Dec. 15, 1894.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
811 
of snow and ice from which I had just come, the warmth 
of tBe air and the green of the landscape gave a feeling of 
relief and comfort. I could not help thinking of the verse, 
"Fair as the garden of the Lord." 
I didn't know anybody in Missoula, or at least I didn't 
know I did. So at the hotel I asked the clerk for the 
name of some one of the local sportsmen. "Why, there's 
one of them right there in the billard room now," said 
he. "Mr. Jones, Tom Jones. He'll tell you all you want 
to know." 
I walked in and introduced myself to Mr. Tom Jones, 
and found myself looking rather hard at him and him 
looking pretty hard at me. "I think I've met you before," 
we both said. And it was so- One rainy day at the 
World's Fair Frank Webster of Lawrence, Kan., had in- 
troduced me to Tom Jones, out near the gates, and now I 
remembered it clearly, so after that I was right at home 
in Missoula. With Mr. Kenneth Nicoles, a young fishing 
attorney; Mr. Will Cave, a big-game hunter of approved 
and permanent reputation; Chas. Emsley, the local tax- 
idermist; W. H. Wright, also taxidermist and mountain 
guide, and the many friends of all these, I was clearly, to 
use an expression of Mr. Horace Briggs of 'Frisco, "right 
in the heart of the city." 
The Carlln Party. 
Missoula itself is right in the heart of the mountains. 
The range of the Bitter Roots is extremely rough and 
broken, and though not subject to so heavy a snow fall as 
the mountains east of the main divide, these mountains 
are very lofty and difficult of access. It was in this range 
that the Carlin party had their trouble, and at Missoula 
I heard over and over the details of that unfortunate 
affair. W, H. Wright, whom I met at Missoula, is the 
partner of Spencer, the guide who took the party in, and 
Wright was the head guide of the military relief party 
which worked from the east side of the range in the 
attempt to get at the lost party, the effort, of course, being 
made over the east slope of the Lo Lo trail. There were 
seventy men in this Eastern expedition, Wright told me, 
and they failed because supplies could not be gotten for- 
ward to them fast enough over the trail. The streams 
rose and flooded the valleys back of them, and the snow 
ahead stopped the horses. Of course I don't know any- 
thing about it, but it seems to me that a party of four de- 
termined men on snowshoes could have pushed on over 
to old Jerry's cabin from the point which Wright reached 
on the east side of the trail, eighty miles above Fort Mis- 
soula. Meantime the party that went up the opposite 
side of the trail, or the South Fork of the Clearwater, 
were proving successful. There seems to have been very 
little snow to hinder them on that side, and Wright says 
they could all have walked right on out if Colgate had 
been able to travel. They got thirty miles down the 
Clearwater by their raft before Colgate was abandoned, 
and they were forty miles below where they left him 
when they met the search party. By that time they were 
practically out of danger, and nearly to the fork of the 
stream, where they would have been safe. When found, 
Spencer was about four miles ahead of the next man be- 
hind him on the trail, and the others were scattered, each 
man for himself. Carlin had given up hope for the last 
two days. Colgate had refused to stay in the mountains 
with old Jerry, the trapper. At the time the westward 
march was begun, so Wright told me, there was deep 
snow on the summit, but not enough on the lower trail to 
impede them altogether. The snowshoe and sledge idea 
seems never to have been entertained at all. At a rough 
guess I should think this would have been better than the 
raft proposition. At any rate, the affair was deplorable 
in any light, and it had created the most intense feeling 
at Missoula. Later than my visit a party went in to look 
for Colgate's remains, and made due report that they had 
been swept away by the floods. And now comes Lieut. 
Green and says that he met Lieut. Elliott in the Bitter 
Roots in September, and that Lieut. Ellott had found Col- 
gate's remains and given them burial. This is the final 
chapter of one of the most widely known and one of the 
saddest stories of the mountains. 
Big Game. 
The Bitter Root Range is good game -country, and 
offers elk, deer, sheep and some goats. It is well spoken 
of by the local men, though all agree it is rough country 
and hard to hunt in for a great part of its extent. I 
somehow got the idea that, while Missoula would be an 
excellent point to head for for a big-game hunt, it would 
be better to go the north, up beyond or near the Flathead 
reservation country, and this would certainly be better if 
one wanted to get his goat. Mr. Emsley assured me that 
it would be no trouble to find goats in the country to the 
north where himself and friends had made a recent trip. 
He showed me a number of fine skins and some mounted 
specimens which he had taken on that trip, and moreover 
showed a number of beautiful photographs taken by him- 
self of trophies, camp scenes, etc., all of which served to 
make one want to start at once for the same country. 
Trout. 
Mr. Jones told me fish stories by the hour while I was 
at Missoula, and one who knew nothing of the wonderful 
fruitfulness of these mountain rivers would hardly credit 
in full all the statements as to weight and number, though 
I do not believe that, large as they run in these waters the 
average of the mountain trout here is as large as it is in 
the Clark's Fork or the Rosebud, on the other side of the 
range, of the waters of which I have made earlier men- 
tion. But 3 or 31bs. is big enough for trout to get if one 
is not anxious to go into a general freight and traffic busi- 
ness, and I should think the jolly sportsmen of Missoula 
and all the Army officers at the Post near-by would con- 
gratulate themselves and thank their lucky stars, every 
day of the fishing season. 
Missoula was also suffering from the drop in silver, and 
everybody talked poor, though I noticed she was a wide- 
open town at night, with plenty of the green cloth and 
hurdy-gurdy features which seem to constitute a necessity 
or at least make an index of a fairly healthy state of 
affairs in a city of the mountains. 
About every man in Missoula is an angler, and a good 
fly-caster, too, and of course the average man would be 
handy with a rifle. There is a trap-shooting club of good 
membership there — about the last place in the world one 
would think such a club needful or likely to flourish. 
Forest and Strmam tells about the doings of this club, 
among its other items from the far West, and readers 
may Bee that the Missoula men take mighty kindly to the 
shotgun, too. Their local champion of renown,^ Mr. 
Rogers, is willing to go into the lists with any comer, and 
is well known in the meetings over the State. Missoula 
will no doubt eventually go into the Montana State Asso- 
ciation, if indeed she has not already joined. 
An odd sort of shooting club at Missoula, and one whose 
like I do not recall for any part of the country, is the 
"Ladies' Twenty-Two Club," a collection of ladies who 
go in for target practice with the little rifles. This club 
has a membership tba.t varies from a dozen to twenty, 
and several of the ladies do exceedingly close shooting 
with the small weapon, moreover. 
Mongolian Pheasants. 
About the time I was in Missoula, Dr. Mills and Mr. J. 
Menard were beginning the experiment of introducing 
the Mongolian pheasant into the Bitter Root Valley, and 
there was talk of trying to acclimatize the Bob White 
quail. I hardly believe the Bob White would do well in 
that region, but the general conditions of climate would 
seem to make it a practical certainty that the Mongolian 
pheasant would thrive there as well as in Oregan. I have 
not since heard, but would like to hear, of the result of 
this interesting experiment. This bird is attracting much 
attention among the sportsmen of the country, and is 
destined to attract more in the future. Of the introduc- 
tion of this bird in different localities in the East accounts 
have from time to time appeared in Forest and Stream. 
The latest attempt of this kind, of which I have knowledge, 
was made by Mr. Howard Bosworth, of Milwaukee, Wis- 
consin, who has reared a number of the chicks of the 
Mongolian pheasant on his place, about twenty miles out 
of Milwaukee. He thinks the birds will stand even the 
rigorous climate of that State, and if so they should do 
well in the Bitter Root Valley of Montana. 
The Prize Fool Law. 
At Missoula I heard considerable vigorous comment 
among the anglers on the absurd Montana fish law. This 
law, I suppose, has been the cause of the destruction of 
mountain trout to an extent not equaled by any other 
agency. It is well known that these spawn in the spring 
instead of in the fall like their Eastern cousins, the brook 
trout. The spring also is naturally the time when the 
farmers turn on the water in their irrigation ditches. 
Following their natural instinct the fish run out into the 
irrigation ditches and find their death floundering in the 
meadows. It is impossible to estimate how many tons of 
these noble fish are thus destroyed every year in Montana. 
One of Marcus Daly's trainers says that one morning he 
picked up two gunny sacks full of trout which were flop- 
ping around in the shallow water of the ditch overflow 
back of the barn on one of Daly's places. The Silver 
Creek ditch, fifteen miles long, is one of the great 
destroyers of the trout. Tubs full are picked up there 
daily and fed to the hogs during the spring run of the 
spawning trout. Naturally the sportsmen of Montana, 
and all who have any decent interest in the preservation 
of animal life, sought to put an end to this outrageous 
destruction of fish valuable alike for food and sport, but 
more especially for food. They knew that these fish were 
fed in tons to the farmers' hogs and sought to preserve 
them for food of human beings, as a use more natural and 
advantageous. 
Going before the Montana Legislature, they introduced 
a bill which should provide for the shutting off the heads 
of the irrigating ditches by means of grates, which should 
keep back the fish during their running season. Their 
bill provided that the gates should be put in at the heads 
of all ditches on March 1, and removed Sept. 1. The 
Montana Legislature, however, being composed of a lot 
of brilliant jays, concluded that they knew better than 
the intelligent element of Montana citizens who had in- 
troduced the bill. One of them said he did not think all 
the fish in Montana were worth over §80 at the most. 
The Legislature then proceeded to amend the bills intro- 
duced, aad actually passed a law which is now on the 
statute books of the State of Montana, completely revers- 
ing the provisions of that bill, and making it obligatory 
to put the grates in at the head Sept. 1 and remove them 
March 1. There is no such deliberate and malignant 
provision for the wholesale and abominable destruction 
of fish life to be found in the history of all the senseless 
and absurd protective legislation of this country. The 
Montana fish law now provides as follows: 
Unlawful to fish at any time except with ordinary fishing: tackle. 
Nets, seines, grab hooks, powder or poison strictly prohibited. 
Unlawful to fish in any manner or with any contrivance or device 
during the months of May or June. 
Unlawful to sell, offer to sell, display for sale or purchase at aDy 
time, brook, speckled or mountain trout. 
c >A11 ditches and drains leading from natural streams must be pro- 
tected with grates at the junction of said ditch and stream. Grates 
must be placed Sept. 1 and removed March 1. 
Fish ways or ladders must be constructed at all dams. 
The provisions and penalties of this act apply also strictly to all In- 
dians and half-breedB when outside of an Indian reservation. 
At first glance this would appear to be a good fish law, 
but any one knowing the habits of the mountain trout, 
and the extent of their destruction in the irrigatiag dis- 
tricts, will know that its main provision is absolutely and 
cruelly wrong, and will join in the general indignation 
of intelligent Montana citizens at the passage of such an 
act. 
Foreign Butchers. 
The growth of a sentiment of strict observance of the 
game laws will probably be slower in the Rocky Mountain 
region than in almost any other part of the country, for 
reasons which will be obvious, and which to some extent 
base themselves on absolute necessity. Nevertheless, it is 
not to be supposed that Montana men look with indiffer- 
ence on the wanton and unnecessary destruction of their 
big game. There is much protest at the invasion of the 
State by Eastern hunters, who kill all and every thing they 
can. 
The European sportsman is especially loathed and de- 
tested in Montana, it must be said with good reason, in 
view of the record of the past. Of this I will give one 
instance where names and facts are at hand, although the 
greater part of the killing was not done in Montana, but 
Wyoming. A year and a half ago a party of German 
so-called sportsmen came over to this country and went 
to Montana for "sport" as they understood it. They 
divided into two parties. One party, composed of L. V. 
Feilitzch, Premtrent Dietrich, Graf C. von Bliicher and 
Graf Pocully, huntedjin northwestern Montana, with A. 
Pfhal and F. Black, of Fridley, Montana, as guides. 
They killed only a few head of game, all their elk, of 
course, illegally. The rest of these men took Curly Rogers 
and A. G. Vance as guides, and went into Wyoming. 
Their names were Graf von Leppelin, of Stuttgart, Ger- 
many; G. Meisenbrand, T.Fery andH. Bothe, of Mfmchen, 
Germany. These men committed one of the most abom- 
inable pieces of butchery of which itemized account has 
ever been kept. They hunted on Atlantic Creek and Elk 
Ridge, near the south line of Yellowstone Park. They 
killed between thirty and forty bull elk, and all they did 
was to knock off the horns from the skull. All the bodies 
were left to rot, and even a greater part of the antlers 
were abandoned later on. The man Fery said publicly 
that he had killed twenty-six bull elk himself, and that 
the "sport" was so great that he intended to bring over a 
larger party from Germany the following year. 
Such Butchery Must Stop. 
The day is past for such outrages as the above, even in 
the wildest part of the Rocky Mountains. Even if it were 
not true that the modem phase of sportsmanship has 
penetrated thoroughly all the larger towns of Montana, 
even the old mountain men of the remote districts will 
now rebel at hearing of such slaughter as that. Foreign 
butchers of that type will henceforward run greater and 
greater risks each year in that region in their expeditions 
for the purpose of violating alike the statutes of the State 
and every feeling of human decency. If legal measures 
cannot be taken by the organized sportsmen of Montana 
(for this year the sportsmen have organized themselves 
into a State association) then let us hope that the moun- 
tain men will follow the example of Colonel Pickett, of 
Wyoming, and take the enforcement of the game laws 
into their own hands. If a few of these incredible foreign 
butchers should at some future date be found rotting in 
the mountains on their own slaughter fields, I can imag- 
ine that no injury would result to the world therefrom. 
I believe this hint may be of use to some of these persons 
who come over for the purpose of slaughtering all the 
American game they can. The mountains have secrets 
which they do not tell. For my part I should not be torn 
with grief at the thought that the grave of any of the 
above party of marauders was to remain forever unknown 
and unmarked, and he to have no further epitaph than 
the record of his doings recorded in the sentences above. 
E. Hough. 
909 Security Building, Chicago. 
From a Business Point of View. 
There are laws that some people think more honored 
in the breach than in the observance. One of these is 
the .game law. During the past week there have been 
several good sized consignments of venison sent out of 
the State by local commission dealers of fair reputation 
as law-abiding citizens. The law is a recent one, but 
there is no reason why it should not be obeyed just because 
it is young. The man who fails to obey a law that is 
made to be obeyed, is a criminal, whether the law is one 
regulating the shooting and sale of game, or the buying 
and selling of beer, or the misappropriation of horses. It 
would be well for the country shipper to ascertain if he 
can if the commission house to whom he consigns his pro- 
duce is actively engaged in trying to evade the game law. 
If so, he may be on the look-out for that same house to 
try to evade the law compelling the debtor to pay his 
debts. "False in one, false in all" is a very good proverb 
to apply to the man who is entrusted with your property. 
—Commercial Bulletin, Minneapolis, Minn. 
A Turkey Call that Calls. 
In the Forest and Stream of July 10, 1890, was a 
diagram of a turkey call with explanatory article signed 
"H. L,, Kankakee, 111." If "H. L." is still a reader of 
our paper will he please accept my thanks for the best 
call I have ever used, and I have used wing bone, section 
of cow horn, and the commercial article of wood and 
horn combined, but with the little box one can e'enamost 
call a turkey out of his feathers. The directions were to 
use the call on the stock of the gun, but I found a better 
place to be the metallic plate just forward of the trigger 
guard. I am more sure against a balk there. 
If any one has occasion to look that diagram up, for 
"fin. long" read "S^in." And I would change the last 
paragraph to read, "The wide part of the projection, or 
the lip of the back cover, should be furthest from the per- 
son, or that grasped by the forefinger." I can't work it 
satisfactorily any other way. O. O. S. 
Leased Lands and Quail Netting. 
ThomasvHjLE, N. C, Dec. 5.— There are two very good 
game or shooting clubs here. We have 10,000 acres of 
excellent shooting ground, and there are plenty of birds 
this season. We have eight members only. The other 
club has a larger membership and have 15,000 acres 
adjoining ours. They have built a very fine club house 
and stables at Thomasville. Our members put up at the 
hotel. The farmers of this section are exerting them- 
selves in preventing the netters from depredating and 
taking their game without permission. They deserve 
credit for the manner in which they protect the leased 
land against intruders, and before long a precedent will 
be established by their efforts which may prove to be 
absolute protection to the sportsmen who pay their money 
for the privilege. "w. 
Shooting Chain-Shot. 
Little Rock, Ark.— I have often seen the question 
asked how to load buckshot to shoot out of a chokebored 
gun. 
Jerry C. South, a noted deer hunter of this State, gave 
me his way, and he claims to be able to put 15 No. 8 buck- 
shot in a lOin. circle at 70 to 80yds. His formula is to use 
a gut fiddle string, and cut and string the bullets on (the 
same as you would if putting a split-shot on a fishing 
line), far enough apart so they will chamber five in a 
layer, tying the ends of the string together. The shorter 
the string the closer they will hold together. A deer up 
to QOyds. struck with this load is a dead deer. He shoots 
them out of a full-choked 12-gauge. Irwin. 
To Go to Sleep. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
"J. H. D." in his article, "To Go to Sleep," forgot to 
mention that in order to assume the attitude he describes 
one must be a contortionist. J. Jj, W ' 
Philadelphia, Pa. 
