S44 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[May 4, 1895. 
into the clay or sand, thus preventing the trap from being 
carried off by its victim. 
"I'll set a trap here," says Ora, "for the sign is good;" 
and he points to some bits' of green grass strewn along the 
clay margin beneath an overhanging bank. The rat, he 
tells me, is a vegetarian. His daily food consists of grass, 
grass roots, flag roots and bark. The animal dotes on 
"garden truck," such as beets, turnips, carrots and 
parsnips, and many a farmer knows how very partial 
it is to corn. It is in general a clean feeder, and most 
trappers do not hesitate to make a fricassee of a tender 
youngster on occasion. A fat, tender, juicy, two-thirds 
grown one, cooked to a turn and smoking hot, was set 
before me on the box-lid table one snowy morning. Now, 
a muskrat is not a rat — not the ugly, dirty scavenger that 
burrows under our barns and thrives in our lumber piles. 
On the contrary, he is a mouse — a gigantic mouse, to be 
sure, but a mouse nevertheless. In spite of him being a 
clean feeder, he has a veritable mouse tail, and he sheds 
a musky odor that is strangely popular in, quarters where 
we would least expect to find it so. I can eat muskrat, 
but I don't "hanker arter it." Not that there is anything 
disagreeable in the flavor of its flesh, or in the odor of it 
before cooking or while cooking or after cooked; not a 
bit of it. On the contrary, it is as toothsome as a rabbit 
and is cleaner than a woodchuck, and is a more dainty 
feeder than a chicken. But then a rat is a mouse, and 
has a hairless tail. Now, I'm not partial to rat. The 
muskrat is an inquisitive animal, and through this char- 
acteristic more often comes to grief than in any other 
way. The trapper, having noted his feeding ground, 
selects a favorable spot and throws up with his paddle a 
little mound of mud and turf and sets his trap close by, a 
couple of inches or so beneath the water. After Ora had 
thus set his first, "Mr. Eat," said he, "will see that some- 
thing has been working here and will at once proceed to 
inspect, and while so doing he will stand ten chances to 
one of putting his foot in it." 
The trapper seldom baits for rats, but for mink this is 
frequently done. The mink is carnivorous, and the car- 
cass of a dead rat or bit of other meat tied to a stake in the 
water close by a trap, putorius finds hard to resist, and 
while tugging at the bait the chances are that he will put 
his foot in it likewise. 
The boys set about eighty traps between them, and 
would have put out more but for the fact that some other 
trapper had preempted the stream by setting his own 
traps; and notwithstanding they roundly asserted that this 
trapper was a hog because he had strung his traps for 
three or four miles along the stream, I was struck with 
the care they took not to interfere with his traps. They 
passed them by without meddling, and were careful not 
to put theirs in the runways that he had set in. Before 
my outing was up, however, I learned that all trappers 
were not so honest. After we reached the St. Joseph 
River we fell among fur thieves, who filched from our 
traps the best part of a night's catch. 
Thirty or forty pelts taken in one night our trappers 
accounted as first-rate success, and fifteen or twenty they 
thought very good. Rat and mink furs are not the most 
valuable of furs; but in these days of ours, when the pelt 
of as humble a beast as is the opossum has a market 
value in New York and London, it must be apparent that 
the fur of the muskrat, let alone that of the mink, is not 
to be despised. A first-grade rat pelt is worth this spring 
17 cents, and a full-grown first-grade mink will sell at 
from $1 50 to $2. The first-grade furs are taken in the 
spring, the second in winter and the third in the fall, 
when the price runs down from 50 to CO per cent. The 
time is past when trappers in northern Indiana or south- 
ern Michigan can count with any degree of certainty on 
making good wages trapping. Our trappers, who were 
by no means wanting in experience, said if they could 
sell $60 or $70 worth of fur taken during their four weeks' 
outing they would consider that they had done well. If 
minks were as plentiful as are the rats, it must be evident 
that trapping would still be very profitable; but the rats 
taken on our trip must have been as ten to one of minks. 
As we floated down the creek I learned that it was not 
the rats and the minks alone that were entrapped by the 
wicked trappers. Raccoons, weasels, skunks, ducks and 
hawks the boys told of catching, and I saw myself an 
owl, a blackbird and a crow that were in durance vile. 
Mink bait, it was evident, had lured these poor creatures 
to their destruction. 
The muskrat has a bad name among those of our West- 
ern farmers whose opportunities are best of knowing 
him, but notwithstanding he is a very interesting little 
animal. His worst fault, I believe, is his tendency to 
burrow. He burrows for a home and safety, but is not 
discreet about it. Instead of burrowing in places where 
lie can do no harm, he selects dams, embankments and 
other of the very places with which the thrifty farmer 
wants no one to meddle, and there tunnels and lets in the 
water when the floods come. But it is only in compara- 
tively dry ground that the muskrat makes his home 
underground. In swampy places he builds him a house, 
and a right comfortable and nice-looking house it is. 
Selecting a firm foundation, he builds a round haycock- 
looking affair with mud, grass, flags and flag roots, and I 
do not know what all else, in the center of which is a den 
nicely blanketed with dried grass and the like. In that 
den the young are reared and therein the family are 
housed during the wintry weather. 
We were afloat and in camp with the trappers for a 
week, and did not leave them till after we had passed 
Constantine. Fortunately, it did not rain, but we had a 
flurry of snow. The farmers' hay and straw stacks fur- 
nished us the material for our beds, and wood for the 
camp-fire was everywhere to be had. We encountered 
cold and disagreeable winds on two days; the ground was 
frozen so hard that it was difficult to drive tent pins; ice 
formed every night, and there was much of last winter's 
ice and snow piled in ridges along the creek, yet we voy- 
aged, ate and slept in great comfort, and returned home 
with the back all right and ready for our spring work. 
D. D. Banta. 
I. UIANA Universits. 
Louisiana Game. 
OpelouSas, La., April 16.— The hunting season is about 
over here. The close season on quail is in effect, and the 
birds are now paired off and nesting. There is yet some 
shooting to be had on plover, ducks and snipe, but the 
weather is so warm that it makes that kind of sport more 
of a labor than a pleasure. T. A. J. 
THE SUNNY SOUTH.-Xl. 
Classic Gum Hollow. 
At Portland we chartered two fall down Mexican 
vehicles and made start for Gum Hollow as early in the 
day as we could get away from the car. It was an ideal 
duck day and we found Gum Hollow an ideal shooting 
place, all except one thing — the ducks were not there. 
They had been shot so persistently by a certain market 
shooter that they dared not come in there any longer. 
The spot could not be better adapted to duck shooting if 
built to order. A little stream of fresh water is dammed 
up about a half mile from its entrance into the salt water 
of the bay, a fresh pond being backed up about a mile in 
length. The dam is 15 or 20 feet high, and very finely 
built, with mason work for gates. All over the dam the 
wild cedars have grown heavily, and the cane on top and 
at the sides stands 10 or 12 feet high. The ravine down 
which the stream runs is deep and narrow, so that the 
dam is only about a couple of hundred yards wide. 
Every bird that comes into the water comes in from the 
sea, over a wide strip of open ground, so that it can be 
distinctly seen for a mile or so, and when it strikes the 
pond it is bound to come directly over that fatal dam. 
The shooter does not need any blind or any decoys. He 
simply stands up on the top of the dam, and has the prettiest 
practice in the world on incoming ducks. I never saw so 
deadly a trap for ducks in all my life, or one where the 
shooter could have so easy and comfortable a time. I 
could readily see, when told of the tremendous flight 
which often came in here, what bags could be made, and 
could pardon the enthusiasm of Guessaz and his running 
mate Max Luther over this favorite shooting spot. 
But to-day Guessaz was very glum. The market hunter 
had been ordered out by Mr. Geo. Fulton, the owner of 
the grounds, but he had lingered until he had ruined the 
shooting, aided therein by some unwise parties who had 
shot there practically all night on several occasions. We 
sent two guns out into the market shooter's blind in the 
open water, and deployed the rest of our forces in line 
along the dam, and so awaited the flight. It would be 
wrong to say that we had no shooting, and still further 
wrong to say that we had no fun, for we had what would 
be fine sport in many localities, though not what our 
friends wished us to have. I do not know how many 
birds we bagged, but forty or fifty I should think would 
cover it. We killed our first canvasback here, getting 
about half a dozen in all. Quite often fine bags of .can- 
vas are made here. Certainly, it was a unique and socia- 
ble day at duck shooting. We would walk along and 
visit each other on the dam till some one called "mark;" 
then would go into hiding till the birds came over. What 
the guns on the dam did not get, those in the blind behind 
us would, so that often we had quite a lot of fun out of 
one flock. Old Count Foster, the corpulent but energetic 
pointer which Dick Merrill had brought with him from 
Milwaukee (the dog belongs to Mr. Howard Bosworth, I 
believe), was kept very busy retrieving birds in the icy 
water, which he was more anxious to do than we wished, 
as often he would be away out in the pond when wanted 
elsewhere, though it was difficult to coax him away from 
a bird he once had sighted. He would whine and swim, 
and swim and whine, until some one got near enough to 
take him in tow and try to get him dry and warm again. 
As the day did not promise very well, Guessaz and I left 
the place at about two in the afternoon and walked along 
the beach about three or four miles, and set Mitchell at 
work cooking something to eat, which he had ready just 
in time to catch the others, who had pulled out and fol- 
lowed us in not long after we leit. 
A Baron of the Range. 
At table we held council of war, and voted to go to still 
another locality, of which we had heard much, and to 
which Mr. Guessaz told us we were invited by Mr. Fulton, 
whom we were soon thereafter ready to call with Mr. 
Guessaz "the" prince of the Southwest." This new spot 
was the tank known as the Mud Flats on Mr, Fulton's prop- 
erty, near the home ranch of the "T," or Rincon ranch, 
as it is usually called. At Portland Mr. Fulton removed 
all doubt or hesitancy by coming and seeing us at our car, 
and taking full and absolute possession of the entire party. 
There is indeed no peerage in America if it be not that of 
the great cattle barons of the range, and nowhere in 
America could we have had a welcome and an entertain- 
ment more fit to be called royal. Mr. Fulton is much im- 
posed upon by shooters,who come into his tanks and keep 
the cattle away from water, who shoot for the market 
where he tells them not to, and who make him a great 
many kinds af trouble. Yet he seems to lay up no grudge 
against this gens intractabile, but rather likes them better 
the more they impose on him, and whenever a party of 
strangers blow down into that country, he just goes out 
after them and camps on their .trail until he brings them 
to camp. Tall, genial, commanding but not assertive, 
Geo. Fulton would be a force in any company, and it is 
likely we shall hear of him yet higher in the councils of 
the State of which he is so prominent and esteemed a 
citizen. In case Mr. Fulton should ever get out of a job, 
I am sure he could make a living by singing bass solos of 
' Sweet Marie." We very soon discovered that he could 
sing '.'S weet Marie" and at once drafted him into the opera 
troupe, which was now fast making a name for itself in 
the land. 
It may be borne in mind that in all the various move- 
ments of our party after leaving Rockport we had kept 
close along the coast. Most of the time we were upon or 
near the property of the Fulton Pasture Co. , which ex- 
tends some lorty miles along the coast, or nearly from 
Rockport to Corpus Cbristi. The Aransas Pass Railway 
seems to be built especially for the convenience of the 
shooters who wish to visit the best ducking grounds of 
that region. Mr. Fulton's home station is Gregory, about 
ten miles from the ranch house where his family live. It 
was therefore necessary to make another move with our 
car, whieh Mr. Peabody had taken over to Gregory, only 
a short distance from Portland , on the early morning train 
after our G um Hollow trip, Mr. Fulton said that he didn't 
bother ducks very much himself, but he thought we 
could get "a little shooting" out on the Flats. 
At the Rincon Home Ranch. 
At Gregory station on the following morning, then, we 
were met by some of Mr. Fulton's men, and a vehicle he 
called his "rig." This was an ideal hunting wagon or 
ambulance, drawn by four horses, a vast concern with 
three seats, lockers under the seats, carryall box slung 
beneath for guns, and more room all around than one 
ever did see in any other wagon — a sort of Great Eastern 
of the plains, fit ship for a man of Mr. Fulton's tasteB and 
habits. Into this we piled our shooting gear, and climbing 
aboard made off through the chaparral blithely singing 
"Sweet Marie," with never a care in all the world. Dickie 
Merrill's tenor voice, sweet but not very strong, sounded 
finely on the cool morning air, and Col. Bill Peabody let 
go another fold or two out of his voice, and Oscar Guessaz 
essayed additional curves and frills, the while Mr. Fulton 
trolled a bass which loosened the king pin on the wagon. 
Wilbur Dubois was silent, and therefore surely happy. 
As for Count Foster the corpulent, and Dame Bang, Col. 
Bill Peabody's pointer, hardly less corpulent or energetic, 
they were simply wild with the glee of animal life which 
pervaded all things and all creatures then and there 
present. 
Our road took us near some live oaks and scattered 
chaparral, in which we found hundreds of doves and 
some quail also as we drove along, so nothing would do 
for that wild crowd but that the guns must come out, and 
very soon we had meat in the wagon, after some pretty 
sport at swift crossing birds in the chaparral, hard enough 
to hit, we soon found. I saw here a curious instance of 
the alertness of the birds of prey at making a living. A 
hawk had picked up a crippled quail, which had escaped 
one of the guns somewhere in the shooting, and I could 
see the quail held in its talons as it crossed an open space 
near me. Firing on the hawk, it dropped the bird and 
went on, though I could not find the bird in the grass. 
A Hawk is your Best Retriever. 
In due course we arri ved in sight of the Rincon ranch 
buildings, but it being still early, we determined to go 
over to the tanks before lunch, so turned off from the 
trail and went to the water holes, passing en route great 
flocks of geese out on the prairies, and also more jack 
rabbits than I ever saw on the same extent of country. 
A more beautiful country for coursing never lay out of 
doors. Indeed, a prettier sporting region in many ways 
could not be found. All the air was full of moving fowl, 
and the ground was alive with hopping, running, flying 
and creeping things — rabbits, larks, doves, hawks, crows, 
birds of many sorts. It was surely a generous and com- 
fortable land. In the North we never see such abundance 
of animal life under any circumstances. 
Where the Wild Fowl were. 
But the great surprise was reserved for us at the tanks. 
Here was a body of water three miles long perhaps, and 
too deep to wade, for the most part several hundred yards 
in width. Down to the water the shores dropped bluffly 
or sloped gradually, breaking into many coves and bays. 
In all these shallow places, where the feed grew, were 
thousands and thousands of ducks of all sorts, both of 
marsh and deep water varieties. It seemed as though all 
the fowl of the country had come in here, and we saw 
where the Gum Hollow marketman's ducks had taken 
refuge. It was a stirring sight for a Northern shooter, 
one may be sure, and there were hurrying fingers un- 
fastening the gun cases before we had paused at the bank. 
As we drove up the birds rose in vast bodies, circling and 
hovering and working up and down along the water way, 
a sight to do one's eyes good. 
Wilbur Dubois and Dick Merrill and myself started to 
a certain long neck of land to put out some decoys, I hap- 
pening to have a few canvas decoys with me, the only 
ones we had. There was no cover whatever on the point, 
but before we could get out the decoys, or pulL a little 
grass to spread over our legs, the birds began to come over 
us in strings. I had intended to leave as soon as Mr. 
Dubois was fixed up, but we forgot our intentions, and 
not stopping to build a blind, we sat there on the bare 
ground and did some of the fastest and wildest shooting 
I ever saw. The birds soon went over very high, almost 
out of shot, in fact, but they came so fast one could not 
resist the temptation. For half an hour, I think, I was 
in a sort of delirium, for I never wasted so many shells 
on impossibles in all my life in the same time. Of course 
not all the shots were so far, and we got together a nice 
little bunch of birds in spite of all. Of course, too, once 
in a while one of us would kill one of the long range 
shots, and to see the bird come down out of the sky was 
very gratifying as one looked at the pile of empty shells 
at his feet. Then Dick left us and went to shooting geese 
on a point back of us, and as the day brightened the birds 
went out below us and our fire slackened, so that we had 
time to wonder why we had been so far from conserva- 
tive in our notions of burning powder at absurd shots. 
Mr. Fulton armed himself at the wagon before long, 
and coming over to us knocked down his share of ducks 
behind us. Then Guessaz appeared on the wrong side 
of the water, but bearing a brace of geese he had slain, 
as well as a number of ducks. When we finally got 
that gentleman around to the wagon in time for the 
lunch round-up, we found that our shoot of a couple 
of hours had resulted in just about two bushels of ducks 
and geese. 
Arrived at the ranch house we found that the ladies of 
the house had kept an elaborate luncheon waiting for us, 
and in all ways treated us better than a dirty and dis- 
reputable mob of shooters deserved. We could do no 
more than apologize, for there wasn't a suit of decent 
clothes in the lot of us. Mrs. Fulton and the other ladies 
of the household must have been shocked at our appear- 
ance and our appetites, but we told them we would sing 
"Sweet Marie" for them and that seemed to fcquare all de- 
linquencies, so we were soon very much at home in one of 
the best of Texas ranches and one of the most hospitable 
of homes. It was a pleasure to see Col. Bill Peabody pass 
his plate the fourth time for sweet potatoes, or to notice 
the celebrated dog man from Milwaukee keep the roast 
duck near by where he sat. Wilbur Dubois was silent, so 
he must have been either busy or happy, probably both. 
We were in all a very dirty, happy, hungry lot, and a 
luckier lot of barbarians than we never wandered south- 
ward; so we figured it all out when we compared notes 
on costumes after we had assembled out on the gallery. 
Certainly we had no more fortunate experience than 
when we fell into Mr. Fulton's hands. 
A Model Ranch House. 
The home ranch of the Fulton Pasture Co. is one of the 
model places of the kind. Abundant water assures abun- 
dance of trt-es and grass, and careful hands have made a 
fine garden of flowers, which look very bright and cheer- 
