SB8 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Nov, t6, igoT. 
deer hunting localities in the State of Wisconsin. Star 
Lake on the C. M. & St. P. in another popular point. This 
week several parties have started for that place, among 
these the party of J. Verner Ewan, of Cincinnati, who 
goes accompanied by Mr. Fred E. Harrison and Mr. 
Chas. Gray. They will be in the woods for a couple of 
weeks or so. There is any amount of good deer country 
left in the hardwood and pine country of Wisconsin, and 
there will be deer for some time to come. The influx 
of deer hunters is something remarkable, and indeed the 
numbers who naturally go into the woods after deer 
amount to a total of far greater magnitude than is gen- 
erally supposed. It is mere guess work. There may be 
10,000 hunters out next week in Wisconsin or there may 
be 20,000. Sometimes over looo licenses are taken out 
in a single county. This, it will be remembered, is not 
the non-resident license, but the common or garden 
license which costs one twenty-fifth of the amount which 
the State of Wisconsin exacts from aliens. 
Mr. D. J. Hotchkiss. ©f Fox Lake. 111., suggest.? that 
the Colorado law forbidding the shooting of any deer 
without horns is one which ought to be enacted by the 
State of Wisconsin. He thinks that the search for horns 
on a deer might save the life of many a man. Quite 
aside from this, it is high time that the disgrace of 
killing a doe should be legally promulgated by this 
State while there are still left some does to protect. 
Duckst 
The duck flight is working South and just now it is 
principally mallards Avhich are occupying the attention 
of the lucky ones. This week, at the Hennepin Club, Mr. 
Phelps Hoyt, of Chicago, killed 71 mallard ducks in a 
single day's shooting. It would seem that this ought to 
keep the wolf from the door of Mr. Hoyt for a few brief 
moments. 
Mr. Harry Clark, also of Chicago, has returned from 
the Hennepin Club this week. He had very decent 
shooting and bagged 35 nice ducks in all, expressing 
himself quite contented with his sport. 
At Senachwine Lake and in the Swan Lake country 
the water is low, and there was a freeze early in the week 
which temporarily sent the ducks out. Later in the week 
a very heavy flight was reported near Chilicothe. HI. 
This Chilicothe country is perhaps the best natural duck 
marsh that ever lay out of doors in the West. The best 
part of the marsh is what is known as the "Rice Field/' 
which has for some years been held as a game preserve 
by six gentlemen, all residents of the town of Chilicothe. 
They have a duck preserve which is simply priceless in 
its value and they handle it wisely and conservatively," 
not shooting every day in the week, but getting some- 
thing every time they care to go after it. 
Far to the south of our Illinois River country, in the 
timbered region of Arkansas, the flight of mallards is 
scattering down on its southern flight. Joe Irwin writes 
from Little Rock that a big flight has been in around 
that country, but that there is not water enough to hold 
the birds. The latter is a common complaint ever much 
of this part of the West. 
About Wild Rice. 
One has pei-haps overlooked, if it has been printed in 
Forest and Stream, instructions in regard to the art 
of planting wild rice so that it will make a stand of feed 
for a duck preserve. I was talking to-day with the vet- 
eran duck hunter, Mr. Abe Kleinman, of this city, and 
he says that the reason for the failure of duck cluljs to 
raise wild rice on their grounds lies in the fact that the 
seed is usually sown in places where there is a channel 
or current of water in the spring time, or where 
the whole tract of sowing grounds is under the spring 
inundations. "The wild rice plant has a way of coming 
to the top of the water," said Mr. Kleinman. "If the 
water is shallow, the roots stay down, but if the water 
is deeper, you will notice that the roots seem to rise, 
the whole bog in which the roots lie apparently floating 
or coming up ofif the hard bottom below. Now, in the 
spring, the water finds these roots nearly detached and 
not fast in any hard bottom. The plants are frozen solid 
in the ice. There comes the rush of the freshet, perhaps 
the whole bottom being overflowed. The ice simply 
draws out the whole- mass, vegetation, roots and all, 
and all j'ou have left is a few struggling plants along 
the edges where the water is not sa swift. The best places 
for wild rice are always those with little or no current, 
and the plant grows the best in protected arms or coves 
where the ice does not sweep out with the current of the 
stream." 
There may be something in what Abe says, and cer- 
tainly he is a mighty well posted man in everything per- 
taining to ducks and duck feeding. This tip may be 
worth something to those who intend to plant wild rice 
on game preserves. Plant it in the stillest places possi- 
ble and keep it protected from freshets or the grind of 
the moving ice field. Also plant buck brush and chin- 
quapins. 
Dock Calls. 
There was a big argument at the Wishininne Club the 
other day about the original invention of the so-called 
Illinois River duck call. Bill Haskell claimed that he 
was the first man who ever made a round barreled duck 
call with the tongue fixed at the bottom of the call. 
There were about a dozen who challenged his statement 
prompt^. 
Mr. W. L. Wells stated that he had in his possession 
a duck call made by Fred Allen more than 30 years ago. 
Fred Allen himself, as I understand it. does not claim 
to be the originator of the duck call, but only the first 
extensive manufacturer. Yet another gentleman thought 
that Tim Wood, of the Swan Lake Club, was the first 
inventor, and this is perhaps closer to the mark. Abe 
Kleinman says, and his experience dates back to the 
early days of duck shooting, that Horner, a brother-in- 
law of Tim Wood, made a di:ck call before Tim experi- 
mented in that line. Tim Wood told me that the first 
duck call he ever used was made from a section of cane, 
to which he fastened a brass reed. Then he got to 
wrapping these canes with twine, and then te making 
them of wood. The earliest duck call of which the writer 
has any recollection was made of wood with a bell- 
fHQU!:]ie4 llOLn niOllth piece, The barrel was ofty^rt cqvc\- 
pletely through longitudinally. This call I remember to 
have seen previous to the year 1870. It was not very 
effective, although in those days ducks were not so 
highly educated as they are now. 
Bill Griggs, the famous market hunter, told me he 
thought the best duck call made was that turned out by 
Nick Glodo, of Paw Paw Junction, Mo. Glodo now 
wants $10 for one of his calls. He used to get The 
kgitimate trade price of the duck call is about $1. Bill 
Haskell has taken a sudden spurt of energy and is now 
manufacturing 500 duck calls which he intends to put 
on the market one of these remote days. There are a 
dozen different varieties of duck calls already purchasable 
in the sporting goods stores. Nearly all of these need 
retuning. and some of them can be made to do service 
in the hands of an expert caller. The fact is that most 
duck callers call too much, and with too poor an imita- 
tion. A poor duck call in the hands of an industrious 
shooter is apt to scare away more ducks than it bringsc 
into the decoys. 
.^be Kleinman says that one of the best duck callers 
he ever saw was n^ade out of the handle of an old tin 
dipper. It had a loud but accurate note. As for himself, 
he used to call ducks with the unaided mouth, but he 
says this is very hard work if one manages to produce 
a loud note. I have heard several market hunters along 
the Illinois River prod.uce a very good imitation of the 
mallard call, and with the unaided mouth. 
The probabilities are the artificial calls for tiie wild 
duck, like those for the wild turkey, antedate the hunters 
of this generation. One imagines that the first call w^as 
made by the southern hunter, out of a section of cane, 
just as Tim Wood made his first call on the Illinois 
River. Upon the contrary, Abe Kleinman states that 
he began hunting in 1851 in the Calumet River country, 
near Chicago, and that at that time he had never heard 
of a duck call. He seemed to think that the idea came 
from somewhere south of us, perhaps the Illinois l^ver 
country. Upon the whole, the consensus of opinion 
seems to be that Bill Haskell Avas not one. two, eight 
in the invention of the instrument above specified. 
QuaiL 
Mr. J. L. Jones, of this city, is now ab.sent on a quail 
hunt at Neoga, .on the Illinois Central railway, this 
State. Dr. Shallenberger, of this city, is also out in 
that vicinity. Mr. Oswald Von Lengerke is just back 
from the same point. He killed 41 quail one day and 48 
the next, having a local guide who had with him three 
good dogs. Mr. Chas. S. Dennis, Mr. J. V. Clarke 
and Mr. W. L. Wells are contemplating a quail hunt, 
and will probably go to Watson, in the same district as 
Neoga. It is the general belief in that country that the 
quail did not breed three times and perhaps not even 
more than once. The last week has shown windy, dry 
weather, and the birds have been hard to handle, run- 
ning ahead of the dogs like so many blue quail. The 
sport has not been of the best, but there has been enough 
shooting for those not too unrea.sonable in their 
demands. 
The young son of Mr. J. G. Drennan, District .Attor- 
ney of the Illinois Central railroad, goes to-night for a 
little trip on his father's lands near Taylorville. 
Mr. W. A. Powcl and myself, accompanied one day 
by Mr. Estill Harner, of Taylorsville. had a pleasant 
little shoot near Sharpsburg. in this State, early this 
week. We found some very large bevies of birds, num- 
bering in several instances over 30. but on the other 
hand found in that part of the country someone had been 
shooting ahead of us, the bevies being cut down to one- 
half their numbers, sometimes only a half dozen being 
left to the bevy. We did not care to kill all of them 
at once, but usually got from two to three dozen birds 
when we went out. 
As to Mr. Powel himself, and his dog Dorothy, and the 
dog Rock, son of Dorothy, it is to be said only that they 
are, as ever, the best on earth. Dorothy does not grow 
older with the years, but can still eat three square meals 
a day. and wear out the average hunter at that. Mr. 
Powel himself is, if possible, a" little longer in the leg 
and a little more tireless in the wind than he ever was 
before. I can recommend him to anyone needing phys- 
ical training. As a quail shot. I think he improves as 
the years go by, and surely he frequently makes dis- 
couragingly long runs of straight kills. 
In the matter of shooting quail, it is an odd thing, 
but I hear of all kinds of people who can kill all the 
quail they shoot at. One man writes a nice story about 
himself killing 15 or 20 straight. Another tells of a story 
told him by his father, who saw his uncle or cousin 
kill 40, so, or 60 straight. Somehow I never have been 
around _ when these things were happening. Warren 
Powel is a good quail shot, yet he and I agreed that a 
man who bags half his birds is doing pretty well. For 
amusement I kept track of my own shooting for a while, 
and found that the score stood 2 birds out of 2 shots, 
2 out of 4, 2 out of 6, 4 out of 8, 5 out of 9, 6 out of 
II, 9 out of 19. Then it grcAV gradually darker and my 
gun did not prosper so well. If I recollect correctly, 
I pocketed only 10 birds out of 26 shots that day. The 
following day was very windy and cold and the birds 
were so wild that I did not get half my shots, and I 
think it puzzled Powel himself to account for half his 
birds that day. Incidentally I made a string of straight 
misses so long that I do not care to put it on record. 
On that windy day we found Bob White at his best as 
an enigma. Time after time we would put up a bevy 
and try our best to mark it down, but if we picked up 
more than two or three singles out of the scattered 
birds, we figured we were doing well. T never saw quail 
run so far or lie so badly to the dog. Dorothy was dis- 
gusted with the birds and once or twice bodily ran in 
after them, just to see if she could get close enough to 
sm.ell them good and hard. We co.uld absolutely see the 
annoyance on her countenance. ' 
Doubles. 
It is easier to talk about killing a double on a bevy 
rise than it is to do the same. Once in a while Mr. 
Powel and T would do this act, and on three different 
occasions we executed a little stunt which is rare when 
two guns shoot together. On three different bevy rises 
we e^ch killed a double, bagging 4 birds each, each 
killed the single shot. When two shooters fire at a 
bevy rise they will nearly always double on one or both 
of their birds. I think 36 was the greatest number of 
birds we brought in but we had more than $36 worth of 
fun. 
Mr. Powel himself is as irrepressible as ever, and an 
exceedingly hard man to get away from. "I don't want 
you to come down here just to stay a couple of days," 
said he, "but want you to bring your wife, dog and fur- 
niture and spend the winter. What's the use of working? 
There is nothing in it." 
Shooting with him and his friend, Mr. Sharp, over 
near Sharpsburg, I said that in such tall corn, with the 
wind blowing so strongly. I was a little bit nervous 
about shooting, lest I might land a few shot on Mr. 
Sharp unbeknown to myself. "Oh, don't mind him," 
said Powel; "shoot him all you want to. Don't pay 
any attention to him at all. If you did shoot him he 
would just think it was a joke. We want you to feel 
that you are getting near to the edge at least of southern 
hospitality." I should think as much, although, on the 
Avhole, I concluded it was best not to pattern my gun on 
Mr. Sharp's anatomy. He was a tall man, and very 
husky, and I was afraid that he might not agree with 
Mr. Powel in his estimate of the pleasure involved. 
The Old Dog. 
The saddest thing in a sportsman's life, if indeed, it is 
not the . saddest thing in the world, is the sight of his 
faithful old hunting dog getting too old and too crippled 
to longer accompany him afield. On the morning when 
Mr. Powel ;ind I drove out of town for our little hunt, 
we looked around and saw old Put, his ancient hunting 
companion, waddling along behind us in the road, wh.n- 
ing piteously and begging us as plainly as dog language 
can, to wait for him. Put is one of those grand old 
gentleman of dogdom which now and again turn up. 
Nearly every fellow has had one best dog in his life, one 
which did things which none of the others could do, one 
which was just a little dearer to him than all or any of 
the others. Dorothy is as grand a shooting dog as ever 
.man could ask. yet ever Mr. Powel becomes remi- 
niscent and tells what Put used to do when thei' 
were afield together. Put was a shooting dog, a 
meat dog; that is to say, he woiild never have won in a 
field trial, yet was one of the dogs on which one would 
put no price whatever. Tall, big boned, heavy framed, 
placid, equable and sagacious in disposition, old Put 
never needed much training, and after he reached his 
majority could give the average shooter much advice in 
the art of hunting birds. He always knew where to 
find the game, and he always knew how to handle it in 
just such a way that the gun would make the biggest 
possible bag. 
Now here was old Put, a dozen years old. broken down 
with rlieumatism, swollen out of all propoition with 
dropsy, just upon the verge of death, yet eager to go out 
with the gun just one mere time before he laid him 
down to die. AH summer the old fellow has been con- 
tent to stav around the yard, never venturing outside 
the gate. On this morning, when he saw Dorothy taken 
into the bug.gy, and saw the guns go in under the seat, 
the old fire revived in his heart. He managed to push 
open the gate, and to waddle down the sidewalk, and 
when we heard his piteous voice, he was doing his best 
to overtake the vehicle. He followed us for nearly half 
a mile, and Uien Mr. Powel, just a little bit uncertain' 
about the throat, got out of the buggy and gently led 
him back toward the house. He could not reproach the 
old fellow, and he took his own time about the pace of 
the homeward march. I suppose this was the last time 
in Put's life that the ancient fire is to kindle up with 
a trace of the old time vigor. He will hardly follow 
the guns away again. Pretty soon we will hear of his 
death. There is not anything much sadder than this, 
and so nearly any shooter can testify. 
Lived tip to Her PtincJpIes. 
The papers print all sorts of things. The Audubon 
societies resolve all sorts of things regarding the iniquity 
of women wearing bird plumage on their bonnets. So 
lar as is known, no kind-hearted but fashionable lady 
has ever been inflitenced by all these preachments, and 
there has been no recorded case of a milliner refusing to 
order the accustomed quantity of mounted birds for the 
heads of her patrons. Yet this week Miss Spantmi. a 
milliner of Stoughton, Wis., did an act which is worthy 
of emulation by all those who believe in certain prin- 
ciples, and who ought to practice what they believe. 
Convinced that the use of these mounted birds was 
wrong, she packed up and shipped back every such arti- 
cle included in her stock. Now, there was courage for 
you, as well as wisdom. It is sincerely to be hoped that 
this milliner will receive the patronage of every lady in 
her town, just as she ought to receive the approbation 
of every Audubon society and newspaper writer and 
every professor of good principles in this broad land of 
ours. E. Hough. 
ilA»romD BtJiLoixQ, Chiccgo. III. 
**With the Cougar Hounds,*' 
Brethren of the Forest and Stream, if there be any 
among you who have not read "With the Cougar 
Hounds," by our President, delay not in doing so. It will 
be the best hunting trip you ever had. When I was a 
boy I was preparing for a hunting trip, which I never 
took, because I was "taken down" with typhoid, and 
during the weeks which followed I dreamed I was in the 
Rocky Mountains, camping in a snow-bound valley, 
through which ran an ice-bound stream. I was continu- 
ally chopping a hole in the ice and drinking the blue-black, 
delicious, icy water. I suppose that when the doctor losi 
my pulse and my breathing stopped and they thought T 
was dead, I was only down on my belly drinking ont of 
that hole in the ice. and that when I got up I began 
breathing where T had left off. It was only, a dream, but 
it was like Heaven — and "With the Cougar Hounds" was 
like dreaming it over again. It may be presumptuous to 
praise the President, but if the likes of us can't do it, who 
can? We'd speak well- of Shakespeare and Izaak Wal- 
ton and Oliver Cromwell if we wanted to. 
