110 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
Down in, old Kentucky they are having poHtical trou- 
ble also, and near to the center of affairs with the State 
militia is Col. Roger D. Williams, of Lexington, fox 
hunter, dog fancier and breeder, one of the best-known 
sportsmen of his State. The writer first met Col. Will- 
iams out in Kansas years ago, when the latter was judge 
at a coursing meet. Years before that Col. Williams 
was a Black Hills argonaut, going into that country when 
there was an Indian fight at every twenty miles of the 
trail. His brother, George Williams, adjutant of his 
regiment, died some years ago at Lexington, from sun- 
stroke, sustained while on drill, as was reported in these 
columns at the lime. Col. Williams has an unwelcome 
task this week, but can handle it properly. 
A Real Old-Timer. 
A real old-timer — one of the genuine sort — is a most 
lovable and interesting personage, albeit rare, indeed, 
these days — such a man, for instance, as old Bill Ham- 
ilton, over whose cabin on the Yellowstone a tattered 
American flag is flying to-day, as it has for 3rears. Now 
comes Mr. George Kennedy, of St. Louis, whose name is 
known, but all too rarely seen, in the columns of For- 
est AND Stream, and brings word of an old-timer of 
the genuine breed, whose home is at St. Louis — Major 
Doan, whom it has never been my fortune to meet, but 
whom one of these days we must interview for the For- 
est AND Stream. Of him Mr. Kennedy writes: 
"I have been trying for some time to neglect my busi- 
ness long enough to write j'ou about Major Doan, and 
now I am doing so. I saw him Saturday, for the first 
time in some months, and after we exchanged greetings 
I said: 'Major, a friend of mine (Huh! Didn't know 
that, did j^ou?) in Chicago is reading up all the old 
books about the settlement of the West, Horace Kep- 
hart tells me. I guess Ife could get some information 
from you, couldn't he? You know you were out West 
in the early days.' 
" 'Yes, George,' he replied, reminiscently, 'you know, I 
went trading to Santa Fe in '43, and the next year, with 
a partner, took a stock of goods on a trading trip to the 
City of Mexico,' etc., etc; something about the Mexican 
War and a trip to California the year after — '45, or some- 
where along in there. 
"The value of the Major's story, I suspect, would be 
in the circumstance that he is a man who never talked 
about it much. I've known him fifteen years, and only 
heard him mention the above once before. He is a man 
of education and refinement — has always been one of 
"us boys" around tOAvn. t suppose he is close to 75, and 
his spirit is as young as mine. He is the kind of man 
who, when an argonaut, must have found somewhere 
along the trail a spring of the water of perpetual youth. 
I would like to write his funeral sermon, except for the 
fact that we all want him to live forever." 
The Tale of a Sternwheel Dock. 
Dec. 20, 1899, was an ideal day for a quail shoot, but 
rather tantalizing in its way, since it was the last of the 
season. The air was clear and fresh, just warm enough 
and just cool enough. "We will bag at least a hundred 
quail to-day," said Mr. Powell; and Major La Rue 
thought that was within bounds for three guns. To 
make less horrible the slaughter, we concluded not to 
start out too soon in the day, but dallied about home till 
well on into the morning, to give the" birds a chance, we 
being attended with something of the same reputation 
which General Buller took with him to South Africa, 
and which he has left there the same as us. 
For the sternwheel duck, that fateful augur consulted 
of yore by Powel and La Rue, still remained unpro- 
pitious. He would quack, would eat, would even swim; 
but swim backward after his ancient fashion he ab- 
solutely and heartlessly refused to do. "Never mind, 
your dog'll be here to-day," said La Rue, "and that'll 
make you feel better." No dog at 11 o'clock, when 
we started; and, indeed, to cut short that part of the 
story, no dog at all had arrived when I left town. The 
hoodoo still worked. 
We rode out six or eight miles into as lovely a quail 
country as ever lay out of doors, and we had two 
dogs as good as man ever shot over, and we had this 
great advantage, that my companions had hunted over this 
country for a month, and knew the life, adventures and 
personal character of every bevy and every member of 
every bevy in that whole countryside. Yet, what do you 
think happened? One hour, two hours, and not a bird 
put up, not a feather, not a track, not a place where a 
bird had been feeding, walking, flying or otherwise in- 
dulging in quail activities ! Gloom overcast the ordinarily 
smiling face of Mr. Powel, and Major La Rue lagged 
sadly in his walk. They two gathered apart and hel'd 
converse, muttering and pointing a mistrustful thumb at 
the man from Chicago who had wrought this ruin. Thus 
it was for many weary miles, till we had eaten our lunches 
and turned our faces homeward. 
Powel wandered away in disgust, and at last, to our 
joy, we heard his gun, once, twice. We found him 
working hard and far over dry leaves, after a bevy he 
had raised on corn and followed in, but he got but two 
for all his labor. Then we tried the corn again, and both 
the dogs at last pointed, and we were easier in our minds. 
Two birds, only here, my friends shooting while I marked. 
We went after four singles, which dropped in the edge 
of the corn, and which proved to be runners. We picked 
up a couple more, and here it was that I had a very nice 
picture shown me, in one of the swift asides of . the 
field which go into the panorama one rolls up in his mind. 
Win, the setter, caught scept of one of these running 
birds, and dropped just as it rose. It crossed over La 
Rue and headed for the timber. I saw in a little narrow 
field of vision the whole act of the shot. He swung his 
pump-gim over and forward, with a quick, startled mo- 
ment, and I saw the gun go too far forward, r 
itself, steady and stifTen, as it were, and then came t.-t, 
shot, and the bird fell far onward with its own momentum 
and that of the load, which struck it full. It was shqf 
within 20 yards, which shows the speed of the shooter's 
mind and muscles. 
Now the luck turned a bit, and we soon put up ano^ Aer 
bevy and marked it into woods, where they took to trees 
like grouse, and where the shooting was hard, though we 
slowly got together a hz^Jf-doz^n more- Here, while La 
Rue and I sat on a log, we heard Powel's gun again 
deeper in the woods, and presently a single quail came 
flying directly toward us and dropped close by upon the 
leaves. We had no dog with us at the moment, and when 
we went to kick the bird out it would not start, nor did 
either of the dogs get a scent of it at the place when 
we brought them up, so we never saw the bird again; 
proof enough of the cunning of Bob White on the last 
days of the season. 
Now we went on into the woods, and the dogs pointed a 
nice bunch which Mr. Powel thought might be the 
gathered band of one of the two bcAdes which he told 
us he had put up at the same time, and which he had 
not been able to mark at all in the dense cover. Out of 
these birds we took a little toll, and followed on 'till 
they came to the bank of a deep creek. Here two birds 
sprang and tried to get across, but La Rue's fatal pump 
stopped them, and Win very gallantly plunged into the ice 
water, swam across and brought in the game as hand- 
somely as could be. Two more birds started back here, 
and La Rue and I shot into them, Powel standing by and 
telling us to have a good time. The round-up showed 
perhaps a dozen or more birds in storage now, so we 
began to take heart. 
My friends showed me places where they had seen a 
hundred quail, where they had killed a dozen here, a 
couple of dozen there, etc. I preserved a high and 
scornful silence. It waxed late, and we sought the 
open fields, and here, with the usual bad luck, put up a 
big bevy at the top of a high timbered bluff at the 
edge of a stubble, which left us no chance to mark the 
flight. Not one of us could tell where the birds had 
gone, but each had a theory, and as a resultant of our 
tlifferent theories we got a quarter of a mile away from 
what at last proved to be the right place. A half-hour 
passed while we beat the stubble out, and then, at the top 
of a high knoll, we saw the dogs point nicely and knew 
they had a bevy. Here we began to show form, each 
stopping his pair except La Rue, who had one fall ahead 
a bit, which we failed to find, though I was more lucky 
with my second bird, which was badly cut up to go so 
far as it did. These birds went straight to the deep 
woods, and we did not follow them, as it meant a sharp 
climb and a problematical search, as they had a high 
start from the top of the bluff and seemed good for a 
quarter of a mile before stopping. So we swung off 
to the right and toward home. 
Now we had another little picture or two, and this 
was the best part of the day so far as worktnanlike 
shooting was concerned. We were walking along tlie 
edge of the stubble, near the woods from which came the 
big bevy that had not been able to mark down. All 
at once there was the whirr of a quail almost imder La 
Rue's feet, and again I caught the act of the shot in a 
narrow vision field which made it beautifully distinct. I 
was directly behind him and thought with him exactly. 
I saw his gun come up into line, as his body leaned 
just a little forward, saw that he had not covered the 
bird exactly with the first movement, then noted the 
steadying and straightening which I think is almost un- 
conscious to the shooter, and almost in the same flash the 
bird pitched forward, hit plum center and Avell cut up 
The next instant Powel knocked down a bird which was 
frantically trying to get over the hill, and he and the 
Major doubled on another in the same direction. Yet 
another swung sharply around to the right, and I dropped 
it, and then Powel killed another on top of the knoll 
where he had gone after his first birds. I missed a bird 
which took through the wood at a quarter-horse gait, 
though I crippled it with the second and marked it down. 
La Rue and Powel, if I recollect correctly, got one more 
each before we left, and I killed the last bird here, over a 
point where my friends called me up to shoot. I thinV 
they would have given $10 apiece if I had missed, so the] 
could have wiped my eye. It was now getting toward 
evening, and we turned sharply for home, meeting eili 
route a friend of Mr. Powel's, who had walked out from 
town and who had not had much better sport than we. It 
seemed to us that the storm had driven the birds, if not 
out of the country, on a general migration, as sometimes 
happens in lower Illinois, at least into cover different from 
that in which they had been using for the earlier portion 
of the season. 
We had a nice walk home in the evening, all except 
Mr. Powel, who had unwisely engaged in rabbit shooting 
during the day and had a back load of cottontails which 
he said he intended to use in sweet charity. And now 
the wind fell into a mere breath, and the sun sank 
gloriously, and the air was soft and sweet. Thus the 
last day of the season ended. 
My friend apologized to me for the poorness of the 
sport we had had, but really there had been no reason 
for complaint. We found that we had seventy-five quail 
hung up on our string for the three days. This does 
not figure out very big for three guns, three days, but it 
makes a pretty big pile of birds to get together and look 
at, and I hardly think any of us wanted it to be more. 
My friends are both splendid field shots, and, indeed, we 
all did fairly well on the average on this hunt, for we 
figured it out among us that we could only recollect six 
birds in the whole three days which had been missed by 
the three of us, though, of course, we had some bad luck 
in picking birds that had been knocked down. I am 
not apt to shoot so well again very soon, and wouldn't 
have done it then if it had not been so unpleasant to miss 
a bird in the society of these two fiends. 
The next morning I left for home. No dog had ar- 
rived for me. The sternwheel duck still preserved a 
dignified neutrality. Powel asked me if I knew any way 
by which La Rue could be induced to go home too. but I 
could not suggest any. In fact, we both told Powel 
that we were going to spend next fall with him, and per- 
haps part of the summer. 
The day after my arrival home I received the following 
" ^tter ; . 
"You Old Hoodoo: At 8:15 this A. M. your dog 
(Belle) was here, and at 8:30 the duck was swimming 
backward. _ Now you must admit it was all your fault. 
But you will find your dog on morning train, looking a 
trifle thin, but all there." 
The dog was indeed "a trifle thin." She looked bigger 
than a yearling calf when she drove up in the express 
wagon, and weighed pretty near to 70 pounds. But she 
was a beauty^ and no mbt^kft city fed as she had been 
for her two years of pampered life. I took her out with 1 
one of my dead quail, and she could find it as nicely ' 
as one could ask, though she looked at it with curiosity, i 
The city is no place for a pointer, so I sent her to Tom 1 
Divine at Memphis, and he sent her to his friend, Mr. 
Thompson, away down in Louisiana, and there she is 
being trained in the manner and custom of a perfect lady. 
Mr. Thompson had her taken out with his old dogs, and 
at the first point Belle walked over his dog and into the 
middle of the birds, and watched them fly with a look of 
joy on her face. She did this again and again, and then 
seemed to figure it out that it wasn't quite the thing, be- 
cause the other dogs didn't do it. She tilted her head 
on one side, and thought it over, and at the fourth 
bevy fell to pointing singles as though she had done it 
all her life. Mr. Thompson is in love with her, and', 
says, she will make a great one, and'indeed this does seem' 
pretty well for a dog two and a half years old, that had 
never seen a quail before. 
Next year I am going to have a dog to beat Win and 
Dorothy, to say nothing of the fact that Mr. Powel 
offers me a pup on the side out of his own kennels. Thus 
every cloud has a silver lining. Certainly I must meet 
Powel and La Rue again, and the only ill luck I can wish 
them is that they may both fall off just a little bit in 
their shooting between now and next year. As to the 
sternwheel duck, it remains to be seen whether it will 
swim backward for any but members of the family, though 
eventually it will recognize me as such, along with La 
Rue. E. Hough. 
300 BoycE Building, Chicago, 111. 
The Management of Woodlands. 
Washington, D. C, Feb. 3.— Among the applicants for 
Government assistance in the management of woodlands 
is William Rockefeller. This gentleman owns a track of 
60,000 acres at Bay Pond, Franklin county. New York, 
on which he has built a hunting and fishing lodge. Much 
of the land has been logged over, but there is a large tract 
of virgin timber which has passed the stage of greatest 
production in a natural state and is lying idle. Mr. 
Rockefeller has asked for a working plan by which the 
mature timber can be turned into revenue without injury 
to the forest as a game preserve. 
The Section of Working Plans of the Division of 
Forestry, which gives assistance to owners of timber 
lands desirous of applying conservative methods of cut- 
ting, began the new year with applications representing 
nearly two million acres. This innovation was intro- 
duced in October, 1898, and has been exceedingly popu- 
lar, not only with farmers owning small wood lots, but 
with large timber proprietors. The purpose of the Gov- 
erriment in furnishing this assistance is chiefly, to afford 
object lessons to wasteful timber owners who are now 
skeptical of scientific forest methods. Work has been 
done on several tracts in the following States: New 
York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, 
Iowa, Connecticut, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia, 
Maryland, Kentucky, West Virginia, Illinois, Missouri, 
New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana and Tennessee. 
The offer to give advice and furnish working plans to 
persons desirous to plant forest trees, made last August 
by the Division of Forestry, has received immediate re- 
sponse from fai-mers in every part of the country. 
Although but a few months have elapsed since the offer 
became generally known, one hundred and eighteen appli- 
cations have been received, and plans for thirty-eight of 
these will be completed before the time for spring plant- 
ing to begin. A still larger number have asked for writ- 
ten advice, which does not require field inspection by the 
forest oflicials. The treeless States have been quickest to 
avail thernselves of assistance, the number of applications 
being as follows: Kansas, 38; Oklahoma, 19; Nebraska, 
12; North Dakota, 9; Iowa. 6; Indiana, 5; Texas, 5; 
Minnesota, 4; Colorado, 3; Washington, 3; South Dakota, 
2; California, 2; Illinois, 2; New York, 2; Ohio, i; Mis- 
souri, I ; Delaware, i. \ 
The majority of plans are for tracts of fi^e to^ ten ' 
acres, intended by prairie farmers to afford wind-breaks 
and fuel supplies. A few plantings of 1,000 and 2,000 
acres are being made as experiments in raising forest crops 
for market in regions where such material is scarce. 
After considering these applications in order, the Division 
of Forestry has sent experts to study the conditions of as 
many as possible of localities which offered the best op- 
portunities for object lessons to the public. Plans will 
be sent without delay to each owner, instructing him in 
detail how to plant, and recommending the species best 
adapted to his tract. 
Game in Restatifants, 
New York, Feb. i— Editor Forest and Stream: The 
article below is taken from the New York Times of Feb. 
I, 1900. If you will publish it in your columns, I think 
it will speak for itself to the thousands of sportsmen who 
are your readers. If the article be the truth " 'tis pity," 
and from my knowledge of human nature, I am more than 
half-inclined to believe "pity 'tis, 'tis true" : 
"I assure you that both the venison and the birds are 
imported," said the head waiter at one of the Broadway 
restaurants when a patron protested against the service 
of game out of season. "It is brought over in the French 
steamers, and is not American game at all, though we do 
not tell our patrons of that unless they make objections, 
as you have done." So the man who would not have the 
game law violated, tried a French quail and found it to be 
wonderfully like the same sort of bird he has been in 
the habit of shooting at, at least, in this country, "How 
about that for an explanation?" asked the scribe of the 
steward, with whom he had had a sufficiently long 
acquaintance to warrant a familiar chat together, "Well, 
the waiter went the limit, I must confess. He had been 
told to say the game was imported, but the French busi- 
ness was a fancy of his own, and does not bear the official 
stamp of the house. Of course, it is an open secret that 
they are imported from no more distant point than the 
cold storage warehouses, where there is always a supply 
of most any sort of game for the right purchasers. Our 
patrons want it, and we have to give them what they 
ask for, or else lose their trade. We never ask too many 
questions about game out of season, for the whole business 
