I 
April i^, iSgS.j 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
307 
to break up the stronghold of H, Clay Merritt, of Ke- 
wanee. Tlie, former warden quit this case, for some l"ea- 
$0n Qr another, and nothing decisive ever came of it, 
Merritt was fined in the upper court foi- tlie hkAs lie 
a,ctuall}^ sold And sent out during the close season, but 
the replevin suits by which he retained liossession of 
27.000 head of illegal game were never pushed, and he 
kept his game. The vital point of the affair, therefoi-fi;, 
was never touched upon, which of course was the ques- 
tion whether a dealer could hold over game to tlie neJ^t 
season, and not . forfeit title if his game was discovered. 
In brief, it w^as the question whether putting illegal prop- 
erty on ice nijlkes i,t become legal. Merritt therefore 
iveht on with his trfide in giinie vci-y milcli Is before, but 
relied on the New York market, riot daring to ti-.ust his 
stuflf in Chicago. He got picked up in spite of his cate, 
and then he Libeled his contraband stuff as "poultry," 
and tried again for the New York market, not daring 
to trust his stufY in Chicago. He got picked up in spite 
of his care, and then he labeled his contraband stuff as 
"poultry," and tried again for the New York market, not 
dreaming that he would be caught in transit. Yet that 
is just what happened. Warden Loveday falling upon a 
fine lot of it not long ago. He has brought suit against 
this old ofifender in the Circuit Court of his county, the 
amount being set. at $50,000 at the lowest. This time 
-it is very likely that Mr. Merritt will npt see the case 
dropped or conlpromised. This is what he can he fined 
for having tu,rned loose otjt qf his freezer. Not even 
yet will the State of Illinois, by its Avarden, tackle the 
graver question of what shall be done with tiie birds 
which are on ice and which ought to be confiscated just 
as much as those which he sends out from his freezer. 
The lawyers say that the. confiscation of such game would 
be "tlncoAistittitional.** It seems to me I have heard that 
word before. It might be very well for us to have our 
Siipteine Cbui't declate It tlnConstittitional, rind not leave 
it to. the lawyets .ot- td the; dcEllers. When we can open 
the .doors of the freezers at tiie eiid of the selling season 
we have won oilr fight all over tiie West Eiild ;lll over the 
United States. But eyen if we catmot, it, is a conlfort to 
think of Mr. Merritt's . confiscated "p.oiiltry," which he 
was hopefully sending down to New York. 
Que more word, ijrctlnren, and I am, done. Chicago is 
a big market for game, but it is not the only one. Out 
on the Pacific coast there is also a demand for game 
by men who can't shoot.it. The . Elsinore,, Cal., PVess 
has the following item at)out the business done by just 
two market hunters: 
"George and H. Ati<ins, two young men who have 
been shooting wild- ducks for mari<et the past season 
on Lake Elsinore, kept an accoiint of each day's re- 
sults. Fi-oiu Oct. 17 to Feb. 28 they killed and shipped 
5,223 ducks and SS geese. Of tllese 2,811 were of the 
variety known as spoon jDills, tile Iwlance of, the 5,223 
being distributed among the other varieties, 'fhete Were 
several other ma.rket hunters shooting on the lalcc dur- 
ing the season, hut we have no nieans of knowing the 
amount of game they secured, hnt it is safe to say that 
altogether they must have secured as much again as the 
Atkins brothers." 
The Los Angeles. Times, . comirienting on tliis item, 
says in soiper good faith: "It is a wonder that niore of 
the unempioycd men do not go into the business of hunt- 
ing for the market during the season. There is money 
to be made in this wdy." 
Club Haps and Mishaps. 
The Fox River Hunting and Fishing Club, of Osli- 
kosh. Wis., has voted to put up a good clui) liouse on 
its grounds on the Butte des Morts nlSrsh, dbove Osh- 
kosii. 
The club house of the East St. Louis l^od and Gun 
Club, .situated on the famous Okaw River, in Illinois, 
about forty miles from East St. Louis, has been de- 
stro.ved by the breaking of a levee, which caused the 
flooding of 10,000 acres of land and the destruction of 
much property. The members of this club lost between 
twenty and thirty boats, and the furniture in the house 
was ruined. 
Game fa Old Mexico. 
Mr. Howard K.-Frost writes froin the City of Mexico 
about a little hunt in that country which some of his 
friends have just had. Among others 1 see the riaiue of 
Mr. Daniel Raum, of Peoria, who is of the law comirlittee 
of the Illinois State Sportsmen's Association. I could 
wish Mr. Frost had more details to of¥er us about the far- 
ofif southern country. He says: 
"A.lthough my muscallonge tale from northern Wis- 
consin was doubted, and I have never heard of any one 
who took time or trouble to consult E. A. Everett, of 
Hotel Everett, although I .gave liim as a reference, I 
still live to tell a tale of a United States shooting party 
in Mexico. 
"A party. Consisting of Col. Moore and son, from Kan- 
sas City, Mo.; Daniel F. Raum, of Peoria, 111., and 
John W. Maxcy, of Austin, Tex., under the guidance 
of E. J. Fletcher, spent last week hunting on a four- 
million acre hacienda about fifty miles from Tampico. 
"Six deer, a quantity of turkeys, and many small 
pheasants, were secured. As to the quality of the game, 
consult Samuel E. Magill, our genial Consul at Tam- 
pico, who with us banqueted off a fine young buck. 
"I stayed behind, not being particularly fond of jungle 
hunting, though the size of boa constrictors can be at- 
tested by. Col. Moore and Dan Raum; the number of 
fleas and ticks is beyond human calculation. The tired 
and happy hunters say that is nothing compared to the 
excellence and quantity of the game. Nevertheless all 
agree that to bag game in Mexico the first shot must 
be instantly fatal. Like fish, 'heaps got away.' " 
Alligator Hunting. 
Dick _ Merrill, of Milwaukee, who spent part of the 
winter in Florida, tells me he had considerable sport in 
shooting alligators, of which he and a man who went 
along, an old 'gator hunter, killed 14 in all, one measur- 
ing lift, in length. Dick brought up a lot of hides and 
several of the best heads, and will have a collection 
of valises and gun trunks manufactured from the hides, 
Avhile the heads will be mounted with such mottoes as 
"Merry Christmas" and "God Bless our Home." He says 
it is not very hard to kill a 'gator, the best poiat fQ hit 
them being in or near of behind the eye, or behind the 
forearm. He s&ys that the activity of the alligator in 
the' water was a surprising thing to llim. He saw for the 
first time a new.fiport, tliat of calbng alligators. The 
gtn'de would do tiiis by ptttling a .stick below the .surface 
of the water a(nd .giving a good invitation of the 'gator 
gtluit. , Soon a streak of bul)ble§ Would he seen coming 
toward tite noise, and then tlley got ready vvith tlie rifles. 
Legal. 
Hunting rights on marshes are affected by the decision 
in Hall vs. Alford (Michigain), which denies the right 
of hunters to .go in boats and hunt wildfowl on a mai'sh 
surrounding an island, in a river, without consent of the 
olvner of the land, where tlic water is sometimes 10 or 
i2in. decb, and at other times the ground is dry and 
covered Wltli rusiies. 
A Setting Hen. 
Chicago, III., March 11.— The other day, as I was 
passing along a street near my office, 1 saw a dense 
crowd of human beings, such as make up the average 
population of a city, ail gathered about some object at 
which they were fighting and .struggling to .get a good 
look. The crowd was just in front of a basement .gro- 
cery store, whicii was offering cut rates on hams, eg.gs, 
butter and other products not indigenous to Chicago. 
At an earlier time I had observed tiis joint attracting 
attention by means of certain livin.g pictures, the same 
being Ijarnyard fowls roosting on a pole. I more than 
half suspected some other sUch clfgutnciituin ad hominein. 
and so was not altogether surprised to observe, as I 
passed, that the center of attraction in this case was 
hotliing niote than a lafge, coarse, yellow hen, of ob- 
viously truculent disposition, which was apparently 
chained to business on a nest full of eggs arranged for 
her on top of a barrel at the ed.ge of the sidewalk. In 
plain English, this was nothing but a settin' hen, yet 
it Was something which many persons were apparently 
willing to hazard their necks to witness. I suppose 
A gfeat many of these city folk never saw a settin' hen 
befol'e; They may have dreamed, in a va.gue sort of a 
way, , that eggs came in some wholesale fashion from 
the fireside of Mr. Armour, Mr. Swift and other pack- 
ets who make us our .genuine Jersey butter. Perhaps 
there inay have b^en others in the crowd in whose 
niinds tlie sight of this buSy fowl brought up recollec- 
tions of pleasant country scenes in earlier days. For 
my own part, it made me think of blue skies and wide 
fields, with the caw of crow and the jangle of jay over 
head, and near at hand the cackle of many fowls— the 
same of goodly yellow legs and suggestful, portly 
presence. _ I admit that t paused to gaze at this yellow 
hen, proving thus once more the shrewdness of the 
dealer who posted her there as a sign, knowing that 
she wonid be welcomed by humanity, cither as a curi- 
o.sity of- as a friend. 
Tliere !s somethin.g in this city scene which jars upon 
the sense of eternal fitness. All men who savvy hen 
know very well that the hen prefers to conduct these 
private domestic matters in a sanctuary of her own 
choosi.ng. _ Unless heavily hobbled and side-lined, any 
hen of spirit Avhich has the intention of increasing the 
feathered population of the world will forsake the most 
luxuriously upholstered nest possible to be constructed 
by the skill of man, and will litint rip sonic spot of fan- 
cied seclusion under a scraggly currant bush at the 
furthest end of the plaza, and there take her chances 
with rats, skunks and other elements, merely for the 
sake of a little privacy. I do not know what there is 
that passes through the mind of a settin' hen. my native 
delicacy having prevented me from inquiring too curi- 
otisly into such matters, even when I was day herd on 
the hen fanch of my mother. I never have considered 
that it was for me to inquire why a hen, with the pros- 
pect of fourteen cheerful little chirping, soft-bodied, 
pretty chicklets, should erect the feathers of her head 
like quills upon the fretful pumpkin vine,, or why she 
should gutturally complain to the circumambient air 
wken approached but by the hand of kindness. This, 
as T have conceived it, Avas the business of the hen, and 
not for me to know. Therefore I must confess that, 
having these preconceived notions as to the constitu- 
tional rights of the hen in such matters, it irked me 
somewhat to see this hen compelled to carry on her 
incubation, against lier Avili, in the garish air of the 
crowded^ city, pursued not merely hy one bare-legged 
boy anxious to count her eggs and to see whether such 
eggs would all float or sink in a pan of warm water, 
but actually surrounded by an assemblage of grown 
men and adult women, many of whom appeared to pos- 
sess some of the nvarks of intelligence and education. 
Thus. I said to myself, progresses the barbarity of that 
which we call modern civilization! Nothing is sacred. 
The reporter with his note book invades the privacy of 
our divorce arrangements. The grocer sets his hen 
upon our very streets, concealed by not e\'en the mock- 
ery of a currant bush! 
There is a moral in nearly everything you run across, 
if you look at it the right way, sighting along either 
before it or back of it. We read now of large bags of 
ducks being killed this spring by those strong-kneed 
souls who think spring shooting should be allowed, and 
by those other weak-kneed individuals who think it 
ought not to be allowed, but who do it nevertheless. 
Had I been in possession of a gun the other morning, 
I could very easily have shot this hen, although I pre- 
sume her embonpoint was not such as it should have 
been at a later date. I restrained my ardor and did 
not shoot the hen. Nay, indeed, I recall that in earlier 
days we never shot the hens when they were ruffling 
up their feathers and strutting around, evidently with 
this business of incubation on their minds. We could 
easily have done so, but we didn't. We figured that 
each hen thus left to herself Avould soon produce ten 
fold for us of fowl which would be better to eat than 
herself. I am sure I coidd have killed every hen that 
my mother owned. I did not do so, and although this 
was a score of years ago, the last time I was out to 
the old place there Avere just as many hens, just as many 
chickens and just as many eggs as there were when 
I_ was a boy. Moreover, I find that the markets of this 
city have just as much poultry, just as many eggs now 
as they ever did. While perhaps I should not speak 
positively in this matter, I am disposed to believe that 
this perpetuity of the hen is due to the fact that those 
controlling the fountains of tlie hen industry have never 
made it a practice to .go gunning along the currant 
bushes in the spring in searcli of easy shooting on nest- 
ing birds. 
I said there Avas a moral in almost anything, but a 
moral is such a bore. Let us not draw any moral. Lei 
us get our guns and kill every breeding bird we can. 
But twenty years from now let us not Avail because the 
nests along the currant bushes, and along the marshes, 
are no longer to be found, and because neither on the 
marshes nor in the markets are wildfowl as plentiful 
as they are even to-day. Perhaps my hen is still to 
be found at the old stand. The spring has come. I 
have not had my gun out for quite a Avhile. Shall I 
not yield to temptation, and go arotnid and take a pot 
shot at this fowl which has just come in on the flight, 
and which is seeking a place where it may privately 
endeavor to add a few more fowls to the glory of na- 
ture and the good of mankind? 
Another Singing Mouse. 
I haA'-e heard of yet another instance of this strange 
freak of nature. Mr. Stanley Waterloo, of Chicago, 
author of "The Story of Ab," and one of the best known 
newspaper men of Chicago, tells me that some years 
ago, Avhen he had apartments near what is now the 
Victoria Hotel in this city, he had a singing mouse, 
which entertained himself and Avifc for some weeks. He 
first heard it in one of the closets, singing very slirilly, 
and explained to his wife Avhat it was. After that they 
often listened to it for many moments at a time. This, 
r ,h''''>v'' is the sixth in.stance of a singing mouse of 
Avhich r have Icnc'iVn. 
About Alaska. 
Mr. W. A. Work is the last one to Avrite me asking 
advice about an Alaskan trip. If Mr. Work goes diic-t 
to the coast from Texas, he will pass through some 
pomt— San Francisco, Tacoma or Seattle— where the 
outfitting^ for Alaska has been brought down to a sci- 
ence. Lists of provisions, articles of clothing, tools, 
.supplies, etc., are issued by these firms, and they are 
fairl.v correct for the use of a man going to make a long 
trip in a hard country. He may feel safe in depending 
on these lists, but I Avould advise that he add one-third 
to the grub list, for a man in a cold countrv eats a 
powerful lot. It is better to have too much than too 
little to eat, and if you get tired and come out. you can 
sell all the grub you have left. As to boats, Mr. Burn- 
ham, of the FoRE-ST AND Strkam, took in not one, but 
tAvo canvas boats. I understand that they did very well. 
They must be bi.g enough to carry a ton of stuff be- 
tween the two. It is no pleasure trip that one tackles in 
the Yukon journey. After he is started he mav build 
rafts or Avooden boats, as he finds needful; knoclc-down 
or canvas boats are easier taken in now than they were 
last year, as facilities at the passes are better. 
Alaska is a great big country, and some of it is very 
poor game country, while some is very good. . The 
west coast, say in the Copper River region, seems to 
have produced the most of the big game we hear about. . 
Suppose one killed any good heads over in the heart of 
the region along the Yukon? He could hardly get them 
out without paying far more than they Avere worth. If 
he hunted somewhere near the coast, he might save 
his trophies, even then at great cost and trouble. It is 
impossible to speak of Alaska as a game country. It 
is all sorts and any kind of a country, depending on 
where you go. Of course it is not yet shot out, as are 
the United States. 
As to the gun, tastes differ, of course. The old stand- 
by, the .45-70 Government, is always good. The small- 
bore nitro rifles are fancied by very many. The cold 
Aveather will not "kill the powder." The ammunition 
for the small bores is much lighter, a great point in 
favor of the latter. The .30-30 and .30-40 have killed 
some of the large moose and big bears which have this 
season come down from the Cook's Inlet country of 
Alaska, so they may be said to have passed the stage 
of doubt. Many men Avill not shoot the old rifles at 
all any more, though the old rifles will kill meat in the 
proper hands. It is all a question of taste. 
Got Him on the List. 
CiiTCAGo, 111,, April 9.— I must add to my lists of per- 
sons high in position, but not too high to break the game 
laws, the name of Deputy Collector M. E. Burns, of 
Tower, Minn., who has for some time been figuring in 
a trunk mystery case. Mr. Burns got hold of partridges 
contrary to the law. locked them up in his little trunk, 
and then checked the latter as baggage Avhen he went 
down to St. Paul. The St. Paul Dispatch tells the sequel 
of what happened to Burns: 
Suspicion was directed to a storekeeper at that point and it 
was noticed that frequent trips were made by Collector Burn's 
to tlie Twin Cities, accompanied by trunks unusually bulky for 
trafhc in the woods. On his last trip down on March 30. a trunk 
which went up empty a short time before was brought by him 
on the stage to Tower, and the weight, and care with which the 
trunk was kept outside the hotel, probably for cold storage, at- 
tracted notice. The trunk was examined at its arrival at St. 
Paul, and was found to contain partridges. The erame was seized 
and instructions were received by Deputy Game "Warden Philips 
to arrest Burns on his arrival in Tower from St. Paul. Burns 
was arrested immediately upon his arrival and bound over to tlie 
Grand Jury in the sum of ,$1,000, Sufficient bond was furnished 
and Burns was released. There is widespread indignation here 
over the brazen attempts which have been made to evade the law, 
and guilty parties will meet with scant sympathy at the hands 
of the prosecuting authorities. 
ToUeston Again. 
There is a rumor out that a receiA^er has been ap- 
pointed by the court to take charge of the property of the 
Tolleston Gun Club for the purpose of satisfying a judg- 
ment secured by Theodore Pratt, who was injured by 
one of the club wardens while trespassing on the club 
grounds a year ago. Mr. Daniels, President of Tolles- 
ton Club, says that he is not fretting any over this re- 
ceiver, and that the club will not pay any attention to 
him, but will pursue the even tenor of its Avay and let the 
upper courts take their course. 
Bags. 
Members of the Carthage Lake Chib, of Burlington, 
la., have been having fair siiooting tliis spring. Lastweeli 
