so 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Jan.. 14, 1899. 
five trips to; Arkansas vsrith. more or less .success. Tlie 
last time there were two parties of us from Illinois, three 
in each partjs we killed fifteen deer, before dogs, but 
there was no other game, and shooting a deer before 
xiog is not just the proper thing, I think. This was in 
January, '97. about ten miles above Clarendon, Ark." 
In reply to the above. I wrote Mr. Whitman that I 
thought lie might get good country out at Texarkana, 
Ark. Now comes friend Joe Irwin, of the Capital Hotel, 
Little Rock. Ark., with one of his interesting budgets of 
Southern shooting news, which I give below. Perhaps 
this will be of use to Mr. Whitman, as well as others. 
It i? ray wish to make this office a clearing house for 
shooting news, and I am always very much obliged to 
friends who will send information such as that given by 
Mr. Irwin, who writes as follows : > 
"A party of four of lis went down to Fenton, La., la.st 
week, where the shooting on quail last year was very 
fine, but it had evidently been shot out the year before, as 
we found them very scarce. Saw millions of ducks in an 
open lake (Serpent Lake), three miles from Fenton, but 
there was no cover that we could use to any advantage, 
though we managed to pick up some fifty or sixty in a 
couple of days. En route we met our friends Dick 
Merrill and Frank Parmelee, going to High Island and 
Port Arthur on a duck and goose hunt. 
"At Texarkana we also met Mr. Gray Carrdtlf tif Little 
Rock, with a party of English friends, returning from 
a short trip al)ove Texarkana, and they had with them 
four bears, eight deer and tAventy-three or twenty-four tur- 
keys, and as it should be, they were a very happy party. 
^'I had a little turkey hunt over in St. Francis the 
first week in December, and was lucky enough to kill six 
fine turkeys. I called them up as they are called in the 
spring. I carried three of them on my back about four 
miles, that made me quite wearJ^ 
"Quail shooting has been quite good in Arkansas this 
year, and ducks too, in some parts, but I have not hunted 
ducks much yet." 
What Ails Wisconsin? 
Chicago. III., Jan. 7. — Yesterday afternoon the Forest 
AND Stream office was favored with a visit from Mr. John 
Stevens, a wealthy sportsman of Neenah, Wis., who 
spends a great deal of time in pleasant trips in different 
parts of the, country, especially in the upper part of his 
own State. Mr. Stevens brings some rather startling 
news about the state of affairs in Wisconsin. He says 
tJiat the executive officers of the State entirely fail to 
give any practical enforcement to the non-export clause 
of the Wisconsin game law. I have earlier repeatedly 
called attention to the big game "fence" run under one 
name or another in the city of Milwaukee. There was 
some talk about the breaking up of this Milwaukee clear- 
ing house for the Chicago game markets, and without 
doubt a great deal of good was done, yet it would be folly 
to assert that the clearing house has been abolished or 
seriously impaired. Not only does Milwaukee act as a 
blind for the Chicago market, but also for the St. Louis 
market, the latter one of tlie largest and most un- 
scrupulous game markets in the world. It is high time 
that the people of Wisconsin should take it into their own 
hands to see that the game laws are enforced in this 
regard, otherwise within the next five years they will 
wake up and find their State stripped bare, and no better 
than Illinois or Iowa. 
Mr. Stevens was rccentli' in the upper part of the Stale 
near Prentice, Fifield and Ogema. He was there not for a 
hurried visit, but for some time, and he knows what he is 
talking about. He told me that the amount of partridges 
JhsLt were being shipped from Ogema alone was some- 
thing almost past belief. He said that time and again he 
saw heaps of partridges piled up at the station platform 
in piles reaching almost as high as his head. Shipments 
of 400 and 500 a day from that one point alone were the 
ordinary thing during the open season. The express com- 
pany carries these birds all to Milwaukee. Thej' go into 
one end of the commission houses at Milwaukee, and out 
at the other end into a lake boat, which carries them to 
Chicago. There is no reason or excuse for the denial of 
these facts, for they are facts. They require no comment 
other than the reiteration that the people of Wisconsin 
will do very well to wake up and get their laws enforced. 
That so much game should be shipped from one little 
town, itself only one of many, shows that there has been 
a systematic and extensive campaign laid out. As a matter 
of fact, agents of commission houses at St. Louis and 
Chicago have been out all over upper Wisconsin among 
the little outlying pine woods towns, and have made busi- 
ness arrangements with local shooters to shoot steadily 
for their markets. It is not generally known that this 
plan is pursued by the commission houses, but really this 
is the way the prairie chickens were cleaned out of the 
Western country. In the earlier days the commission 
houses located their shooters, shipped them ammunition 
and put them on a working footing, one house sometimes 
having out a great many men. I remember that old Col.- 
E. S. Bond once told me that he had just shipped 3,000 
shells to one of his market-hunters out in Nebraska. This 
same systematic onslaught has been recently transferred 
from the Western prairies to the Northern pine woods, 
and the game now marked for extermination is now the 
ruffed grouse instead of the prairie chicken. The local 
shooters are paid 40 cents fo"r each bird they kill, some- 
times as high as 50 cents. The bags run from twenty to 
forty birds a day to each man, and the number of men is 
such as would startle the good people of Wisconsin were it 
known. A laboring man can make from $4 to $6 a day 
shooting grouse, where he could make perhaps $1.50 a 
day at much harder and less pleasurable work. One man 
said he had shipped 1,500 birds last fall up to date, and 
he was ,still shooting, and had seventy-five birds ready to 
■ ship. This m.an said that he had paid off the mortgage on 
•hjs.-farrn, by means of his m.arket shooting-. 
You may always trust a market-hunter to know the 
easiest and md*t deadly way of killing his game. This 
slaughter of ruAed grouse in Wisconsin is going on in the 
slashitigs and pine \vpods of a logging country The 
cover is very thick, and the country is hard, to travel. 
Wing shooting would be too difficult for the market- 
hunter, nor could a bird dog very well be worked. The 
marl^et'hunter uses a little yelping cur dog, which trees 
th" (yroiis^, and the .shooter ha? sinal! excuse for ever 
missing a shot at a bird, since he simply pots it as it sits 
on a limb. 
It is well known to all acquainted vvith the Northern 
woods that much of the shooting on grouse is done along 
the logging roads, where the birds come to feed or walk 
around. Often very fair shooting can be had by the 
sportsman who simply walks along the road and does not 
need any dog. The habits of the grouse are known very 
well to these Northern market-hunters, just as the habits 
of the prairie chicken were known to the Western market 
bittchers. Two men this fall put into practice one of the 
most deadly schemes of which I have heard. They had a 
two-wheeled cart, which they loaded up with wild I'ice and 
other bait, and they traveled all along the country roads 
and baited them for miles. After they had done this they 
began their work along the same roads, and are said to 
have killed thou,sand5 of birds. I am not in the least at- 
tempting to be sensational in these statements, but they are 
all true and su.sceptihle of proof. The express agent at 
Ogema could tell some startling stories if he could be 
indiiced to .speak. This is part of the work done by these 
pious frauds, the express companies, who tell all the game 
wardens that they are in sympathy with them and want to 
aid them in their work. They can best aid the wardens in 
their work by beginning their solicitude at the shipping 
end and not at the receiving end of the consignment. 
Mr. Stevens tells me that a very common method of 
evading one part of the Wisconsin law is the shipping of 
deer in barrels, covered up under a lot of partridges. I 
presiime that he may also have heard of the Christmas tree 
dodge, which has been worked to a very great extent tliis 
pa.'^t fall. Each fall a great many thousand Christmas 
trees are shipped from upper Wisconsin to the cities, and 
it has long been the custom of the astute woodsman to 
conceal a deer or two in the car under the Christmas 
trees. This is a way they have of saying Merry Christmas 
to the game wardens. Week before last week there was 
one arrest made at Pembine of a man who was working 
the Christmas tree racket. 
Mr. Stevens tells me that there is no pretense of en- 
forcing the license clause of the Wisconsin game laws, and 
he expresses surprise that any one should imagine that 
there had been any attempt at collecting the non-resident 
license. He says that the only thing the non-resident 
hunters need do is to hire a local guide, and he does the 
rest. At the camp of McCartney and Boyd, near Fifield, 
last fall, there was one party of twenty-six Ohio men who 
stayed there for quite a while and shot everything they 
could, Mr. Stevens does not think that one of them 
paid a State license, and I am convinced that had they all 
paid they would have turned in about double the amount 
of money that was actually collected in the entire State of 
Wisconsin this year under the non-resident license clause. 
The enforcement of the non-resident law ii) Wisconsin 
has been worse than a simple mockery. 
What ails Wisconsin? 
Southern Game. 
Mr; Irby Bennett, of the Winchester Repeating Arms 
Company, with Mr. Charles F. Sylvester, of the same firni, 
made the Forest and Stream office a very pleasant visit 
this week. Mr. Bennett went on to St. Louis from this 
place, but remained here long enough for a good talk about 
the South and Southern game. He tells me that the 
shooting at Wapanoca Club preserve, on the St. Francis, 
near Memphis, has been remarkably good recently. Mr. 
J, Edrington, of Memphis, on three consecutive days 
killed the limit of fifty diJcks a day, and moreover, killed 
five turkeys and two wild geese. Mr. J. M. Neely killed 
100 ducks in two days. Mr, W. H. Carroll on one day 
killed fifty ducks and eight wild turkeys. Mr. B. F. Price, 
the secretary of the club, killed fifty ducks on one day, and 
Mr. Buckingham and Frank Poston, of Memphis, have 
each killed the limit on several different occasions this 
winter. That is really a wonderful shooting preserve, and 
personally I always liked this club, because it sets a limit 
to the daily bag, which is something any shooting club 
ought to do in these days. 
The sportsmen of Kansas City complain that the season 
has been an extraordinarily poor one for sport. The 
duck shooting was good for only a few days, the quail 
were shot out pretty badly, and even the rabbits did not 
seem to have a realizing sense of their duty. Incidentally 
I notice in the Kansas City Star a statement that during- 
the last week, in Decem.ber the warm weather caused a 
great deal of game to spoil. The city meat inspector on 
one dav condemned 43 wild turkeys, 980 quail, 423 rabbits. 
97 opossums, 27 jackrabbits, 127 ducks, 11 geese and 
fSolbs. of venison. Perhaps this is where .some of the 
Missouri game had gone. , 
Warden Loveday has been getting into the profound dis- 
like of the St. Louis commission men. as it is reported 
that he has seized several thousand quail intended for the 
St. Louis market. 
In the North, 
The wardens of upper Minnesota are having lively 
times trving to stop the illegal killing of deer by men who 
hunt for the lumber camps. In the neighborhood of Sdlan 
Springs there have been a number of arrests of the yard 
hunters. Henry Swenson, John Wade and Edward Orloff 
are among those who have got mixed up with the meshes 
of the law. . 
Quail shooting was good in Minnesota this past tall, 
but the snow came early, and consequently the number of 
quail killed has been very large, so that some . of the 
-portsmen fear the stipply has been badly cut down. This 
would be too bad. as these birds are now moving up into 
Minnesota in great numbers, a fact never before so general 
and noticeable as within the past two years. I think it 
undoubtedly true that there has been a general migration, 
or rather a general extension of the habitat in the West, of 
the B6b- White quail to the northward. The lOgged-ot^ 
pine linds of Michigan. Wisconsin and Minnesota are 
now. arid will be still more in the future, aniong the best 
quail grounds in America. E. Hough. 
1200 BoYCE T3tui,DiNe, Osicagto. HI. 
Jackson. Mich. — I get more solid comfort frorn Forest 
AivrD Strea^m thg-n from any other oaper I read. ' 
■ ' r 7" De: W. W.. Lathrop, 
A Successful Maine Trip* 
New^ Bedford, Mass. — In compliance with your requests 
in asking your readers to report their successes to the 
Forest and Stream, I'll try to give the main points of my 
last trip into the North Woods in search of moose. In 
company with W. M. Stowell, of Dartmouth, my partner 
of last year, and C. O. Wing, of We.stport, we arrived at 
Swctt's Camp, on' Lake Sapompeag, Oct. a. This lake is 
seven miles in the woods from Oxbow, Me., surrounded 
by hiUs and hardwood ridges, making it a picturesque spot 
amid the most magnificent scenery. Several streams in 
the vicinity abound in trout. We spent a couple of weeks 
roaming the woods, endeavoring to locate the most favor- 
able places for calling when the 15th should arrive. It 
finally got along, bringing with it a thick snowstorm. In 
the afternoon we started for our chosen spots. 
Mr. Wing and his guide, Bert. Willard, went up the lake 
about three miles. Mr. Stowell went over to Carry 
Branch, three miles to the west, while I started for dead- 
waters in the north, I went alone to the canoe about a 
mile from camp. Stowell was to follow in the course of 
an hour with the camping outfit. I sat down and had a 
smoke, when all at once I heard a grunt, a bellow and a 
crash. It did not take me long to locate the sound and 
to decide that if the moose kept his course in less than 
thirty seconds I would be face up to a big bull. On he 
came at a smashing gait down an old logging road. Just 
across the stream he hove in sight inside of 50ft., and 
stopped looking right at me. No one but a moose hunter 
could begin to appreciate that supreme moment. All the 
different anxious thoughts that have been chasing each 
other in mad riot through your seething brain are stilled, 
the blood that lias been rushing and roaring in your 
ears and making your heart beat as never before has 
frozen. You are simply carved from stone. All thoughts 
of the world and yourself have vanished. The critical 
moment has come. I pity the man who is subject to that 
common complaint called buck fever, for his chances are 
slim. 
I raised the old .45-90 and taking careful aim placed the 
ball at the butt of his neck, and as he was standing a little 
quartering, on through his heart. He simply wilted in 
his tracks, as dead as a hammer. With exultant thoughts 
I crossed the stream, to gloat over my prize. He was a 
beauty, and no mistake. Then I started for camp ; on the 
way I met Swett, and told him of my good luck, and of 
course he was tickled. 
Mr, Stowell came into camp next morning, and after 
congratulating me in a hearty manner, told of experiences 
that a tenderfoot is rarely favored with. A cow moose 
began to call about 3 o'clock, about 500yds. away, and 
until dark it was ''which and t'other" between Stowell 
and the cow, which could make the most noise. Before 8 
o'clock they had called up four bulls and a cow moose. 
One of the quartet met the calling cow, but none of the 
rest cared to come to Stowell. They hovered around for 
several hours, but notwithstanding all Stowell's persuasive 
eloquence on the horn, none came in sight. Stowell got no 
moose, but he had an awful lot of fun that night. Mr. 
Wing got a small moose by tracking on the snow. 
We hunted deer with good success, as they were very 
abundant around there, anywhere from five to twelve be- 
ing seen most any day. We came out of the woods the 
25th with six deer and two moose, havfng had a great 
time. To anyone desiring full information in regard to a 
good location and a competent guide, I will be most happy 
to supply both. Michael Shea. 
Maryland Nigfht Shooting on Ducks, 
Stockton, Worcester County, Md., Jan. 5. — Editor For- 
est and Stream: This year the wildfowl have been 
unusually plentiful, and it has been a pleasure to watch 
the great drifting beds, and the almost countless flights 
as they pass from one feeding ground to another. Red- 
heads, bluebills and geese have been killed in numbers not 
before reached for years, but the brant have behaved very 
badly. So far we have been unable to break up the great 
bunches of brant, and as a consequence the decoying has 
been very poor and but few have been killed. We have 
had plenty of rough weather, and the bays have been 
frozen over twice already. The ducks, however, stay with 
us, and their numbers continue to increase from the 
Northern birds coming in. In a few weeks the Southern 
flight will be moving, making the prospects good for plen- 
ty of game, and fine shooting will be had until late in 
March. For several weeks the weather has been too rough 
for night shooting, so the fowl have not been frightened 
and decoj' well. If this fire shooting were stopped we 
would have plenty of fowl and good decoying. Night 
shooting is done very openly here, no one thinks of hiding 
his outfit or making a mystery of his going out. I am 
informed, on good authority, that a warden not a hundred 
miles from here not only shoots at night, but furnishes 
an outfit for another party to shoot on shares. If the State 
game warden would do better work on the coast, and 
give a little more attention to the wildfowl, and a little 
less to a few stores around the city, much good could be 
done. O. D. Foulks. 
Not all of Hunting to Kill. 
* * * or worse still, they go out with the . idea of 
killing — no matter what nor how, just so they kill and 
bring in a big bag. 
Which, in passing, is not sport, but tnet'e lust; for 
blood and lacks every element of the keen joy one finds 
when they have learned to read as they run from the 
great book Dame Nature pages^day after day. 
It is this element of love for the outdoor creatures that 
is .so strong in Rowland Robinson and his associates who 
write for Forest and Stream, and to that is due the high 
regard held for the paper in the hearts of the old line 
sportsmen (not "sports") who have the eye to see the 
great beauties in nature, a?id the minds which are broad 
enough to go to . the wilderness for other joj's than the 
mere lust for blood. In other words, one head 6i game 
fairly stalked and fairly killed with a clean shot, amid the 
setting of any of nature's pictures, gives a keener joy and 
a sense of satisfaction and power not to be procured 
through a big bag and a hot gun. As an exponent of this 
great principle, I say, "Long live Forest vxn Stream." 
El C^MANcao. 
