May zij 1898.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
407 
and ducks, with just sufficient cover of weed to let one 
get within shot. Later on in the year the birds are all 
in the paddy fields; but so early in the season as when 
we were out the fields are as hard as bricks, and it takes 
a deal of rain to make them soft enough to enable the 
snipe to get their bills to work. 
"No birds," I said, after half an hour's trudge. Bilt 
I was a bit premature, for up got a snipe in front of A., 
our doctor, and was dropped gracefully. Another and 
another got up, one coming my way, but having one 
leg up and the other down deep I missed clean; B. 
grassed the third nicely. By 10 o'clock we thought we 
had had enough for the time, it being very hot, so we 
returned to the belems, and having satisfied the inner 
man we resumed operations. The birds were fairly 
plentiful, but wild, and at sunset, when we ceased shoot- 
ing, we had bagged sixty-seven and a half couple of snipe 
and four mallards. We camped for the night on the river 
bank, were nearly eaten alive by mosquitoes and sand 
flies, and were up betimes in the morning. We did not 
try the snipe again, but went into some dry reeds where 
we thought we might find partridges. Wc were lucky 
enough to get thirteen, and at mid-day started on our 
homeward journey, arriving on board by dinner time. 
Circumstances necessitated our leaving the river from 
that time until the end of November, and on the 35th 
of that month the same three guns, with anotlier, pro- 
ceeded up the same ground in a steam launch, lent us 
by one of our numerous friends on shore. 
We found a good many more birds than on our pre- 
vious trip, but they were wild, owing to a sti-ong breeze 
blowing and it being rather a raw day. However, we 
returned the same evening to Bassorah with 108 couple 
of snipe, eleven ducks, and a wild goose. This part of 
the country is particularly suitable as regards climate for 
consumptive patients; it is also a grand field for a nat- 
uralist or geologist. The ship which winters in the gulf 
is always looked upon with envy by the rest of the squad- 
ron. 
A curious incident happened during our first trip. 
A snipe and a partridge were flushed close to the i-iver; 
the doctor killed right and left, the partridge happen- 
ing to fail into the water. A hawk swooped down and 
was ofi" with the snipe before we could wink, and a 
large fish at the same moment took the partridge, and 
we never had either. This is not a fish story. — Corre- 
xpoiidence London Field. 
Out of the Usual. 
To show how extremely hurtful it is to fire guns 
after sundown where dttcks come in to roost, let me 
relate an incident: Late in November last the wildfowl 
shooting at Wapanocka Lake, Ark., was superb, and 
the limit of fifty game ducks was easily and often reached. 
About the best and most abundant shooting, both on 
ducks and geese, was around Thanksgiving Day; and a 
bank cashier, who could but seldom leave his duties, 
heartily enjoyed the success of his outing until nearly 
dark, when he and his new paddler, Quay Douglass, 
Our Lost Hunter. 
missed the mouth of Little Lake, and were missed by 
his companions at supper in the club house, when toasts 
and scores were discussed. The searchlight party seek- 
ing him fired volleys on the lake, and at 10 o'clock 
clinked glasses in the club house to the safety and suc- 
cess of the lately lost brother; but the salvos on the 
The Safe Return. 
lake startled the wildfowl, and the next day was a blank; 
indeed, shooting was ruined until new flights of wildfowl 
arrived. 
On rowing homeward, or clubward, about dusk in 
December last I was tempted beyond resistance by the 
clanging honks and swishing wings of a flock of Can- 
adas, and crashed into them with Du Pont and chilled 
5s at short range, but this deadly double was fatal to the 
next morning's shoot, since it routed thousands of roost- 
ing ducks from this Arkansas' lake, and they quacked 
their adieux. 
Myriads of English spatrows some months since roost- 
ed in magnolias overhanging a white stone front pave- 
ment (and their litter, or guano, was grief to maid and 
mistress), which evil cats and air rifles failed to remedy; 
and poisoned seeds and dough we could not use because 
of poultry. I remembered how grievously we had rout- 
ed the wildfowl, to otir sorrow, so tied bunches of fire- 
crackers in these trees and at night exploded this mine 
under the sleeping horde of pests, and not one has ever 
returned. 
But, retufiiitig tG web-footed game and their oddities, 
1 was in a duck blind last fall, and had routed out an 
enormous number of greedy mallards, teal and sprigs, 
and was gloating over their certgLin and early return. 
The Turkeys are Flushed. 
Just behind me, in the woods, a flock of turkeys flushed 
from the noise of dragging out of sight our boat; and 
the paddler, Greer, who is insanely fond of hunting and 
outwitting turkeys, pleaded eagerly for the gun to kill a 
gobbler before the ducks began decoying back. The 
morass was so waxy and full of bog holes I let him pur- 
sue the turkeys for a specified fifteen minutes or less, 
and with only the two cartridges in my gun. Just as 
my grand flight of ducks came pouring in and circHng 
low, alighting all around me, and rushing storms of 
green-wing teal fanned my face by the thousands, I heard 
those turkeys flush again. My paddler's hunting blood 
was up, and he mttst have a turkey, or at least a shot, 
so he followed them out of hearing of my whistles, calls, 
prayers, and imprecations, while I was literally be- 
sieged and bombarded by the grandest flight of hungry 
and reckless ducks I ever saw, until 10 o'clock, when, 
full and sociable, they all settled in the middle of the 
lake, nooning; and the warm south wind drifted them 
in an enormous body within 203rds. of me in the blind, 
without a gun. Precisely a similar drift of snoozing, 
nooning ducks bore down on my friend, Jim Neely, in 
this same charmed spot once last season, and he shot 
nineteen of them from Trexler's corner; but my absent 
man was a mile away, "calling" through a turkey's wing 
bone, and I was ahnost sweating blood, and had it_ in 
my eyes; when, after an eternity, he came sloshing 
through the mud, up rose at my feet thousands of ducks, 
to come no more till the evening flight. Yet the only 
"Hunting without a Gun." 
difference was that I killed my limit in the afternoon in- 
stead of morning — fifty ducks. 
In this same dead angle for wildfowl I once found 
seventeen dead and frozen ducks, blowm across the lake 
from a party shooting opposite, the previous day, in a 
gale that had made boat retrieving extremely dangerous 
in the whitecaps. 
As I now toast the Forest and Stream in a mid- 
night nightcap, I see an historic legend, graven on 
my silver set of eight beautiful pieces, saying: "Present- 
ed' by Forest and Stream at Memphis Field Trials, 
1875. Won by Tom (setter) for George W. Campbell 
and W. A. Wheatley." W. A. Wheatley. 
Memphis, Tenn. 
The Yukon River Illustrated. 
The Alaska Miner, printed at Juneau, is publishing a 
very interesting sketch of a journey from Juneau over 
the passes and down the chain of lakes and the Yttkon 
River to Fort Michael, from notes and photographs by 
its editor, Mr. W. A. Beddoe, which are none the less, 
interesting to the reader at the present time because 
they are strictly true, which cannot be said of much of 
what is written. Could Lieut. Schwatka have possessed 
himself of this journal when he made his tour of ex- 
ploration in 1883. it would have been of essential ser- 
vice to him. 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 
Indians and ^ Eggs, 
CHTCASt5, ill. May 14.— At last I can give an atithentic 
instance of an Indian robbing a duck's nest, and it isn't 
in Alaska either. Dispatches of St. Paul journals have 
the following: 
"Chamberlain, S. D., Special, May 7.— On complaint 
of local sportsmen, the Board of County Commissioners 
has passed a resolution reciuesting the United States 
Indian agents at Crow Creek and Lower Brule agencies 
to prohibit the Indians on their reservations from des- 
troying ducks and duck eggs in or near any and all 
lakes and artisian well ditches in Brule cottnty. The lakes 
and watercourses of the county are becoming famous as 
the rendezvous of numberless ducks and other wildfowl, 
and it had become the practice of Indians from the ad- 
jacent reservations to slaughter the ducks when ver}-^ 
young and carry away the eggs." 
I am unable to state whether the above egg depre- 
ditiong have been committed by the Indians because of 
the Alaska duck egg stories, which have been given 
great circulation, or whether the Alaska stories original- 
ly began because the Indians in Dakota took some 
eggs. 
St. Louis Game Dealers* Association, 
I have earlier mentioned the formation of an organiza- 
tion of the game dealers of St. Louis, a body somewhat 
similar to the recently defunct Produce Exchange of 
Chicago. The purposes of these two bodies were iden- 
tical, and both are deceptive and specious. Both were 
careless of the protection of game and both sought to 
tinker with the game laws for purely commercial rea- 
sons, while asking the support of sportsmen for "better 
game laws." The only sort of "better game laws" which 
the St. Louis dealers want is tlie sort which will allow 
them to sell game, more openly and more easily. The 
milk in the cocoanut is" obvious in view of recent utter- 
ances of some of the interested parties. Mr. P. H. Kiely, 
a dealer of that city, says: 
"St. Louis is the greatest city in the country for game, 
but the law prohibiting the sale of game after the lawful 
season for killing the same has expired is proving in- 
jurious, as it prevents this city from haftdling game from 
States where the law has not been violated ita killing the 
same. The season for killing game in Missouri is short- 
er than in any other State. 
"In Chicago the dealers are allowed sixty days after 
the expiration of the game law of that State to handle 
game. from other States, and here we must cease selling 
just as soon as the Missouri law expires, no matter if the 
game we have on hand was killed in some State where 
there is no game law. It is our intention to ask the 
Legislature to amend the present law in the respect I 
have named. 
"So far as punishing men for the tmlawful destruction 
of game and fish is concerned, the commission men are 
heartily in favor of tlte same. The priticipal local game 
handled here is qttail. One firm here disposed of $20,000 
worth last November and December, and a large per 
cent, of these birds were killed outside of this State. The 
Missouri law prohibits the shipment of quail and prairie 
chickens from one county to another, and as such game 
can only be lawfully killed and exposed for sale two 
months in the year, while in every other State a longer 
time is allowed, it will be observed that the St. Louis 
commission men are laboring ttnder a discrimination "in 
comparison with those living outside of the State and 
engaged in the same line of business." 
What the St. Louis dealers want is to be placed on an 
equality with Chicago, and what Chicago wants is to be 
placed on an equality with New York and Boston, and 
what New York and Boston wants is the last living game 
bird left in the West. Meantime the Supreme Court of 
Missouri has gone on record with no uncertain sound 
against the whole cold storage proposition, giving the 
sportsmen of the country one of the best decisions ever 
placed in their magazines of ofiiense. From all this I in- 
fer that in Missouri as well as Chicago the press of 
popular sentiment is beginning to become too strong for 
the dealers. They can no longer run things in the old 
high-handed manner. The cause of protection is making 
rapid and actual progress these days, and in no way 
faster than on the point of seUing game, a prodttct which 
never ought to be sold at all in this country. 
Illinois Jacfcsnipe^s Nest. 
Mr. Ruthven Deane, of the Illin.ois Audubon "Society, 
writes me in regard to the mention in Forest and 
Stream of the finding of a nest of the jacksnipe on 
Maksawba Club grounds in Indiana: ' 
."I read with interest your note on the finding of the 
nest and eggs of the jacksnipe in Indiana. Could you 
give me the name of the finder, so I could get the exact 
date of his discovery? Geo. Morcom, formerly member 
of the Maksawba Club, now of Los Angeles, Cal., has a 
nest and eggs of this snipe taken on the club marshes a 
number of years ago." 
The name of the discoverer of this nest is John Wat- 
son, of Grand Crossing, 111., a gentleman very_ well 
known among Chicago shooters. Mr. Watson will no 
doubt tell Mr. Deane the exact date of the discovery, 
which was late in April. Mr. W. C. Haskell, of this 
city, is also, I believe, credited with finding a jacksnipe's 
nest, btit this occurred a while ago, as I understand it. 
No doubt Mr, Haskell would be glad'vto give Mr. Deane 
any information possible. 
Maksawba Clob. 
Members of Maksawba Club held a meeting last week 
and completed plans for rebuilding the Maksawba Cliib 
house, lately destroyed by fire. The new building will 
have a larger assembly room than the old one, with 
atnple sleeping accommodations and everything to make 
life easy. The club even shows a marked disposition to- 
ward luxury, in that it will light the new domicde 
with gas, instead of the big lamps which in the past have 
shone over so many fair women and brave men. 
Spring Shooting Over. 
-So far as I know, most of the spring shooters have 
new put lip their guns, as the law is up all over the West, 
