OCT^ 3, 1896.] 
FOREST AND STREAM, 
265 
This, as I recall it, must, usually have been in August. 
We raxely were without chickens enough to eat even on 
the fii"st day out, and when in the unbroken open country 
we always got all we wanted, though even in those untu- 
tored times I had guidance which taught me that it was 
unsportsmanlike to kill more birds than could easily be 
used, and that it was ungentlemanly to think of selling a 
game bird. 
In those days, when we started out for such a trip, we 
never took but one dog along, nor do I remember ever to 
have heard of anybody in those days who ever took more 
than one. This dog was sure to be one of the old-time 
chicken dogs, staunch, of good nose and so well conver- 
sant with the habits of his game that he needed little care 
beyond keeping him in sight while he was at work. We 
never thought of taking a dog into the wagon to ride, 
unless it was very late or very muddy. It seemed to us 
obvious that a dog, being of four legs, could get along 
twice as weU as a man, who had two, and a man was 
good for an all-day's walk, if need be. The dog seemed 
to coincide with this belief cheerfully, and being igno- 
rant was happy. Our old dogs never clung to the wagon 
or to the heel. When we were on the road it was their 
business to cover the fields on both sides of the road and 
find any birds which might be within a quarter mile, say, 
of us on either side. I do not recall that the dog objected 
to doing this, but, to the contrary, he seemed to like it. 
He usually traveled at a long lope, steadily and method- 
ically, and not with quarter horse speed, though fast 
enough to be well up with the wagon. How far he would 
travel in a day I have no idea, but I should guess sixty to 
eighty miles, at least it would seem that he must have 
done three times the distance the team would travel each 
day. Very often as we rode along over the country we 
would see the old dog whirl around into a, point, and we 
knew he would "hold them" until we could get out and 
get to him. Sometimes the point would be a grand high- 
headed stop, then a slow walk, perhaps over 200yds. to 
the place where the covey was lying. I do not think 
chicken dogs to-day point birds so far as they used to, for 
I do not believe the birds are abundant enough anywhere 
to give a dog the subtle education of the noso which the 
old-timers had. A flush was a disgrace, and when the 
guns got to work among the birds a miss was almost as 
much^ a disgrace. We had fewer of the graces and 
amenities of sportsmanship in those days, but everybody 
was used to the sight and sound of chickens, evei-ybody 
shot cylinder bore guns and the birds were not wild, but 
lay lower than they do nowadays. When we were done 
shooting the same old dog went in and retrieved our 
birds for us, and this was the best part of the fun for the 
dog and for us. To-day it is heinous for a chicken dog to 
retrieve. 
After we had retrieved our birds we followed on after 
the covey if we liked, or more likely went after another. 
The birds did not often fly very far. There were no 
stubble fields of any vast extent, and very often few 
cornfields. The flight was usually from stubble to grass, 
and not so far but that we could easily mark the birds 
down. To be able to mark down closely a dead bird or a 
flying covey was one of the accomplishments of a good 
chicken hunter, for the surface of the country was much 
alike and had few landmarks. A tall rosin weed, a 
clump of bright prairie flowers, a darker colored bit of 
cover in a slough — such were our marks. There were 
not many hay stacks or straw piles on the horizon 
then. 
In those days the habits of the prairie grouse were as 
regular as a clock, and we had a regular system of hunt- 
ing them. On the stubble in the morning, well toward 
the knoUa and centers of the flelds, then toward the edges 
of the stubbles as the morning progressed. At 10 o'clock 
in the edge of the grass near the stubble, then further 
sand further into the grass toward noon, In the high 
grass and sloughs in the middle of the day if it was hot, 
and then back up to the stubbles for the evening feeding, 
in inverse order to the above, A cloudy day meant more 
time spent by the birds on the stubble, A very warm 
day meant that they would be late in coming out of the 
grass. In the evening we hunted about the heads of 
little shallow draws that made up from the grass into the 
stubble, because the birds nearly always walked on to the 
stubble out of such little sloughs. In all this formula of 
the chicken our old chicken dogs were as well posted as 
we, and I would far rather have trusted to their judg- 
ment where to make the cast on a given field at a given 
hour than to leave it to a hunter not skilled in the 
ways of the bird. Time and again I have seen our 
old dog stand with his front feet up on a fence, tak- 
ing survey of a field before going to work in it, 
■and frequently have seen him go apparently as 
straight to the birds as though they had been pointed 
out to him. He wasted no time and no running, but 
hunted the likely places first, and took his own advan- 
tage of the wind. No one thought of a dog's quartering 
or that sort of thing, and dropping to command, backing 
and all that we never heard of. There was nothing to 
back, for no one hunted but one dog, and as for inde- 
pendence in range, I should be pleased to see anything 
more independent than our old dog was. Powerful, 
stubborn, hard-headed, dreadful "sot in his ways," he 
knew his business and was sure of it, and asked only to 
be let alone. We let him alone mostly. For this he 
found us birds and pointed them like a gentleman for us, 
and was a lot more careful than we were about what he 
was doing when he got up to the covey. In return for 
this we cheerfully lammed the old fellow a-plenty — never 
enough to make him whimper — and fed him at our own 
table, and let him sleep in the tent at night, and loved 
him like a brother. Any insult to the old dog was an in- 
sult to the party. At night the old fellow ate about as 
much as a den of lions, curled up and went to sleep on our 
feet in the tent. In the morning he ate as much more 
not dog biscuit or any well-considered dog diet, but just 
anything he could get his hands on— and then he was 
ready to go out and do it all over again . It never occurred 
to us that any dog needed any rest or that it could ever 
wear out. We never changed dogs, and one dog did us 
all through the hunt, no matter whether it was two weeks 
or three. The dog would hunt as long any day as any of 
us wanted to hunt, and he would repeat this ae often as 
we wanted to. Moreover, he was always glad to have a 
neighbor come and borrow him for a chicken hunt just 
for a change. Anything like a dog's giving out in the 
field we never heard of, and I think if a dog had quit and 
come to heel we would first have held a council over the 
problem of what ailed him, and would then have killed 
the dear. We were awfully ignorant and very happy, a.nd 
if I knew where I could buy to-day a dog like our old fel- 
low, I would have him if I had to mortgage my gun and 
had to keep him in my oflice dpsk of nights. 
I remember that in those days the work of market 
hunting was going on in Iowa, and shall never forget the 
indignation with which my father always spoke of it. 
Sometimes on our shooting trips we would hear of parties 
who were shipping birds from some little station. They 
went always to Chicago — a far-away, unknown, mysteri- 
ous city, certainly very large and powerful. Once I re- 
member that we saw riding out across the country a party 
of darky market shooters with new guns and blue neck- 
ties. My father was very wrathful over this. The 
market shooters shot chickens just as we did, only more 
so. They began work along in July, when the weather 
was very hot. They hired a wagon to follow along after 
them as they shot, and in this wagon they caried not 
blocks of ice, but barrels of ice water with plenty of ice in 
the water. After cleaning up a covey they would come 
to the wason and throw the birds into the casks of ice 
water. The birds were so easily killed at that age that 
the market hunter rarely shot any shot larger than 98, 
and some argued that No. 10 was better. At our time of 
shooting we usually shot Sa. We rarely went after 
chickens in the late fall, and although I killed a great 
many chickens in those days and must have been a good 
enough chicken shot, I do not remember of ever killing a 
bird with shot larger than No. 8 up to Sept. 1, at which 
time I always had to begin going to school, much to my 
regret. 
In the last of our chicken trips up into the northern 
part of Iowa we saw the beginning of the end of the old 
chicken days. After that the extermination of the bird 
became very rapid. We never valued the great, beauti- 
ful fowl at half its worth. It was so easy, so abundant, 
that it seemed to us it must always be possible to get as 
many as we liked with the least of tmuble. Yet T can 
remember that I was still a very young man when on a 
visit home I saw our old dog, thirteen years of aee, and 
then lame and worn out, and my father mournfully said 
that there was no longer any need for the old dog, since 
the chickens were all gone. 
That was the history of Iowa, and then the history of 
Minnesota, and then very suddenly the history of Dakota 
and Nebraska. The old chicken days are gone, no doubt, 
forever. The bird survives, but in numbers much re- 
stricted and with habits materially changed. 
Chicken Shooting of To-day. 
For years I had not had a chicken hunt until last fall, 
when I noted the change in birds and methods, but got 
enough of the old fever to want to go again. This fall, 
being at St. Paul on opening day of the Minnesota season, 
and havine: the kind invitation of Messrs. Fred F. and 
Dick Merrill to join them for a shoot at a point not very 
far away in Minnesota, I ran out to them to see some- 
thing more about chicken shooting as it is practiced to- 
day. It may be interesting to see the points of difference 
existing between our old fashioned chicken hunt and one 
of the modern kind. 
To begin with, I had- traveled, not by wagon, but by 
rail, a distance not of a few dozen miles, but over 550 
miles. Many men travel over 1,000 miles nowadays and 
Still do not get many chickens. But my friends had done 
much more than this. They had had their trainer out in 
the West with their dogs for many weeks ahead of the 
season, looking for good country where there were birds 
enough to promise sport. They had, at I do not know 
how great an expenditure of time and money, determined 
upon their location, and here for two months their trainer 
and his assistants had been at work with the dogs, young 
and old, the entire kennel numbering over 20, of which 
half a dozen were ready for use on chickens. It is prob- 
able that no better dogs than these are to be found in the 
country now. Of pointers there were Lady Peg II. , Daisy 
Rip Rap, Stridemore and Noble; of setters, Rudge Glad- 
stone, Neva, Nora, Topsy and Pauline Bo, besides a lot of 
puppies of both breeds not yet old enough to work. These 
setters are very fashionably bred, running back to Paul 
Bo and Paul Gladstone. (Paul Gladstone, by the way, 
died of sheer old age at the kennels of his owner, Richard 
Merrill, of Milwaukee, July 23, this year, a fact which 
none of the kennel editors of the country have ever ' 'got on 
to.") One of them, a grand young dog, Rudge Gladstone, 
is the handsomest dog I have seen for a long, long time; 
and I am disposed to prophesy for him a victory in 
the bench shows if he is ever shown. He is almost 
faultless except for a tail a trifle long, and has that most 
desirable quality for a field dog — good common sense. 
This, unless I recollect wrongly, is the last puppy of the 
old dog Paul Gladstone, and his mother was Lady Lucy; 
she descended of Druid, Jr., and Lady Patch, The last 
named I had seen perform on quail over in Canada, and 
so took great interest in the dog Rudge, I am sure he 
would make a chicken dog up to the old requirements, 
if there were birds enough now for him to work upon, 
and if his owners would use him roughly enough to teach 
him the stick and stay which comes of long conditioning 
in man or dog. All these dogs I observed to be not of the 
old type, but of the type which is modern and approved. 
They were very much, smaller than our old dogs, much 
more nervous and wiry, much less stolid and quiet in 
action. Almost without exception they were very fast, I 
think much faster than our dogS of the old sort, and with 
a quicker, choppier style of going. Their owners do not . 
find it necessary to run a brace of dogs — they were usually 
put down in pairs — ^for over an hour, and we were in a 
way all the time seeking to train the young dogs and give 
each a chance at the birds; so it was never possible to call 
a dog run to a finish by any means, though I think my 
friends would not care to ask as much of their rolling 
stock as we did of ours in the old days. Poor dogs! they 
were willing and eager enough, and able and good enough ; 
but there was one great drawback, and that was the 
scarcity of birds, which made the work discouraging at 
times. It is an easy guess that, with such abundance of 
birds as we had in the past and with hunting as steady, 
the dogs of to-day would be as good as those of the past. 
The older pointers, Noble and Stride, had had more ex- 
perience than the others, but Daisy a\no did fine work for 
us; and it was most amusing to see some of the young set- 
ters, which had never had a bird killed over them (their 
training all having been in the close season), enter into 
the last stages of a chicken dog's joy. In the first requis- 
i te of an enjoyable chicken hunt, that of good dogs, we 
were certainly well supplied, The cost of this was a dozen 
times that which would have been considered necessary 
a doKan years ago. 
The care of these dogs required the services of an able 
trainer (Tom Richards, and a good trainer too), together 
with an assistant, who had lived at this little country 
town for two or three months, and worked the dogs daily 
on birds before the law allowed of shooting. The owners 
of the dogs and myself lived in the village hotel, several 
rooms of which we filled up with our trunks, guns and 
modern sporting paraphernalia, a dozen times as much 
ss we should have thought necessary a dozen years ago. 
When we went afield we had a light wagon to carry the 
trainer and assistant, and a big crate containing half a 
dozen dogs (in the old days we never heard of a doer orate). 
One of the owners of the dogs, Mr. Fred Merrill, rode 
with this wagon, Dick and I had a buggy, in which we 
rode immediately behind. When we got into action we 
made quite a cavalcade. Our method of work was some- 
thing similar to that which I have described as belong- 
ing to the old days, but in this case we never trusted 
everything to the dogs. When we came to a like'y bit 
of ground we got out — or at least some one always did — 
and walked with the dogs, the trainer always taking care 
of the dogs. This modern feature I am willing to call a 
blessing, for even in the good old days chicken dogs were 
not bought ready trained. The trainer carried a whistle 
and a whip, the latter very rarely used, and never at all 
upon a timid puppy. In the old days we depended upon 
the whistle which Providence gave to each man without 
artificial aid, and for a whip we were accustomed to use 
the hickory ramrod upon occasion — a most excellent 
device, albeit risky, for I have seen a chicken hunt 
stopped untimely in the muzzleloading days by a too 
enthusiastic chastisement of a husky chicken dog. 
As in the old days, we hunted the stubbles in the morn- 
ing and evening, but the rest of the time we never did 
know where to hunt, for the birds might be in the corn, 
in the sloughs or in the next State, we could never tell 
where. I think probably they were in the next State. 
The dogs would go down in braces and hunt faithfully 
under these most trying circumstances, very often not 
getting a sniff of a bird. Then another pair would be 
put down, or yet another. The older dogs, Noble and 
Stride, knew more what to do, but even Stride had bad 
fortune for two days and hardly got to taste the luxury of 
a point all by himself. We rarely got up over half a dozen 
coveys a day. Indeed, I think we never got so many as 
that. Even then it was likely that we would find but 
half a dozen birds left to the covey, though it was actually 
the first week of the season. Such conditions are hard 
for training chicken dogs, though they were the best con- 
ditions my friends bad been able to discover in three 
States after patient effort, It was no wonder that Dick 
Merrill said he was almost of a mind never to attempt any 
further to train dogs on chickens. It seemed impossible 
to find a locality with birds suflBcient for the proper 
breaking of the dogs. 
But by this I do not wish to do more than draw a dis- 
tinction between the plenty of the past and the lack of the 
present. It should not be supposed that we had poor 
sport, for indeed we had fine sport. I am ready to say 
that I never enjoyed a chicken hunt in the old days so 
much, for then the sport was too easy to have an equal 
interest. On this modern chicken hunt when we got a 
chicken we valued it. We made much of it and smoothed 
down its feathers and declared it was a lovely bird, whereas 
in the old days we would have ripped off his skin and 
thrown him on the ice without smoothing a single 
feather. We had plenty more like it in those days. Of 
the sport in the old times both my friends had had 
wide experience. Dick told me that one day when he 
was a boy he killed fifty-six chickens to his own gun. 
On our hunt the three guns killed on the best day 
only twenty-four birds, and hardly a bird got away 
from the firing line. Once a covey of four got up 
all together in front of Fred and Dick and they picked up 
three, losing a fourth dead in tbe wild rice of the adjoin- 
ing swamp. Once a covey of five rose in front of the 
three of us, and we killed all five. Once a covey of six got 
up and four were killed, two unshot at. Once four were 
Jkilled out of four that rose. Indeed, I recall only four 
shots missed by the Merrill boys in the four days' shoot- 
ing, and those were long and hard ones. I have never 
seen so regular and fine shooting in the field, for this was 
at birds very much harder than those of the old days, and 
under conditions which demanded a high grade of skill. 
I found that September of to-day is very different from 
September of the old days. Instead of birds at easy 
range, flapping up out of the grass, we had wild, long 
rises at 30 and 40yds., and often on old and strong birds, 
Dick shot 73 and 6s. Fred shot the unheard-of load of 
No. 4 shot, and after seeing what was asked of the guns, 
even on the first three days of the season, I was willing 
to say there was reason in his selection of a load. I do 
not think a dozen birds were killed close up to the guns, 
as we used to see in the old days. The entire nature of 
the birds seemed to have changed. They were wilder 
and more wary in every way. When put up they flew to 
four times the distance we used to see in the past. Often 
they went to the corn, where the dogs could not be used, 
and where the only way to do was to form a line of beat- 
ers and go through abreast — a not uninteresting sort of 
shooting, however, for the birds went out strong and wild 
and needed good, quick work. 
Instead of the old unfenced prairies of the past we had 
to deal with fenced fields and country roads, and often 
with hostile farmers. When we saw one of the latter 
approaching we had to call in the dogs lest he should in 
his anger shoot them. As we could, we drove over the 
country in the fashion of the past, but often we could not 
get to the wagon for some miles. Instead of the wide 
prairies we hunted narrow sloughs and strips of grass 
left by the plows, and the edges of the great cornfields. 
Instead of a few stubble fields of small area, which would 
be sure to hold several coVeys in the old days, we had 
before us thousands of acres of wheat and rye and oat 
stubble, among which, in a ratio all too small compared 
to that of the past, the birds were indifferently scattered 
about, no one knew where. Tom Richards had a number 
of coveys located before the season opened, and a few of 
these we found, but others we never did find. We thought 
the birds had already dropped their local habits and 
begun to travel for the season of "packing up." Only on 
one day did we find anything like the old system of 
chicken hunting possible, and then we blundered on a 
long strip of unplowed prairie where we really got into 
our birds and worked them in the old way, hour for hour, 
