166 
FOREST AND STREAM, 
[Aug. 29, 1896. 
panther and a polecat." There is no comment entered 
regarding the moose, and it would appear to be the regu- 
lar thing for two hunters to kill two moose. At least it 
occasioned less remark than the killing of a big deer. 
One of the men, Mr, Ordway, was from Glens Falls, 
where his relatives now reside, but the other man I know 
nothing of except what the register tells me. I think 
Col. William F. Fox has the date of the killing of the last 
moose in the State of New York. A, N. C. 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 
The Chicken Crop. 
Chicago, 111., Aug. 15.— From every indication there 
will be a better crop of chickens and wildfowl in the 
Northwest this fall than has been the case for years. The 
season has been wet enough and not too wet. A great 
many of the Dakota lakes that were dried up entirely are 
this year again full of water, and the same is true for parts 
of Minnesota and upper Iowa, In Minnesota the shooters 
will have the best chicken shooting they have known 
for a long time. In Illinois there will be a good crop also. 
Illinois has for five years been one of the best of the chicken 
States, though the fact has not been generally believed; the 
shooters preferring to press on to "newer" fields, not be- 
lieving it possible that these latter could have been so 
soon and thoroughly depleted. In Wisconsin also there 
are more prairie chickens than is known by the average 
shooter of this section. Waukesha county will show 
quite a number, and a bit further north, around Berlin, 
Portage, Fox Lake and the edges of the big Horicon and 
Poygan marshes, there will be a lot of birds killed on the 
opening or before the opening of the season. Illegal 
shooting has been flourishing royally for some weeks in 
Illinois, and no doubt the other States as well, for it is al- 
most impossible to keep shooters of a certain class from be- 
ginning to kill chickens as early as they can flap up out of 
the grass. Nowadays when a man has a good chicken 
pocket he keeps quiet about it. Many inquiries come to 
me for chicken country, I know of no surer place than 
the upper county of Minnesota, in the northwest corner 
of the State, or in the northeast county of North Dakota. 
This is not the only place where there will be birds, but it 
is about as sure as any I know of. Look up the laws be- 
fore going, and stick to them. I don't know of anybody 
who is any better than anybody else when it comes to 
breaking the laws of a State, and one's personal prefer- 
ence for himself may not extend into the beliefs of the 
oflS^cers and courts. It seems to me that if shooters ought 
to have compassion on any bird on earth it should be for 
the prairie chicken, for a more helpless, defenseless bird 
never flew. When I hear shooters boast of the big killings 
they have made of these birds it occurs to me that they 
are advertising their own lack of quality as shooters. It 
is against the law to send or take these birds out of Dako- 
ta or Minnesota. Sportsmen will not wish to violate this 
law, others must not. 
Woodcock. 
Local woodcock shooters have been killing a few birds, 
not in numbers to amount to much. This bird enters less 
into the calculations of the Western shooters than it does 
into those of the East. Early woodcock shooting has 
little of fascination to it, and in fact the month of August 
seems too early for one to take his gun afield for any 
sort of game. There are good woodcock grounds along 
the Kankakee, the Yellow River, and others of the 
marshy upper waters of Indiana. There is also good 
ground below White Pigeon, Mich. Along the timbered 
mottes which outlie the great St. Clair marshes above De- 
troit there is fine woodcock shooting in season, but all 
that country is watched pretty closely by eagle-eyed 
sportsmen, who find out each nesting before it is hatehed 
and wait eagerly for the law to lapse. 
About Missoula. 
Mr. R. E. Miller, of Elmira, N. Y., wants to know what 
Montana town he can go to for a few months' life on a 
ranch near deer and other game, and inquires about Mis- 
soula more especially. Missoula has a good winter cli- 
mate and there is big game near by, and some small game 
also. Mr. Will Cave, of that town, can be more specific, 
if he should please. 
From the Piegan Reservation in Montana come two or 
three letters from members of the Fouest and Stream 
Indian party who made the feature of the Sportsmen's 
Exposition at New York last spring. Bear Chief is well 
and apparently prosperous. He wants me to pick him 
out a good wagon here in Chicago, of a kind that will be 
useful on his mountain farm. Bear Chief says he has fifty 
acres of oats ready to harvest, though a good many are 
not so well off. "Those who might have had a good 
crop," he says, "went and spent a week at the Medicine 
Lodge, and while they were away the crop suff tjred. I did 
not go. Prayers will not f^ed cattle in the winter." 
Billy Jackson says that Natoka and the little f ootlight 
favorite, Natoye, the Indian baby, are well, and are the 
envy of the tribe, all of whom want to come East to the 
white man's country. Billy says that very few hunting 
parties are coming West this season, and he lays this to 
the presidential campaign. He is going hunting for a 
few weeks himself, but though he says he can get lots of 
game, he gives it up about ever seeing another bighorn 
equal to the one whose head he gave to the Forest and 
Stream oflSice here. I can assure him that the head re- 
ceives a great deal of admiration, and is prized very 
highly indeed. 
The Grayling. 
Mr. W. B. Mershon, of Saginaw, E. S., Mich., writes 
me in regard to recent mention of the decreasing gray- 
ling supply in Michigan, confirming the doubts I have 
expressed. He says: "What you say about the disappear- 
ance of the fish is all too true. I have taken only three 
small ones this year in Kinne Creek, the preserved waters 
of the Pere Marquette Club, but I hear that Mr. B. B. 
Mitchell, of the Fontinalis Club, and some of his fellow- 
members had very good grayling fishing last year some- 
where on the Pigeon." 
A Double-^Header. 
It is perhaps pardonable that one should wish to have 
himself photographed in connection with an exceptionally 
large bag of game, though there are many photographs of 
that sort now in existence the originals of which may 
later wish they had never had made, for the tendency of 
opinion to-day is quite agaii;ist extremely large bags of 
an7 sort of game. However this ma^ be, there are ai' 
ways men who long to be pictured as the slayers of a lot 
of game. Recently the vaulting ambition of one of these 
men o'erleaped itself, or rather it o'erleaped the shrewd- 
ness of a Chicago publication devoted to .pet dogs, guns 
and loads. The mighty hunter in question had been out 
with a party in the South, and they had killed a respect- 
able lot of deer and a bear or so, which had been hung on 
a long pole for the purpose of photographing. The pic- 
ture showed about 80ft. of game hanging up, with a nice 
picture of the mighty rhan well posed in front in the act 
of watching for some imaginary foe which was supposed 
to be threatening the camera from behind, and whose 
assault was to be repelled by rifle if need be. It required 
little study to discern that the string of game was divided 
into two equal and similar parts, though the human fig- 
ures were not the same. In fact, the picture was a double 
one, made by pasting two pictures together. The photo- 
graph was made of the game twice, the men posing in 
different positions the second time. This gave the idea of 
twice as much game as there really was. I adduce this as 
the most elaborate evidence at hand of the ambition of 
certain men to achieve reputation as game hogs in the 
most labor-saving way. 
I am pained to see that a Kansas paper is spreading the 
report of a Fort Scott tame drake which has developed a 
fondness for young spring chickens. This unnatural fowl 
eats the chickens alive, and if it experiences difficulty in 
swallowing one it dips it in the water and lubricates it 
until it can swallow it. E. Hough. 
1306 BoYOK BtriLDiNQ, Chicago, 
A STILL-HUNTER'S CALIBER EXPERI- 
ENCE. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
The mornings are getting cooler and the air is beginning 
to have a decided autumnal whiff at certain times at least 
up in this northern country. This state of things re- 
minds me that I ought to have my say about those calibers 
for hunting rifles and some other things. 
Now a few years ago I took a three months' trip up in 
the upper Michigan peninsula. My camp was located 
somewhere in the woods twenty-five miles from Iron wood, 
and the nearest railroad station was Beechwood, a town of a 
couple of log cabins and a frame "hotel" the inside of which 
consisted of a long row of bottles and a bar! The 
repeating rifle is or was then the favorite in that section 
and I had one, a .45-85 repeater with a cartridge 3 or 4in. 
long. This cannon weigbed about lOlbs, early in the 
morning, but had a habit of weighing in the vicinity of 
501bs. at night, and that's a bad enough habit in a gun, 
not to mention its kicking ability. It kicked some, but 
withal was a good shooter, worked nice, and grave satis- 
faction in a general way. But the agony of lugging this 
elephant gun around did not compensate for seeing your 
game "drop in its tracks," and as I could not eat up more 
than one or two deer at the best, and my appetite is good, 
I came to do considerable thinking evenings when the gun 
was heavy and six or eight miles lay between myself and 
camp. Then, too, any man will get tired of venison 
steak after awhile, and the squirrels and pheasants looked 
good to eat, but how could I shoot any of them with that 
thing? Any one who has tried it knows why not. Still 
there was the chance of running across bears and — tell it 
softly — moose. Only I never run across bears and moose 
when I have a gun along. So to sum up the whole thing 
I carried for three long months every day in the week 
lOlbs. of iron to kiU the two little bucks, which were all I 
needed and all I killed on that trip, and for their sake 
had to forego many a squirrel stew, pheasant roast, etc. 
As said before, I did considerable thinking on the caliber 
question 
Only once during that trip did I have a chance at any- 
thing unusual, and that was the first evening in camp. I 
had made camp and got all "slicked up" about an hour 
before sundown. I resolved to go out for a stroll and get 
the lay of the land and look for sign in a small oak open- 
ing which was visible from camp. Sauntering along 
slowly, I suddenly observed some sort of an object dodge 
behind a fallen log. I stood motionless for fifteen or 
twenty minutes, when there slowly appeared in sight 
above the top of the log a few tufts of hair. It might 
have been a woodchuck for all I then knew, but I fired. 
There was tremendous snarling and kicking behind that 
log, and on cautiously stepping up I observed a large 
Canada lynx in the throes of death. Another shot 
finished him, and he was one of the finest specimens of 
lynx I have ever seen, but his fur was not yet "ripe," al- 
though it was then the first week in October; still I man- 
aged to save his skin in fairly good shape. Under the 
circumstances a .22 would have answered almost as well 
as the .45 to kill the beast; if I had had the first size there 
would be more of the scalp left on top of the head — the 
.45-85 lifted his brain cap clean off. 
Well, the trip ended Christmas day of the same year, 
and it did sort of seem good to be among friends again. 
The .45-85 was disposed of, however, and I invested in a 
.38-55 Marlin a short time afterward. That gun suits me 
to a T when going into the woods for a short stay of a 
week or so, and when the main object of that trip is deer. 
It's plenty large enough for the toughest buck, it's light 
and handy — the ideal deer gun. As for moose hunting 
I cannot say. I never hunt them, and have long since 
learned not to expect to come across them accidentally. 
It seems difficult how so many hunters — and mostly ama- 
teur hunters — come unexpectedly across moose and bears. 
My own experiences have been that these animals but very 
rarely are taken unawares in our much frequented Ameri- 
can woods. If going out after such game, I go prepared for 
it; if not, I am not lugging around 3 or 41 bs. of iron and 
ammunition on the chances of coming across them. I am 
not dealing in chances, they do that better in the wilds of 
Wall street, where the bears are more plentiful and not 
so shy. 
Now, this year I shall take another trip of a couple of 
months or so. My weapon will be a .32-20 Marlin; that's 
what I have decided upon. If the trip would last only a 
couple of weeks the .38-55 would be about right, but as 
it's going to be a long stay I prefer the .32-20, Now, 
whenever I take an extended trip I do considerable loafing 
and loitering around in the woods; maybe I have a dozen 
or so of No. 2 Newhouse traps scattered in the vicinity of 
camp. To me there's more fun in trapping a few of the 
sly fur-bearing animals than there is in shooting deer — 
unless they are still-hunted. Now, I dearly love to putter 
around among these traps, and perhaja try my hand at 
bwildiag dea4faUs (orroiRfe Pabl© (piaepjarteu). Tbm 
there is the fun of shooting partridges' necks, a squirrel 
still-hunt, and perhaps a chance shot at bunny by the 
way; all this I can enjoy with my .32-20. Of course, my 
chances for deer are smaller, but what's the odds? In a 
trip of this kind a good hunter usually has a number of 
chances at deer, and if the first deer does not give me a 
fair chance for a dead shot in a vital part, I wait for the 
next, that's all. The rifle is short, light, accurate, and 
the ammunition can be had in any country store — a 
weighty fact. So I will take my chances on the .32 this 
trip and venture to say will have no more cripples lost 
than you, Mr. .50-110. Matterhoen. 
IN COLORADO MOUNTAINS. 
As told by the Junior of the Party. 
Ever since the beginning of the vacation my father and 
I had been planning to take a hunting trip together some- 
where, but we had not fully decided where, until one day 
my father received a letter from his old college chum, 
Mr. C. , who at the time was engaged in some business at 
Denver, and who said he had heard of a very good hunt- 
ing ground, and that if we would come West and join 
him for a short trip he would make the necessary ar- 
rangements. As he promised us shots at deer and elk 
and a chance at bears and mountain lions, with all the trout 
fishing we wanted, we of course jumppd at the idea. 
The place he referred to was Marvine Lodge, in the 
White River region of Colorado. This lodge was estab- 
lished by the Marvine Rod and Gun Club, and is leased to 
Wells & Patterson, two experienced guides and hunters 
who fit out hunting parties with horses, guides, provisions, 
dogs, ete. The lodge is fifty -five miles by stage from 
Newcastle, the nearest station on the Denver & Rio Grande 
Railroad. 
We reached Denver about 8:30 on the morning of Aug. 
30, and spent the day there seeing the city and getting 
some necessary articles for our trip. That night we all 
took the sleeping car on the Denver & Rio Grande Rail- 
road for Glenwood Springs, a point thirteen miles this side 
of NewcEistle, and arrived there on the morning of Aug. 
31. Glenwood Springs is a beautiful place situated in the 
heart of the Rocky Mountains. It is named from the hot 
sulphur springs which are found there, and which have 
been led into a large artificial basin about 100ft. long, and 
from 3 to 6ft. deep. The water is very warm (about 90°), 
and to one accustomed to seashore bathing is a little too 
much so, Invalids go there for rheumatism and catarrh- 
al affections. We took a swim in the pool before dinner, 
and on coming out were cooled off by a shower bath, 
which felt very grateful after the warm water of the pool. 
After supper we took a carriage, and drove by moon- 
light thirteen miles down the canon of the Eagle River 
to Newcastle. It was a beautiful ride and a very exciting 
one. We drove at the Western breakneck pace whether 
we were on level ground or where we could look down 
from the side of the carriage 100ft. to the rocks in the 
cafion below. It was nearly full moon, and the moon- 
light shone beautifully on the rocks and trees around and 
above us, and on the foaming, tumbling water below. 
Every time we struck a rook in the road I expected the 
wagon with us in it to go over the cliff; but it didn't, and 
we arrived safely at Newcastle, where we stayed for the 
night. 
Next morning we were up bright and early and ready 
for our start, which we made about 7 o'clock in a four- 
horse open stage, which carried our party of three, the 
driver and our baggage, guns and fishing rods. All that 
morning we cUmbed up and up on the divide between the 
Eagle and White rivers to an elevation nearly 5,000ft. 
higher than Newcastle. We reached the top about noon, 
and made the remaining twelve miles to the dinner sta- 
tion in two hours, arriving there about 2 P. M. We had 
a very good appetite for our dinner, as we had had noth- 
ing to eat since 6 o'clock but a few equaw berries picked 
on the way and spring water. Jim Shaw, who keeps the 
dinner station, is one of the queerest specimens of human- 
ity we met during the whole trip. He lives there in a tent 
all alone through the summer, and takes care of the 
horses for the stage relay at that point, doing also a little 
ranching. He furnishes meals for passengers, cooked by 
himself, for which he charges "50 cents a head, sir," and 
very good meals they are. I heard some gentlemen who 
had been camping in the vicinity telling Jim what a hard 
time they had getting a dead jjuck out of some timber 
near by. Jim's only comment was, "That place rough? 
Why, I hauled rye out of there," which he repeated at 
least twenty-five times during dinner. 
Nothing happened to interrupt our journey until we 
were five miles or so from the dinner station, when, hap- 
pening to look up, I saw a good-sized buck walking across 
a little open park toward a bunch of quaking asp. It took 
me just about ten seconds to get a cartridge into my rifle 
and get out of the wagon. By this time the deer, which 
had not observed us, had walked slowly into a bunch of 
timber. I tried to head him off, but did not succeed in 
getting a shot. This was the first deer we saw. It was a 
six-point buck, three points on each antler, not a large 
deer. 
We were descending the slope now toward the White 
River, and could make fairly good time, and on reaching 
tlao White River bottom we made still better time on the 
comparatively level roads up the White River to Marvine 
Creek. I killed three blue grouse, and shot at some ducks 
on the way. We arrived at the lodge at 8 o'clock in the 
evening and received a warm welcome from Mr, William 
Wells, who was to go out with us, and his brother, Mr. 
Frank Wells. We were ready for bed after our fifty-five- 
mile ride and were soon sound asleep. 
We had not arranged to start on our hunting trip until 
Sept. 3, 80 we decided by Mr. C.'s advice to spend the 
second trout fishing in Marvine Lake. We started early 
on our seven-mile ride on horseback to the lake and spent 
the day fly-flshing from the shore. We all filled our 
baskets, Mr. O. getting the most. I had my rifle with me 
in case we should see a deer. I was riding in tiie lead on 
the way home when my horse jumped violently, and I 
saw three deer start up not 20ft. away; they were a. doe 
and two fawns, and therefore not fair game, as no sports- 
men shoot does or fawns in Colorado. Soon after this I 
killed a grouse with my father's shotgun, and we arrived 
at the lodge without further adventure in good time to 
prepare for our start into the wilds next day. 
Tommy, Cream, Baldy, White Man, Deceiver, Ghost, 
Crowfoot, Speckles, Dawn, Mac, Nelly, Fly, Honey, 
BttokekiB Tex, Koaaey-, Teddy, Brook, Kitphen Dick 
