Sept. 24, dg&. ] 
. . . -ii .- .-.-1 v^-. "1-1 . 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 
Illinois Season Opens. 
Chicago, 111., Sept. 15. — To-day is the opening of the 
ast of the Western chicken seasons. Some of the 
Western States begin shooting the big field grouse Aug. 
jo, others hold off till Sept. r,-but Illinois shuts the 
tars till Sept. 15. This is putting the grouse of the fields 
itily about two weeks ahead of the grouse of the woods, 
he ruffed grouse and the quail. I have earlier stated 
hat this has always seemed the best thing to do, in the 
opinion of the Illinois men who had most to do with the 
raining of our law, but in the progress of events it 
night very well happen that the same men to-day would 
hink it better to open the season Sept. 1, for this 
State and all adjoining States. As it is, our opening 
lay to-day is a very barren a*ffair, for it is an open secret 
hat our birds have been shot into and pretty much all 
rilled off in a very large majority of the best regions 
:>f the State. In some few better protected localities 
here Will be shooting to-day and for the coming week or 
;o, and to all such localities our shooters are now hur- 
-ying out, each following such tips as his judgment may 
lpprove, or accepting such invitations as he may have 
trom shooters living in sections where there are still 
some birds. This has been a hard year for protection 
Df prairie chickens in Illinois, and if the average of the 
individual "opening days" were struck I am afraid it 
would set the consensus a good many days ahead of 
Sept. 15. 
If the reader happens to have a map of the big State 
of Illinois, he may readily be able to discover why it is 
that it has been so difficult to protect the prairie chick- 
ens of Illinois. It is an enormously large country, this 
State of Illinois. It runs far, far down to the south, so 
far that the lower end of the State is quite, out of touch 
with the upper, and is regarded as almost a foreign 
region, with ways of thought quite as much Southern 
as Northern; for the State^ bases on the Ohio River, and 
that stream docs not divide sharply the characteristics 
of two sections. To patrol all this immense territory 
is an absolute impossibility. It is too big, even covered 
with railroads as it is and easily accessible and free from 
wild lands. The active warden, Harry Loveday, has 
done good work and has tried faithfully to get good 
deputies all over the State. Without thought, we ask 
that he do all this all at once, and do it so that no 
illegal birds shall be killed. Look at the map, and it 
may teach us something of the reasons w T hy this has not 
all been done all at once. The warden appoints deputies 
which are recommended to him by lists of residents. In 
very many cases the local deputy warden is inefficient, if 
not corrupt, and it is hard to get a better man to replace 
him, since, of course, the State warden is not personal- 
ly acquainted in each and every community of the State, 
flie result is that in many of the far-off counties the 
game gets little actual^ protection while the hunt for a 
decent deputy goes on." On the whole the work has been 
done as well as we could hope, though it would be 
mere folly to claim that no game is killed in this State 
out of season, or that none is shipped into this market 
out of season. Warden Loveday admits this very freely 
and knows some of the main drawbacks of his work and 
wishes he could overcome them. 
A very simple little question in traffic matters means a 
great deal to the game of Illinois, more especially the 
quail, snipe and wildfowl, and to less extent the chick- 
ens. This is the fact that the express companies will 
not permit their cars to be searched at this end of the 
St. Louis bridge. All this through stuff goes bang 
through the edge of Illinois, and over the bridge and 
out of Illinois jurisdiction, and when you figure that 
this is an airtight outlet, and that it is working and has 
been working for a long time, for over two months on 
chickens alone, and that it is going to keep on working 
for all the rest of the year, and all the rest of the other 
years, so far as can be foreseen, it may well be supposed 
that the total of game thus smuggled away from this 
State is something enormous. 
The Chicago market is the greatest of the Western 
markets, and St. Louis next. Of course, the stuff landed 
here by the express companies can more or less thor- 
oughly be spotted out and seized, and a great deal of 
such contraband game is confiscated, as see these col- 
umns from time to time. This game is game that has 
been killed- somewhere out in the State, by market hunt- 
ers, farmers' boys and "sportsmen," and which has been 
marketed perhaps at some little out-of-the-way country 
village, where perhaps there is no warden, or where 
perhaps there is one who does not know or does not 
care what is" going on about him. It is too late to 
prevent the killing of this game, but though the man 
who killed it is not available, the men who handle it and 
who have money in it can be reached and punished and 
made very careful, and perhaps ver}' reluctant ever to 
handle any more such game. This is one way of getting 
at the corrective principle of the protection of our game. 
We can't save it in the field, so Ave punish the men who 
carry it out of the field, and so teach them to do better 
the next time. 
Obviously the little local market men who find their 
shipments to Chicago interfered with look about them 
for another market. They see that the city of St. Louis 
Ire's for game as well as Chicago, and learn that their 
'shipments, once* on the train, arc safe, for they cannot be 
stopped this side the market, and the market is outside 
the State. No one knows just how much this great 
leak means to the game of Illinois, but it is without 
doubt a very big one. Warden Loveday has not yet 
I -secured any permission to go into the. express conn 
panics' cars, and until he does he cannot do much toward 
stopping the outgo of this game. Co-operation with 
St. Louis protectors seems not to have been found 
feasible to any practical extent. 
A look at the map again will show that the State of 
Illinois runs down below the latitude of St. Louis, and 
rilhat vast territory of this State may be called tributary 
to that city. It is sure that all the game killed for mar- 
ket in Illinois within too miles or 150 miles of St. Louis 
is now shipped to St. Louis and not to Chicago. That 
f n.cans that just so much game is out of all possible 
v at. h of our wardens. Look at the map again. You 
I see hundreds and thousands of little towns and villages 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
dotted all over it. Would you like the job of sitting 
down and getting for each and every one of these towns 
a warden who should prove honest, capable and efficient 
to stop all the illegal shooting within six miles of his 
home? Can you cover six miles of country yourself and 
know what is going on all over it? That is the small 
end of the protection, and the city market inspection is 
the large end of it. Both are necessary, and both ought 
to be possible in this State, so far as covering the main 
country towns and the two big city markets is con- 
cerned. It is a long, slow, hard, in some ways a thank- 
less job, that of protecting game in a country which does 
not want it protected. If all our citizens were as ready 
to steal personal property as they are. to steal that of 
the State, we would need vigilantes here in twenty min- 
utes, and our civilization would be anarchy. It is a 
matter of popular education, and it is slow. There is no 
population on earth more reluctant to take up with the 
idea of protecting game and fish than many of the in- 
habitants of the more remote country districts of south- 
ern Illinois, and especially along some of the larger 
streams, where fish and- fowl have so long been, part of 
the hereditary right of all men at all seasons. It will 
be manv years before these men will change their ways. 
One of the quickest ways to help them change would be 
to get' a chance to see what is going into St. Louis. 
* • * J .'**f # 
Chicken Bells and Game Circles. 
If we may take another look at the map we may per- 
haps get a bit of information on a more cheerful side of 
the question, for it remains true that, in spite of* all 
the inroads made by all sorts of. agencies, there still are 
chickens in Illinois. Strike a line from east to west 
across Illinois, at a point say at Springfield or neighbor- 
ing locality, twenty-five to fifty miles north or south. 
North of this line will be the chicken belt of Illinois 
and south of it the chickens will not be found in any 
considerable- numbers. There are no " chickens worth 
going after in lower Illinois, though up^oru.the other 
hand that is the best part*offthe State fppmjail. The 
quail line and the chicken line do not sharply Refine, but 
overlap roughly, thongli the division I hel^jiaVntion may 
be accepted as practically correct. Thu6^&#'f air south as 
Springfield one riaay find good chicken^ shooting, and 
Sangamon county ""'was once arid may said w;.be .still a; 
very fine game country. A little-above there, at Bloom- 
ington, you come to what was once one of the greatest 
chicken sections of the State, and it is still about as 
good as any, all this of course dependent upon local 
protection here or there. Still east and northwest of 
that country you will Be on ancient chicken grounds,, and 
you still will find bin's. Turn to the south and you run,; 
out of the good chicken country when you get very 
much below Springfield. You strike a plenty of local- 
ities which you will do well to remember when you want 
quail, but you are below the chicken belt. Sup- 
pose you get so far south as Kankakee, 111., you will 
then be in good chicken country, though only about 
fifty-five miles south of Chicago. You may go on 
south of that place for sixty, eighty or one hundred 
miles and still get birds, and at say fifty or sixty miles 
south of Kankakee you should again be in one of the 
best of the Illinois chicken regions of to-day. This 
country has been fairly well protected. Suppose you 
keep on east, on this line of latitude, until you reach the 
eastern line of Illinois, then run on up till you hit the 
big Indiana marshes along the Yellow River, the 'Iro- 
quois, the Kankakee and other marsh-lined streams. All 
this that you have caught in your net is good chicken 
country— good for to-day. I know it is good, not be- 
cause I have been over it lately, for I will not have time 
to get out for any chicken shooting this fall, or for sev- 
eral falls, but I know it because I know they have been 
shipping illegal game from that country, and getting 
caught at it. There are a great many towns where they 
do not ship chickens ahead of the law, and some of these 
have chickens and some do not; but if you find a town 
where they have been shipping some chickens, and not 
too many chickens, it is safe to suppose that the chicken 
supply is not yet quite all gone in that neighborhood. 
Now suppose we go to the extreme northwest corner 
of the State of Illinois, and take a string sixty to one 
hundred miles long and make a circle, sweeping to 
within thirty miles or so of Chicago. You will have in- 
side that circle what is to-day probably the very best 
of the chicken shooting left in the State of Illinois. 
This was in early days the best chicken country that 
ever lay out of doors, and it so happens that over a 
part of this region at least the birds have been much 
better protected than they have lower in the State. In 
that circle rudely drawn there will be included a number 
of such marshes as the once famous Winnebago Marsh, 
the marshes near Mineral, Sheffield, Annawan, etc. It 
will include the marshy ground, of Lee county, and a 
rumbcr of the great swamps which are now coming to 
be drained, but which still have grass lands along their 
borders. If one could see the whole State at a bird's- 
eye view, it would be very safe, if one were hunting for 
chicken country, and did not know the localities, to 
pick out the long river bottoms, the big marshes which 
cover large tracks of land, and all the open and tin- 
broken grass lands, the larger the acreage the better. 
The chicken loves the wild prairie grass, and next to 
that the marshes appeal toft. Driven to nest in the low 
grounds where it finds the only hiding for its nest, it 
is often drowned out, . That means a bad chicken year. 
Given a drier spring, and we have a good chicken year. 
Always we have the most chickens on wheat country 
which is also grass country, where there are large bodies 
of marsh grass or long tongues of unbroken land run- 
ning into farming regions, Given such conditions, such 
weather, in the above described zone of this big State, 
and you will have this week, with the assistance of the. 
saints, and such assistance as the wardens may this sea- 
son have given, some very fair sport at the biggest and 
best of our Illinois game birds. It will be largely corn- 
field shooting, and the birds will be big and strong. 
That is one virtue about Sept. 15 as on opening date. 
You get shooting when you shoot. 
Warden Loveday and his old friend. Bill Werner, of 
Kinsley's, have gone out to Sheffield to take a whirl at 
the chickens. They go as guests of a large land holder 
there, Mr. Humphreys, and shoot over some 200 acres 
of country which has b^n absolutely protected. They 
should meet good sport, and I do not know of two men 
who better deserve it, for the one has done all he could 
to protect the birds, and the other has spent years as a 
chef, and can cook game birds better than anyone in 
the world. Methinks they may discourse on protection 
as they travel over the fields together, over cookery as 
they gather about the board at night. 
More Hunting. 
There is a decidedly better feeling among men in all 
sorts of business in the West, and with improving con- 
ditions we always have more hunting and fishing. For 
the past few years of hard times it has been difficult 
for newspaper men and others to make a comfortable 
living, with cucumbers up to three and five cerfts each, 
but now the money market is easier and there is every 
reason to believe that we shall see a time of prosperity, so 
that it is sure we shall have times of greater activity in 
field sports. I think that there is very much more 
sporting travel this fall than last, or the fall preceding 
that. Last spring there was less shooting than for many 
years, the excitement over the war cutting off much 
shooting. In some ways this has been a good thing, 
Thus I note in Wisconsin the number of local-bred 
ducks is better than was expected, simply bom the fact 
that the birds were less disturbed than usual in the 
springtime. Out of this we may perhaps not deduce a 
moral in favor of war, but certainly one in favor of 
stopping spring shooting. 
Returns from the Minnesota fields still point out that 
the estimate of the chicken crop in general was cor- 
rect, and that it is above the average. From the coun- 
try around Hallock, in the upper tier of counties in that 
State, I have word that bags of ten and fifteen are not 
infrequent, and that the number of birds is now thought 
to be a good one, not only in that once teeming region, 
but all over the West to-day. % 
Pheasants for Missouri. 
The State of Missouri is the next to take up the ques- 
tion" if importing the Mongolian pheasants. The Big 
Lake Hunting Club, of Pulaski county, will put out 
twenty-six birds, and the Wattensas Club will soon fol- 
low this . example with a liberal stocking of its preserves. 
Two pairs of these birds were put down by the Big' Lake 
Club last year, and a fine covey has been seen this year. 
The club hopes for success in this work. 
Cook's Inlet. 
The Cook's Inlet country, of Alaska, may not be 
panning out very big in the way of gold, but it is surely 
making history as the best big game country within reach 
on this continent, though about the hardest to hunt in. 
The heads and horns of big moose and the skins of big 
bears come down kom that point almost in ship loads. 
If one has lost a fnoose, I presume that is the place to 
go for him. This is the region from which the giant 
heads shown by Periolat, of this cityj came last winter. 
They were wonders to the sporting world. 
Docks. 
Members of the Duck Island Club, whose splendid 
preserves are located along the Illinois River, this 
State, are this week to have the first try of the season on 
the bountiful crop of birds which they have on their 
marsh. This is a fine shooting place naturally, and of 
course the closing of the marshes to open shooting in- 
creased the supply of birds fourfold. I should expect to 
hear very good reports from that club. It is still too 
early for the fall flight of northern ducks, and our men 
are still less concerned about ducks than about chickens, 
but at such grounds as those of the Duck Island Club, or 
the old Spring Lake country, the early shooting at teal 
and wood ducks is sometimes very fine indeed. 
They hunt ducks out in Montana too, and do not de- 
vote all their time to shooting grizzly bears and such 
like. And they have sooners out in Montana too; men 
w.ho go out ahead of the opening day and swat the 
ducks all the same as they do back in this part of the 
country. The valley of the Big Blackfoot is described 
as the natural duck hunting grounds of the Missoula 
shooters, but there comes a story to the effect that the 
latter found the birds pretty well cleaned up at the time 
the season opened. 
They have duck preserves out in Washington, just as 
they have in the East, and they have some very good 
preserves too, I should fancy, from the story about the 
Peyton-Corbin preserve, near Lamona, on the Great 
Northern road. This club was established by Col. E. I. 
Pfe3'ton, of Spokane, Wash., and Austin Corbin 2d, who 
bought a large strip of marsh and erected a good club 
house. Last week the two gentlemen above named, with 
Lord Orford, son-in-law of D. C. Corbin, and Mr. T. B. 
Ware, made a trip to the club, marsh and bagged 375 
ducks in two days. I note one very sensible plan adopted 
by this select body of shooters: they have certain por- 
tions of their marsh which are called "safe harbors," 
where no shooting is ever allowed at any time what- 
ever. No boat is allowed to go into these parts of the 
marsh, and the ducks are left entirely to themselves, with 
tire result that they breed there and hang about the marsh 
all the time. 
Waponoca, of Tennessee. 
The annual meeting of the famous Waponoca Club, of 
Tennessee, whose grounds are on the Arkansas side, op- 
posite Memphis, will be held this week. Mr. Bun. F. 
Price, the secretary, is so good as to send me the yearly 
report, which will be submitted, and it is easily to be 
seen what a lucky and well-to do body this club is. 
The property is a large one and is owned in fee, the as- 
sets of the club being worth some $14,000, The secre- 
tary makes a most satisfactory showing of the club 
finances, and recommends that the club fence in every 
foot of land which it owns, so that it may still more 
perfectly protect its privileges. The fence would cost 
about $2,000, but is thought to be desirable. The secre- 
tary also recommends a good cook and a good warden 
on salary, the latter to give his whole time to super- 
vising the property and keeping out poachers. It is 
thought that the value of club shares, if the ;ence should 
be completed, as suggested, would range lro-i $2,000 to 
$5,000 each. The • oting on this great preserve has 
