claimed, and of coi^rse this means that they are ceasing to 
hold their former stock of game. In the gradual adjust- 
ment of things, I can see that the sport of the upland 
has for some L:nie been gradually growing in proportion 
to the sport of the marsh. Ten years ago in this city, 
or shortly al'tef I first went to work on the Forest and 
Stream licre, nearly everybody went duck shooting and 
did net ekre so much for grouse or quail. Now, as T 
have often said of late, I think one sees less preparation 
for wildfowl shooting and more parties outfitting for -up- 
land shooting. Some game will linger for a long time 
.around the cultivated regions, though of course the ducks, 
geese and snipe are bound to go when the country set- 
tles up. The Bob White quail is going to be the salvation 
of the Western shooter. This bird is more abundant this 
year than ever all over lower and middle Illinois, and 
more and more our shooters are going in for quail shoot- 
ing. I rather look to see more men own bird dogs the 
next few years than have for several years past, and I 
believe this fact to be due not merely to the prevalence of 
easier times. 
Parties and Thck Luck-, 
Among Chicago parties who have been disgusted with 
the poor sport left in this part of the country and who 
have gone far away to get some shooting, is the De Gol- 
■yer-Cook party, several gentlemen of this city and of 
Michigan, who were at one time owners of the famous 
De Golyer marsh, on the Kankakee, where they had a fine 
club houseandaboutthe best mallard shooting on the river. 
A wealthy Chicago pork and beef packer bought their 
marsh, drained it and ruined it years ago, and since then 
the gentlemen have been going up to North Dakota, 
usually to Dawson. Last year Dawson was no good, as 
the Avater was too low, but this year Mr. E. C. Cook 
sends back word that the lakes have all filled up and the 
ducks are there. This is the same party who were sued 
some time ago by Dakota farmers for setting some stacks 
on fire through a prairie fire which they were alleged to 
have set out by accident. The suit cost them over a 
thousand dollars, and I am not sure it is ended yet, 
though these shooters seem not afraid to go back to the 
same grounds again. 
Mr. A. D. Curtis, of Menominee, Mich., asks me where 
he can get good duck and goose shooting in South Da- 
kota. I understand that there is good stage of water in 
the lakes near Preston, S. D., and would advise a trial of 
that p.oint, or of Waubay, or, say, Webster, all of which 
points are said to be good now, though I have no more 
direct personal information about them. 
A number of members of the Poygan Gun Club, of the 
Lake Poygan marshes, of Wisconsin, have left Chicago 
for a stay at this prolific shooting ground. This club is 
mostly made up of Chicago shooters. The sport there is 
at times very good indeed. 
From Horicon marsh and the Diana Cliib, of that 
region, I hear that there has been some little duck shoot- 
ing and some very fine sport on snipe. 
About as good a bag as I learn of made near home 
this fall is that picked up by Billy Cutler and H. Levi, of 
this city, who returned a few days ago with seventy-two 
snipe and twenty-four teal. The}^ shot near Lockport, 
111., hunting the spring marshes back of that town. 
Mr. C. C. Hess, of this citj-, reports some snipe, but 
nothing startling, in near Lorenzo, on th.6 Kankakee 
marsh, reached by the Santa Fe railway. 
Fox Lake, Wis. — and by no means let this be confuated 
with Fox Lake, 111. — keeps up its records as a sporting 
region. The town fisherman, Dick Hoover, this week 
on one day caught thirty-five pickerel, four bass and a 
pike. One pickerel weighed I2lbs., three weighed lolbs. 
each and others were good fair fish. Squirrels are now 
ripe at Fox Lake, and this little corner is worth pasting 
in one's memory for a quiet, decent little trip one of these 
fall days. 
Around Lake Minnetonka, Minn., a few snipe are now 
coming in, though of course a shooter would hardly ex- 
pect to find very many in so thickly settled a part of the 
country. Near the Narrows there is a bit of ground 
where one may get a few birds now and then, and at scat- 
tered places all around this great inland sea one may find 
a wisp here and there. Squirrel shooters are out around 
Minnetonka also, and are having a little sport. No ducks 
to speak of are reported from the neighborhood of St. 
Paul, Minneapolis, but some snipe are in on the Minne- 
sota river bottoms. 
Dakota ChJcken Law, 
I hear that North Dakota shooters, or some of them, 
are dissatisfied with the dates of the chicken law, which 
closes Oct. I. They think that is too soon to end the 
season, and indeed if one wants good fun with grouse 
October will offer it better than September, provided one 
can find the birds on any proper sort of cover. The Au- 
gust date seems to many too early, and I believe that two 
months, beginning with Sept. i, would see less birds 
killed than the present season of forty days. That is to 
say, it would do so provided that everybody observed the 
opening day and there were no sooners in the land. That 
.slate of affairs, however, is something that never did 
exist in any chicken co.unt^3^ 
The Fae West. 
Mr. A. C. Smith, of the Chicago Fly-Casting Club, 
came into , my office the other day and asked what I 
tliought about a trip out into Colorado at this season pE 
the year, in the neighborhood of the North Park. He 
was' afraid of being snowed in, but I told him that he 
could have no pleasanter experience than that, for the 
mountains are more delightful in winter than at any other ' 
time, in some regards. We talked over outfits, and I 
gave him the tip to get some Gold Seal leather-top rub-, 
ber-s and plenty of German' lumbering socks, and also to. 
take in with him a pair of snowshoes for each man of the 
party, -T am inclined to think that he and his fi-iend will 
just aboiit do this, too, and I am sure I envy them their 
luck. 
Mr. Itba H. Bellows, president of the Chicago Fly- 
Casting Club, is a sort of combination sportsman. He 
can cast a fly further than anybody _in town, and is now 
claiming to have killed the biggest bear that ever was 
seeii in the . moiintains. Mr. Bellows was out in Cq,K 
oradft this fall, 'in this same North, Park region^, and was' 
huB-tiivg jh--company -with two local hunters, when they 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
saw this bear. Mr. Bellows won the first shot, biit only 
broke a foreleg, and this started the bear up in a rage, 
but only in time to receive the other two bullets in the 
back. The bear then slid or rolled down hill, and was 
shot into by all three again, and when reached by the 
party was quite dead. It had slid down over very rough 
country, and it took the men a long time to get the skin 
up hill. Mr. BeUows brought home the skin, which is 
indeed very large. It was a black bear, however. 
Speaking of angling and bear hunting, reminds me of a 
little incident which happened to a party of Chicago 
fishers who were up in Wisconsin, near Mercer, some 
few years ago, among the party being Billy Burroughs 
and A. C. Smith. Coming back to their camp one day 
they found a tent smashed in and saw that a bear had 
been fooling around there. None too happy at this dis- 
covery, they none the less went to bed and slept all night. 
About daybreak they heard a sort of scratching noise on 
the tent, and Mr. Burroughs slipped out of the tent with 
a shotgun in his hand. He was a bit surprised to see a big 
black bear standing up alongside the tent and softly 
scraping his paw down along the side, as if puzzling how 
to get into the place. Mr. Burroughs was afraid to shoot 
at the bear with the shotgun, but stepped back and got a 
rifle and came out again. The bear had obligingly 
stopped at the edge of the wood, a few yards away, and 
Mr. Burroughs promptly killed him. 
Speaking of "Western regions, I am reminded by a late 
newspaper item of the regular Indian-settler-game butch- 
ery war which comes up every year around the Wyoming 
region visited by the Indians from the Snake reservation. 
At these particular times Uncle Sam can use a good 
many regulars in his business, and it was proposed to 
remove the garrison from Fort Washakie. The citizens 
around Lander and other W^yoming points have protested 
and have secured a promise that the troops shall stay. 
They say that if the soldiers go the Indians will leave 
in a body and butcher game in numbers even greater than 
before. There is a little border war pretty near due out 
in that neck of woods between the whites and the Indians 
over this A^ery game question. 
The Great Father, 
By the way, speaking of Indians, government and that, it 
was something of an occurrence, methinks, from an In- 
dian point of view, when President McKinley this week 
received a party of Chippewa Indians at Aitkin, Minn., 
in the course of his Western trip. To the Indian the 
Great Father is a far-oft' and mysterious being. I won- 
der what they thought when they were told that the Great 
Father had come out there to see them? Probably that 
the Great Father was a little bit crowded for time, for a 
man in his high position as chief of all the peoples. The 
head man in an Indian tribe doesn't haye to hustle quite 
so hard. 
Wet Warden. 
Game Warden G. E. Ratto, who works in the dark and 
bloody ground around Calumet Lake, at the southern 
edge of Chicago, has some rather exciting times with the 
law breakers he meets there. These men are usually for- 
eigners — Polacks, Sclaxs, Bohemians and God knows 
what, with names ending in 'itski, 'owski and 'onski. 
One of these men was out shooting the other morning 
before sunrise, which is against the law. This man's 
name was Schranski, and he knew no law. He shot a few 
times and incidentally shot a fisherman, who was also 
breaking the law by using a net. Warden Ratto at- 
tempted to restore peace by arresting Schranski, but the 
latter fled and stood off the warden with a gun when 
chased from his boat into shallow water. Ratto called for 
help and was assisted by his deputy aid, and the two took in 
Mr. Schranski, who was very much annoyed at finding 
this was not the land of the free he had supposed it to 
be. Mr. Schranski had shot nothing of consequence — 
only one mud hen and the fisherman above mentioned. 
Quail in His Dooryard. 
A friend of mine writing from upper Indiana has oc- 
casion to make the following remarks regarding the quail 
crop in his immediate vicinity: "Quail are abundant. 
While dictating this letter I looked out of my window, 
and on the green lawn I saw three full-grown birds scur- 
rying through one of my flower beds. In a potato patch 
back of my house a week or two ago a full covey was 
seen, and even the old back cat and the mother cat each 
lugged one into the kitchen, knowing that their mistress 
was sick and needed a bird; but I think I was more in- 
clined to obey the law than to be hiunane, for the birds 
were uninjured and I let them both fly away. One of the 
boys came in from our yard a day or two ago and said 
that in a bunch of willows near the fence for over a week 
there had been at least thirty quail. So you see we have 
them right around us, and you cannot help but have a 
good bag when you come up for the promised shoot in 
November." 
"In Possession.*^ 
I wish some one would tell me what "In possession" 
means. We see that term used a great deal and very 
elastically, in game law matters. I recentlj^ saw in a Col- 
orado newspaper an item to the effect that a rancher of 
Routt county has several elk in possessiion, and that he 
has paid taxes on them as so much live stock. He thinks 
he needs no further title to their retention and classifies 
them just as he does his cows and horses. Yet in the 
Colorado statute there is a specific clause stating that the 
State retains all title to the game and fish in the State, 
and that no title, right or interest therein can be acquired 
by private party. This doctrine . that the State owns the 
game is one of the foremost tenets of the Minnesota 
law; also, and is coming into recognition as one of the 
sanest of protective measures. It is sustained by many 
decisions. . . . 
An odd instance of this same old question came up 
last week in this same State of Minnesota. I see no 
special reason why the facts should not be known, though 
it is true that I was a guest at the banquet where these 
facts first came into prominence. This was at the Min- 
neapolis Club limcheon given in the afternoon to the 
Congressional party on its return to Minneapolis from 
the jNlinnesofa. trip. . The menu was good in its way, .and 
the second course "brought to each .guest, a nicely cooked 
brook trout, about loin. long. This was the first week 
[Oct. 21, 1899. 
in October. The Minnesota law says: "No person shall 
* * * have in possession or under control for any 
purpose whatever * * * any variety of trout between 
the 1st day of September and the ist day of May follow- 
ing.'' According to this it would surely seem that in 
serving to the honorable members of Congress of the 
United States an illegal fish, and that in the good old 
protection State of Minnesota, the mother of them all 
in good game laws, some one had indeed blundered. 
On the morning following the Minneapolis episode this 
matter came up for discussion among some of us on the 
train during the ride to Chicago. Mr. Bishop, of Lud- 
ington, Mich., said that the trout were all of the same 
size, and no doubt came from some hatchery, either the 
State hatchery or some private ponds. In the latter case, 
thought Mr. Bishop, it would be perfectly legal to kill 
these fish at any time of the year, as they were not any 
longer animal ferce naHira:, but were reduced to posses- 
sion and to a domestic state as much as poultry or cattle. 
Mr. Bishop declared it was good law which thus gave 
title to the individual, and said that no law could take 
this title away from him. 
The main opponent to Mr. Bishop in this argument 
was Hon. C. F. Cockran, of Missouri, who went into 
the matter so clearly and fully that I am sure I wish I 
had space to reproduce all he said. It was the best little 
argument on both sides that I ever heard on this ques- 
tion. Mr. Cockran 'cited a very important case which 
involved much this same idea of the title of the State fol- 
lowing property with police powers. He said he was once 
engaged with five other lawyers to give a decision in a 
Kansas case, where a brewery was closed up under that 
State law, it being claimed that this was confiscation of 
property and illegal, because the product was not sold 
in that State. None the less it was on trial decided that 
the State could hold that it was against public policy— 
against the good of the public — to allow the manufacture 
to continue. Mr. Cockran said that the State — any State 
— could surely stop the sale of fish or game as against 
any possible private title, simply on these same grounds — 
those of its being contrary to public policy. The State 
could be judge whether the food supply of the State — ^its 
fish and game — wotild not be endangered by acts which 
offered it for sale the year round. "You can eat that 
privately raised fish on your own table, perhaps," said 
Mr. Cockran, "but you cannot sell it, for there you run 
into the realm of the State's authority. The State is to 
be the judge whether it will have any portion of its food 
supply sold, and at what time, and in what method. No 
private title can stand against this supervisory power, and 
this statement I can show you to be upheld by many good 
decisions. The State is the judge of the emergency as 
to whether its food supply is endangered." 
Mr. Bishop was not convinced, but was staggered, and 
I am sure was in the wrong of this, as both he and Mr. 
Cockran would all the more readily admit had they per- 
haps had occasion to go into the matter of game laws 
more fully than their experience had ever asked of them, 
though both were lawyers of good practice. I was sur- 
prised to see with what earnestness Mr. Cockran went 
into this thing — ^just as thou,gh he had studied up on 
some game law case, which really he had never done at 
all. It was simply a good elucidation of the principles of 
law, by which he'arrived at the same conclusions as have 
been reached in many game law suits of which he never 
heard. According to his view, the men of Minneapolis 
had no right to serve trout to the Congressmen, even in 
their eagerness to give them the best of the land. It 
would appear as though a special dispensation would be 
in order. I may state that about everybody went away 
with his trout in possession, though for my own part I 
never cared to eat October brook trout; anyhow not 
while I have a copy of the Brief in my valise. 
E. Hough. 
480 Caxton Building, Chicago, 111. 
New York Fish and Game Protectors. 
Jno. E. Leavitt, Johnstown, Fulton county. 
M. C. Worts, Oswego, Oswego county. 
F. S. Beede, Keene Valley, Essex county. 
F. E. Courtney, Wells, Hamilton county. 
George Carver, Lyons, Wayne county. 
Thomas Carter, Bridge street, Buffalo, Erie county, 
T, H. Donnelly, Perry, Wyoming county. 
Geo. W. Earl, Port Leyden, Lewis county. 
L. S. Emmons, Oneonta, Otsego county. 
Spencer Hawn, Cicero, Onondaga county. ■ 
Geo. W. Harmony, Lockport, Niagara county. 
E. A. Hazen, Hammond, St. Lawrence countyv 
James Plolmes, Apalachin, Tioga county. 
Carlos Hutchins, Indian Lake, Hamilton count> 
Robt. S. Jones, Hardenburgh, Ulster county. 
Willett Kidd, Newburg, Orange county. 
Jas. H. Lamphere, Weedsport, Cayuga county. 
D. H. McKinnon, Masonville, Delaware county 
John B. McCook, Ozone Park, Queens county. 
B. H. McCollum, Oswegatchie, St. Lawrence. 
Jos. Northup, Alexandria Bay, Jefferson county. 
F. M. Potter, Chautauqua, Chautauqua countf 
Samuel Pearsall, Camden, Oneida county. 
W. L. Reed, Canandaigua, Ontario county. 
B. Salisbury, Ellicottville, Cattaraugus county: 
N. A. Scott, Greenfield Centre, Saratoga county. 
J, F. Shedden, Mooers, Clinton county. 
Geo. B. Smith, Horseheads, Chemung county. V 
H. L. Wait, Gray, Herkimer county. 
Albert Warren, WilliamstoMm, Oswego county. 
Alvin Winslow, Stony Creek, Warren county. 
Isaiah Vosburgh, Saranac Lake, Franklin county. 
A. D. Wellman, 116 Hay ward avenue, Rochester. 
OYSTER PROTECTORS. 
Edgar Hicks, West New Brighton, Richmond county. 
John Ferguson, Patchogue, Suffolk county. 
Selah T. Cook, Bay Shore, Suffolk county. 
Syracuse Sentiment. 
Your magazine is beGoraing more entertaining' with' every nuin- 
ber, and one wh'o does not enjoy it -and look forward- to t-he next 
with anticipated pleasure siifely has no elemeuf of fhe sportsman 
in his makeup, . . W. A. B, _ 
* 
