208 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Sept. io, 1898. 
the central part of the State, back from the railroads, 
there are birds, though one should not look for them 
near an}' railroad town, where the shooters have been 
out after them for years, in season and out, with good 
guns and good dogs. J. J. Gokey writes me again 
from Dawson, N. D., that the season has begun, and 
that the birds are very abundant. "Hunters are coming 
in every night with good bags of chickens," he says, 
"and all report all the shooting they want. Among 
these parties stopping here are Messrs. Jos. Patterson, 
Philadelphia, Pa.; W. P. Tuttle and son William, 
Chicago; J. S. Marson and son, of Chicago." 
In South Dakota the season has not been opened, but 
the early shooting has this year been very general for 
many weeks, in open defiance of the law. I am told 
that Parker, S. D., is a good place to go to, and that 
one may be sure of getting some sport there. 
Michigan is yet another State which opens the fall 
campaign on Sept. 1, and to-day a great many shooters 
will go afield, but not for grouse or prairie chickens, or 
for woodcock and snipe, on all of which birds the 
shooter must wait till Oct. 1. The local ducks will 
therefore be the main sufferers to-day and during this 
month. A party of seventeen members of the Potta- 
wottamie Club, of Grand Rapids, Mich., will go down 
to their club preserve to-day, and formally and suitably 
open their shooting season. This nice little shooting 
ground is located on the marshes of the Kalamazoo, and 
on many days the shooting there is good enough to 
make one content to stay home and not go to Dakota. 
Travelers. 
Mr. W. B. Mershon, of Saginaw, Mich., was in the 
city this week for a day. He tells me that he and the 
"Saginaw crowd" will take the regulation Western trip 
this fall in October, as usual. The party will be as big 
and jolly as ever, and it will have much the same pro- 
gramme — a week or so in the Bad Lands of Montana, 
after deer (and this time after bears too, Mr. Mershon 
says), then a return to Gokey's graat game country at 
Dawson, North Dakota, where the outfit will shoot all 
the ducks and geese they want before turning eastward. 
This is a trip such as does not come to many men. 
The Saginaw crowd is one of the special car parties 
which. is welcomed wherever it goes, and which never 
leaves a bad impression behind. 
A very nice little trip is that proposed by Harry 
Goodman, of this city, who, with his friends, Theodore 
Peterson, Geo. and Robert Sanders, will take a team 
and start for an overland trip across Wisconsin and into 
Minnesota, traveling leisurely, and shooting at such 
good country as they may discover. They expect to 
start about Sept. 15, and to be gone until cold weather 
drives them home again. 
Mr. Geo. H. Stuart, 3d., of Philadelphia, Pa,, writes 
me a letter similar to others which I have answered 
personally. He wants chicken country, and says: 
"I have been reading your letter on the 'chicken' 
crop, published in last week's Forest and Stream, and 
being very anxious to get a few days' shooting, I take 
this liberty of asking for some information. 
"A friend of mine in St. Paul writes me that unless I 
am there at the opening of the season it is almost use- 
less to hunt chickens. He says he only knows the coun- 
iry over toward the South Dakota line. I will be un- 
able to reach Minnesota before the 20th of September, 
and I .wanted to ask if you knew any spot in northern 
Minnesota where I could find some birds not too wild 
to hunt. I am especially anxious tq. get two or three 
sharptail grouse at the same time. Are there not some 
places in the direction of Fargo, N. D., at least on, the 
way, where the birds are less wild and are not hunted to 
death. I will be greatly indebted to -you if you can 
give me some light on this subject, and also if you can 
give me the name and address of a reliable man." 
When Mr. Stuart gets out into Minnesota he will 
discover two things which will impress him very much. 
First, he will find a very large country, and second, he 
will find it very full of shooters. If he should go to 
Fargo, he woidd not find the chickens there any tamer 
than they are in the southern part of Minnesota, indeed 
they will have been shot for more than a week longer 
than in Minnesota. It is no use trying to s?et so far 
north as to find a place where the chickens will, on Sept. 
20, not have been shot into and broken up — that is to say, 
it would be hard to find any such place near the rail- 
roads. If. Mr. Stuart got as far north as Pembina, for 
instance, far above Fargo, he would observe that the 
local sportsmen have had a very keen scent for the best 
fields, and have shot there and shot very accurately. 
Yet in lower Minnesota, in the country not far froni 
Fargo, and in the region adjacent to Pembina, he will 
find'enough birds still left on the stubbles to give him 
sport, and these birds will be flyers too, and will tax 
his skill rather more than they would do at this date. 
I should not take it to be true that every last living 
chicken will be killed in Minnesota on opening day, 
though' no doubt the chances for a big bag would be 
better then than two weeks later. 
If Mr. Stuart will go to Pembina, I think perhaps Ned 
Cavalier would be good enough to direct him how and 
where to go, and could get him his coveted chance 
to stop a sharptail ed grouse — which the stranger will 
hardly be able to tell from the pinnated grouse until 
he gets it in his hand, though he soon will learn to 
see the difference when the bird rises. At Fargo also 
(though Fargo is a big and busy Western wheat town) 
the traveler can get out about a dozen miles or two, and 
can find a few of the sharpies on the wheat stubbles and 
about the cornfields. He will find plenty of these birds 
in the sand hills southwest of Fargo. At this point, or 
at Pembina, he will have to take out a $25 license. All 
things being considered, if I were an Eastern man and 
wanted a good Western trip, which would do for me to 
remember many years, I believe I should just take out 
my little license and go out to Dawson, N. D. J. J. 
Gokey, of that city, I know to be all right, and I would 
prefer to direct a man to a place which I knew about 
personally than to send him bo some good hearsay total- 
ity. I never saw anyone who came back from that part 
of North Dakota without being satisfied with the sport 
he had. It is not the only place, but it is the best I 
personally know of out there. The S*l^ warden, Geo. 
Bowers, avIio has been reappointed for a second term, is 
a friend of mine, a good fellow, and a good shooter. I 
am sure he will do all he can to help Mr. Stuart to a 
good place, if he can tell of any better than Dawson. 
Of course, one must expect to ride out perhaps twenty 
miles from the railroads, but that doesn't take long in 
that country, where the roads and the air are a revela- 
tion to an Eastern man. The trip out to the great 
prairies is pay enough in itself, and I think we may safe- 
ly promise Mr. Stuart his sharptail, and several of him. 
Sooners Here and There. 
Public sentiment out at Yankton, S. D., is very frank 
and outspoken in regard to the observation of the 
chicken law. # The following naive statement from the 
Gazette, of Yankton, may give a notion of things in 
that neck of woods. It is dated Aug. 26, several days 
before open season, and states: 
"The chicken harvest is in full blast these days. To 
be sure none of the hunters are anxious to have it 
published that they have been out, owing to the fact 
that there is at least a pretense of a law which pro- 
hibits killing the birds at this time of the year. This 
does not prevent the sport, however, and large bags are 
brought in every night. One man captured fourteen fine 
birds yesterday and he says it has been a good many 
years since the crop was so good or so ripe for the 
harvest at this time of the year." 
The same paper states calmly: 
"D. D. Gross and Chas. Edmunds are back from 
their hunting trip with H. E. Dickenson in Clark 
county. They report the chicken crop in that part 
of the country as very plentiful, and shooting good, but 
extreme heat spoiled all their game." 
They ought to see that newspaper man, and tell him 
not to talk out in meeting that way. 
Out in Nebraska is another newspaper man with 
whom I think a great many men would be glad to 
shake hands. He lives at Hastings and in his paper 
he says: 1 
"Sportsmen are not as plentiful in the' sand hills these 
days as they used to be. This is caused by the scarcity 
of chickens, and the scarcity of chickens is caused by 
potshot hunters killing them off before they can fly. 
A true sportsman is a gentleman, a potshot hunter is a 
coward." 
That is the good side of local journalism. Here is 
the other end of the pendulum, from Sauk Rapids, 
Minn., a locality which has always been a good one for 
chickens. The Sentinel, of that tpwn, has a kick: 
"Common and well-substantiated talk on the streets 
of St. Cloud and Sauk Rapids," it says, "justify these 
remarks or we would not make them. Every day much 
chicken shooting is done all over Benton county and 
the north portion of Sherburne county without hin- 
drance. At least one person who has previously been 
in the hands of the game commission for a very large 
violation of the law, and was able to compromise it 
privately, has now been shooting chickens steadily for 
more than a month past, as if his private compromise 
insured him immunity for the future. It is not extrava- 
gant to say that the administration of the game laws 
this season, in this vicinity, is a farce and a fraud. 
"We do not advise every farmer in the country, with 
all his boys and hired men, to turn in at once and get 
as many of the chickens they have raised as possible 
without regard to the law, but we do not advise ' to the 
contrary — not at all." 
The Sentinel writer does not think the citv sportsman 
is a lovely being. Here is the way another paper— 
the News, of Aurora, 111. — paints him: 
"Farmers of Sugar Grove say they do not wish to 
be unreasonable, but when a valuable colt or a fat steer 
is killed or wounded by some irresponsible shooter with 
a bottle of whisky in each hip pocket and a gallon jug 
full of the same stuff under the seat in the buggy, all 
will admit that it is about time to call a halt. The 
farmers have decided to stop hunting on their premises 
at all hazard." 
Inasmuch as our chicken law does not open for two 
weeks yet in Illinois, I am disposed to believe that the 
Sugar Grove farmers have seen a few sooners, and not 
sportsmen. Thus the sins of the former bring punish- 
ment on the latter. I personally know a great many 
shooters who do not quite fill the above description. 
An honest note is this from the Independent, of 
Chippewa Falls, Wis.: 
"Sportsmen of this city are aroused to a pitch of 
just anger at the seeming indifference of the game war- 
dens in respect to the violation of the law. That this 
vandalism should be now Dermitted has aroused true 
sportsmen to righteous indignation, and the attention 
of the State authorities has been called to the matter. 
The result is that a special State warden is now located 
here, and has been doing good work of late. 
"If this practice continues much longer few game 
birds will be left by the time the open season arrives. 
Mallard, teal and wood ducks are now being killed by 
these unscrupulous pot-hunters and criminals, for no 
other purpose than an apparent desire to satisfy a fiend- 
ish delight to slaughter. 
"It seems that the killing of game before the ex- 
piration of the law is sroing on to a greater extent this 
year than ever before." 
Still another local paper has a good man running it, 
at Lancaster, Wis. (the Herald). He says that the 
quail are coming back into his part of the State, to the 
pleasure of many who knew them long ago, and adds: 
"But with the return of the quail comes the report 
that they are being killed in several localities both by 
hunters and trappers, despite the law. This" is too bad, 
for if the practice continues and becomes general the 
quail will go the way of the pigeon. Public opinion 
should assert itself to protect the quail. When a man 
or boy kills a string of quail, let him be- convicted, if 
not in a court of justice, at least in the circle of his 
acquaintance, of having done a shameful act and one 
which only future good conduct can atone, for." 
I was talking with President Timberlake, of the Min- 
nesota Fish and Game Commission, out at St. Paul, this 
week, and he complained bitterly about the lack of 
public appreciation and understanding of the work of 
protection. "We want more public sentiment in our 
favor," was his cry. Yet he has more public sentiment 
in his favor in the State of Minnesota than the protec- 
tors of almost any Western State have behind them. I 
submit that the above reprints from local papers show 
a very good beginning of public sentiment in some 
of the cases, and a very bad sort' of sentiment in some 
of the others. The newspapers help to create or to 
change a great deal of sentiment on such matters. The 
country paper is read by many dwellers in the coun- 
try who give heed to its advice. I suggest to Mr. Tim- 
berlake, for instance, that he call on the Sauk Rapids 
Sentinel man and labor with him earnestly. 
Four Burlington, Iowa, men came across the river 
and shot some nice fat Illinois birds in Lee county; 
$10 each and costs, but I can't get the names. The 
sportsmen about Elgin, 111., have been out on the watch 
for sooners, and I don't doubt they landed a few last 
Sunday, as the scouts made a grand sooner hunt on 
that day. 
Out in Minnesota they have a great scheme for cast- 
ing down the spirits of the sooners. Tliey seize not 
only their guns, but their dogs. I think I shall go out 
to Sam Fullerton's house before long, and pick me out 
a nice dog, as he has quite a lot of good ones now that 
he has confiscated. Around Crookston several dogs, 
have been retained, it is said, and their sorrowing own- 
ers will see them, no more. It costs something these 
days to get a good chicken dog, and it grinds a man 
a lot to see a fat and smug warden sail in and reap the 
fruits of many weary months of training. Some of the 
sooners say that they are almost persuaded it is wrong 
to go out before the law opens. 
Wild Pigeons. 
Mr. Taylor A. Snow, of Chicago, who used to live in 
Ohio in the old wild pigeon days, and saw the great 
flight before it was much decreased, has recently returned 
from a visit to certain rather wild and little frequented 
parts of old Mexico, and he says that he has undeniably 
found the wild pigeon in very large numbers in that 
country. He thinks there may possibly be a northern 
migration of these birds at some later day. At first 
hearing this discovery of the wild pigeon sounds very in- 
teresting, and it is perhaps true, though it occurs t& 
me the discoverer may perhaps have mistaken the south- 
wester; bird, the band-tailed pigeon, for the old pas- 
senger pigeon of our fathers' days. The two birds are 1 - 
very similar in general appearance, as I may personally 
testify from a shooting acquaintance with the band-tails'' 
in New Mexico several years ago. It would be great 
news should it prove the case that the wild pigeon is 
really 3till alive in something of the old numbers, though 
now in an alien land. 
Odd Game. 
A friend advises me that one day last week Mr. Dick 
Hoover, of Fox Lake, Wis., while out casting frog for 
bass had the singular fortune of getting a strike from a 
bittern, which was standing on the bank, and near which 
the frog landed. The bird caught the frog, and the 
angler struck and hooked the bird, landing it after a . 
sharpish fight. The event is mentioned as a curious one, 
and so it is, though this is the second time I have heard 
of such a case. 1 earlier recorded the other instance in 
these columns of Forest and Stream. It occurred on 
the Maksawba Club grounds along the Kankakee River, 
in Indiana. 
Unconstitutional ? 
There is a good deal of complaint among shooters of 
a certain class at St. Louis that the law protecting wood 
ducks at this season is an unjust and hard-hearted affair, 
inasmuch as by Oct. 1 all these birds have taken flight 
and gone elsewhere, so that the shooters of the Missouri 
streams and slashes get no show at the birds which were 
born and reared these. It is more than hinted that the 
law is not thought worthy of observation, and is dis- 
regarded by many members of the shooting clubs who 
have grounds in duck country. The shooters think 
that when they go out after doves and woodcock iti 
August they should also be permitted to shoot wood 
ducks, as that is the only chance they will get at these 
birds. 
In this state of affairs we have nothing new and noth- 
ing noble, nothing newer or nobler than human nature, 
which is about four-thirds selfishness in a good many 
men and a good many so-called sportsmen. Any man 
who feels and acts that way is no lover of protection and 
no lover of any game bird. He doesn't want to have 
any protection or any law. He just wants to shoot 
whenever he feels like it. It is surrendering the whole 
question of the continuance of the American game supply 
when we hear men of presumed intelligence reiterate this 
old, senseless cry. If anybody is ever going to get a shot 
at this bird let me be first, at no matter what cost! Does 
it then follow that the bird one does not himself kill 
is at once thereafter killed by some one else? Is it im- 
possible of supposition that this same bird may perhaps 
have a better chance for its life, so to speak, if it is not 
killed? Let the shooters of St. Louis, more especially 
of the shooting clubs which are supposed to hold only 
sportsmen, give this matter a little sober consideration. 
Is it too hard to ask them to weigh the simple propo- 
sition that a dead duck lays no eggs, whereas a live duck 
may possibly do so? This is the old question of Illinois 
and Wisconsin over again. .Wisconsin says — and long 
said it on her statute books — "We shall not stop spring 
shooting until Illinois does!" That always seemed to 
me to be the most weak-kneed piece of legislative enact- 
ment on earth. 
By the way, speaking of St. Louis. I observe a local 
report to the effect that "young owls" are now and for 1 
some time have been advertised on restaurant bills of 
fare in that city. Very likely the sooners of Illinois 
are shipping in an occasional "owl" to St. Louis, 
Knapsacks and Packsacks. 
I notice' that a great deal of complaint is made of the \ 
U. S. army knapsack, the gist of which complaint is 
that the soldier cannot wear it. because it cuts off his ' 
breath, is clumsy, heavy and improbable. How would 
it do for the Government to have a look at the common 
pine woods packsack used all over Wisconsin and the 1 
Western pine regions? This bag does not cut off the \ 
