266 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Oct, 3, 1896. 
Here we put up two coveys, and to show the helplessness 
of the pinnated grouse even in these da^ s of educntion, I 
will state tha,t we put up the first rise wilJ, ci.iy one, 
Dick, being in, who got two down. Then \7e went on, 
and after nearly a mile of travel Daisy poii.ted, and we 
were lucky enough to kill four. Then we went on again 
on our route, and over half a mile further on one of the 
party walked into two birds and killed one of them. 
Looking back over the country, we saw that all this had 
happened on the same line, and we thought that, although 
the birds had flown too far for us to mark them, we had 
actually had three rises out of the remnants of this covey 
and kiUed all but two of the entire lot, these two not 
having been shot at. It is no wonder the prairie chicken 
is disappearing. Yet all these birds were big and full 
feathered, and sprang wild ahead of us. 
A curious evidence of the change in environments of 
chicken hunting might have been found in my own 
preparations for this hunt. Last fall, at Sept. 32, I had 
found a close shooting gun useful, but this time it was 
only Sept, 1, and it seemed sure to me that the shooting 
would be like that of the past, when it was a disgi'ace to 
miss a prairie chicken. Accordingly I took out for my 
first day a wide open scatter gun and No. 8 shot, figuring 
that I would kill about all my birds, of course. The 
sequel was amusing. Early on the first day we got a 
point on a bit of grass between two stubble fields, and 
went up to the dogs. I confess that the sensation of be- 
ing behind the chicken dogs again was so novel to me as 
to key me up to a great state of interest. The birds went 
up easily ahead of us, about 20yds. or so, but with a 
whir of wing which told of a vigor I had not planned 
upon. I snapped at one rising bird and undershot it, but 
struck it rankly with a few edge pellets. Annoyed, I 
fired again at it, superciliously, and supposing, of course, 
it would come down, It struggled on, hit hard in the 
back, but not dropping worth a cent, Dick Merrill cut 
down his first bird nicely, waiting to give it time enough 
for his choke bore, and then calmly killed my bird for 
me. I felt myself actually blush at this, but got so used 
to it later that I didn't blush any more. Then we got an- 
other point, and actually I missed that bird riarht and left 
with a cylinder bnre gun at about 9yd8, , and Fred calmly 
killed it about SOyds. away. Fred had also meantime 
killed another crossing wild at about the same distance. 
My friends were very polite, which made it much worse. 
I missed another bird which I believe was a bit far. and 
yet another which was only slobbered (and which Fred 
calmly and politely killed for me, explaining that he was 
"hard hit"); then I realized that I was being all kinds of 
a fool and took a tumble to the situation. It was simply 
an attack of too much prairie chicken after long absti- 
nence. I think I killed the few remaining shots straight 
then, my two friends always giving me the shot, how- 
ever. They knew very well that if I didn't kill they 
would, though it is due to them to say that they were 
considerate and courteous to the last degree in the field. 
On the next day T shot a close gun that didn't fit me by 
a mile, and did some very bad and some very good work, 
and then I settled down upon an old friend of a gun 
which was just right and had the satisfaction of shooting 
somewhere near what any man who can shoot at all 
ought to do all the time on prairie chickens. My com- 
panions shot the same all the time. 
These diflEerences in the chicken hunting of the past 
and the chicken hunting of to-day occur to me all the 
more vividly because I had not had a chicken hunt, be- 
fore 1895, for over twelve years. It may be seen how 
changed are all the conditions of the sport. Of course 
the old days are gone, never to return, but as to the sport, 
I believe I would caU it improved in quality. On our 
little hunt we had very few birds which were shot at 
close range. For another hunt at the same date in that 
country I would certainly shoot nothing smaller than 
No. 6 shot, and I am not sure I would not have a few of 
Fred Merrill's loads of 4?, with which one can rip the 
back of an old cock up most pleasantly at SOyds. or so, 
with a cheerful sound, as of a hired man eating cabbage, 
or a carpenter taking off shingles from the wood shed. 
Sometimes we would get a buch of these strong-flying 
birds scattered and marked, thanks to the good eyes of 
our assistant driver, the boy Albert, and then we had fun. 
Once, I remember, we had six or eight marked down 
along a ditch for a distance of several hundred yards. 
They went up one at a time, never closer than 30 to 35yds. 
from us, and with a great burst that was good to hear 
and see. These birds were noble game birds, and their 
killing was something of a feat and much of a satisfac- 
tion. Out of all these hard shots not one bird got away 
except one of my own. But that was shooting far and 
away above any I remember ever to have had in the old 
days of young birds and scatter guns. It was sport be- 
yond that attributed in the contemptuous estimate of 
early days, when to miss was a disgrace, and when it 
was said, "Anybody can kill chickens." It is not the case 
that juat anybody can kill chickens such as some of those 
we shot at, and though the Merrill boys missed nothing, 
I do not expect to see their field shooting on these birds 
equaled again very soon. I have forsaken the sport of 
chicken shooting all these years because I have had a sort 
of contempt for it, but if it can be had under such condi- 
tions as we found on our hunt this month at big strong 
birds, that fly wild and far, and know perfectly how to 
make a hunter work and shoot, I am not sure but that 
my waning interest will revive, to say nothing of my 
anxiety to try to wipe Fred and Dick Merrill's eyes some 
day in return of their compliments, although that, I fear, 
is a long and uphill task. 
In our hunt we killed on one day eleven birds, on an- 
other seventeen, on another only three birds, and once 
the high bag of twenty-four. On the opening day Fred 
and Dick together killed eighteen. We did not work very 
hard any of the time, for it was the intention only to give 
the dogs a little training and to kill enough of birds to eat 
for ourselves and friends about the town. We bagged 
eighty-four birds during the week, an average of less than 
six birds to the gun daily, and that with as skillful shoot- 
ing as I ever saw ; for, counting in a few birds which were 
killed, but not found, I do not think a half dozen birds got 
away that were shot at. 
In the old days our outfit for a Chicken hunt, outside of 
the cost of the wagon and team, would not have run up 
into very many h undred dollars. Our single dog would 
have been thought high-priced at $50, though we would 
not have sold him for any price whatever. Our guns were 
good, but not costly, and we had no knowledge of many 
thinge wbioU withiu ten j^ma have groww t9 be necessi- 
ties. In those days the universal price of a chicken dog 
pup was $5, $10 for one that was a little older and had the 
favorite orange and white markings, which we most prized 
in that day, since that was the color of our best specimens 
of the chicken dog in our country. On this little modern 
hunt we had hardly a dog which its owner would like to 
sell for a dozen times that price. Our outfit, aside from 
the wagon and team, as it crossed the stubble fields repre- 
sented somewhere between $1,000 and $2,000 of actual out- 
lay or actual value, to say nothing of the time and money 
expended in looking up chicken country. This not in the 
least in the way of display, but only for things thought 
necessary to-day, and in the pursuit of sport under quiet 
and gentlemanly surroundings. What a difference and 
what a commentary! 
My friends intend to spend the month of September in 
the chicken country, and very enviable is their experience 
these glorious days of autumn, when the birds are big 
and strong and the air is a stimulus and a medicine with 
every breath. They will go to North Dakota later after 
ducks and geese. They apologized to me because they 
could not offer me a seat in their new hunting wagon, 
which they are expecting daUy from the factory. This 
wagon was made upon their own design, and must be a 
great affair. It is a long buckboard, with wide seats far 
apart. All the seats are covered with corduroy, and have 
no iron about them to scratch a gun or a leg. Behind the 
first seat is an upright gun rack with places for four 
guns, the steps for the guns felt-lined at the bottom of the 
rack. Behind the seats is the big dog crate. This is the 
perfect chicken wagon, devised by two shooters who have 
spent many years at chicken hunting. I presume there 
is not anywhere in the West to-day a chicken outfit more 
admirably equipped in the way of dogs, guns, vehicle and 
general outfit as theirs. We should have wondered at it 
in the old days. 
The prairie chicken has improved in value as a game 
bird with the passage of the years. It is still a heritage 
of the American sportsman, and in view of the unex- 
pected increase in its numbers this year — consequent, it is 
confidently said, upon a better observance of the game 
laws than was ever known before — it is not too much to 
hope that it will for a long time afford sport adjusted to 
the changed conditions of the day. 
It is a singular fact that in all the reports I have had 
this fall from many chicken hunters who have been out 
in Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa and North Dakota, I have as 
yet not heard of any one gun killing over a dozen birds 
on any day. The highest is about three dozen birds to 
three guns, a few of about two dozen to two guns and so 
forth. In the past I have often known of over sixty to 
one gun. I once saw my father kill thirty -seven without 
a miss one afternoon at a house party on a big farm in 
Iowa. I have known of eight, ten or even more birds 
being killed by a shooter who never moved from his 
tracks, and that with a muzzleloading gun. Those days 
are gone, and if they have taught their lesson it is well 
that they are gone. E, HoUGH. 
1206 BoYCE Botldins, Chicago. 
FIRST HUNT OF THE ANTLERS. 
Buffalo, N. Y,, Sept. 17.— The Antlers Club, com- 
posed of men living in New York, Rochester, Buffalo and 
Johnstown, will start for its third annual hunt in the 
North Woods on the evening of Sept. 30. This club has 
had, in the three seasons of its existence, about as much 
fun as it is possible for an organization to get out of deer 
hunting in the Adirondacks. The first year that the club 
went into the woods it had the most extraordinary luck, 
killing in ten days fifteen deer before the hounds. The 
second year, which was last year, the luck was not so 
good, only five deer having been killed. This year they 
expect to equal the great record made upon their first 
visit to the woods. 
The headquarters of the club is in Rochester, where 
the president, Charles H. McChesney, and the secretary, 
Charles L. Hoyt, live. Messrs. Hoyt and McChesney 
have, as a rule, had charge of the arrangements for the 
annual hunts, and so carefully have they planned all the 
details that the other members of the club are inclined to 
let them go on and do the managing for years to come. 
Each year they visit the woods before the time of 
starting and select a place to hunt and engage guides, so 
that all the rest of us have to do is to pack our trunks, 
buy our railroad tickets and start for the camp, We 
know that everything will be ready for us when we get 
there. 
The other members of the club are: S. B. Williams, 
J. L. Willard, F. F. Shepard, W. H. Learned, D. Wilson 
and W. C. Fredericks, Rochester; James Nolan, Buffalo; 
Frank Seaman, E, N. Wilson, George R. McChesney and 
D. W. Pardee, New York; W. C. Hutchins, Johnstown. 
E, H, Danford, who was with us the first year, died 
this summer after a short illness. He was a Rochester 
man and an enthusiastic sportsman, and a most agreeable 
companion in the gamp and in the woods. His death is 
the first one that has occurred in the club membership 
since it was organized, and during the coming meeting 
in the woods appropriate action wiU be taken upon this 
sad event. 
On the evening of Dec. 15, 1894, the Antlers had a 
banquet in Rochester to celebrate the success of their 
first hunt in the woods. At this banquet I read an ac- 
count of our adventures jn the woods, as I had been ap- 
pointed historian for that hunt at a meeting held just 
before we broke camp. This sketch was as follows: 
"On the eve of his departure for Spring Cove, Franklin 
county, N. Y., to enjoy the first hunt of the Antlers As- 
sociation, the Rochester newspaper man told his wife just 
how he was going to kill the buck. He would do just 
what the guide told him to do, sit still on his runway and 
when the buck, flying from the dogs, broke cover on the 
river bank and paused for a moment to locate the baying 
hounds, the newspaper man would raise his rifle, take a 
careful aim and send a bullet through the shoulders of the 
buck and drop him dead in his tracks. This seemed a 
very simple thing to the Rochester editor as he sat by his 
hearthstone and pictured it out to his wife, but somehow 
when he got into the woods and the buck shot out of the 
timber and went capering across the rapids of the river, 
dodging bullets from a repeating rifle at every caper, the 
editor realized that in his fireside calculation he had over- 
looked an important factor, namely, that some of the old 
bucks that inhabit Franklin county do not always p9,u8e 
on the edge of the river bank to listen to the music qf the 
dogs, The bucks th^t came th^ editor's w&y dieted by 
him and plunged across the river and into the shade of 
the heavy timber as though they ha,d business in an adja- 
cent county that must be attended to that very day. 
"With this little explanation of the editor's failure to 
carry out his plans as unfolded to his wife, I will, with 
your kind permission, attempt to carry out the orders of 
our secretary to recall some of the scenes and incidents 
from the diary that I kept. You aU doubtless recollect 
that each evening I scribbled upon scraps of paper such 
as I could find about the cabin a brief account of the ad- 
ventures of the day. Before I got home my diary was 
scattered pretty well. Some of it was in my trunk and 
some of it was in my pockets on the backs of envelopes 
and letter- heads. I gathered all the scraps and sealed 
them in an envelope, and this afternoon I spent three 
hours trying to put the record together in some connected 
form. 
"This hunting trip on the St. Regis had been eagerly 
looked forward to by the Rochester Antlers, whose hunt- 
ing blood had been thrilled by the narrative of that great 
buck killer, Charles H. McChesney, in which he described 
how he killed his first buck on the St. Regis River the 
year before. McChesney said that he had been on the 
runway but a few minutes when the buck swam around 
a point twenty rods away, and McChesney just drew a 
bead on the buck with his old Maynard and in the lan- 
guage of an old North Woods guide 'just unhitched and 
let 'er bile,' The rifle 'biled' all right and there was a 
dead buck in the river. 
"This story had been told in the headquarters of the 
Columbia Rifle and Pistol Club, of Rochester, over and 
over again, and some of the Antlers who had had the 
privilege of hearing it concluded that deer killing was 
one of the simplest things in the world, and so it is if the 
deer only comes your way, at least this is what Frank 
Shepard says, and Shepard knows, for he has sat on the 
runways in sunshine and in storm and cussed under his 
breath the bucks that crossed the river on the other fel- 
low's runway. 
"The main body o^the Rochester division of the Ant- 
lers left Rochester for the St. Regis country on Sunday 
evening, Sept. 30, 1894. We met at the station of the 
Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg Railroad at 7:30 o'clock. 
S. B. Williams, city treasurer of Rochester, and Charles 
L, Hoyt, who were not abla to go that evening, were at 
the station to see us off. Hoyt was detained by a case in 
court in which he was a witness and Mr. Williams had to 
remain in the city to attend a meeting of the Common 
Council. Williams and Hoyt shed tears because they 
could not go on with us, but there was no way out of it 
for them, and after we had promised to leave a couple of 
bucks in the woods for them they bade us good-by and 
we were soon whirling over the Genesee River and on 
toward Lake Ontario. We reached Oswego at 11 P. M. 
just a bit hungry, and after a deal of skirmishing we 
found a hole under the sidewalk into which we crawled 
and had some lunch. Then we put up at a hotel. We 
left Oswego on empty stomachs and the R., W. & O. at 6 
A. M., and at Richland Junction obtained a first-class 
breakfast. We had dinner at Moira, and while we were 
waiting for the afternoon train for Spring Cove, on the 
Northern Adirondack Railroad, we unpacked our rifles 
and went down the railroad track to target our guns. It 
seemed a long time waiting for the train, but it started at 
last with us on board. William C, Hutchtns, of Johns- 
town, joined us at Moira. Two miles out of Moira the 
engine became disabled and we were delayed, and it was 
8 o'clock when we dragged our trunks and gun cases out 
of the cars and dumped them upon the station platform 
at Spring Cove. 
"We were met at the station by our guides, cooks, mas- 
ters of the hounds and general utility men. They con- 
ducted us along the wagon road to the cabin that had 
been secured for us and which was within forty rods of 
the railroad station. When we reached the cabin Presi- 
dent McChesney introduced us to the guides and cooks, 
who were: G. Fred Kimball, head guide; Norman Peck, 
assistant guide and cook; Warren Peck, his brother, 
chief cook; Fred Farmer, guide; and Kinzie Goodrow, a 
resident of Spring Cove and a hunter himself. We were 
surprised to find the cabin to be a pretty comfortable sort 
of a shack with two sleeping rooms up-stairs; a store 
room, pantry and dining room down-stairs. There was 
in addition an outside storehouse and a small barn for the 
dogs. There was a big cook stove in the dining room and 
a big table around which twenty men could be placed. 
While we were getting our trunks stowed away the boys 
prepared supper, and in half an hour we were gathered 
about the table, a happy band of prospective deer hunters. 
Everyone had a word of praise for President McChesney, 
who had conducted us to Spring Cove and who had se- 
cured the services of such pleasant guides and cooks as 
those we found in charge of the cabin. 
"I have no record of the hour at which we turned in 
that first night in the cabin or what we did after supper, 
but I know that the evening was pleasantly passed with 
pipes and cards and hunting yarns, and that regrets were 
expressed more than once that Hoyt and Williams and the 
New York men were not with us. We left instructions 
for an early call and an early breakfast, for all were eager 
to be out upon the trail of the deer. We had breakfast at 
7 A. M., and at 8 o'clock on the morning of Tuesday, 
Oct. 2, the whole party, with guns on shoulders and car- 
tridge bags and pockets full of shells, left the cabin for the 
runways along the river. It took about half an hour for 
the guides to place us on the runways, and at 8:30 A. M. 
the line of battle as officially reported was as follows: 
President McChesney was stationed at the Wheelock run- 
way,' the place where he killed the deer the year before; 
Hutchins was a bit further up the river, Chapin was at 
the Wing Dam, W. H. Lewis at the Eddy, Willard at 
Slide Rock, David Wilson at the Big Rock, Nolan at the 
Big Pine, Danford at Stony Point. Shepard at Trout El- 
bow, Goodrow at the Cut-c ff , and Kimball, the head guide, 
at the Tea Field. The names given to these runways are 
names by which they are designated by the guides and 
hunters of the locality. 
"The morning was a beautiful one. The sun by the 
time we had reached the runways had come out from be- 
hind the forest-covered hills to the east, and was shining, 
brightly down into the valley of the St. Regis. The foli- 
age on the mountain sides had just begun to show the 
golden tints of October, and it was a picture that one could 
view with satisfaction as he waited for the sound of the 
baying of the hounds, the dogs having been taken back 
along the mountain sides by two of the guides, Norman 
PeoK ^nd Fred Farmer, The dogs began tp giv§ tongue 
