384 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



LNov. 4, 1893. 



CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 



[JVojw. a Staff Correspondent] 



Oct. 20.— Mr. C. F. Johnson of the Waltonian Manufac- 

 turing Company, Chicago, is just back from a month's 

 trip in Oregon and Washington, and he is wild with en- 

 thusiasm for the sport and sportsmen of the Coast country. 

 He went there a stranger to both, and came back ac- 

 quainted, which was enough to raise his ardor. In com- 

 pany with Mr. Fred Tritchelar, one of Portland's anglers, 

 and "Doc" Wheeler, of doggy fame in the same city, he 

 enjoyed sport at the Mongolian pheasants and grouse till 

 he wished no more, and then went on a five days' trouting 

 trip in the Cascades, in which the party took 700 trout. 

 Then, with a party of five, he went on a fourteen days' 

 hunting trip in Washington, in which time he killed to 

 his own gun nine deer, a bear and two cougars. The bear 

 was small, but the cougars (mountain lions) were full 

 grown. They came past his station on a runway for deer, 

 being started by the drivers, one about three-quarters of 

 an hour later than the other. 



Such luck as this does not fall to very many mortals; 

 and no wonder Mr. Johnson wants to go back there. He 

 says that a city like Portland, where you can, as he did, 

 take the street cars almost out to where you can kill two 

 181bs. salmon of a morning, is good enough for him. Mr. 

 Johnson says he never knew before what it was to see 

 shooting with the rifle and revolver imtil these Western 

 men showed him, and according to his story, the streets 

 of every Coast city are .tenanted by nothing but good shots 

 and good fellows, all ready to take a stranger out and 

 show him the sport of the country. I don't know when 

 I have seen a man come back ofE a trip so pleased clear 

 through as Mr. Johnson is, and it creates no surprise to 

 hear him say that he is going back again this fall. 



Hard to Supply. 



Mr. Geo. A. Rose, of Cleveland, O., asks for a place 

 hard to supply when he sends the following: 



' 'Being one of the many readers of Forest and Stream 

 who enjoy what you write about the sport had in the 

 Northwest, and as a party of us are going on a short 

 shooting trip next month, I write you to see if you can 

 tell me of some one I can write to in regard to a favorable 

 locality for quail, partridge and larger game. We want 

 to find some place not too far away either in this State or 

 Michigan, as our time is limited to a week or ten days. 

 If you can do this I can assure you it will be appreciated, 

 as I have made many a trip with the same result, a light, 

 very light, game bag." 



There is no place in Ohio or Michigan that I know of 

 where one can find large game and also partridge and 

 quail. Deer and ruffed grouse go together in the pine 

 woods, but not quail. A ten days' trip after deer in 

 northern Wisconsin or the upper peninsula of Michigan 

 might or might not be successful. One could get deer 

 and quail on the same hunt in Arkansas or in the Indian 

 Nations. He can certainly get quail in abundance, and 

 perhaps a few grouse, in northern Indiana, say about 

 Newton, Ora, Huntington, or almost anywhere west of 

 Fort Wayne along the Panhandle road, or east of Chicago 

 100 miles on the Erie road. If I wanted a pleasant ten 

 days' f aU trip I would rather spend it in the latter coun- 

 try than search further for bigger possibilities in the 

 shooting line. One could be almost certain to get all the 

 sport at quaU a gentleman should wish. E. Hodgh. 

 909 Skcdbity BuiiiDiNG, Chicago. 



BIG GAME IN MAINE. 



Fully 100 deer are being shot weekly. It is too com- 

 mon a thin^ to particularize: most sportsmen now are 

 after something larger; deer shooting is mere tenderfoot 

 business. It is like rabbit hunting in the past. Any am- 

 bitious lady hunter can capture a deer, even "Fly Rod," 

 our famous woodscraft writer and trout fisher, is looking 

 for something more worthy of her steel. 



The woods of Maine are filled with the beaten paths of 

 deer, and it is a daily occurrence to see deer feeding in 

 pastures and in company with domestic cattle. 



We are done eating that sort of steak ; if venison we 

 must eat give us a bull moose's nose or shin marrow, or a 

 cutlet from a 7001bs. big-footed bear, roasted on the shore 

 of a distant lake, far from the haunts of man, seasoned 

 with the cry of the Indian devil echoing through the dis- 

 tant mountains— sme qua non. 



The papers are full of reports of the slaughter. Our old 

 bear hunter of Roxbury, Oxford county, has just killed 

 his forty-fourth bear. G. W. Dunbar of Concord, Me. , 

 killed last week a bear weighing STGlbs. , and whose foot 

 measured 6x9in. 



A party of three men from Whitinsville, Mass. , were 

 badly frightened last week in the Rangeley woods by 

 some wild animals making fearful screams and driving 

 some deer in the night time near their camp, probably 

 wolves. They called the noise terrible yowling. 



The middle of October Emery Burbank of Whitinsville, 

 Mass. , shot a large bull moose near Flagstaff, Me. , whose 

 head weighed 541bs. 



J. C. Havenieyer of New York and Herbert C. Brownell 

 of Providence, have shot two moose on the Penobscot 

 waters. 



Mr. Henry Young, of Greenbush, Me., shot a bull moose 

 which weighed 825lbs. dressed weight, on a bog in that 

 town, only one mile from a railroad and twenty-one miles 

 from Bangor. 



J. H. Howard Gibson and Frank G. Rogers, of Phila- 

 delphia, killed one moose and two caribou lately. W. F. 

 Montgomery, of Boston, and Philip Richmond, of Provi- 

 dence, killed one moose, two caribou and three deer in 

 October, the whole weighing a ton. 



A hunter came into Bangor last week with a 900-pound 

 moose, kiUed up near the Canadian Pacific, having a fine 

 head, which he sold for $100, and another hunter sold a 

 bull moose for $87. 



J. lilanchester Haynes, of Augusta, Me., has killed a 

 moose. S. H. Watts, of Berwick, Pa., brought in a moose, 

 and Oliver Prescott, of Cambridge, Mass., a buU cari- 

 bou. 



A young man nineteen years old, in Somerset county, 

 Maine, still-hunted and killed a large bull moose in a 

 small thicket, and in an instant after the moose fell a bull 

 caribou leaped out of the thicket at the boy, who hit him 

 with the butt of his gun, spoiUng the gun but stunning the 

 caribou so that he cut his throat. 



There were over 500 deers' heads mounted in the State 

 of Maine last year, and this month of October there has 



been one-half of that number killed already. It is just as 

 easy to kill a deer as a sheep after you get to where they 

 live; and it is wicked to drive them with dogs, as the man- 

 ner of some is. Public opinion is none too soon coming 

 to the rescue. That practice belongs to the Dark Ages. 



The present laws are good and suflicient to protect the 

 game of the State, and if lived up to, we shall have good 

 shooting and big game will increase for years to come. 



J. G. Rich, 



Bethel, Maine. ^ 



A STILL DAY. 



The day is still. There is hardly a ruffle of the water 

 that spreads its unbroken calm to the horizon, where 

 it blends so perfectly with 

 the blue sky that it is hard 

 indeed to say where the one 

 ends or the other commences. 

 An ideal day for dreaming! 

 A poor day for sport! How 

 often I have whiled away 

 the golden hours under such 

 conditions. There is always 

 the hope that a breeze may 

 spring up and start the fowl 

 moving, and again you can- 

 not tell at what moment some wandering 

 duck may swing to investigate your decoys. 

 Half dozing, one sits motionless, conscious 

 only of a delightful sense of contentment, 

 when suddenly, with a swish-h-h of wings 

 a duck flashes over the decoys. To seize 

 the gun and fire instinctively is the work 

 of an instant. Still he speeds away, ap- 

 parently untouched, save for a single 

 downy feather that floats through the 

 iilife^'r- haze of powder smoke and settles on the 

 ' s water, lijght as a thought, 

 3-. How could I miss him? you mentally 



1— J exclaim, as your eyes follow his receding 

 1 — form. All! At fuU five hundred yards 

 ^£Zr his wings go up, and down he pitches — 

 "dead," dashing the spray in a shower as 

 jb.6 strikes 



•j ow-vsEND jja^g ^^Qj. been there? 

 Bay Ridge, New York. WiLMOT TOWNSEND. 



'LOTS OF BIRDS." 



Speaking of quail, my son Aleck and I took a run last 

 winter down to the southern part of North Carolina for 

 quail, intending to shoot the last ten days of Februaiy, 

 when the law goes on. We had heard of such splendid 

 shooting, we went loaded with 600 shells. On the way 

 down nothing of importance hapiiened, except that I lay 

 awake all night. The fellow in the next bunk pointed 

 himself the wrong way, which brought his head next to 

 mine; just as soon as his head touched his piUow, he 

 started his saw miU and ran it till daylight. On the 

 branch line we had quite an exciting little incident. On 

 board was an officer, having in his custody a negro, who 

 he was taking to Asheville to be examined in a murder 

 case. The darky was so frightened, for fear of being 

 lynched, that he jumped through the car window, while 

 the train was runmng at a speed of forty miles an hour. 

 He did it so quick that the officer just had time to catch 

 him by one foot as he disappeared through the window. 

 The officer held on until the train was stopped, and the 

 man taken in again by help from the outside. The pris- 

 oner was not hurt in the least after bumping along on the 

 ties, but the poor officer was terribly cut up by the broken 

 glass. 



On arriving we were gi-eeted by a little colored tot, 

 "Gorn' gunnin', Massa? Lots er birds." The next person 

 we met, a negro, greeted us with the same salutation. At 

 the hotel the landlord kindly informed us that there were 

 lots of birds. While sitting in the hotel office prepara- 

 tory to going to dinner, the better class of the population 

 began to drop in. Every one put the same question, 

 "Goin' gunnin'? Lots of birds." One party told us that a 

 friend of his had flushed twenty-five bevies the day before. 

 Another that two of his friends had bagged 115 birds. I 

 looked at Aleck; he is not very strong; and it did my heart 

 good to see the peaceful smile that crossed his counte- 

 nance. He must have been thinking of how we had 

 struggled through life and at last had reached the happy 

 hunting grounds. 



Dinner over, we were introduced by the hotel proprie- 

 tor to the nice young man who was to be our guide. For 

 the afternoon shoot I did not think it worth while to don 

 my shooting clothes; for if quail were so plenty, I would 

 take it easy, go as I pleased, and do a good deal of rest- 

 ing — perhaps whistle them up, as we do the yellowlegs at 

 home. But, alas! how we are doomed to disai^pointments. 

 We traveled the whole of the afternoon up hill and down, 

 across mud holes and through briers on which I left some 

 of my covering. We flushed just one bevy of about a 

 dozen birds, out of which we bagged six, when our guide 

 called us off. I think we could have brought them all to 

 bag, but the guide told us that he did not want the bevy 

 killed up too close. 



That night the guide came to our room, and suggested 

 that by hu'tng a team he could take us where there was 

 good shooting. We told him by all means to engage a 

 team for the morrow. Then we turned to meditating how 

 we were going to get rid of those 600. 



Breakfast over the next day, we were soon on our way 

 with fifty shells each in our pocket. After two hours 

 drive over the worst road I ever traveled, we halted, 

 made the horse comfortable and started in. It was the 

 same old story— a tedious tramp before we found any 

 birds. To make a long story short, after a walk of about 

 fifteen miles we put up three bevies and got ten birds. 

 Then we started for the hotel disgusted. 



The kind-hearted proprietor was on hand to meet us 

 on oui- arrival, and to know of our success. You cannot 

 imagine how sad he looked when he inspected that bunch 

 of game, which it had taken a team, a guide, two good 

 dogs and two good guns to gather in, ten little quail. 

 Our hotel man said he felt very bad, but perhaps we would 

 meet with better success on the morrow. I begged and 

 pleaded with him not to feel bad. I told htm our lives 

 were "made up of disappointments. After he got over feel- 

 ing bad and I thought it safe, I sadly, but gently, broke 

 the news to him that I was home-sick, and would take 

 the evening train for the North. We reached home tired 

 out after being on the road two days and a night. 



I would rather bag one dozen of our big strong Long 

 Island quail, with a pleasant country to tramp over, and 

 the comfort of being at home, than to bag 50 of those 

 small Southern quail and put up with the inconveniences 

 that we met with. Heretofore when I brought to bag 

 100 or 200 of our birds during the fall shoot I did not ap- 

 preciate it, but I feel now that I have a big privilege, 



Alfred A, Frazeb, 



MORE ABOUT THE .22. 



Exeter, Neb., Oct. 25.— Editor Forest and Stream: In 

 Forest and Stream of Oct. 81 1 see that "Tode" is doubt- 

 ful of the qualities of the .22cal. short cartridge that I 

 upheld in your issue of three weeks back, being used in 

 the .22 short Winchester repeater, and laughs at its kill- 

 ing at 303yds. True, I am a "Westerner," as he says, 

 and again that distance counts as merely nothing to one 

 long residing in the West, where the broncho Is generally 

 our mode of locomotion. "But truth counts with us and 

 at all times." In the first place he acknowledges his sur- 

 prise at the shooting of the Kttle cartridge, trials of which 

 he has been carrying on in his "cellar." Now then, just 

 take that little Stevens gun into the open air and give it 

 a chance to breathe good, fresh autumn air and see what 

 that little gun can do. If it is a 24in. barrel or longer I 

 will warrant you can put a .23 short in a target at 303yds, 

 or further. If not go to your gunsmith and get one of 

 the best .22 short Winchesters he has — "the best," mind 

 you, for that is what my gun is — and mark off 325yds. 

 Throw the hind sight up into the last notch, taking a 

 coarse sight and let her go. If you are not surprised then 

 I'll stand treat. Just try it, "Tode," and let us hear the 

 result in our "family paper." 



Citing an incident of the .22's force, I was visiting a 

 friend eight years ago who had a .22 short Winchester . 

 single shot rifle. One evening we were on the lawn shoot- 

 ing at a large sunflower stalk. There were no houses 

 nearer than foiu' blocks and we had no idea of the httle 

 ball's going so far when a man came running up and 

 stopped us. It seems one of the balls had gone 400yds, 

 and into the leg of his little boy playing in the yard. This 

 stopped our shooting and caused us a doctor's biU. 



This spring in company with a citizen of this place I 

 stood four blocks away from a windmill and to see if the 

 balls would cut through the vane fired five shots at it and 

 all five balls not only hit but cut "clean" througli. True, 

 the wood is thin, but the blocks are 100yds. in length. I 

 put the hind sight up into the last notch and caught the 

 bottom of the front in the slot of the rear sight. 



I am not like the "man from the East," anxious to shoot 

 a grizzly with a .22 or with anything else for that matter. 

 My experience has been when a grizzly was sighted to go 

 about my business — and he will do the same. But if one 

 should ever corner me I would not hesitate to try "my" 

 .22 on his bearship, for a .22 Winchester in the hands of 

 one who can handle it and knows what it is capable of 

 "can do wonders." Dla.mond Walt. 



SQUIRRELS AND BASS IN TEXAS. 



Waco, Tex., Oct. 23.— In your last issue, "H, B, C." of : 

 New Hampshire, wants to know where good gray squir- 

 rels abound this fall, I will tell him thiswise. Some two 

 weeks ago I heard of a black (fresh water) bass that was . 

 caught in Montgomery county, southern Texas, that 

 weighed 221bs. I went there with tent, tackle, squirrel . 

 gun and not forgetting an 18oz. greenheart rod. We 

 stopped at New Caney, twenty-seven miles east of Houston, 

 and took a wagon "for an eight-mile drive through pine : 

 woods and magnolia groves to East River, one of the trib- 

 utaries of the San .Jacinto River. We crossed over, how- 

 ever, in half this distance, two streams so beautifully pure • 

 and clear, in which we saw so many moderate-sized bass , 

 as to induce us to ponder over the fact of going on further. . 

 We camped on a bluff of sand in the midst of a large . 

 magnoHa grove, the river just within a few rods of us. 

 Nature never made to run a more beautiful river, without i 

 rocks, in the South, than this East River. Our tent was 

 soon up, and while our cook was getting dinner I just i 

 slipped off less than lOOyds. and killed four gray squirrels : 

 — only moving under two or three trees. It was all we . 

 wanted for supper. The difficulty was to keep from kill- 

 ing the squirrels. I am certain I could easily have got 100 

 each day I was there. 



But I was not after anything else but bass and channel 

 cat. The latter, by the by, is superior in fighting and , 

 eating qualities to the former. The water was too clear 

 for large bass, but the channel cat we caught, and returned 

 to the water what we could not use. The bait was grub ' 

 worms and minnows, The woods are full of deer and 

 bear, but as I only went to squirrel hunt and fish I made 

 no effort for larger game — one large deer walked past 

 our cook within lOycls., and as leisurely walked off. 



Our stay was one week. Each day too short. It was 

 enjoyable. Bacon for breakfast, boiled or old-fashioned 

 barbecued squirrel for dinner, and fish for supper. 



Tell H. B. C. to go there. Let him take good tackle, shot- 

 gun for squirrels and .45cal, rifle for bear and deer; for ' 

 he will need each. While there I inquired into the weight 

 ofthat221bs. bass; I was told that several gentlemen will 

 qualify as to its accuracy. I am certain that there are ' 

 in South Texas fresh- water bass that will weigh 221bs., 

 andl expect to take one such in the next twelve months. 



J. Walter Cock. 



Nebraska Game. 



Beatrice, Neb., Oct. 21.— Wild ducks of all kinds are 

 here in goodly numbers now, and hunters bring in good 

 bags of quail. Not many chickens are killed now, as 

 they are fidl grown, strong flyers, and hunted so close 

 they get up a long distance away. Lots of squirrels and 

 plenty of mast for them to feed on, Pike are beginning 

 to bite, though no large catches are reported up to date. 

 Good game outlook here for the coming season. 



El Comancho. 



Two Hundred Miles in a Skiff. 



Chicago, Oct. 19. — 1 started on my trip to-day, which 

 will be from here down the Des Plaines, Kankakee to the . 

 Illinois, then down that stream to Spring Lake, something ' 

 over 200 miles, in a skiff 12ft. long. Expect to have lots 

 of sport with bass and later with ducks. Will write you 

 full account later. Spring Lake is one of the finest places 

 for duck shooting in the State. F. O. S, 



