308 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Oct. is, 1898. 
box goes nicely into a wagon bed, and the members of 
the Saginaw crowd this year may be sure they can have 
a good meal at any station of the road or any condi- 
tion of the weather. 
The other contrivance which Mr. Mershon has along 
this year is a wood case for a .30-40 Winchester rifle, 
the sort that has that two-story front sight. This case 
is cut out to fit the contour of the rifle, which is bedded 
perfectly in one side of the case, so that it can not pos- 
sibly be injured. The opposite side folds over the 
matrix case and latches with a tidy catch. In the back 
of the case is a slot cut for cleaning rods and rags and 
oiler. This case cannot be used as a saddle case, but 
for any ordinary travel by rail or by wagon, or for 
sending a rifle by express, it is the finest thing I ever 
saw. The Winchester people may want to see this 
case of Mr. Mershon's some day, for it is perfection for 
the transportation of the .30-40. As to that arm, Mr. 
Mershon says he would think of no other. He killed 
a number of deer with it last year, and says that this 
fall he is going to get a grizzly, of which animals they 
always see tracks in plenty in the bad lands. That they 
will get deer this trip is a certainty, and I hope they 
get the bear. 
Quail. 
The quail season is now on for the most of our 
Western shooting regions. It is pleasant to report 
that these admirable game birds are more than holding 
their average numbers. From all I can learn, I should 
say that the quail season for Illinois, for Iowa, Kan- 
sas and lower Minnesota, as well as for Michigan south 
peninsula and upper Indiana, is better than the average 
of the past four years. As to the Southern quail fields 
I cannot say so much, as it is still too early for much 
quail shooting there. 
Reports personally received from Michigan state that 
the birds are abundant enough, but many of them so 
very small that a good sportsman will not shoot at 
them. The weather has been rather warm. On the 
whole the quail shooting of that State will be better two 
or three weeks later than it is at present. The crop is 
a great one. 
In the neighborhood of Bloomington, 111., quail are 
reported in unusual numbers this fall. From the line of 
Bloomington southward, in Illinois, there will be good 
quail shooting from now on out of most any of the little 
towns. In all that part of the State, however, and more 
especially in the lower part, and in upper Missouri, 
the supply of quail will depend somewhat on the migra- 
tion. It is not generally known, yet I consider it to 
be true and proved by the observations of many accu- 
rate sportsmen, that there is a regular migration of quail 
to the southward in the territory above mentioned, and 
that this occurs, if not every year, at least very often. 
This fact I have earlier mentioned in the columns of 
Forest and Stream. 
Around Lansing, Mich., quail are, according to re- 
ports, very numerous this fall, but local shooters say 
that the law ought to begin on Nov. 1, as the birds are 
too small to shoot at the beginning of October. 
Several shooters of Grand Rapids, Mich., who went 
out on opening da3 r , had good luck. A nice mixed bag 
was made by Gen. I. C. Smith, Dr. Wooster and Mr. 
P. O'Rilley, who got twenty-seven birds, woodcock, 
grouse and quail. 
Sedgwick county, Kan., though boasting the largest 
city of the State, Wichita, boasts also that it has more 
quail this fall than any county in the State. This Kan- 
sas quail shooting is most enjoyable sport, as I can 
testify after many days spent in the low and open covers 
of that favored land. The hedge row shooting of Kan- 
sas is the easiest and most deadly form of quail shooting 
to be found in America. 
By the way, at Abilene, Kan., another town which I 
once visited and found to be full of good sportsmen, and 
in a country full of game, I observe they are now form- 
ing a protective association to look after violators of 
the game laws. The local shooters offer $50 for con- 
viction. It is said that market hunters are shipping a 
great many quail out of that part of the State. 
Texas opens her quail season Oct. 1. The Dennison 
Herald states that a great many Dennison shooters are 
going out after the "'festive flutterers." I presume the 
newspaper means quail. I could never see any real rea- 
son for calling a quail a "'festive flutterer," or a trout a 
royal encarnadined beauty of the gurgling stream, or 
other words to that effect. 
Messrs. Geo. Thorn and W. B. Leffingwell, both of 
Montgomery Ward & Co., this city, will start late this 
fall for an extended hunting trip in Texas. They go 
on the invitation of a friend at Dallas, and will shoot 
ducks on a club preserve, and quail in some of the best 
covers in the world. Their trip will include a visit to 
the famous Rockport waters, and before they return to 
Chicago they will have had the best time they ever 
knew, even in their extended sporting experiences. 
A Side Hunt. 
They have some game out in Minnesota, and I pre- 
sume that under fair treatment they always would have 
game there. The town of Graceville, Minn., was once 
reputed to be in one of the best shooting countries in 
that State. I take it that the shooters of Graceville do 
not like their game and want to get rid of it, for it is 
announced that a big hunting contest lias been planned 
by the sportsmen of Graceville for Oct. 17 and 18. 
Seventy-two men will participate, and will be divided 
into two sides. 
Past and Present. 
I have had occasion to mention above the fact that 
the Jerome Marble special car party was this fall in 
North Dakota. The trips of the Jerome Marble party 
have in a way been famous ones, and cover a number of 
years. At one time this party used to go down into the 
Indian Territory, which at that time was considered the 
best shooting country of the West. I do not know how 
long it has been since the last trip was made to the 
Indian Nations, but presume that the change was made 
on account of the failing game supply of that country. 
It is a fact that to-day the Indian Nations are cleaned 
out of their game, and that probably there never will be 
much shooting there again. The opening up of the 
country by the railroads, and the settlement of large 
bodies of land by the many homesteaders, have been 
causes in the extermination of the game. Deer and 
turkeys are now as scarce in the Nations as they are 
about anywhere else, and even the chickens and quail 
are now uncertain quantities. 
The remote and wilder portions of every Western dis- 
trict offering any abundance of game are now sought out 
with wonderful exactness by non-resident sportsmen. 
One after another these good game countries are cleaned 
up. I know of only two regions in the United States 
open to wildfowl shooters which may be called really 
good game countries. These are North Dakota and the 
Gulf coast of Texas, The towns of Dawson in North 
Dakota, and Rockport or Galveston in Texas, are in 
their way centers of a great news interest to sportsmen. 
When they cease to hold this interest, where will the 
non-resident shooters be going then? To Alaska, in 
part, very likely, and to the far British Northwest. I 
name Dawson and Rockport as the extreme northern 
and southern shooting points of the traveling sportsmen 
(or let us call the Devil's Lake country of North 
Dakota as the northern edge of the shooting region). 
Between these points and the Gulf coast there were once 
thousands of snooting points where one could have all 
the sport he cared for. To be sure, there are many 
points where he can still have this sport, but to one who 
has really had any knowledge of this country for the 
last decade the changes in its shooting resources are 
far from pleasant to contemplate. The glories of the 
Platte River have departed. The Arkansas River is no 
longer a wonderland of wildfowl. The Indian Nations 
are shot out. The once apparently exhaustless covers of 
Texas are said to be failing. The New Madrid country 
of the Sunk Lands, once miraculous in its duck supply, 
was long ago shot out. One by one the famous locali- 
ties have lost their fame. Is it mere calamity howling 
to note these facts and their significance, or is it mere- 
ly a just and open-eyed view of the actual state of 
affairs in Western shooting? I have been working on 
Forest and Stream for ten years, and in those ten 
years I have seen such changes in the game resources 
of the West as would break your heart to think about. 
A Game Record. 
I wonder if we stop to reflect how many thousands and 
millions of head of game, of one sort or another, are 
killed in the United States every 3^ear? The Tamalpais 
Sportsmen's Club, of San Francisco, in its annual re- 
port, says that 1,761 quail and 44 snipe were listed on 
its game books for 1897. The club records state that 
since Oct. 1, 1892, there have been killed 10,970 quail and 
g6 deer, A glance over the individual scores does not 
show any extraordinary amount of game killed by any 
one man, but the totals are extremely significant. The 
men who complain because they cannot kill 100 birds 
a day when they go shooting are the men who do not 
deserve any shooting at all. A club limit of fifty birds 
to the man per day is a liberal one in any part of the 
United States, and is one which ought not to be ex- 
ceeded. The time will come when twenty-five birds a 
day will be princely sport. If the hundred-birds-a-day 
men will stop to figure how much game would be killed 
on that basis in a single day by himself and men of 
similar ambitions, and will then multiply that amount by 
the number of days in the total shooting season, and 
then multiply that by five or ten years, he will begin to 
ask himself where the game is all to come from. The 
Tamalpais Club is a moderate one, but the figures foot 
large for five years. How about the market totals and 
sportsmen totals for the entire country? 
Personal. 
Mr. W. H. Mullins, of Salem, Ohio, the well-known 
maker of metal hunting and fishing boats, was in the 
city this week on a brief visit. 
Thj Minnesota Indian War. 
Chicago, 111., Oct. 6. — The daily papers this week 
are full of accounts of the so-called Indian uprising in 
Minnesota. As usual these stories arc full of inaccu- 
racies, partly due to the hurry of preparations, and part- 
ly to the inaccuracy of the sources of information. As 
this "outbreak" is occurring on the shores of Leech 
Lake, Minn., within six miles of one of the best patron- 
ized sporting resorts of the West, and adjacent to a 
country which in natural course of events would have 
been overrun .with deer and moose hunters this fall, I 
take it that a brief resume of the facts may not be out 
of place in the Forest and Stream. The history of 
this "Indian war" is much like that of many other In- 
dian wars, or armed disturbances in which whites and 
Indians have taken part. It is a story in which ignor- 
ance, misunderstanding, dishonesty and bad faith play 
as usual their leading parts. 
Some time during the past summer some individuals 
of the tribe of Chippewas, who live on Bear Island, in 
Leech Lake, were accused of selling whisky to the In- 
dians. Some of these men were arrested and taken to 
Duluth for trial. Other Indians were taken as wit- 
nesses, necessary to the conviction of the accused 
parties. After these witnesses had testified, they were 
turned loose in the streets of Duluth, strangers, hundreds 
of miles from home, unprovided with mileage for their 
return, and without any knowledge of the new sur- 
roundings in which they found themselves. These acts 
the Indians did not understand, but thought it injustice 
on part of the Great Father. Added to this was the in- 
dignation of the whole tribe over the invasion of their 
reservation by the lumbermen, under the so-called "burnt 
timber act," to which reference was lately made in the 
columns of Forest and Stream. Last winter these lum- 
bermen stole 20,000,000ft. of lumber from the Indians of 
the Leech Lake reservation, under cover of this burnt 
timber act. The Indians had been told that the reserva- 
tion belonged to them. They thought they owned it. 
When their timber was taken they thought the Great 
Father had been unjust. All of which was perfectly 
true. 
At the time of the arrest of the whisky sellers there was 
one bad Indian, who escaped and refused to come in. 
He did, however, come in on annuity day to the agency 
near Walker, Minn. He was seized in the trader's store. 
Others of the Indians saw this, attacked the officers and 
took away the prisoner. He retreated to his home and 
defied the officers to take him. 
The part of the tribe of Chippewas to which this man 
belonged lives, and for a long time has lived, on Bear 
Island, a body of land situated on the east side of Leech 
Lake. This island is about three miles long and perhaps 
three-quarters of a mile in width. It has long been held 
by the Chippewas as a sort of stronghold. Here was 
fought one of the bloodiest battles of the ancient wars : ; 
between the Sioux and Chippewas. The Sioux attacked 
by night, coming out in their canoes to take the island, 
but were repulsed by the determined resistance of the 
Chippewas. Although the Sioux were located far to the 
west in the reservation days, the Chippewas have al- 
ways held Bear Island by their ancient right. There 
are only about 150 persons who hold this island, and all 
of these are blanket Indians. The fugitive wanted by 
the authorities belong to this Bear Island band.. He 
made his home on the main land, on a rocky point 
about a mile from the island. It was here that the 
deputy marshal and the troops this week attempted his 
arrest. Some of the newspaper stories say that the 
troops moved on Bear Island. This is not the case, be- 
cause the Indians had left Bear Island in anticipation of a 
fight, and had taken to the main land, where they could 
not be penned in, but could scatter and escape. Some 
of the daily newspapers printed maps, showing Bear 
Island located on the west side of Leech Lake, and i 
marked the spot where the fight took place as near 
Walker, Minn. This is altogether erroneous. The daily , 
editors, no doubt, mistook for Bear Island that long 
headland near Walker on which the agency buildings 
are located. The truth of the matter is that the officers 
and troops sailed in launches, nearly twenty miles across 
Leech Lake, before they reached Bear Island. Then 
they disembarked on the headland above mentioned, 
where the fugitive had been joined by all the blanket In- 
dians of Bear Island. Back of this point stretches a 
great point of hardwood timber, matted with the heavy 
underbrush common to all such timber. Along the' beach 
at this point is a narrow strip of sand. Here, it seems, 
the soldiers gathered to make their coffee. The In- 
dians were concealed in the brush back of the beach, and 
it was from such cover that they probably did the firing 
which resulted in the loss of life reported by the party 
of officers and troops. The country lying east of Leech 
Lake is rarely visited by white men. It has been little 
known by the sporting public until within the past 
year, since which time it has received considerable at- J 
tention in these columns as a good shooting and fishing, 
country. The Indians may scatter to the east and north- 
east into those districts most affected by the non-resi- 
dent deer hunters in their fall hunting. If they are feel- 
ing very ugly they might pick up a deer hunter or 
two, though "this is altogether improbable. 
The above facts I gained largely from an interview with 
Mr. H. G. McCartney, the owner of Kabekona Camp, on 
Woman Lake, located near the edge of the Leech Lake 
reservation. Mr. McCartney last month made a trip 
over this identical region, some mention of which trip 
was made in the Forest and Stream at that time. It 
may be gathered that this is a wild and lawless part 06 
the pine woods country. Near Mr, McCartney's hotel 
lives old Bungo Buck, an outlawed Indian who has a 
certain following about him. The attitude of Bungo: 
has been hostile to the others of his tribe, but should he 
now conclude to go on a little warpath of his own, he 
might make trouble for shooters or fishers in that neigh- 
borhood. This possibility has been considered by at 
least one party, who intended to make a hunting trip! 
of some weeks in that region. Members of this party! 
are Messrs. Clark, Pope and Reed, with the newspaper! 
artists, W. L. Wells and William Schmedtgen, all of, 
Chicago. These gentlemen will perhaps defer their 
trip. Mr. Schmedtgen was one of the ablest newspaper 
artists with the army in Cuba. Here he became ill and 
returned home to recover his health. He said that he 
did not relish the idea of going into another war for his 
health, so he thought he might wait until the clouds 
rolled by. Messrs. R. R. Donnelly and Alex. Lloyd, twoi 
well-known Chicago sportsmen, have been in camp 
weeks. They arc now out of the woods and home again. 
Mr. and Mrs. Blin Smith, of Dixon, 111., have also been in 
and Mrs. Blin Smith, of Dixon, 111., have also been in 
camp on Little Boy Lake, in the same region. On Sept. 
28 word came that Mr. Smith had caught two muscal-i 
longe, 28 and 30lbs. This camp has not been heard from 
since that time. It is altogether unlikely that the least 
danger attaches to a hunting or fishing trip anywhere in 
that region. 
It is stated that the Bear Island Indians were further; 
incensed by the report that the Government intended to 
remove them from their reservation and place them on 
the White Earth reservation, further west. They con 
sidered this removal from their ancient citadel on Beat 
Island as something more than their tribal pride could 
endure. No doubt these Indians are in the wrong, andj 
no doubt they will be punished. Yet, if we look at it 
from their side, the side of ignorance and misunder- 
standing, we may perhaps realize that they hardly knew 
what all this was about, though they feel that they hav« 
been imposed upon until they would rather die than tc 
endure it any longer. They may be wrong in this, from: 
our standpoint, but this is perhaps the way it seems tc 
them. Under the whole pitiful story lies the greed □ 
commerce. The lumbermen want the pine lands of thes< 
Minnesota reservations. E. Hough 
1200 Boyce Building, Chicago, 111. 
Massachusetts Partridge Snaring* 
Danvers, Mass., Oct. 2. — Editor Forest and Stream: 
Two weeks of our shooting season has gone and no: 
much game has been killed. I went out on the opening 
day and got one partridge and one woodcock; have beer 
out twice since and got a partridge on the hills or high 
ground, the other times in swamps. Game seems to be 
scarce or else I can't find it. I hear of a man irj 
Middleton who had twenty-nine partridges that hae 
been strangled to death to ship to Boston markets, anc 
he stated that he believed over 100 had been snared anc 
sold in Boston the week before. I was unable to learr 
his name, and as there are so many in the business uj 
