Jan. I, 189S.I 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
7 
ried a gun. After a cordial greeting he gladly accepted 
an invitation to join me and we started in the direction 
of the woodcockj but I had not mentioned that I had 
killed it. When we came near the place I motioned the 
dog on and she came to a point near the foot of the pine 
tree that I have mentioned, when my friend at once 
started to go around, as he had been accustomed to do, 
iji order to flush the bird for me, and was nearly under 
the pine and I had opened my mouth to tell him that 
the bird was dead, when out from the top of the tree 
fluttered my bird, which was only slightly wing-tipped 
and could lly fairly well; I again drew a bead on it 
and again brought it down amid his exclamations of 
surprise that we should find woodcock in trees and that 
the dog could point them just as well as when they were 
on the ground. I was also not a little surprised, as this 
was the first instance of the kind that I had ever seen. 
After I had explained the case to him he soundly rated 
me for spoiling so good a story as this would have been, 
and said that he had more than half a mind to ignore 
everything in connection with the affair, except just the 
simple facts just as I had seen them. But I had no fear 
of this, as he was one of the most honest and truthful 
men that I ever met; and I have always felt pleased with 
myself in that I resisted the very strong impulse to keep 
silence, as such a tale told by a man of his character 
might have reached wrong ears and ere this, in cold type, 
have stared me in the face as a new fact in natural his- 
tory. 
I learned, however, through the landlord, that he did 
so far pander to the depravity as to tell the tale just as 
it appeared to him, and then, after listening to the com- 
ments of the wondering crowd, he would give the expla- 
nation to the disappointment of all and the disgust of 
those who "had often seen the same thing." 
r was in this cover one day with Mr. Coe of Worces- 
ter, when my dog came to a point not ten rods from the 
pine tree mentioned above, and as it was my turn to 
shoot I walked in front and flushed a woodcock and had 
it covered and was about to pull, when a grouse rose 
near, and as I saw that 20ft. would put him safe behind a 
thicket I swung the gun onto him and bowled him over 
just as he was disappearing. Then I again put on to the 
woodcock and tumbled it also, making a very neat 
double — a shot, as Mr. Coe said, to think of with pleas- 
ure when shooting days were over. 
Rather a curious incident occurred the first time that 
my farmer friend, mentioned above, went out with me. 
Thei"e was a bit of good-looking cover upon his land, 
and I called at his house and asked permission to shoot 
there. Cordially granting my request, he remarked that 
I was the first hunter he had ever heard of who asked 
permission to shoot on any one's land (this was thirty 
years ago), as it was the custom for every one to shoot 
where he pleased. He then asked me to sample his cider, 
and as I had not the slightest objection he led the way 
into the house and we were soon on the best of terms, 
and I am pleased to say that we have been very good 
friends ever since. 
After partaking of the cider I gave him an invitation 
to accompany me, which he accepted, and we proceeded 
to explore the bit of cover I have mentioned, but without 
finding anything, when he proposed going to a birch 
cover where he had seen both woodcock and grouse; 
and after a half-mile tramp we arrived at the place, Avhich 
has since proven to be the very best cover in all that 
section. The dog being sent on, she was soon on point 
to a woodcock, which I flushed and killed. My com- 
panion had watched the proceedings with deep in- 
terest and at the crack of the gun he broke shot, and 
rushing to the place where the bird had fallen, stooped 
to pick it up, exclaiming "I've got him!" and actually 
grabbed a fresh bird that he could have held, but not 
expecting to find any resistance, somehow it struggled 
free and with a startled whistle mounted straight in the 
air; but my second barrel brought it safely do.wn again, 
and it struck the -ground not loft. from where it started 
from. My companion, as soon as the bird doubled up, 
pi^epared to spring for it, but as he afterward explained, 
upon glancing to the ground to see that the footing was 
all right his eye fell upon the first bird, which he picked 
up and then made his rush, and securing -the other one, 
was soon at my side with animated countenance and 
sparkling eyes, asserting that he had never had such fun 
in his life. After this I began his field training and soon 
had him steady to wing and shot, and found him to be an 
excellent companion, but I could never induce him to 
carry a gun nor to take a shot with mine. He would 
always shake his head and say that he had had enough 
of gun to last him as long as he lived. As he evidently 
disliked the subject, I asked no questions until we had 
been out together several times, when one day he made 
an allusion to the matter, and in response to my request 
for the story he told it in about this style: "You must 
know by the trees in my yard that I am fond of cherries. 
When I was a boy we had only one tree, and I usually 
had my share of the fruit; but the birds used to bother 
me, and I tried every method that I could think of to 
keep them away, and succeeded fairly well, except that 
one pair of robins would pay no heed to the scarecrows 
I set up, but helped themselves whenever they wished. 
Well, this went on until the summer that I was fifteen, 
when these birds built their nest in an apple tree just 
back of the house; and as the cherries began to ripen 
they feasted on them pretty much all the time. I was 
wild over it, but could do nothing, as father thought 
everything of the birds and Avould not let me touch 
them. So I brooded over it in silence until one day, 
when father went away, I resolved to put an end to my 
troubles. I took down the old gun, and putting in pow- 
der and shot enough to do the business up in good shape, 
I climbed the apple tree until I was about on a level with 
the nest, upon which the old bird was sitting, and resting 
the gun across a limb and taking a good aim at her 
head, which was about 6ft. from the muzzle, I pulled 
trigger; and when I came to I found myself hanging by 
a broken leg in the fork of the tree, with the blood 
streaming from a deep cut in my cheek and my shoulder 
so sore that I thought it smashed all to bits; and, worse 
than all the rest, that blamed robin was perched on the 
very top of the cherry tree with not a single feather 
harmed. So you see that I have good reason for refusing 
to have anything to do with a gun." Shadow, 
[to be continued.] 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 
New Yeats and Old Years, 
Chicago, 111., Dec. 24, — At this holiday season of joy 
and mirth, when all the world is squaring up accounts 
and getting ready to tackle another year, when half the 
world is happy because it thinks the other fellow is 
going to settle, and the other fellow is laughing because 
he thinks it a joke that he should be expected to settle — 
in this time of peace and good will to everybody who 
has made us a present or who we hope is going to make 
us one pretty soon, how seemly it is for man to pause 
and take an inventory of joys! 
After all, the chief joy in life iS- perhaps this: It 
might have been a lot worse than it was! We can nearly 
always, if we are in the lea.st philosophical, have this joy 
with us. It would be much worse if there were no For- 
est AND Stkeam. The man who is broke is not so bad 
oft' as the man who ia in debt and broke too. There is 
always room for joy, if you Avant to look at it that way. 
And why isn't that a good way to do? It is only the 
old plucky doctrine of never-say-die which has put wood 
on many a wood-pile, and saved many a man from 
ennui and I'Veltschmers. 
There are a great many things to give any sort of man 
Weltschmerz, except a newspaper man, and it is some- 
what the fashion nowadays to think that the new years 
are not as good as the old years. I confess that I now 
and then at this season of "the year wish I were a boy 
again, with red mittens and copper-toed boots, and just 
setting out for a rabbit hunt such as we used to take in 
the old years. It is pretty bad to be shut up in the city, 
with only a vacation every week or so, but it might be 
worse. The snow we see nowadays, more especially in 
the city, is pretty dingy, but it might be worse. I saw 
some rabbits piled up in front of a store this morning, 
and they looked pretty bad, but they might be worse, 
though they were priced at five cents each. In short, 
this world is pretty much the same world it was a long 
time ago. It still has snow, and rabbits, and boys, and 
it is b}^ no means so bad as it may be rashly pronoimced 
to be by those who wrongfully think they have come 
to the end of the world. There isn't any end. She's 
round, and about alike all the way around, though better 
in the portions where there are rabbits and snow. 
At this season we have few game birds left legal ex- 
cept the rabbit, but what more could we ask? Almost all 
over the United States the rabbit is to-day ripe and 
accessible. It is not bad fun to hunt rabbits, but is best 
when you can borrow a boy with red mittens and copper 
toes and watch him have the fun. So long as felicity 
such as that is possible on earth, this globe is no faiktre, 
no matter what experts on worlds say about it. Hail! 
then, to the Rabbit and the Boy, the proper combination 
for the New Year season, having whom the world is not 
so bad but it might be very much worse. If, now, there 
were no rabbits and no boys, how sad and unpleasant 
would be the winter season. 
We used to kick the rabbits out of the snow, where 
tliey sat cuddled up in the grassy brush patches, and 
we shot them as they ran; or Dad chd. And if Dad 
missed, the old bird dog usually managed to retrieve 
the rabbits anyhow. We had not heard of field trials 
then, and didn't know it w^as improper for a dog to 
retrieve. We always encouraged the dog in such laud- 
able endeavors, and this made life a continual source of 
pleasure to the dog when he was out rabbit-hunting 
with us. When it began to snow he would come into 
the house and look at the gun and ask to be taken out 
rabbit-hunting. When the old gun was taken down, and 
tlie ramrod rattled in the pipes, how the old dog would 
leap and howl! He was a very rude, improper dog, 
untrained and. coarse, I fear, and not gentlemanly and 
calm and meek, as I am told a dog should be now; yet 
as I look back, and again look around at the dogs of 
to-day, I atu disposed almost to say that there might 
be Avorse dogs than those of the past! 
In those days we never heard of a ferret, and indeed 
I may say that I never got down to ferreting yet, for, 
bad as I am, I might be worse. Yet I hear that of late 
3'ears and in poor rabbit country, where the law of supply 
and demand is in sway to the detriment of the rabbit 
supply, some folks use ferrets. More than that, I learn 
that this fall a man up in Wisconsin has invented a sort 
of rabbit scarer which is worse than a ferret. He simply 
takes a long piece of wire cable, less than an inch thick, 
and fixes to it a carpenter's bitstock, so that the cable 
can be insinuated and revolved into the uttermost ends 
of a rabbit's burrow. On the end of the wire is a bulb 
in which a nice little fire of sulphur and briiustone can 
be fixed up for the rabbit if he isn't scared enough in 
the first place. How far is all this from the days of red 
mittens and copper toes and the muzzle-loader and re- 
trieving dog! Let us not be too curious to examine 
more into such devices. I fear they will next exterminate 
the Boy. Such thoughts do not appertain to this season 
of optimism. 
Rabbits and Food, 
Some six or more years ago I suggested in the col- 
umns of Forest and Stream what was to me at that 
time at least a new idea in rabbits, and more especially 
jack rabbits; namely, that some of the big rabbit drives 
of California or elsewhere should ship their rabbits to the 
poor of the large cities. Since then the same idea has 
been put in force, and "Parson Uzzell's" annual jack 
rabbit hunt in Colorado, with its consequent shipment of 
thousands of the big rabbits to the cities, has become 
one of the Western fixtures. This year the sixth annual 
hunt was held at Lamar, Colo., and 130 men were regis- 
tered for it at $1 a head. It is comment on the side of 
human nature which loves to kill, when it is noted that 
men came from Boston, New York and other East- 
ern points, all the way to Colorado, to help kill jacks 
"for the poor." The annual charity ball at Lamar was 
a great success, 4,756 jack rabbits being killed. The 
weather w^as cold, 6 below zero, but this did not chill the 
proceedings. 
At Las Animas, Colo., they also had a big battue this 
month, and slew their thousands, many of the rabbits 
finding their way to the cities. It seems also that Gov. 
Leedy, of Kansas, has got the jack rabbit food idea, and 
has offered to send any number on to New York city 
to feed the poor, provided that some one will pay the 
freight. Sumner county, Kansas, paid a 3-cent bounty 
on jacks this fall, and counted 11,000 scalps in a month. 
Some 200 persons held a drive in that county and killed 
600 in one afternoon, using hounds and clubs and guns. 
It is well nigh impossible to exaggerate the numbers of 
jack rabbits slaughtered in such drives, and it is stated 
that the big battues are a necessity if farmers are to 
save their farms. How colossal such operations, com- 
pared to the red-mitten days! Then we killed a little bit 
of a creature, and if we got two dozen a day we were 
happy. Had we at that time heard of a party going out 
and killing 4,000 or 5,000 rabbits, each as big as a half 
dozen of ours, we might have been polite, but I fear 
we would have been incredulous. Had I told my father 
I had read such things, I think he would have given me 
double duty on Sunday school for a while. Yet here 
they are, true! Not that I would exchange the rabbits 
of the old years for those of the neAV, but simply to call 
attention to the fact that the world is not retrograding 
in the size or number of its rabbits to any alarming ex- 
tent. And perhaps there were boys with red mittens on 
that Colorado hunt, boys who shot guns loaded with 
what I have known a daily reporter to call "nitrous" 
powder. In the old clays our powder made a most de- 
lectable roar and shed a pall of gloom athwart the land- 
scape; and at night, when we washed out the old gun 
in the basin in the kitchen, what an odor there was to 
the "cleanin's!" Let us cease such remmiscences, and 
again evade comparisons, the more especially as remi- 
niscencing makes people grow old! 
Vindicated, 
Denver newspapers have come out with page reports 
from the committee appointed to look into the killing of 
the Ute Indians by game wardens in Lily Park, which 
affair made so much stir at the time last fall. The com- 
mittee reports that the wardens are entirely vindicated. 
Of course. The press agent of the Utes has not yet been 
heard from. 
Woman "Warden in Colorado, 
Miss Annie Metcalf, of Denver, Colo., has been ap- 
pointed a game warden by Commissioner Swan. This 
makes two women wardens in the LTnited States, Mrs. 
Warren Neal, of Michigan, being the first thus appointed. 
A woman warden should be harmless if properly treated, 
but if things do not suit her, beware! This is an extract 
from Kant's_ "Critique of Pure Reason," but is not of- 
fered as empirically established. 
Results of a Side-Hunt, 
The Sentinel, of Monroe. Wis., has the following little 
story of the results of a side-hunt lately seen in that part 
of the State: 
"A great hunting match was pulled off at Oregon and 
vicinity recently, in which forty-six men. twenty-three on 
a side, headed by Captains Will Pritchard and Will La- 
mont, took part. Two hundred rabbits and a lot of 
other game was captured. Lamont's side won out by a 
great margin. The other side tried to get even by shoot- 
ing the sparrows that cluster about the stock yards. One 
hunter shot at a rabbit and killed his dog, etc." 
This is art. Observe the suspended interest which 
hangs about the little word "etc." What was it that was 
killed in that "etc."? What sort of a gun Is it that kills 
a dog and an "etc." at one shot? Methinks this is weird. 
A Clear Game Law, 
It seems they are having trouble over their game law 
in South Dakota, the main trouble with it being, so far 
as I can discover, that it doesn't allow everybody to kill 
everything all the time. Regarding this I read: 
"The statute passed in 1893 was practically the re- 
enactment of sections 2,379 and 2,384, inclusive, of the 
compiled laws, and all other statutes in conflict were 
repealed. In this re-enactment the Legislature absolutely 
prohibited the killing of large game up to the 1st day of 
September, 1896, and after that date there was no prohi- 
bition upon the killing of large game. In the enactment 
of last winter one of the provisions was intended to 
make every fifth year a closed year, and the first year so 
set was 1900. The rest of the provisions of the law bear 
directly on the manner under which large game may be 
killed in the open years after 1900, but only apply to the 
years preceding that time by implication, and do not 
bear directly on the years before 1900. After that date, 
though, the statute is very explicit, and hunters in this 
part of the State take the position that the law does not 
affect them at the persent time." 
' I trust this is all perfectly clear. 
Lead-Poisoned Ducks. 
Out in Oregon they have this month discovered a 
number of mallard ducks which have met death by lead 
poisoning, they having swallowed shot picked up in their 
feeding on such much-shot waters as Foley and Jewett 
lakes. One man found shot on the gizzards of five out 
of six ducks that he examined. The Oregonian exploits 
the discovery. It is not news. The first publication of 
this was made in the columns of Forest and Stream 
some years ago. It was first pointed out to me by Bdly 
Griggs, a noted market shooter at Galveston, Tex., and 
it was later discovered independently by one of the mem- 
bers of the Forest and Stream Publishing Co. at Curri- 
tuck waters, N. C. The matter received editorial men- 
tion at the time; 
Good Railroad, 
The Southern Pacific Railroad refused to ship a con- 
signment of illegal deer hides sent by the Southern 
Oregon Pork Packing Co. to Kahn Bros., of Portland, 
Ore. The latter sued to recover value of the goods, and 
the railroad set up in defense illegal killing of the game 
from which the skins were taken, stating that the goods 
were falsely labeled as furs, but were discovered to be 
hides. As soon as the nature of tlie consignment was 
known it was declined. The Court upheld the railroad 
against the cheeky firm which had asked it to break the 
laws to its commercial advantage. If we had a few more 
