fi FOREST AND STREAM. 
r^4N. 1900. 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST 
From ladiaoa. 
Mr._ Julius Youche, a young sportsmaii of Crown :Point, 
Ind., is in town to-day and paid the Forest and Stream 
office a call. He says that this has been a grand fall for 
quail in his part of the countrj', and he has had his share 
of sport. Crown Point men are organiziiig a gun club 
campaign and will hold a good tournament in February. 
To England, 
Mr. Edward H. Ford, of the Economic Smokeless 
Powder Co., of this city and Hammond, Tnd., leaves to- 
morrow on a visit to England, his former home, retui'n- 
ing in the spring. Mr. Ford is one of the best chemists in 
the powder business. His friends wish him a pleasant 
journey. 
From New York. 
Mr. Lee J. Lockwood, now of New York city, and in 
the insurance business with a New York company, but 
formerly of Memphis, Tenn., is in Chicago this week and 
paid the Forest and Stream office a call to speak of 
earlier days in the South. His family are at Omaha, and 
Mr. Lockwood travels o-^^er twenty-one States. 
Ffom MemptiiE. 
Mr. T. A. Divine, one of the king bees of Southern 
shootingdom and one of the best fellows in the whole 
wide world, was in town for a day this week on business, 
looking just as young as he did ten years ago. 
Indigaant Denial. 
A Chicago daily paper prints the follovk^ing in one of its 
attempts at sporting news, in course of its comment on 
the bass from the James River, Va., which is mentioned 
elsewhere in these columns: 
"E. Hough, the fish expert at A. G. Spalding & Bros., 
said the fish which came to Chicago to-day is not a record 
breaker, he himself having captured one in Gun Lake, 
Mich., in 1894, that weighed 10 pounds 4 ounces. The 
nearest bass to that in weight that he knew of was one 
which weighed 8 pounds 10 ounces." 
That is about as near as a daily newspaper cati Con- 
veniently get at the truth, so I suppose a fellow oughtn't 
to kick. Evidently by malice aforethought some one has 
sought to ruin my fair name by confusing me with Mr. A. 
Hirth, who is the "fish expert at Spalding's." Mr. Hirth 
never caught any lo-pound bass at Gun Lake, or any- 
where else, and in fact I doubt if he ever saw a bass, ex- 
cept such as I have carried in to him now and then, thus 
perhaps having become subject to the same injustice as 
the dog Tray, of which we read in story. I must indig- 
nantly deny this confusing of my identity with that of Mr. 
Hirth. The fact is, he had the Gun Lake bass, stuffed, on 
view at the store, and so I presume fell to dreaming that 
he caught it himself. 
AH Kinds ot a Good Time. 
My erstwhile shooting companions, Mr. W. A. PoAvel 
and Maj. La Rue, seem to have found a good place down 
m Mississippi since I left them, and Mr, Powel has 
moved all his family, including La Rue, down there, to 
Bj'halia, near where Capt. Bobo now lives, and the whole 
outfit has taken charge of the house of Mr. W. I. Spears, 
where they seem to be living in a state of great content- 
ment. I am sorry I cannot accept Mr. Powel's invitation 
to come and live with Mr. Spears, but though I have 
never met the latter, we may all move in there next fall, if 
we don't like it well enough at Mr. Powel's place. The 
following letter will show what kind of folks they have 
down South, and what sort of times they have. It is no 
wonder tliat Mr. Powel has entirely gone back on his 
promise to send me a loaf of bread — the kind like his 
ro.other used to make, and of which Maj. La Rue was very 
fond. Here is the letter: 
"Ingram's Mill, Miss., Jan. 14. — We got here Tues- 
day last and have been having all kinds of a good tiine 
ever since. Mr. Spear's house covers about two acres 
of ground, and Madame and I have the best of it. The 
Major is game as ever. We go for hunting the first 
thing every morning, then shoot quails a few hours, and 
after that Mr. Spears gets out eight or ten couples of 
hound puppies and we catch a few dozen rabbits in the 
field by the house. In the fox hunt, you know, we all 
'ride and holler.' At night we read and play whist and 
have some music, when we don't go coon himting. Mr. 
Bobo lives just across the road, and helps himt anything 
but rabbits. I think there are at least 200 rahbits within 
a quarter of a mile of the house. The club house of the 
Ivanhoe Club is in Mr. Spears' yard, and they have 250,- 
000 acres of ground posted, and have put out pheasants, 
etc.; and while we have not hunted quail more than a cou- 
ple of hours each day, I think it would be easy to put up 
fifty coveys of birds a day here. Very few of them have 
been_ shot here this season. We are going Tuesday to 
put in one day being hogs and kill some birds. Every 
meal we have a big turkey at one end of the table and a 
ham at the other, with quail, rabbit, pigs' feet, sausage, 
spare-ribs, pork and greens, and most everything you 
can think of, in between. Several young ladies are visit- 
ing here, and the Major is in clover. He has taken a 
bunch of thetn out horseback riding to-day. As it was 
Sunday we did not hunt, but had a few simple house en- 
tertainments. I sent back home for my saddle pony to 
be shipped at once, for Mr. Spears only has six or eight 
good saddle horses, and we need more than that. It is 
twenty or twenty-five miles to real good deer and turkey 
shooting, and I think we will go after them in a few days, 
as we can kill them till Feb. i. I hate to think of leaving 
here at all. 
"You should see my wife, Mrs. Spears, Aliss Ingram 
and Miss Stevens trying to catch a cotton tail rabbit, with 
the help of a dozen excited hound puopies. It was worth 
$8 a minute to hear and see them. Mr. Clarence Spears, 
Mr. Ingram, Mr. Kelly and a half dozen more gentleirien 
have done everything in their power to show us a good 
time. I brought Dorothy and Reuben, one of her ptippies. 
along, and Reuben is a wonder. We shot hirn twice and 
put a spike collar on him with an 80-pound boy on the 
end of a plow h°ne. and he ran away after rabbits with boy 
and all, but the Major shot him again yesterday, pretty 
c)ft>s«, and he has cot chased a raKbit since; but he ranges 
and hunts like a quarter horse. Dorothy is' finding a few 
birds, too; and Mr. Spears has a very nice pointer bitch, 
very careful and steady; and Mr. Clarence Spears an 
extra good setter, so we are pretty well fixed every way. 
. "We spent a day in R'lemphis, and the Major hunted up 
Irby Bennett. Mr. Orgill and a lot more people, and we 
spent a very pleasant day. Next winter don't let any- 
thing on earth keep you from coming down here with 
us. The weather, is oerfect, and we haven't a care, nor an 
unsatisfied want. T think yoti mentioned bread in your 
letter. Don't bother me again about such trifles as 
bread. The two colored cooks here are artists, and I feel 
as though I would never be hungry again. 
"This letter would be very incomplete if I failed to men- 
tion Mr. Ike Thompson, of Yazoo Cit3\ aged about 
eleven, and little Nora Spears. Any devilment those two 
kids can't think of and do has never been invented yet. 
"Now you can see I have discovered the best people and 
tlie finest country that lies out of doors, and you bet I am 
going to niirse my job, Spears says for me 'to bring any 
of my friends, any time, and stay all winter and all sum- 
mer, 
"I will write and tell you all about it some day, if it 
won't make you feel too bad, but this is the longest letter 
I ever wrote in my life, and I have to quit now and go 
and have .some more fun. Bread? Bread? You will 
just have to wait till I get back home before I will even 
think of such a thing as bread. Well, the best luck I can 
wish you is just that you might be here with us a while, 
and here's hoping," 
x\las! It would s^em that even the worm will turn. 
Painful as it is to state the facts, one must give the news 
that the house party at Mr. Spears' is to break up, or, in- 
deed, probably has broken up at this writing, unless the 
visitors have changed their minds and concluded to stay 
till spring. Under date of rnh inst. Maj. La Rue writes 
as below from Ingram's Mills: 
"We are having the dodgastest, quail shootin'est, fox 
racin'est, coon huntin'est time you ever heard of. Yes- 
terday Capt. Spears, Capt. Bobo, Sqr. Thompson, Deacon 
Powel and myself had a twenty-mile race after a red 
fox, Last night we causht three coons and five possums 
on an all-night raid in Pigeon Roost Bottoms. Monday. 
15th, Mrs. Powel and Miss Linda Stevens accompanied 
us on an all-day quail shoot on horseback, and so it goes. 
We leave on the igth. Allah be with you." 
Ffee Shipment of Deer in Minnesota. 
Chicago, III, Jan. 19. — It seems that by some fine Ital- 
ian handicraft at the last session of the JVIinnesota Legis- 
lature the game dealers secured a slight change in the 
wording of the law regulating the shipment of venison 
within the confines of the State, and this change now bids 
fair to work destruction in the fabric of protective work 
which in the past five years had gone so far toward stop- 
ping, or at least checking, the notorious game fences 
which at one time were being run in upper Minnesota, so 
that by hook or by crook venison was sent in a stream 
from the pine woods to the markets. The State Game 
Commission had this fairly well under control so long 
as a man was obliged to accompany his own deer during 
shipment, but noAV witness what a ruin the above men- 
tioned slight change creates. The case in question came 
before Judge Orr in the form of a replevin suit brought 
by the king of the Minnesota game dealers, R. E. Cobb, 
against the ex'ecutive agent of the State Commission, Mr. 
John BeuLuer, to recover five saddles of venison seized 
by the latter. Judge Orr, much to his expressed personal 
regret, found that the law would not warrant his confirm- 
ing the warden in the seizure. The Piojieer Press, of St, 
Paul, gives the following details: 
"The venison had been bought by the plaintiff from 
Swanson Brothers, of Moose Lake, Minn. It was shipped 
by express to the plaintiff at St. Paul. No evidence was 
presented to show when or where Swanson Bros, ob- 
tained the game. The presumption was that the deer were 
the property of the State, were killed in the State, and 
were killed during the open season for deer. T cannot 
infer,' continued Judge Orr, in his memorandum, 'that 
the game was killed unlawfully, for the law does not infer 
an unlawful act. The statute provides that the possession 
of venison, the killing of which is prohibited, shall be 
prima facie evidence that it was the property of the State 
when killed. The same inference, it would seem to me, 
would be drawn from the facts as they herein appear. 
The stattite does not provide that the plaintiff must show 
that the deer was lawfully killed. I: seems to me that the 
plaintiff had lawful possession of the venison, and the 
principal question is as to his right to ship the venison 
from one point to another in the State.' 
"Section 14, chapter 242, of the Laws of 1897, provided 
'it shall be unlawful for any person to ship or cause to be 
conveyed by common carrier, or convey or cause to be 
conveyed by any private conveyance, at any time, any 
deer to any person, except the same (deer) is in the con- 
trol of and accompanied by some person in charge thereof 
other than an employe of a common carrier.' 
"But the new law of 1899, (chapter 221, section 14), 
omits the words 'by common carrier, convey or cause to 
be conveyed,' thus prohibiting solely the shipping of deer 
by an)'- private conveyance, 'save when the deer is in 
charge of some person not an employe of a common car- 
rier.' That is, a deer could not legally be transported in 
a buggy by an agent or employe of a railroad company. 
But the deer can, so far as the law determines, be legally 
shipped on any railroad train. Therefore, Judge Orr de- 
clares, 'This is a manifest mistake, and a very evident 
omission of some kind; but it is not for the court to read 
into the statute something that should or might have been 
included within its terms. The provision' (as it now 
stands) 'is almost meaningless, and it would be difficult to 
conceive a condition, in fact, that would fall within its 
terms. This is an unfortunate condition. But there is no 
present escape from the law as it reads. The plaintiff is 
entitled to judgment in his favor.' 
"Judge Orr had previously decided, in thg Case of J. 
Abresch vs. the Board of Game and Fish Commission, 
that the board could not be sued Under that decision no 
damages can be claimed by parties who has lost heretofore 
through the seizing of d«er in transit." 
Death of Billy Jackson^ 
The death of Billy Jackson, reported in last week's 
Forest and Stream, comes as a great shock to his 
friejids in this city, who speak of hitq with genuine grief. 
There were few characters more interesting or more lova- 
ble than this tall Westerner, and the magnetism of his 
personality was not easily forgotten. It was nearly three 
years ago when I last saw Billy Jackson, and my friend 
McChesney, and I parted from him then with regret that 
he was not a well man, but not dreaming that his disease 
would so soon prove fatal. He stood, a tall and striking 
figure, as_ he waved us good-bye on the last morning that 
we saw him. He left camp before the rest of us and went 
home because he was suffering so with rheumatism that 
it was not safe for him to st,ay out any longer. Dressed 
in long white capote, of the old Northwest Company cut, 
he was a striking figure out of the past; and now he 
has gone back into that past wherein he played a good and 
gallant part. One feels like adding his persona! tribute 
to such a man. 
Habitat of the Possum, 
A letter from Mr. William C. Held, of Saginaw, Mich., 
bearmg date of Jan. 13, has the following rather curious 
information: "There was an opossum killed here about 
two weeks ago. the first one I ever heard of about these 
parts. I would like to know if this is not pretty far 
north for them? Another curious fact is that there were 
three otter killed within a few miles of this city a short 
time ago." 
It is not so strange that otter might be taken in the 
neighborhood of Saginaw, for that was all pine country 
once, and good otter range; but I should think the in- 
stance of the opossum a most unusual one. We often hear 
of tile opossum being seen in upper Indiana, but a glance 
at the ma.p will show that Saginaw is some little distance 
above the lower line of the State of Michigan. The opos- 
.^um is hardly a native of the pine regions. _ It would be 
interesting to hear from other readers of the Forest and 
Stream, if any have heard of so extended a northern limit 
of tliis animal's habitat. 
«A/x « « ~ E. Hough. 
800 BoYCE Building, Chicago, 111, 
Some Ontario Deer Figures. 
The following report of the deer killed in the "High- 
lands of Ontario" during the open season from Nov, i to 
15, 1899, will be of interest to sportsmen: 
The H[ighlands of Ontario comprise that portion of 
Ontario including the 30,000 islands of the Georgian Bay, 
the Muskoka Lakes district, the Lake of Bays district 
and the Magnetawan River region, all reached only by 
the Grand Trunk Railway system. 
The express companies alone carried 2,032 carcasses of 
deer, weighing in the aggregate over 200,000 pounds. The 
returns show that 3,559 deer hunting licenses and 2.065 
settlers' permits were issued, these figures being largely 
in excess of 1898. It will be observed that 5,624 deer hunt- 
ers were in the woods during the fifteen days in which 
deer could be legally killed in Ontario. In allowing one 
deer to each license and permit holder, it is giving a very 
low average, many of the clubs and hunting parties secur- 
ing their full quota of two deer for each member. The 
number of deer carried by the express com.panies (large 
as the number is) cannot be taken as a criterion of the 
total number killed. Those killed by the settlers are not 
shipped, and a large number of hunters from inland towns 
and villages adjacent to the hunting grounds have the 
deer killed by them taken to their respective homes by 
teams. It is therefore safe to estimate that the total num- 
ber of deer killed during the last season in the hunting 
confines of northern Ontario was 6,500. One would 
think that this large number of killed would be the means 
of a diminution of deer, but this is not the case, and each 
successive year seems just as good for the sportsman as 
the last. 
In connection with the hunting season in Ontario, it 
might be of interest to mention that the Grand Trunk 
Railway had their photographer in the wilds of the forests, 
getting negatives of the best scenes possible, and the re- 
sult was most gratifying. He secured pictures of the 
hunters' shack, both interior and exterior views; also 
some splendid pictures of the results of the chase, as well 
as several views of herds of wild deer, which were taken 
with a telephote lens at a distance of a mile away from 
the object. These pictures have been enlarged from a 
small 8 by 10 negative to a size 21 inches by 31 inches, and 
the Grand Trunk intend having them on exhibition at 
their different ticket offices in all the large cities of Amer- 
ica. 
The Canadian Champion, of Milton, Ont., whose editor, 
Mr. Wm. Panlon, is one o fthe experienced deer hunters 
of the Province, says in comment on these statistics: 
E. Tinsley, Chief Game Warden for Ontario, reports 
that 5,Soo deer hunters' licenses were issued in this Prov- 
ince last season, and that the number of deer killed was 
6,500. The latter number was much larger than that for 
the previous year. This must have been due to the 
amendment to the Game Act, passed last year, which 
legalized the killing of deer in water. 
The excuse for the change was that as long as hound- 
ing was legal, deer would be killed in water any way. 
There was something in this; but the last could have been 
stopped by prohibiting the first, and why this was not 
done is hard to understand, the more so because when the 
opinions of all those who took out deer hunting licenses 
iji 1898 were asked by the Chief Warden, the majority of 
those received wore against hounding. It might be un- 
charitable to say that the amendment was passed, not to 
protect the deer, but to facilitate their slairghter by so- 
called hunters who cannot leave the trails in the bush with 
out losing themselves, and who for that reason are unable 
to kill deer in a sportsmanlike manner; but the passing 
might bear that consti-uction. 
It is time for a change, to prevent the practical exter- 
mination of the deer, which will be a question of only a 
few years under the present law, though Mr. Tinsley re- 
ports that they are holding their own. He no doubt re- 
peats what has been said by so-called hunters of the type 
referred to above. They, for obvious reasons, want the 
Game Act to remain as it is. 
Let us have a law to prohibit hounding. It is true that 
this will involve a loss of revenue, for it would keep many 
bounders and water hunters out of the bush; but it is to 
be hoped the question of revenue from licenses does not 
figure except subordinately in the framing of Ontario 
