Oct. 21, iSijg,] 
FOREST AND STREAM, 
331 
Wildfowl. 
Stockton, Md., Oct. lo.— Since my last writing I 
have received no less than fifty letters inquiring about 
land for sale down here. So to save myself from endless 
writing, I will say there are no farms here on the bay 
for sale. Back in the country quite a number can be 
found, and very cheap; but away from the water I con- 
sider them dear at any price. There is an island here 
for sale, but it has no advantages over the main land, 
'and is just as far from the gunning grounds. Many 
have tried to live there, but all give it up as a dismal, 
lonely failure. 
Already a few dlicks are in the bay, sea coot, sleepy 
coot and shell ducks, also a few bunches of geese. There 
appear to be less black ducks on the marshes than usual; 
tliey must have hatched badly or they have been killed 
of?; however, many will come down from the North 
laler on, There has been no shooting on the bay yet; 
nearly all wait for election day, and then open the season 
"on shelducks. No one here shoots either coot or south 
southerly ducks, not even the colored population. There 
is an odor about them while cooking that hangs to the 
stove, the house, the dishes and even the table long after 
the offending fowl has been safely, covered with earth, 
for I have never seen cats or dogs hungry enough to eat 
these fishy, oily, high-smelling birds. There is an un- 
usually heavy crop of grass on the shoals, and I look to 
see a great season with the wildfowl. Last season was a 
banner one — more ducks and better shooting than for 
many years. The prospects are that this year will be 
even better, for the grass is much thicker this jear, and 
ever3' spot seems to be covered. 
I have been busy getting my boats in order, atid patch- 
ing up and painting decoys. There is something about 
the mending and painting of stool ducks that makes me 
linger over the task far longer than the work really calls 
for. Here is one all full of shot. Poor Mr. tried 
to pot a redhead: this was all he got. That goose decoy 
with a broken neck. My! what a shot that was — 70yds. 
at least The old gander, wn'th his I4lbs. of flesh and 
fat, dropped like a plummet on the stool, smashing its 
neck like a match stick. And so it goes, shot marks, 
broken bills, chipped sides, lost heads — each and every 
one has its own memory. I have one deco}^ with the 
top of its head gone. I covered it up with paint and 
leMhe old head stand. S. did that. How we all laughed! 
"Gentlemen," said he, "that is drinks on me; here, help 
yourselves; I am out." Little we thought then that in. 
three short months he would indeed be out — out of all 
our lives and the lives of nearer and dearer ones. A true 
.sportsman, kind and considerate, with a pleasant word 
for all, he has passed out into the great beyond, with 
its unknown limits that we too must explore. I wonder 
can he see me here with this broken decoy? Does he 
know I have left this splintered head in his remem- 
brance? Who can say? O. D. Foulks. 
Rhode Island Game. 
Providence, R. L, Oct. 6. — Editor Forest and Stream: 
Taking into account the teclinicalities of the law, the open 
season on game in this State began on Monday, but as the 
law is interpreted Sunday was the opening. In other 
words, though Sunday hunting is made punishable on the 
law book by fine, nevertheless the first instance of prose- 
cution for the offense since the days of witches has .yet to 
come before the bar of justice. Sunday, Oct. i, dawned 
an ideal autumn day, crisp, sharp, frosty, with just enough 
tingle in the bracing atmosphere to make the sportsman's 
blood rush wildly through his veins as he climbed out of 
the wagon and stretched his cramped limbs in the first 
weak rays of the morning sun, preparatorj' to a day's 
tramp over the meadows and hillsides behind the dogs. 
In the quail he was disappointed. The heavy snows of 
last winter worked such havoc among the ranks of the 
cheery little whistlers as they will not recover from in 
several seasons to come. 
Partridges seemed fairly plentiful. Indeed, this king of 
the American game birds appears to hold its own in spite 
of all that can be brought to bear against him. In the 
heaviest winter snows, when all else is hidden under the 
glistening white mantle, he roosts in the tops of the trees 
and pecks a livelihood from the leaf buds. 
When the little Bob White drops before the swarms of 
gunners that infest the woodland, the lordly ruffed grouse 
springs into the air with a whirr and shoots off like a 
I3in. shell, so that none but the experienced sportsman 
may expect to pull him down with an ounce of lead. Of 
course, at this time there are some chicken partridges that 
are not very strong of wing, but if we place against these 
the dogs, rank and headstrong from months of inactivity, 
and the hunter who has probably not held a gun to his 
shoulder for ten months, the scales will not be far from 
even. 
Rabbits are as yet not to be counted. The underbrush 
too thick to shoot them, and their flesh is worthless until 
snow flies. 
The squirrels are quite plentiful, probably owing to the 
fact that this is an unusually good year for chestnuts; but 
squirrel shooting is no sport until the leaves are off, ex- 
cept an occasional chance shot at one as he skips along a 
fence or swears at the hunter from his perch in a lofty 
tree. Taking all into consideration, the season that 
opened six days ago looks remarkably bright, and from 
now until New Year's Day the farmer Avould do well to 
keep his choice stock away from any suspicious looking 
bit of woodland that may shelter a man with a gun. 
Striped Bass Plentiful. 
A large number of striped bass have been recently seen 
in the sluiceway of Kelley's bridge, at Warren, R. I., at 
slack water. Schools of the fish, some of which would tip 
the scales at lolbs. or more, lazily sv.-am back and forth 
111 the tideway for a half hour at the turn of both the ebb 
and flood tides. They refused all kinds of bait temptingly 
oft'ered them. These fish have probably been as plenti- 
ful in numbers hereabouts as ever, but are much smaller 
than formerly. 
The largest striped bass ever caught in those waters 
nf which there is any record was taken by the late James 
Bishop, of the Barrington bridge, forty years ago, and 
weighed 54] bs. Moses T. Child, who has caught more 
of this kind and other kinds of fish than any other living 
angler of this vicinity, caught one on the same tide at 
Kelley's bridge, near by, which weighed 461bs. Mr. 
Child, when a youth, while fishing at Kelley's bridge in 
the early morning, surrounded by a dozen large bass scat- 
tered on the grass by the roadside, was accosted by Dan- 
iel Webster, who was riding along the road en route from 
Providence to Newport. Mr. Webster, who was an en- 
thusiastic angler, was so captivated by the beauty of the 
fish that he made an appointment with the youthful 
angler to have bait and a line in readiness for him on his 
return the following morning. Young Child was the 
only one who kept the appointment, though Mr. Web- 
ster subsequently sent an apology, but, as Mr. Child says, 
no compensation for the bait. 
While gunning in the wilds of Exeter Sunday morning 
R. J. Sherman discovered and shot a fine deer. On sev- 
eral occasions its presence in the w-oods has been reported 
by different persons. The animal is a large doe which 
tips the scales at I22lbs. A deer is rarely found in the 
Rhode Island woods, and the news of its capture brought 
many people to view the specimen. R. J. Sherman is a 
hunter of great skill. Up to date he has shot four foxes 
this season. W. H. M. 
Canadian Notes. 
TlJE< wsatiier during the last week or ten days of the 
fishing season was (juite favorable to trout, but very 
unfavorable to anglers. An unusual amount of rain fell, 
and the streams were so high that very few fish were 
raised. The slaughter of trout upon their spawning 
grounds was, happily, very small indeed. No less than 
a dozen poachers were recently caught red-handed net- 
ting trout in the lakes about Murray Bay and St. Alexis, 
on the north shore of the St. Lawrence. AH were prose- 
cuted, pleaded guilty and were fined. Proceedings are 
also to be taken against a number of people accused of 
netting salmon in the Saguenay district, where extra 
guardians have been posted by the Government. The 
Hon. Mr. Parent is sparing no pains to provide adequate 
protection of Quebec's fish and game, and proceedings 
are about being instituted against people said to have 
been concerned in the illegal slaughter of moose in the 
Temiscouata country. Rev. Dr. Rainsford has brought 
to the notice of the Government the wholesale slaughter 
of moose and caribou in the Metapedia valley, and 
measures are being taken to prevent a repetition of such 
destruction. 
Deer are reported exceedingly plentiful this season, on 
the south of the St. Lawrence particularly. Moose and 
caribout are plentiful in Pontiac, the Lake St. John coun- 
try, the Metapedia, Temiscouata, the Saguenay and Lake 
St. John disti-icts. 
Senator Edmunds is hunting in "the Gardens" of 
Charlevoix, and Chas. Wolcott and Henry Cabot, of 
Boston, in Gaspe. Mr, Chas. Miller and party, of New 
York, Icilled three moose and several deer in Pontiac. 
Mr. Johnson, of Bridgeport, has secured both a moose 
and a caribou on tlie Triton tract, in the Lake St. John 
district, and several fine heads of large game have re- 
cently been brought out of the Tourille tract, in the same 
district. E. T. D. Chambers. 
Cuban Quail Fields. 
HAVA^fA, Cuba, Oct. 3. — Editor Forest and Stream: As 
a large immigration from the North is expected to come 
here with the snipe this winter, those of them with shoot- 
ing propensities and who may be readers of Forest and 
Stream may be interested in game news in anticipation 
of their coming 
I wrote 3'ou some time since that in the month of 
October the law is off here for quail, and from then to 
March i. But the quail, or a large proportion of them, 
are too small to shoot in October, and I with other 
friends of law and order — at least of the laws of nature in 
reproduction — ^have made some efforts to modify the 
game law so as to protect the quail in October, and as 
compensation to the sportsmen extend the shooting sea- 
son to April 1, because quail do not commence to pair 
off until that date. 
These recommendations are taking their course through 
the red tape methods of Spanish legislation still in practice 
here, so that no definite action has been reached, and the 
shooting season is now open here, and already about 200 
licenses have been granted to sportsmen to carry and use 
their breechloading shotguns and rifles, at $6 each, Amer- 
ican money. 
Well, this indicates some progress in common sense, 
because formerly we were charged $8.50 gold for the right 
to carry a gun and $8.50 more to shoot with it; total $17 
per annum, or during the open season ostensibly. But this 
does not in reality prevent many from shooting on one 
pretext or another through the whole year, both quail 
and deer. 
It is something wonderful the disrespect that these peo- 
ple have for laws, and it will require one or more genera- 
tions to change them in this. 
Although I myself hold the baby quail in respect, I 
went into the country with my gun and dog to see for 
myself if the extremely dry summer has advanced the 
broods in their development. I raised, i. e., got up, five 
broods in all, and in one only were the young birds half 
grown, and in the other four broods they were about 
the size of sparrows, which circumstance confirms all my 
previous observations in other years. I shall not go out 
again until November, although I know that 200 guns 
will be sacrificing the broods by killing the parent birds 
during October. < 
The cattle farms in the near vicinity of Havana are 
gradually becoming repopulated with cattle, and the high 
grass of our intertropical climate is being browsed down 
to the favorable conditions for quail and snipe, so that 
I am anticipating an enjoyable outing during the season 
now opening, and of which I will write you later. 
The snipe (Gallinago ■wilsoni) do not visit us until 
you have had a sharp frost up North, when they usually 
come down in considerable numbers, and in wet seasons 
when the ground is soft in parts of nearly every farm, 
they become widely distributed; bttt this year of unusual 
drought they will find so few soft soils in which to feed 
that I anticipate they will continue on to the swamps on 
our south coast, but few tarrying within reach of our city 
sports. However, as we are now having showers nearly 
every afternoon, if they continue we may find some feed- 
ing grounds nearer to us sufficiently soft for them. I 
hear that deer are increasing in numbers in Cuba and 
furnish good sport for those who prefer this game; but 
as the Cubans hiint in parties and are excitable, I con- 
sider quail shooting a safer sport. Also we have wild 
guinea fowls, and I last winter several times brought in 
four to six in a days' sport. 
In any case permission from the owners of the farms 
is required and is not easy to get unless he is an acquain- 
tance of the shooter, although many of them are lying 
waste for want of capital to rebuild the necessary domi- 
ciles and cattle and implements for reconstruction. It 
will require time to heal the deep and destructive finan- 
cial and social wounds this island has suffered, and much 
longer because of the suspicions and race antagonisms 
and social and political habits and customs so difficult 
to eradicate and substitute modern usages and ideas in 
their place. Dr. Erastus Wilson, 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST 
News from Jackson's Hole. 
Chicago, III, Oct. 7.— Game is more abundant in the 
region adjacent to Jackson's Hole, Wyo., according to all 
available reports, than has been the case for several years, 
and recent returns seem to verify this assertion. Several 
parties have been in, and among these I note one from 
New York, one from Philadelphia and two from Chicago. 
The Thompson party, of New York, was heard of by 
gentlemen from this city a couple of weeks back. They 
had forty horses and a big outfit of guides, etc., and were 
bound on a big trip. They^vere then going in, and I can 
not say what luck they had. 
Messrs. H. O. Wilbur and E. A. Selliez, of Philadel- 
phia, earlier mentioned as westbound, returned to this 
city this week, and they report a grand time. Each man 
killed two fine elk and both were very much content. 
Mr. Wilbur killed one seven-point elk, and on the very 
next day got an eight-point bull, a beauty. Mr. Selliez 
got one curious specimen, an elk with nine points on one 
side of the head, but with the other split down and spoiled. 
To match this, he later killed a fine symmetrical six- 
point head and was willing to call it square. Both these 
gentlemen purposed a quail hunt somewhere in the West, 
but I do not know at this writing just what they con- 
cluded to do, though I think they returned to their native 
city after a brief stop here. 
Mr. L. M. Hamline, of this city, some weeks ago 
started for a trip through the Yellowstone Park, taking 
only one guide. He returned to the country south of 
the Park and was spoken by other men of a Chicago 
party two weeks ago. At that time he had killed one elk 
and two antelope and was not ready to come honie. 
By all odds the best hunt made in the Jackson's Hole 
country this fall, and probably the best ever made in that 
country by non-residents, is that this week completed by 
a party of Illinois gentlemen— Mr. Harry W. Loveday, 
State game warden of IlHnois; Mr. C. B. Dicks and Mr. 
Sam Simon, of Chicago, and Mr. Jas. R. B. Van Cleave, 
of Springfield, III. These gentlemen were gone just forty 
days from Chicago, and they had a grand time. They 
had a good outfit, four guides and a cook and a couple of 
dozen horses. The party was led by Jim Simpson. They 
killed eight elk, ten antelope, two deer, three mountain 
lions, three mountain sheep and one grizzly bear, the 
latter, however, only a cub, and caught in a trap. They 
had a dog which treed the lions. Mr. Loveday is cred- 
ited with the best elk head, a magnificent specimen, but 
each man got a good head. All this plunder will be 
brought on to Chicago as soon as it can be got out by the 
guides, and the well-known Chicago taxidermist, Fred 
Kaernpfer, will mount the whole aggregation of heads, 
certainly a notable collection. All the guides in that 
country said that this much game had never been killed 
by any one party in that region on one trip. 
I talked with the Chicago men over the arms they used 
on this hunt, and am told that the .30-30 "did not seem so 
good as the .30-40." "You have got to be more particu- 
lar where you hit an animal with the .30-30," said Mr. 
Dicks. Mr. Loveday shot a .40-65, and this gun seems, 
to have "stopped an animal, wherever it was hit." 
Waning of the Marsh. 
Chicago, III, Oct. 14. — ProwHng around among the 
gun stores this week to see who is going hunting and 
what luck everybody is having, I noticed two very con- 
tradictory circumstances. The ammunition trade was 
never better, and a great many parties are going out 
shooting; but upon the other hand, there does not seem 
to be very much game coming home with the shooters. 
A few years ago it was quite possible to take a run out 
from Chicago and come back in a couple of days with a 
decent bag of birds, but nowadays not one shooter out of 
a dozen has half the old luck. 
I was talking with Abe Kleinman the other day — and 
everybody knows Abe Kleinman to be one of the old- 
timers among the Chicago game shooters. Abe was 
busy pushing wads into shells, and as usual he was mad. 
"Shooting? No," he said; "nobody gets any shooting 
any more. You fellows are all the time hollering about 
protecting the game, but there ain't any game left to pro- 
tect in this country any more. If you want to have any 
game, j'ou'd better stop the ditches on the marshes. If 
you dry up all the marshes you can't expect to have ducks 
or snipe. The way things are going now it won't be long 
before the whole Kankakee marsh is dry as a bone, and 
you can't get any shooting down there now, only once in 
a long while." 
Some one remarked that out near Hj'-de Lake, just 
south of Chicago, there were a few jacks being killed, but 
this gave Abe no pleasure. "Yes, put that in the paper," 
he said. "There ain't more'n about 400 shooters out there 
every day now. We ought to have a few more." 
What Mr, Kleinman says, and he is really an authority 
on game supply, too, has a great deal of significance. 
Our marshes in this part of the West are all being re- 
