Jan. 3, 1903-] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
9 
afford the same to others, if given the readers of Forest 
AND Stream? I am sure they would, were I gifted as 
a Didymus, a Hopkins or a Hastings. By the bye, what 
has become of that very interesting writer, W. W. Hast- 
ings? I miss his witty effusions so much, and many the 
article from his gifted'pen has found a permanent restmg 
place within the almost sacred leaves, of my scrap book. 
Unknown. 
Old Man Bassford's First Gun. 
We have heard about many a one's first gun and 
first quarry brought to bag, but I think Mr. Bassford s 
first gun story differs a little from all others. As 
usual, it was back in Old Calais, up in Manie, and it 
all happened right after he was fired out of the village 
school. Why was he fired out? I'll tell you as nearly 
in his own way as possible. 
"I was fifteen years old and was attending our vil- 
lage school, a studious and attentive boy, mark that. 
On the particular evening, it was a cold and frosty 
one in January, and I can just hear the old sheet-iron 
cordwood stove crack and tremble with heat as I look 
back. The day before my father, for some good deed 
I had done, presented me with a horn-handled jack- 
knife. It was my first knife, and when I was not 
whittling with it I was holding tight on to it in my 
pocket. And what was more natural for me to take 
it out when the teacher was giving us our morning 
lesson? When and just how it was done I do not re- 
member, but I do know that I saw that knife disap- 
pear into the yawning mouth of that roaring stove. I 
did not shed a tear, although my heart was broken, 
but I do know all the devils in me— and I had a score 
or two of them allotted to me— were aroused. When 
school was dismissed I went home concocting mis- 
chief. Hunting through the cupboard I found an 
empty mustard bottle, one of those old-fashioned 
dropsical kind. I appropriated it. I went down to the 
blacksmith shop and collected a few rusty nails and 
small bits of iron, and returning home I hunted up my 
father's powder horn, and making a fairly good mix- 
ture of scrap iron and powder I packed the bottle and 
corked it. . , , j 1, r 
"I now hunted in the attic for a discarded rag doll of 
my sister's, and found it.. Emptying the sawdust from 
the body I inserted the mustard bottle, and all bemg 
ready, I hid it in the barn, awaiting the opening of 
school the next day. And at the proper time I drew 
•out the doll and began to jiggle it on my desk. Like 
a hawk striking a quail, the teacher pounced upon it, 
and like a flash it went into the stove, and then the 
fireworks instantly went of?, and the lid of the tough old 
sheet-iron stove went through the plaster ceiling, ac- 
companied with a roar like a bursting charge of shrap- 
nel. The pupils lit out like bees. The air was full of 
smoke and spurts of flame began to arise from where 
the stray embers had fallen on desk and floor. The 
fire or bucket brigade was soon on hand, and further 
than a damaged ceiling and a ruined stove no great 
amount of damage was done. That's how I came to 
be fired from school. I have a dim recollection that 
my father had to pay the bill for a new stove and fix- 
ings, but I recollect clearly what went on in the wood 
shed. , 
"And then I was apprenticed out and put to work. 
My school days were over, and when the early spring 
came the ducks began to come in before the ice was 
fairly out of the rivers. I borrowed a neighbor's gun 
—he' valued it at $12. Lord! how well I remember it — 
and Sunday morning at daybreak I sneaked out to the 
river. Well, to make a long story short. I was soon 
floundering in the deeo, icy river. I held on to the 
gun, but i quickly realized that I must decide between 
my life and the loss of the gun, and I let go the gun. 
How I managed to scramble out upon the ice I can- 
not tell, but I turned up home with my clothes frozen 
like boards and shivering like a boy Avith the ague. 
And who should be standing in the front yard talking 
to my pa but the man who owned the gun— that had 
«'one to the bottom of the river. Pa yelled at me, 
* Where have you been?' and the man yelled at me, 
'Where's my gun?' Gee whiz! but I can remember 
every crack and cranny in that old wood shed. They 
were" imoressed not only on my mind but on every 
bone in my body. And when I came out of the wood 
shed the man again asked for his gun. 'Don't say gun 
tn me again as long as you live. When I can pay 
for it I will.' During the six years of apprentice- 
ship my time was not my own, and I had no mo'"'ey- 
But the years rolled around and when my 21st birth- 
day arrived I was free. My time was now my own. 
What T earned was now mine. The first twenty dol- 
lars I saved above my expenses I put in my pocket 
and walked up to the man's store. T want my bill 
for that gun I lost.' said I. 'You said it was worth 
Now figure $12 with compound interest, tell me 
the amount and I'll pay it.' I knew the amount better 
than he did, because I had computed it year by year 
a'^ the time went. And I paid him, I think, sometlung 
like $20, and that was the story of my first gun and 
I have never forgotten it. ^, , , ■ r 
"Many years after I went back to Old Calais tor a 
visit, a reasonably prosperous man in my profession. 
One of the old inhabitants invited me to go up and 
visit the old red schoolhouse, and I went. I could 
yet outline the repaired ceiling and some of the burnt 
holes in the thick pine floor I could yet notice. I 
was asked to make a speech to the children and I re- 
luctantly consented. I started off by telling them how, 
as a boy. I had attended that very school and sat upon 
those very benches. I pointed to the very seat I sat 
in and asked the occupant of it he could not find 
E P B. cut on the bench— and he found it. I went 
on to tell them what a nice, good boy I was At this 
one of the little girls in the front row put her hands 
over her mouth to keep her from exploding, but she 
he! heed! right out. . y <c 1 
" 'What's the matter, my httle girl?' said I. Speak 
lip so all the scholars can hear you.' And what did 
she reply but that her grandma told her that mornmg 
that as a girl she had gone to school with Ed. Bass- 
ford and that %p. wa§ the worst boy ia the whole 
school.' And I cut short my speech then and there. 
There was no use of my quoting scripture to that 
school." Charles Cristadoro. 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 
Disastrous Quail Season. 
^ The close of the quail season this week-^for in spite of 
the lack of legal protection on this bird, all Illinois 
.sportsmen still regard the season as closing Dec. 20— 
ends a shooting term which has been actually disastrous, 
so far as sport with this bird has been concerned, i hose 
shooters who were out early in the season could not tind 
the birds and said that the trouble was that the vegetation 
was too high. Those who waited until later in the sea- 
son were even worse off. They found but a scattered 
supply of birds and encountered the most villainous 
weather imaginable. For ten days we have been having 
nothing but rain, slop, sleet and slush; and if there 
should come a sudden freeze, the poor Bob Whites woula 
have a serious time of it even thus early m the winter 
season. There has been no good sport at all m this part 
of the country this year, and unless prospects brighten, 
we shall feel a little discouraged in regard to the crop 
for next year. I do not discover that the usual number 
of quail shooters have been out, but it is certain that 
those who have been shooting have brought back but poor- 
stories regarding the supply of this standard game bird 
of the Middle West. Without our quail we are entirely 
ruined, so far as shooting is concerned, in this part ot 
the world. Duck shooting has come to be a matter of 
preserves. Prairie chicken shooting is practically at an 
end and so is the snipe shooting, barring an occasional 
haphazard flight in the spring. In the last few years we 
have had good sport with the quail. Let us hope that 
things will wake up next year, for if they do not we shall 
be in a bad way. 
Changed Habits of QwaiU 
I continue to hear stories from sportsmen which in- 
clined me to believe that the mention earlier printed in 
these columns regarding the changed habits of the Bob 
White quail is matter based upon excellent foundation. 
I was talking to-day with Mr. Oswald Von Lengerke, a 
gentleman who perhaps goes out as often after quail as 
any one of mv acquaintance. He tells me that the quail 
'■act different'' from what they used to. He agrees with 
me that they flv further, scatter more widely, run further, 
rise more wildly, and secrete themselves more mysteriously 
than was ever the case before. Mr. Von Lengerke has 
noticed these changes in the habits of the Bob White 
quail within the last six or seven years of his shooting 
in this country. I never before fully realized that these 
birds were becoming more wary, less valuable as sport- 
ing birds indeed, until certain experiences of my own this 
fall. I am disposed to believe that Bob White is learning 
to take care of himself to the extent that he is losing just 
a shade of his original sporting quality. 
The gentleman above referred to cited several instances 
of his own experience this fall. On one occasion he put 
up a bevy which split, a half dozen alighting apparently 
on an open, frozen field and about a dozen going into 
scrub oak. He had good dogs and went directly to the 
place where he saw the birds light in the open. He 
hunted for half an hour in the center of the field and 
then around the edges of the field, but could get absolutely 
no trace of these birds. Following the rest of the bevy 
in the scrub oak, he saw them get up wild ahead of the 
dogs one after the other, giving practically no shooting. 
Again on his last quail shoot he put up three bevies, 
which scattered in practically the same fashion. In the 
morning he killed eight birds out of nine shots. The 
weather was wet and freezing and in the afternoon the 
birds were simply impossible. He fired 18 shots and only 
killed three birds in the afternoon; and I may say that 
he is a very steady quail shot. Any quail shooter will 
realize that this means conditions under which the birds 
will not properly lie to the dog. He says that_ the birds 
would run every way, going up behind him, flying out of 
• trees, in fact acting entirely difTerent from what Bob 
White used to in the good old days. I am satisfied that 
this is to be the history of quail shooting in all this 
northern country. The species, harried too hard, is learn- 
ing of mother Nature how to take care of itself. 
Bear Dogs in Old Mexico. 
I met my tall friend, Mr. Fred. M. Stephenson, of Me- 
nominee, Mich., in town to-day, and asked him to give me 
the true stoi-y of his bear and lion hunt m Mexico last 
year, when he had down John Goff, of Colorado, and his 
pack of dogs, to see what could be dotie m running the 
silver tips of the Sierra Madres. Mr. Stephenson says 
that they had some sport in Old Mexico, but believes 
they would have killed more bear without the dogs than 
with them. The trouble with the Goff pack was that it 
was made up in part of fighting dogs and in part of trail- 
ing dogs. Tlie latter could outrun the former. It was no 
trouble at all to start a bear, or rather to get a bear trail. 
Then the running dogs would trail off and soon go out 
of hearing, j umping the bear perhaps entirely out of hear- 
ing. Mr. Stephenson once saw a good grizzly going up a 
mountain side with six dogs following behind it, not one 
of which had courage to go in and nip the bear. The 
fighting dogs did not seem to be able to keep the pace 
and would frequently come back to the hunters, leaving 
the rest of the pack still running and unable to bay up 
the game. This sort of thing might tire a lion, but 
would not stop a bear. The country was very rough and 
it was impossible to ride to the dogs with any kind of 
success. Mr. Stephenson was ready to say that bear 
hunting with dogs, or at least with this pack of dogs, 
was not a success in that part of the world. Yet he says 
that he hears Mr. Lyons of New Mexico very often kills 
grizzlies, cinnamons and silver tips by means of his own 
pack, which manage to stop a bear even in the roughest 
countrv. 
Mr. Stephenson and his friend ex-Alderman William 
Kent, of this city, shot deer together in the north woods 
this fall, each killing his limit in Wisconsin and in Michi- 
gan. They were intending to have a hunt with the Bobo 
pack of bear dogs in Mississippi this winter, but I pre^ 
sume that the sudden and wholly unexpected news of 
Col. Bobo's death will, of course, end all plans to this 
effect. 
The Fate' of Our Game Birds. 
This afternoon my friend' Graham H. Harris and my- 
self were prowling along South Wather street in search 
of feathers for our winter fly tying operations. We 
stopped at the commission house of George Sloane & 
Company and talked for a while with Mr. Sloane himself. 
"Mr. Sloane," said I, "I would like to ask you as a 
man widely experienced in the game supply, what yon 
think as to the future of our game birds? Do you think 
that our supply of game birds is going to hold out? 
"There will be game birds in this country as long as 
there are men," replied Mr. Sloane. 
"How do you figure that out?" said I. 
"Well, this way," was Mr. Sloane's reply. "They will 
be raised and protected by men on their own lands." 
"But how about the poor man," said I. 
"There is no place in this world for the poor man, 
said Mr. Sloane sententiously. "There will be no shoot- 
ing in America for a poor man. We will have birds, but 
they will be preserved and protected birds. We will come 
to the same system that they have in England." 
I expressed my discontent over this prospect. Mr. 
Sloane went on: "There is something in the trade in 
game birds on the street this fall," said he, "which is not 
generally known. I want to say to you that more than 
half of the game which we sold on South Water street 
this season came not from the American West, but from 
across the Atlantic, from England. We sell a great many 
grouse here which come from Liverpool, Eng., and are 
passed with the average man as prairie chickens. They 
are not quite so good a bird. Now we can sell these 
PZnglish birds— we get them at Liverpool, but I do not 
know where they are killed— for just about one-half what 
the American grouse will cost. We get some English 
partridges also, and a great many pheasants. Now, if 
you ask me what is to be the future of the American 
game birds, I simply tell you these facts. We will always 
have game, but we will not always have the old days of 
open shooting in America, where every man, even the 
poor man, could have sport for himself." 
There is small comment to be added to the labove ex- 
cept that Mr. Sloane is a man of very wide experience 
in the selling of game. He is accepted to-day as prac- 
tically the head of the game trade on South Water street. 
A Bird-Eating Man. 
The following is the latest Wishinninne story. About 
two years ago Messrs. C. S. Dennis, W. L. Wells and 
Eddie Pope, all of the Wishinninne Club, were hunting 
with Ed. Sidler near Wheatland, Ind., and in the course 
of their travels put up a bevy of quail near a country 
school house from which, at the time, the children were 
emerging with the merry laugh and shout usually ac- 
corded to school children in books of poesy. One of the 
dogs pointed and Mr. Dennis managed to knock down a 
wing tipped bird, which fell at a hedge not far from the 
schoolhouse. Running on ahead, he retrieved the bird, 
and, taking it up, proceeded to bite the neck to kill it, 
after approved sportsman fashion. Just as he had the 
neck of the bird in his mouth, Billy Wells, who was some- 
what in the rear, called out : "Run ! run ! boys and girls," 
he said. "Stop that man! He eats up every one of our 
quails that he can get to !" 
The children, somewhat startled, gazed for a moment 
at the bird-eating man, then turned and ran to the school- 
house, where they confusedly expressed their horror and 
fear of a man who would eat live quail. The school 
teacher, witnessing Mr. Dennis standing near, with his 
long flowing beard decorated with quail feathers, was 
much assured of the truth of her pupils' attitude. By 
that time Mr. Dennis had put the quail in his pocket.' It 
would be diiScult, however, to persuade either pupils or 
teacher that he did not insert it into his stomach instead, 
feathers and all, 
Selected Quail for Planting. 
Mr. H. A. Noyes, of Hyde Park, Vt., writes under 
date of Dec. 10 in regard to this same question of 
changed habits in the Bob White quail. He wants 
some selected birds for a preserve in Vermont. I shall 
let him speak for himself as below: 
"1 was particularly interested in reading in Forest 
AND Stream the account of your recent quail hunt in 
Minnesota, my special interest being due to the fact 
that I have for some time desired to do in a small way 
some ciuail stocking in this part of northern Vermont, 
and would have put out the birds the past season 
could I have secured , them. Of course the question 
has always been, will quail survive the winters of this 
section? Your account of the number of birds 
in Minnesota would lead one to believe that the 
right birds would. For the past few years quail have 
been put out near Lake Champlain, but as to whether 
they hold their own or survive the winters in any 
numbers reports are conflicting. In this part of the 
State, which is hilly and mountainous, with an abun- 
dance of cover, there might be a little more snow, but 
very much less danger from thaws and crusts. Snow 
"to stay" usually comes about Dec. i, and continues 
for three to four months. I would greatly appreciate 
your advising me if it would be possible for me to 
secure a few of the Minnesota birds for stocking pur- 
poses, and if you can suggest anything m the way of 
winter protection or feeding." , , , 
I am very sure that Mr. Noyes will not be able to 
get any Minnesota quail for planting, desirable as that 
might be, from the Vermont standpoint. I do not 
know how the situation is in Ontario, Canada, which 
is closer to Vermont. They had a very severe wmter 
there a while ago, and it nearly cleaned out their birds 
I found the Ontario birds very large and hardy, and 
believe these would be as desirable as the Minnesota 
quail It is difficult to obtain any quail for planting 
from Northern States, as the local supply is none too 
generous or secure at best. I doubt if the birds would 
do well in "mountainous country," with heavy snow 
for three months. They need a country with some 
farms, to furnish feed, liking wheat, buckwheat, sor- 
ghum or corn. As to providing shelter, there is little 
tp be done. If the birds are to survive they wiU ma 
