Sept. 21, 1901.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
227 
Saginaw Crowd, of famous memories, will head that ad- 
mirable party of sportsmen to some goose-shooting point 
in North Dakota in the first or second week of October. 
Mr. Mershon has just written asking whether one has any 
knowledge of a white goose decoy. I have referred him to 
Von Lengerke & Antoine, who handle a papier mache 
decoy, which is white on one side and which has a white 
head attachable. So far as I know, this is the only 
pure white goose decoy made, Mr. Mershon thought he 
could rig one out of a profile covered with a goose's skin, 
but methinks it would be considerable labor to get a big 
flock of fifty decoys manufactured in this way. It is not 
yet known what point the Saginaw Crowd will select for 
their fall pilgrimage. 
Jacksnipe. 
A friend reports that he saw one solitary, single, lone- 
some jacksnipe about sixteen miles west of Chicago yes- 
terday. The bird was headed south, and probably in an 
uncertain and discontented frame of mind. 
Not so the reports from Lower Wisconsin, where the 
jacksnipe flight seems to be at this writing. From Mon- 
tello. Wis., near the Puckaway marshes, comes a report 
from ,Mr. Fetter, of this city, who, a couple of days 
ago, killed sixty-eight snipe in one day. A dog trainer 
located at this point reports that the ducks are not yet in 
at the Puckaway or Neepenauk marshes, but that the 
jacksnipe have appeared in A^ery considerable numbers. 
We are having heavy rains here to-day, and the prob- 
abilities are -that the birds will appear over upper Illinois 
and Indiana inside of the next three or four days.. 
Woodcock. 
A good many woodcock — that is to say, if there ever 
was , such a thing as a good many woodcock — have ap- 
peared along the edges of the Skokie marsh and the little 
sloughs which lie north of Chicago. Mr. Geo. R. Thorne, 
of Montgomery Ward & Co., whom I met this morning by 
chance, was in a very happy frame of mind. 
"Do 3'ou see that boy over there," said he, "the one 
holding the dbg? Well, that is my dog. I just bought 
him through an advertisement in Forest and Stream. 
He is a pointer, two and a half years old, and warranted 
broke on woodcock. Now you watch me Monday morn- 
ing. I am going to take out my new dog near my home in 
Winnetka, just north of town, and if there are as many 
woodcock there then as there have been this week, you 
will hear something drop in that neighborhood." 
This^ is within twenty-five miles of the middle of 
Chicago. Considering that Mr. Washburne's nice bag 
of chickens was made within fifty miles on the other side 
of town, we may revive something of the ancient claims 
of the city of Chicago as a shooting ground. 
By the way, Mr. Thorne, with his friend, Mr. John B. 
Drake, and perhaps one or two other Chicago gentlemen, 
propose going to Nebraska for a prairie chicken shoot the 
first week in October, making South Bend, in that State, 
their stopping point. Now, that is something like a 
chicken shoot. The law which opens the chicken season 
at Oct. 1 is not only a wise one, but a sportsmanlike one. 
At that time the birds are big and powerful, and one 
cannot kill twenty straight, as he may in the shooting of a 
month previous. We value only that which is difficult to 
obtain in this world, and the shooter who stops a big 
cackling October grouse has something of which he may 
be far prouder than the loose-plumaged bird which he 
kills at 20 yards from the muzzle of his gun on the first 
day of the shooting season. 
Wisconsin Ducks. 
The Wisconsin duck-shooting season thus far has been 
valuable sim'ply in respect of numbers of local birds. At 
Fox Lake George Whitlinger killed eighteen mallards and 
teal on opening day. The bags on the Horicon marsh 
were also very decent, though the customary rule pre- 
vailed all over the Wisconsin niarsbes that the second 
day found the birds dull, frightened and unwilling to 
move. 
The Wisconsin law which forbids open water shooting 
or chasing of birds with a boat is surely a very wise and 
beneficial one. It permits the birds to rest, and that al- 
lows them to become wonted to a locality and so allows 
better shooting than would be possible if the birds were 
perpetually harried morning, noon and night along shore 
and in the open. 
Keep Yoar License with Yoti. 
If you go shooting in Wisconsin these days, it is wise 
for you to have a license, and not only to have it, but 
to have it on your person. Mr. Valentine Raeth, the 
new Milwaukee deputy, this week took a trip to some ©f 
the better Wisconsin marshes. He arrested Dell Fletcher, 
of Waupun, whom he found hunting without any gun 
license. The prisoner was tried before Justice Williams, 
of Fox Lake, and Fletcher claimed to have a license. 
Word was sent to his residence, and he did, indeed, pro- 
duce such a license, which he had left at home. The 
warden declared that this was not having the license "in 
possession." The justice, however, thought that the pur- 
chase of a license and keeping it at home was legal pos- 
sesion of the same, and he therefore discharged the 
prisoner. There was the usual amount of local talk 
against the game warden, who was, no doubt, entirely free 
from culpability in the matter, It is his business to find 
that the shooter has a- license, and he took the shortest 
cut to that end. In order to avoid any such trouble, even 
should it end in ultimate discharge, it is well for any 
shooter to remember that the license ought to be upon 
his own person when he goes afield. 
The Roasting of Live Squirrels. 
One of the pride.s of ^he stately Chicago suburb known 
as Evanston, located north of town on the Lake shore, 
is the large quantities of squirrels which live in the great 
forest trees that adorn so many of the homesteads of that 
residence quarter. These squirrels are wild and belong 
to no one, yet they are fed and loved by everybody, just 
as arc the squirrels in the public park at Memphis, Tenn. 
This week four small boys of Evanston chased four of 
these squirrels mto the hollow limb of a big oak tree. 
They then climbed up the tree ard set fire to the limb, 
which presently burned off and fell to the ground. The 
boys then got ^n axe and split open the burned limb. 
finding therein the four dead squirrels. The youthful 
savages will be prosecuted under a local ordinance which 
provides a fine for disturbing these squirrels. 
After all the Evanston youths should remember that 
Hieir act is not without precedent. The other day I 
picked up by chance in a gun store a little pamphlet 
published anonomously and entitled the "Real and Orig- 
inal Game Hog." It might well have been entitled "A 
Treatise on Roast Pork," had it been intended as a cul- 
inary tract. In brief it was the reprint from the Forest 
AND Stream of two years ago of those magnificently 
reserved and scathingly accurate articles written by 
"Didymus," of St. Augu.stine, in regard to the doings 
of Mr. George O. Shields in Florida. Among other 
things Mr. Shields was quoted as having, in one of his 
Florida journeys, en.gaged iis the pastime of roasting out 
an opossum from a hollow tree in which it had taken 
refuge. These Evanston boys, therefore, may reflect, 
even thoiigh they are placed temporarily in duress, that 
rhey have to cheer them an illustrious example. 
The Fixer Worked. 
Mr. and Mrs. Albert Bruning are stage people now 
playing an engagement in Chicago. Mr. Bruning 
is much an outdoor man, and spends his summers in 
Maine or Canada. This last summer professional duties 
took him to California, whereas Mrs. Briming joined 
friends at their lodge in Maine. Among the pleasant 
bouse party thus made up there was, of course, the ardent 
amateur photographer, in this case a newspaper man who 
had once been a military correspondent, and who had 
a $100 camera with complete outfit along with him. He 
made the worst pictures in the world, by the way, which 
sometimes happens with the hi.ehest-priced outfit. This 
photographer was a hero in a certain little drama which 
took place in the vicinity of the lodge one day. The 
heroine was a cow. It seems tlxit the photographer in 
the course of his operations had exhausted the virtue of 
his developing and fixing solutions, and he had thr^ wn 
away a large quantity of the fixer upon the green sward 
without the door. Enter now the cow, bent, as are all 
good and amiable cows, upon the absorption of as much 
green grass as possible. The cow ate freely of this grass 
saturated with the fixer. It fixed her! The funeral 
took place the next day. 
What Would You Do? 
What would you do in a case like this? A very good 
friend of mine, a novice in field sports, but with his en- 
thusiasm in the right place, came to me yesterday with 
joy in his face. *T am going out to Minot, N. D.," said 
he, "with three other advertising men, friends of mine 
here in Chicago, and whom you know (names omitted 
at this writing)." "We are going from Minneapolis 
with a Baptist minister whose names is" (it rhymes with 
Riley, but I will not tell here just what it is). "He 
was up at Minot last fall, and said he had awfully good 
chicken shooting. I have never killed a chicken myself 
nor seen one fly, and I am tickled to death at this 
chance." 
I told my enthusiastic friend that he was indeed to be 
congratulated. Then I reached down in the drawer of my 
desk and pulled out a copy of the Woodcraft Magazine 
and Game Laws in Brief. 
"I suppose you know that you have to take out a $25 
shooting license if you go to North Dakota," said I to 
him. 
"What!" he exclaimed, and he sank down into a chair 
with beads of perspiration on his forehead. 
I showed him the statute in such case made and pro- 
vided. At once he flew to the telephone, called up all 
his friends, and conveyed to them the information that 
a $25 license was a neces.sity for this trip. 
"Why, P tells me," said he, turning from the tele- 
phone to me, "that he was out there with the Baptist 
minister last fall himself, at this same place, and they 
didn't pay any license. You see tlje minister stands in 
with the game warden up there, and the game warden 
told him that if he wanted to bring his friends up there 
this fall, it would not cost anybody a cent. The game 
warden, you see, is a member of the same church that 
this Baptist minister belongs to. I don't think we would 
have any trouble if we went up there, would we?" 
In answer to this question I took out the North Da- 
kota game laws once m.ore and pointed out that imder 
the laws of that State it is made a misdemeanor for a 
warden or any of his deputies to issue a complimentary 
shooting license. 
Now what would you do in a case like this? It would 
be the simplest thing in the world to telegraph to the 
State game vvarden and have him meet mj' friends at 
Minot and give them the jarringest little surprise party 
they ever had, more especially the young man who shot 
at Minot last year under the wing of the church member 
warden. Of course, it would be a simple thing also to 
have action brought against the game warden who did 
this complimentarv business last fall. If I did this, all 
these friends of mine here in Chicago would think I was 
a real mean tliin.g What would you do? 
The answer is really not a very difficult one under the 
circumstances. The information came to me from a 
friend in confidence, he being at that time ignorant of 
the actual facts. Therefore, I cannot make public these 
names, or take the action which, from a strict sporting 
standpoint, might be a good thing. 
The entire party of Chicago men set out last night to 
meet the Baptist minister at Minneapolis, and to journey 
thence farther out of Minot under the tutelage of the 
righteous deput}^ who has apparently forgotten the new 
clause. in the Dakota law. I simply adduce this as show- 
ing the way in which non-resident license laws of a State 
sometimes do not work. As to the minister, it would 
seem that he really might be in better business. Perhaps 
he remembers the example of Dr. Thomas, of Chicago, 
■•ind his Wisconsin svimmer deer. Obviously the fact of 
his being a minister of the Gospel is simply an instance, 
and the censure in his case is no greater than that in any 
other, only in that capacity he has such a good oppor- 
tunity to set a good example rather than a poor one. 
E. Hough. 
Hartford Buii-DiHG, Chicago, lU. 
All communications intended for Forest and Stheam stioulil 
always be addressed to the Forest and Stream Publishing Co., and 
not to any individxial connected with the paper. 
Game* in the Granite State* 
Never before in the history of the Granite State has the 
season opened on birds under similar conditions. New 
Hampshire has realized the necessity of adopting the 
Platform Plank of the Forest and Stream, when the 
present season opens, as it will in a few days. All of us, 
whether residents or visitors, can shoot all the birds we 
are able to. but there is no profit in such killing. Some 
of us n for one) are pledged to supply some of our Gov- 
ernment officials with a few birds. ' As one of our 
prominent officials said to me yesterday, I couldn't hit a 
flock of birds if they sat still, I told him I would try and 
get him enough to go around, even if his olive branches 
were sonaewhat numerous. Well, birds are said to be 
plenty in this vicinity. This is an old story, which 
oftentimes fails to be verified. I want about a dozen 
birds on the opening day (or, rather, on the second 
day). I think I can get them within a mile of my house. 
Some of my neighbors who (with the exception hereto- 
fore of selling every bird they killed) are good fellows are 
apparently out of it this season. One does not own a 
gun, another wants to sell his dog. Some three years 
since I was drawn as juryman from 'this towt;. It sort 
of cut me out of some days I would otherwise have spent 
in the covers. For some unknown reason I was very sel- 
dom drawn on cases before the court, and my duties con- 
sisted in driving to Concord and driving home again. I 
was excused for a day and a half by the judge for a good 
cause, but I put in part of the time in near-by covers, .and 
I was very glad to be able to present to his honor and 
the" clerk of the court quite a btmch of woodcock and 
grouse (which I do not think either of them could have 
killed). I did not have any reason to suppose that any 
.of my fellow, jurymen knew of it, yet they found it out 
and kept saying, "So the judge excuses you to go gun- 
ing for him." I will give an account later of how our 
season open?. I think it will not be in such orthodox 
Fourth-of-July style as heretofore. No market means no 
hunting for some of my neighbors. C. M. Stark. 
DUNBARTON, Sept. 18. 
Wild Rice. 
Harwood. Rice Lake, Ont., Sept. 13. — I am sorry to say 
I have had poor luck with the rice this fall. I have barely 
three barrels. The rice beds were good and heavy. Sat- 
urday night, the 7th inst., there came an awful wind with 
hail and rain, which knocked the rice beds fiat on the 
water, and all the rice seed went to the bottom of the 
lake. The Indians could not gather it, I am very sorry; 
so are the Indians. I had orders ahead for forty bar- 
rels. That is always the way; when you have not the 
seed there are lots of orders. 
Chas. Gilchrist. 
Cold Storagfe Game is Cheaper. 
A New York man and a friend were arrested for shoot- 
ing partridges a few days ago in the Catskills. They 
pleaded guilty and Justice Decker then fined them $20 each 
and costs, amounting to $27.50, the total being $67.50. 
The New Yorker paid the fine and costs and remarked to 
the justice that wdien he wanted partridge again he would 
buy it from the cold storage in New York and get it much 
cheaper. 
An Adirondack Elfc. 
Canton, N. Y., Sept. xi. — Editor Forest and Stream: 
It is reported that on Monday morning, the 9th inst., a 
Mr. William Barber, living eleven miles from this vil- 
lage, on the Clare road, shot and killed in his cornfield 
an animal that is pronounced to be a cow elk. It is said 
to have been a very fine animal of probably 500 pounds 
weight, Mr. Barber is said to have supposed it to be a 
very large deer. J. H. R. 
A good many of our older readers will remember the 
incredulous scorn with which not only the general pub- 
lic, hut even expert naturalists, received the early descrip- 
tions of the gorilla furnished by Paul B. Du Chaillu, the 
discoverer of that engaging beast. The gallant and vi- 
vacious explorer was denounced as a later Munchausen, 
and it was a long time before the corroborative testimony 
of other travelers brought to him tardy and rather un- 
gracious vindication. But his most highly colored pic- 
tures of the great ape of the African forest pale before 
the real terrors of the monster whose stuffed hide and 
skeleton may now be seen in a Berlin museum. The 
brute measures six feet and ten and a half inches from 
the top of his head to the end of his great toe, and his 
girth and bulk are those of the Farnese Hercules — a fig- 
ure which has been called an anatomical impossibility. 
He fell a victim, almost by chance, to the rifle of a Ger- 
man commercial agent, to whom, in a South African set- 
tlement, came the report of a gorilla in an adjacent wood. 
Knowing the negro powers of imagination, he mistrusted 
the story, but, nevertheless, went out with a crowd of ex- 
cited blacks in the hope of at least getting a shot at some- 
thing. Suddenly he caught a glimpse of a huge figure 
climbing with astonishing rapidity the trunk of a tall 
Cottonwood tree. The natives stood around the base and 
shouted, ever and again discharging some ancient fire- 
locks. After a long wait the branches parted, and the 
gorilla, apparently curious, looked out to take a survey 
of the situation. The German, seizing the rare oppor- 
tunity, fired, and his bullet, passing through mouth and 
brain, brought the creature crashing to the earth. It is 
said to be the largest and finest specimen ever secured,—- 
New York Evening Post. 
1st 
Take inventory of the good things in this issue X 
of Forest and Stream. Recall what a fund was 3» 
given last week. Count an what is to come next j| 
week. Was there ever in all the world a nwre St 
!S abundant weekly store of sportsmen's reading? « 
