although perhaps not as good eating 

 as pie, are never by any means in danger of "going beg- 

 ging," when properly cooked, especially if set before a 

 gunner just in from a morning's shooting. 



What do we do with our coots? Never mind that! We 

 have had some capital sport, and after counting up, well, 

 we confess that about "settles it!" We furnish a tiptop 

 wild game dinner to a few friends, perhaps sell half a 

 dozen at 50 cents a pair and are satisfied. Later in the 

 season we get now and then a redhead or black duck, 

 with a few brant and geese. L. A. Wass. 



GtouCESTEB, Mass. 



A QUAIL SHOOT IN WEST TEXAS. 



ON Tuesday, Nov. 11, 1890, Rev. Dr. H., of Dallas, 

 Tex., Ed Harris, Bob Maloue and the writer crawled 

 into a double-seated hack drawn by two fine roadsters, 

 and pulling the dogs in after us we sped away for Cedar 

 Mountain, fifteen good miles south of Abilene for a two 

 days' quail shoot. 



Our hunting ground did not lie among the so-called 

 mountains, which are only low hills rising abruptly from 

 the dead level of the prairie, but in that peculiar strip of 

 low scrubby brush that follows these hills within from a 

 mile to a mile and a half paralleling them for hundreds 

 of miles, called by the Texas folk "shineries." If you 

 never saw a shinery let me describe one. It is a sandy 

 ridge of varying height running parallel with all these 

 West Texas mountains and covered with a little shrub of 

 the oak family and growing to the height of your shins. 

 This tiny oak grows "as thick as the hair on a dog's 

 back'' all over this sandy ridge and matures its acorn as 

 well as its tall and stately giant brothers. Skirting these 

 dwarf thickets are thickets of a sterner sort, thickets of 

 the chapparal, cat-claw and prickly ash, called by the 

 cowboys "tear blanket." In and around these shineries 

 Bob White has his habitat, and they are here by the 

 thousands. The shooting is not of the easiest, as 

 frequently the tops of the chapparal and prickly ash inter- 

 fere. 



Arriving at the shinery at 10 o'clock, we decided to test 

 the ground before lunching, Kate O'Moore II. , the red 

 Irish setter bitch owned by the writer; Zeke, a young 

 pointer, the property of Ed; Fred, a wild, untutored de- 

 scendant of the famous old Meteor, and the property of 

 Bob, and ©arnefc, a dropper, borrowed for the occasion 

 for the use of the eminent D. D. from Dallas, were the 

 dependence in the way of dogs. We were busy disen- 

 gaging the team from the hack when we were excited by 

 hearing two or three quail (Bob Whites) calling in as 

 many different directions. 



We were soon among them, and the dogs were point- 

 ing on all sides. Several hits and several misses, and we 

 are on into the shinery proper. Another covey is pointed , 

 and as they rise eight sharp, ringing roars from the guns, 

 and right out from a clump of chapparal bushes not fifty 

 yards away, and in a line with the firing from the guns, 

 a frightened and wild-looking citizen rushes toward us, 

 crying, "My God, men. what does this mean? Don't yer 

 see my house thar? Wliat ai'e you shooting right into 

 the hind eend of my kitchen fur?" 



Sure enough there, not forty yards away but completely 

 hidden from view hj the brush, was a shanty literally 

 teeming with tow-headed children, crying and begging 

 "mammy" to not let them be killed. Of course, we 

 regretted the scare, but no one would ever look for a 

 human habitation in such a jungle. On examination we 

 found some twenty -seven or twenty-eight No. 8 pellets 

 stuck into the clap-bcard sides of the shanty. This sur- 

 prise somewhat "rattled" every man in the 'party for the 

 next half hour, and on returning to the hack at 3:80 

 o'clock we found that all told we had bagged only seven- 

 teen Bob Wliites. 



Our sport from then tUl night was superb, and when 



we drove up to a farmhouse at sunset our sum total was 

 sixty-three birds. 



A magnificent feast of quail, a string of good yarns 

 around the hospitable hearth of our host, a splendid bed, 

 with an early and royal breakfast like the supper of the 

 evening before, and bidding our kind entertainer and his 

 pleasant family good-bye, we are, by a,n hour after sun- 

 rise, popping away at the birds again. Our first covey 

 was found within loOyds, of tbe house, and we were 

 hardly ever so long as half an hour without quail to 

 shoot at. 



At 3:30 P. M, the eminent D.D. had enough and begged 

 that a discontinuance be granted, and piling into the 

 hack we rolled out for Abilene, 18 miles away, a cold 

 "norther" blowing, and every one in the party perfectly 

 satisfied with every detail of the hunt, except the many 

 unaccountable misses, wbich were about equally dis- 

 tributed among the party, except tlsat "yecorresi3ondent" 

 had as many birds as the other three altogether, and the 

 joke on the whole party — 130 birds all told constituted the 

 bag. Deo volente, I will say something of the larger game 

 of west Texas in my next. This is a sportsman's paradise, 

 and any brother sportsman desiring a few weeks' rest and 

 recreation can find it by coming to Abilene and stopping 

 with the writer, whose latch-string hangs on the outside. 

 Come and let us show our hospitality. Can give you as 

 many shots at quail or antelope as you may d?sire. 



Texas. Wabac Ward. 



"Six Years Under Maike G-ahe Laws."— A paper by 

 Miss Hardy, relating to the Graves case, has been received 

 too late for this issue, and will be given next week. 



'^m dtfd ^iv^t fishing. 



The full texts of the game fish laws of all the States, 

 Territories and British Provinces are given in the Booli of 

 the Game Laws. 



ON THE WISCONSIN BRUl£ 



ON the shores of Lake Superior the winter's mantle of 

 snow is not withdrawn until spring is far advanced. 

 It does not wholly disappear in the latter days of April, 

 but lingers in great gray patches in the secluded i>laces 

 among the woods, beside whose margins the beautiful 

 pink blossoms of the trailing arbutus are found coddling 

 like baby faces against the blanched cheeks of grandpa. 

 It is very charming then to watch and woo the tender 

 advances of nature's sweet beneficence; and if the true 

 lover of rustic features will but seat himself quietly beside 

 some broad and placid river flowing lakeward," whose 

 surface reflects the mottled sky and over-arching tree- 

 tops, he will be sure to discover something more than the 

 splash of a leaping trout, of which there are myriads in 

 all the Wisconsin streams. He will observe, hear and en- 

 joy, forsooth, themes and sensations wbich are vouchsafed 

 at no other time or elsewhere. Already in this vernal 

 month of April the listening ear detects a whisper of 

 music in the softened air, accented by random bird notes 

 and the peep of hylas: but only the wood nymph or 

 dusky son of the forest can determine whether it be the 

 whisper of the pines, the muflied tinkling of cowbeUs, or 

 the premonitory tuning of the Brule harp. Possibly it 

 may be all three, but certain it is that the full melody of 

 the harp is never heard until the 1st of May. Then its 

 chords are all in sweet attune. They peal forth through 

 the forest aisles with mellifluent eloquence. They wake 

 the sx)irit of old Winneboujou, the titular divinity of the 

 river, They call out the entii'e Ojibwa remnant which 

 still lingers around the traditional haunts of their fore- 

 fathers — old men, young men, and comely maidens, all 

 together. They rouse up the mighty Mudje'kewis immor- 

 talized by Longfellow. Even Gitchie-Gumee, the great 

 Manitou who holds the winds of Lake Superior, hears the 

 dulcet strains with favor. All men or persons who have 

 had the good fortune, by invitation or election, to listen 

 to its cadences, never weary of extolling their soothing 

 and restful effects. Tired lawyers, overworked mer- 

 chants, worn-out doctors, professional journalists, and 

 literary ladies from many a Western city, yea, the good 

 Bishop of Minnesota himself, all join in the spontaneous 

 acclaim ; for do they not all go forth to the river at the 

 summons of the harp in the blooming spring? Moreover, 

 there are published chronicles, prepared by the cunning 

 craft of the archivist of the AVinneboujou Club, which 

 can be jjroduced in attestation thereof, and if other 

 vouchers be demanded, there is the harp itself. 



The Brule River is a virgin stream of ample width and 

 volume, with many changeful moods. Its bright waters 

 have never yet been choked by intruding logs, except in 

 the lower part, and the amber pebbles which shine on the 

 bottom reflect without interruption the joyous ripple of 

 the surface above. It winds, widens, meanders and 

 splashes, with occasional impetuous spm-ts, for a distance 

 of sixty miles, through a waste of sombre pines which 

 have scarcely been scored by. the swamper's axe. Some- 

 times it spreads out into lakes a quarter of a mile wide, 

 and anon lengthens into reaches a half-mile long. One 

 of these lakes incloses the island camp established by 

 Frank Bowman, of St, Louis, a dozen years ago or more, 

 at that time the only white man's habitation on the liver. 

 At the headwaters, where the watershed separates the 

 feeders of the St. Croix, there are pretty falls. No way- 

 side paths follow the margin except where the deer have 

 beaten runways, and there are no settlers' cabins or clear- 

 ings south of the Northern Paciflc Railway crossing, 

 except those which belong to the three clubs above, or to 

 their Indian guides and attendants. These camps have 

 only been located within the past four years. Above 

 them there is open sesame to the canoe alone. 



From the little sylvan station of Bnile, half hidden 

 among the towering pines, there is a good wagon trail 

 through the woods for about four miles, and when the 

 visitor comes to the end of it, there is an oj)ening and a 

 vista, and lo! the siDarkling river sweeping with majestic 

 curve, and the bright red villa camp of the Winneboujou 

 Club in full view by the water side, with its breezy flag 

 waving a welcome, and broad verandahs inviting rest and 

 refreshment. Close by are servants' quarters and an ice 

 house, while just within the edge of the forest one Indian 

 wigwam sivee an aboriginal cast to the surroundings. 

 Under the bluff! is a landing, with a jackstaff , and a dozen 

 green-painted Adirondack boats drawn up in line with 

 their noses pointed inshore, looking for all the world like 



a row of alligators asleep in a bayou. A rustic bridge 

 crosses the stream at the tail of a pool a few rods further 

 down, where there is a rapid fairly alive with 6in. trout 

 at this season of the year; and just on the opposite side a 

 trio of pliant birch trees bend to the water's edge to whis- 

 per confidentially where the biggest baskets can be caught 

 in the shortest time by those who are not adepts. ButWin- 

 neboujou's foster children, who are acquainted with his 

 "medicine," can pick out 3Ib. trout aci libitum in advan- 

 tageous places where big boulders in mid-channel divide 

 the streamy waters, or projecting points of land inter- 

 cept and turn the current; and the credulous may readily 

 conceive that the acme of sport is truly attained when 

 the angler is permitted to fish from a boat controlled by 

 an expert hand holding hard when there is business to 

 attend to, and dropping down cautiously to points of 

 vantage when occasion requires. With a dry boat and 

 ample provender for the noon hour, contentment well 

 may sit at ease upon the prow, with radiant face up- 

 turned toward paradise. Woodehucks may chatter as 

 you pass and fretful porcupines fling their bristles from 

 the bank, but the trout will never fail to come to a well- 

 presented hook. On the Brule there is no such word as 

 fail. 



I have heard fabulous stories of myriads of trout hav- 

 ing been taken from the Brule in early days by guests 

 of the Island Camp; of hundreds of fish buried in" ignoble 

 graves when Winnebago was asleep, because they could 

 not be eaten or otherwise disposed of. Bowman himself 

 used to boast that he had caught 1,400 in a day, which 

 would be at the rate of two a minute for eleven hours 

 fishing, a feat almost as despicable as it is incredible. I 

 do not know that his untimely death was ever charged 

 as retribution for this offense, but it has been iterated 

 under breath that Winneboujou never fails to make ex- 

 emplary reprisal for abuse of even the humblest of those 

 who wear his mottled livery. Certain it is that he has 

 prohibited fishing in the river this year, or in any of its 

 tributaries, except during the month of August, and it 

 is even intimated that he may attempt to close it 

 altogether eventually. But of this there is small proba- 

 bility, for he is a professional angler himself, of whom it 

 is officially stated that he was the inventor of the "dusky- 

 miller," the "loyal-knight" and other captivating flies, of 

 which no successful imitations have yet been made. 



Naturally this inhibition of the river was a painful 

 surprise to the habitues of Winneboujou Camp; so that 

 when the harp rang out at 7:30 A. M. of the opening day 

 to wake the slumberers it had a mournful twang. 

 Breakfast was ushered in with a bad grace, barring the 

 Bishop's presence; and when the plan of campaign came 

 thereafter to be discussed and all the lawyers and coun- 

 sellors and prime ministers of the party put their heads 

 together to decide whether to forswear their allegiance 

 to Winneboujou or to invoke the evil spirit of Skittewa- 

 boo, who is always hanging on the outskirts of Bad River 

 Reservation, the camp was divided against itself, one- 

 half going up the river to the watershed and over into 

 the St. Croix, and the other remaining to warm the 

 hearth and make their "medicine." Thereupon a miracle 

 happened of marvelous import. All the trout in the 

 Brule were incontinently transformed into suckers and 

 perch; and the most potent eye-opener which Jim, the 

 colored steward, could compound, was unable to make 

 visible any other kind of fish. Whether this was the 

 magic of the good Winneboujou or of the evil-minded 

 Skittewaboo, could not be ascertained. It has now be- 

 come an interesting question whether the stream can be 

 restored to its original occupants, tbe trout, by the com- 

 ing August, at which time it has l>een rumoi-ed that ex- 

 Secretary Vilas, of Madison, and Col. J. H. Knight, the 

 lumber baron of Ashland, will invite the entire Wiscon- 

 sin Legislature to their Brule Camp for a trout supper, 

 with the stipulation, however, that none of them shall 

 fish. These two gentlemen have a new and pretentious 

 camp on a bend of the river a half mile above the 

 Winneboujou. Between the two is the Gitchie-Gumee 

 Camp of Milwaukee. Both are conspicuous to the brig- 

 ades of boats and canoes which are constantly passing 

 up and down when the Brule harp is in full attune and 

 the colors are flying from the masthead at headquarter?. 



The Brule region is full of game. There are swales 

 and muskegs which harbor deer in large numbers, as 

 well as bears, and there is a large variety of rodents and 

 fur animals wbich range along the creeks and bottoms 

 and burrow into the sandy soil of the pine country. Of 

 these there are stuffed specimens at the Winneboujou 

 camp, including some fine antlered heads of deer, and 

 full forms of lynx, badger, fox, mink, otter, martin, 

 ermine, squirrel, porcupine, woodchuck, fisher and skunk, 

 all shot in the immediate vicinity. Indeed, the whole 

 northern part of Wisconsin, excepting along the Lake 

 Superior shore, is a dense timbered wilderness. Moose 

 are not uncommon, and moose meat and venison ai-e 

 always abundant. Lakes and streams are distributed 

 throughout, some of them stocked with great mascalonge, 

 pickerel, bass and pike, and others with lake and brook 

 trout. 



The Lake Shore & Western Railroad in eastern Wiscon- 

 sin, leads into the most remarkable collection of masca- 

 longe waters known anywhere, of which the Gogebic, 

 Eagle and Tomahawk are already famous. The Chicago, 

 St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha traverses the western 

 and central parts of the State, with termini at Superior 

 City and Ashland, and undoubtedly reaches a greater 

 number of choice fishing grounds than any other road in 

 Wisconsin, Once I went out with a party of oificials in 

 the pay car and spent a week on the road , taking my 

 portable Osgood canvas canoe, which we put into any 

 number of strange and familiar waters with eminent 

 success and surfeit of sport, I know of no other method 

 of fishing which is so independent and charming. 



The whole upper tier of counties swarms with fish. 

 Gordon, White Birch, Drummond, and scores of other 

 places offer golden opportunities to tbe angler. At Ash- 

 land we find in June and July the famous "rock-fishing," 

 so called, where an expert can pick up great 41b. speckled 

 trout as they cruise along the fronts of the pictured 

 rocks and in and out of the caves and crevices opened by 

 the work of the waves, and among the crags and boulders 

 which have become detached from the face of the cliffs 

 and dropped down from the heights. This is an experi- 

 ence never enjoyed by most anglers, and is well worth 

 the trial. The best bait "is the minnow, but flies are some- 

 times attractive if handled properly. There is no better 

 hotel anywhere than the "Chequamegor," on Gitchie- 

 Gumee Bay, and no more charming attraotiona than the 



