^8 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
Jan-. §,' fi<j8.] 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 
The Clock Stopped. 
Chicago, 111., Jan._ i.— It, is a singular fact, , which I 
advance apropos of nothing in particular, that this morn- 
ing when I arose to begin the pleasures of another year 
I found that the clock of the household had gone on 
strike, had folded its hands and quit work. This in itself 
is" nothing wonderful about even an eight-dav clock, but 
the odd feature is that the hands were folded'at precisely 
12 o'clock midnight (I had heard the hour of ii struck 
as I sat near, it reading). Some of, my friends .find in 
this a sign of great ill fortune, and advise me to sell the 
clock and take out more life insurance, but this is ob- 
viously foolish advise, and I find rather in this an omen 
of distinct good fortune and an indication of a perpetual 
high noon of good luck for the next twelve months. I 
think if I understood, this game of policy I read about in 
the papers I should go. out and play it for twelves, with 
a certainty of breaking the bank. Whether this course 
would or would not be a wise one, .and whether or not 
the clock should be held, justified in stopping at this 
weird hour of midnight on New Year's eve, are questions 
which might perhaps best be referred to the "Man in the 
Clock Tower," who shpuld. be passing wise in matters 
of this sort. My own explanation, of the occurrence is 
that, following some line of . obscure communication be- 
tween the mind of man and the matter, of things such as 
we do not yet fully understand, the clock simply followed 
a mental impression of .my own, . I .remember saying to 
myself, as I looked at the bright new face of Forest and 
.Stream in the New Year's number, "She struck twelve 
this time." Which I submit to be a fact. .Not that she 
can't do it again. I suppose the clock overheard the re- 
mark and perhaps rnisunderstood it. 
Snow, 
The other day, to continue my- household words, when 
I arose in the morning, I found mv sleeping room about 
half full of snow. It lay in a big heap in one corner on 
the tessellated marble floor, and covered up to some depth 
the rich color of the Oriental rugs, t j say nothing of 
specking a few objets d'art and getting in my slippers 
some. It is one of my-theories that a fellow ought to sleep 
as near out of doors as he can, and in this case the snow 
came in through the window to help out the realism. 
For a moment I thought of the pine woods, of the Yel- 
lowstone-, the Rockies, but sat down, sad at the contrast. 
In the city you turn on the steam and are sick; in the 
woods you hustle qvraking asp and are well. In the 
woods you take your snqwsho.e to shovel snow out of 
your bed or your house,^ljut in the city you have to get 
a dust pan. and ne'er a pjne bough near for a broom. 
Law me! hoAv I did wish it was the real snow of the 
mountains, that morning, and not this second-hand city 
snow. Not that we should blame it, for it was probably 
doing its best. ■J-'.;^, < 
I have often had occasion in these columns- to speak of 
the virtues of a- winter vacation trip, not one to be spent 
in the hou.se, but out of doors in camp. Really winter is 
the healthiest time of year, and the time when one can 
have most fun out of doors. At no time is exercise so 
beneficial to the physical man as in the-cold and purified 
air of the winter woods, and moreover he is obliged to 
take his exercise then whether he wants it or not, as our 
good mothers used to take us by the nose at the time of 
sulphur or "spring medicine" and force us to swallow it 
willy-nilly. At no time are the woods so beautiful as in 
winter, when they are white -and clean-starched' in na- 
ture's laundry, and at no time is it so pleasant to go hunt- 
ing or -just go walking. Although the winter season is 
usually closed to the hunter of our ordinary game, he 
may turn trapper or naturalist, or - perhaps be h:cky 
enough to hunt where his conscience' need hot suf?er. 
Then, as he goes abroad over the clean surface of the 
earth, there lies the record- of it all written before him. He 
can tell, though he be a tenderfoot, the numbers or the 
nature of the game the country holds; and so his hope 
may rise — indeed, unduly rise, for to the observer of the 
tracks in the snow it seems sometimtes that the animal 
that made them must be then ana there present, or very 
near at hand. ' ©nly by long practice may he know by a 
look how far away is the deer or the lynx or the mouse 
or the rabbit which made the marks in the snow; It is 
a ,v.ast, bewildering, fascinating eryptogram .^that nature 
writes on the snow for man- to try to read. Under it 
lie the conimonplac'e dead leaves, which now you have 
forgotten with all signs of decay, seeing alsoilt you onlythe 
deathless evergreens and the whiteness which predicts 
iio green and no decadent yellow. , - 
Under it lies the earth, with its ' commonplace foot- 
marks worn in so deep that the rain cannot wipe theimout. 
Under it lie the old trenches of the camp-fires, and the 
chips and cuttings, and the bottles and tin cans — gone" 
utterly now, so that the world is new and all quite your 
own to discoyer, You gee few camp-fires now, and you 
have no danger from wandering bullets in the woods. 
You hea.r no talking, or shouting of tenderfeet in the 
woods, for most of the tenderfeet, thank heaven, are home 
by the steam- radiators now. It's your own world, and 
yours only because it is winter and because the snow has 
come. How silent and lovable it.is, with only the chirp 
of some strange bird, the creak of an ice-laden tree, the 
caw of a jay or the croak of a crossing raven. You see 
far, ■he^r far, breathe far. You cannot siispeet corks or 
can-openers. Strangest of all, you are qtute happy and 
comfortable. You are not cold. You have found a new 
world, and a new man tQ inhabit it — a man, perhaps, who 
will .thenceforth think far less of trips cut and dried, to 
places cut an.d dried7 with guides, cut and dried, and 
\is sport mapped out for him, and; his yyork all dotie for 
'imj and after all is said his funii^4 fR5.-hii^i by some one 
Ise. As against the pleasures ©| a-,5ugiiher, or fall trip, 
lose of a winter trip are as Hjfpp-riQtifftp va-i satyr, as ten 
.o one, as dollars to doughnut^l Qi-^^^nythinjg else which 
is conventional and convincing; by, .w^y-; of comparison. 
This statement should not rashly be set down as wrong 
until fully proved out by practical experience. For one, 
when I tell the beads of my trips of many years, those 
which mark the winter camps are biggest and brightest 
of them all. 
Let no man sit down and shiver. Let no man say that 
the advent of the ice closes the sporting year, for it but 
begins the best of it. The cap and tunic and the belt and 
sno'wshoe are as legitimate equipment as the bloody can- 
vas coat. It is by no means necessary always to be kill- 
ing. What is necessary is to be a man, in every way, 
and the physical man seems to have got here a little the 
best of us. What is necessary is to be a man unmindful 
of nerve tonics and spring medicines when the snow 
has gone, a man with lungs not full of smoke arid soot,, 
and with a brain not full of kinks and hai'cl knots 
when the grass comes green again. The terrors of win- 
ter, forsooth ! Rather let us speak of the terrors of steam- 
heated houses, with tessellated lioors and objets d'art. 
That's what is the matter with this country. Look at Gaul. 
Jumping Carp. 
A few weeks, a^o I reported an occuffence at Fish 
Lake, Ind., where large schools of fish, supposed to be 
carp, were seen leaping all over 'a part of the lake. My 
recollection is that 1 spoke rather doiibtingly over the 
carp supposition, as I had never known that the carp 
was a leaping fish. Now I am glad to say that I have 
reason for changing that lack of knowledge" on the habits 
of the carp. Yesterday Mr. E. F. Daniels, president of 
the ToUeston Club, of Chicago, came into the Forest 
AND Stream office and took up this question of carp 
breaking water, referring to the publication of the afore- 
said incident. 
"I have no doubt at all that the fash were carp," said 
he. "For a long time I thought that the carp never rose 
above the surface, and usually kept on the bottom, but 
last fall I learned otherwise. My little son and myself 
were walking along the bank of the Little Calumet River, 
on the grounds of the Tolleston Club, and stopped for 
a moment at the dam, below which lay quite a good-sized 
pool of water a few feet in depth. In some manner the 
dog which accompanied us slipped and fell into the pool, 
splashing and swimming about for a moment. As he 
splashed in a number of other splashes arose all about 
him, and over a dozen good-sized carp sprang clear out 
of the water, all headed not from but toward the dog, 
which might naturally have been frightened at them. 
The boy screamed out, for he thought his dog was going 
to be eaten up. Of course the carp sank at once, and after 
that the water was so muddy I could see nothing. I 
don't know why these fish should have shown this pecu- 
liar action, but I do know they were carp, and that they 
leaped high above the water, showing clear and plain." 
This is one of the most curious things I ever heard 
about the carp. At first thought it would appear that the 
despised fish were showing pretty game qualities when 
it tries to eat a live dog, but this is hardly a fair explana- 
tion of the singular actions. Everyone has seen how fish 
in a hatchery pool or an aquarium will plunge for a cen- 
ter where they think food has been thrown or where it 
customarily is thrown, and very likely this may have been 
the explanation of the conduct of the carp, whether they 
had ever been fed at that point or not. A bass will swim 
at once toward a ripple which it thinks is caused by a 
frog, and the bigger the splash your live bait makes the 
better for your catch. Perhaps it is so with carp, though 
I must confess they must have more nerve than I ever 
credited them with if they swim toward a whole live dog 
when he falls in the water. All this is contrary t® the 
commonly accepted idea of these fish, and hence it is 
very . interf stin g. 
The Tolleston Lawsuits, 
Mr. Daniels told' me that the last suit against the Tol- 
leston Club had been taken to the Supreme Court of the 
United States, where the club hopes to win, though the 
decision can hardly be expected in less than a year or 
two. By error of the attorney the club delayed this ap- 
peal over sixty days, and thus temporarily lost possession 
. of the land in litigation, the famous Cluugh tract of about 
6oo acres over which so much trouble has arisen. The 
Indiana Supreme Court held that Clough could hold 
ground to the center of the stream, and not be confined 
by the edge of the marsh. Of course this allowed Clough 
to take out all that part of the dam which was on his land, 
and half the dam being gone was the same as no dam 
at all, though 'the club left its half standing where it 
was. Meantime the club has left about 1,700 acres of 
its best marsh, and it has devised a way of flooding this 
by windmills and ditches. Tolleston Club by no means 
intends to abandon its rights or its property in this 
much-contested shooting ground. The locality is very 
dear to many of the older members of the club, to say 
nothing of the principle at stake. So far as the principle 
of preserve protection is concerned, the fight of this club 
is one of great public interest in sportsmanship. Though 
Tolleston Club has always been quiet and has avoided 
notoriety, its fight is really the fight of all sportsmen, and 
all sportsmen must hope for its final victory. 
Michigan Partridge and Quail. 
Mr. W. C. Held writes me interestingly about Michi- 
gan partridge and quail: 
"The article which appeared in Forest and Stream 
a short time ago, describing your hunt in Michigan, 
proved quite interesting to me," he says. 
"I was in a locality this fall which I call a good par- 
tridge country, it being nothing unusual to start from 
forty to sixty partridges in a day's tramp. One day I 
bagged sixteen from i o'clock to dusk. Where birds are 
so plentiful I never care to hunt all day. One could start 
from the house at 9 A. M. and return home by 3 o'clock 
and have all the shooting one could wiiih for. i 
"1 carried my camera with me most of the time, and 
often would take a snap at the dog while on point and 
then bag the bird when flushed, but frequently the birds 
would not lie long enough for one to get a shot, either 
with gun or camera. 
"I made a shot this fall which I think will not be re- 
peated by me very soon. A bevy of quail flushed at the 
edge of a black ash swamp." I fired at a single bird and 
killed it, the dog retrieved it, and I then went over to a 
little ridge where the birds had scattered. When I reached 
the place I ordered the dog on, when he suddenly came 
to a half point and then picked up a dead bird. I sent him 
out again and he brought another, and he went out twice 
more, each time bringing a dead quail, making five with 
the, one shot. Another singular thing was that all of the 
five birds were males. 
"L think our quail shooting should not commence until 
Nov. I, then one would get nothing but fair-sized birds. 
Now the shooting commences Oct, i, and some of the 
birds are too small and easy to shoot. One of our shoot- 
ers says he flushed several bevies in October that looked 
like bugs." 
Gave him a Watch. 
The dep^uty game wardens of North Dakota made State 
Warden Geo. E. Bowers a Christmas present of a hand- 
some gold watch, with a suitable inscription within 
the cover. The shooting public might also very well 
give Mr, Bowers at least a vote of thanks for his very 
able work of the past season, which has helped the shoot- 
ing for all who have sought the big open preserves of 
the prairi^ State. 
The Game Wardens' Convention. 
The game wardens' convention at Chicago on Feb. 7 
bids fair to hold a considerable interest. We shall have 
here the wardens of Minnesota, North Dakota, Wiscon- 
sin and Michigan at least and probably others. The 
question of game protection was never before so widely 
advertised or wisely agitated as it is now. 
The Vindication. 
In ifegard to the "vindication" of the game wardens in 
the Ute killing afifair in Colorado there seems already 
to be cropping out a sHght divergence of belief. Rev. 
M. W. Reed, of Denver, proposes to take up the matter 
at a later date, as soon as he has access to the official 
report. The Salt Lake Tribune in the course of editorial 
comment on the commissioner's report says: 
"This recommendation, if carried out, would make the 
Indian a nondescript, neither fish nor fowl nor flesh; he 
could neither hunt according to his hereditary rights 
and treaties with the Government, nor exercise the same 
prerogatives as an American citizen. Altogether, Mr. 
Reynolds's report is a marvel of sophistry and careful 
avoidance of facts — totally at variance with the testimony 
which he forwarded with it. 
"In reading the testimony of the wardens and Indians, 
and according to those present when the latter were ex- 
amined, there seems no justification whatever in his as- 
sumption that the Indians fired the first shot. All of the 
wardens say that they think that such was the case, but 
none of them — not even Wilcox— asserts so positively, 
while, on the contrary, all of the Indians are unanimous 
in their statement that they were not only the last to 
attempt shooting, but that their arms were where they 
could not reach them. Altogether, while the report is a 
disappointment in that it appears to give only the Col- 
orado wardens' side of the story, it is quite as much a 
surprise, as impartial treatment was expected." 
Work of the Wardens. 
At Salt Lake City, Utah, Dec. 24, a box of ducks con- 
signed to Ender & Ender, of Chicago, was seized by 
warden Garn after it was received by the Pacific Express 
Company, the game being confiscated and sold. 
At Mt. Vernon, 111., Dec. 29, warden Slocum arrested 
W. C. Merritt, Henry P. Price, of Bellerive; Geo. Camp- 
bell, A. McCreary anu B. F. Goosetree, of another town, 
ali on difterent charges of violation of the game laws. 
Warden Slocum is trying to stop the illegal shipping of 
quail from that section to the markets of Chicago. 
At Pueblo, Col., warden McLean and deputy Willi- 
ford made a regular round of the butcher shops and 
stores, and confiscated a large amount of illegal game, 
givinp- it to the charitable institutions of the place. I 
should call this sort of thing very much better than our 
Illinois way of selling this game at auction. The selling 
of such game puts money in the pocket, of the warden, 
and so pays him for his work, it is true,, but it is a very 
risky clause this to have in any law, for it makes an tigly 
loophole. It was under this confiscation and sale clause 
of our law that the once famous suit.S: were brought 
against H. Clay Merritt -in the Kewaunee game cases — 
probably the worst bungled prosecution that ever hap- 
pened under any game laws. Had Merritt been fined and 
the birds given away or destroyed, the whole matter 
would have been well ended, with no charges or counter 
charges of any sort left possible. (Merritt appealed from 
the Appellate Court to the Supreme Court of the State, 
which has recently affirmed the lower court, thus finally 
defeating Merritt and . upholding the old Magner case 
of Illinois, often cited on this question, which holds that 
game cannot be legally held in possession after the close 
of the legal season, no matter how or where obtained.) 
At St. Paul, on D.ec. 23, Henry Merrill Peck was fined 
$30 for having in possession three illegal partridges.- 
The Stock Growers Convention of Colorado advertised 
a big barbecue, after the fashion of the old days. In the 
old days it was permitted to have elk and antelope direct 
from the country round about. Not so to-day, and 
though the elk were shown to come from a private herd, 
Commissioner Swan at once started queries about the 
dozen barbecued antelope which were placarded as part 
of the feast. . , 
In Ohio the farmers are kicking about tne rabbit law, 
which they say should allow them to hunt rabbits all the 
time. The plea is put forward that the rabbits eat the 
raspberry bushes. Yes, methinks I see a flock of rabbits, 
each with a long, thorny festoon of briery raspberry vine 
hanging out of his mouth and marching across the 
country like an army of invasion. Let us be protected 
against the rabbits. 
They are kicking in Indiana, near Muncie, because the 
hard winter has killed the quail in thousands. A coat of 
ice has covered; up the fields, and the quail are taking to 
the stacks and barns. This is the way quail are thinned 
out suddenly sometimes, and the matter is indeed one 
for regret. • 
Not contented with having the worst game law on 
earth, so far as oppression to the sportsman is concerned, 
Iowa is beginning to talk of farmers' leagues similar to 
those recently formed in portions of Ohio. The Lemars 
Sentinel takes up this subject, saying among other 
things: "The town hunter is usually a pot-hunter," But 
is he? And is he ^fter all a whit better or worse or dif- 
