Sept. 13, t§d±] 
— <$> — 
Proprietors of shooting resorts will find it profitable to advertise 
them m Forest and Stream. 
Extinction of the Elks. 
It seems thai about once in ever so often it becomes 
necessary tliat some one should rise up and get off a 
screed about the extinction of the elks, simply because 
a few members of the B. P. O. E. order wear an elk's 
tooth for a charm, and throw out the impression that this 
is the emblem of the order. Such writers would like to 
make outsiders believe that every time a new member is 
inducted into the order, some tooth-hunter goes o& into 
the mountains, kills a bull elk, knocks out two upper 
teeth, leaves the flesh, horns, hide and hoofs to rot, 
solely that the aforesaid initiate might have an elk's 
tooth to wear as an emblem; consequently the order is 
to be blamed for the death and extermination of all the 
bull elks, in the near future. Probably, if these writers 
were members of the order they would know that the 
tooth in question is not their official emblem; yet some 
do wear them. Where did they get them? Anybody 
who knows anything about the matter, or is not too 
much prejudiced against the truth, knows that the In- 
dians of the Far West have had vast numbers of elk 
teeth decorating their buckskin clothing, taken from ani- 
mals killed years ago when as plentiful as buflfalo. 
Members of the order who have been among the Indians 
and with whom I have conversed, say they have seen 
garments with three hundred elk teeth on them. These 
are highly prized by the Indians, and are only now parted 
with for a good price. In the earlier days of the order 
these were bought up by speculators, who sold them to 
jewelers, to be mounted as charms. Five years ago I 
bought them in Idaho for 50 cents, whereas now a pair 
of fine teeth cantiot be had for $5. So the members have 
quit buying them, and are wearing instead the official 
emblem, an elk head in "gold. Of course, those who 
have teeth now are not going to throw them away 
simply because of the tooth-hunting odium now at- 
tached; especially, since owing to their scarcity and 
consequently high price, imitation teeth made of cellu- 
loid are being offered. The Indians are just as sharp as 
anybody on a trade, and seeing the white men want 
their personal ornaments, they put up the price. 
The lodges in Colorado and other Western States where 
the few remaining herds of elk are located, have taken 
strong action against their slaughter for this or any other 
illegal purpose. No truer friends of this noble game can 
be found anywhere than members of the order in those 
States, who would quickh^ inform on and cause the ar- 
rest of mere tooth-hunters. I have never yet heard of 
any of these gentry being arrested by game wardens, 
except three about a year ago, in the Black Hills; these 
were caught in the act, but I have not yet read of their 
having been punished. 
As long as there are any teeth in possession of the 
western Indians, I suppose white men and members of 
the order, too, will buy them, and so will speculators; 
but I am sure no member of the Benevolent and Pro- 
tective Order of Elks would buy or wear a tooth if he 
knew or thought it was procured by ruthless slaughter, 
and I know that the wearing of the tooth as an emblem 
is being discouraged by high ofificials of the order, on 
account of the blame attached to the supposed method 
of procuring, which is largely the imagination of alarm- 
ists. Head-hunters and meat-hunters are doing more to 
exterminate the animals than tooth-hunters. Bring on 
your facts, instead of unsubstantiated charges. 
Cervus Alces. 
Dbs Moines, la., Sept 1. 
Chance to Break the Chain/' 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
That little letter from B. A. Eastman in last week's 
Forest and Stream is a jolly good one in several ways. 
It certainly settles that little controversy about true sports- 
manship that has been going on in the paper, or at least 
shows what a man is when he is a genuine sportsman. 
Every sentence in the letter shows that he is an all-round, 
practical and experienced field sportsman, and I have 
seldom read a letter that set so many vivid and pleasant 
memories awake. It made me remember all of the thir- 
teen dogs that I have owned, and of course thought the 
best dogs that ever were. Why, I could write whole 
chapters about each one of those dogs — ^the things they 
did and how they did them, and the hard work they did 
for love of me. It sounds a little hard on my fellow men, 
but truly speaking it would be hard to pick out the same 
number of human friends who could be found so dis- 
interestedly faithful as those dogs were. 
Mr. Eastman's invitation to his brother sportsmen made 
me remember another man like him. I once met a man 
on the cars. A lot of quail flew from the roadside and 
we talked quail. At the end of our talk, he said: "T 
reckon there is no finer bird country in the world than 
where I live. The Sequatchie Valley is full of them, and 
I want you to stay at my house during the Christmas holi- 
days, and we will be happy." I went, and there are long 
chapters of happy memories about that week. It was a 
long time ago, but, like the first fish I caught, it will be one 
cf the last things to be forgotten. It is too long a story 
to tell here, but possibly I may tell it some other time if 
F'OREST AND STREAM cares to hear it. 
I think Mr. Eastman would find my record in regard io 
shooting my friends and being shot by them, a satisfactory 
one, as I have never shot a friend, a dog, nor any kind 
of domestic animal accidentally, and I think he will not 
envy my being "shot up" more than he has. A country 
boy "down on Panther Creek" in Kentucky put something 
more than fifty No. 8 in my right leg, at a distance of 
twenty-five yards, and they are all there yet. Way up in 
northern Wisconsin I got a good dose of No. 7's from a 
Parker gun loaded with 2''/i drams of Dupont smokeless 
at fifty yards' distance. I still carry twenty-four in the 
right arm and shoulder, two in the neck and one some- 
where back of my eyeball. Down in Indian Territory a 
FOnEST AND STREAM. 
man shot at a snipe flying toward me, and two pellets set 
my face to bleeding. As there was nothing to obscure the 
view, there Avas no excuse for such reckless shooting, so I 
lost my temper and "cussed" him. "Bein' shot up" so 
much has made me a bit choice about shooting com- 
panions, but as Mr. Eastman has been duly "initiated," I 
would not be shy about going with him. It's my guess 
that he is all right every way, and that the man who ac- 
cepts his liberal invitation will be in luck. His allusion 
to ruffed grouse stirs lots of happy memories. Why, I 
don't doubt that I've tramped anywhere from 500 to 1,000 
Tniles after them; killed a lot of them and let a few (hun- 
dreds) get away. In spirit, I most heartily accept Mr. 
Eastman's invitation, but that is all that is possible. The 
"chain" is too strong to be broken. I don't anticipate 
much field sport this season. My friend Jim and I have 
been planning to shoot quail, but Jim's dog died re- 
cently and I have none, O. H. Hampton. 
Rail Shooting. 
Essex, Conn., Sept. 5. — Editor Forest and Stream: 
Nearly a week has now elapsed since the law went ofi 
from rail, and the reports that have come to me thus far 
from the hunters and from the shovers as well are quite 
encouraging. On Monday, the opening day, the largest 
number killed by any one person was thirty-five, and the 
next largest something over twenty — I have forgotten the 
exact number. On Wednesday a local sportsman killed 
forty-seven, this being within three of the lawful number. 
I saw an albino, or rather partial albino, blackbird while 
out on the marshes a few days ago. He was with a 
large flock of others and as he flew along the white 
feathers on his wings and body showed quite conspicu- 
ousl}'. This is the first freak blackbird I have ever seen, 
although I am told that it is no rare occurrence to see a 
bird of this kind in a large flock. G. W. C. 
MiLFORD, Conn., Sept. 6. — Editor Forest and Stream:: 
A few rail have been shot on the river near here during 
the past week, but no bags of importance have been made. 
The largest count of which I have heard was twenty- 
three rail and a black duck, and from this they tailed 
down through 20, 19, 8 and 7. 
Since last week I have learned that one reason for the 
scarcity of birds just before the season opened was the 
fact that the meadows had not been mowed. Until the 
crop of hay is cut on the wet meadows, the rail are scat- 
tered all over them, btit after the grass has been cut they 
retreat to the cover of the weeds along the little leads, and 
to the tall corn grass, and 'the cattails, which grow in the 
water and are never mowed. 
With the cooler weather which may soon be expected, 
migrating birds will no doubt come on and some shoot- 
ing may be had. F. Pi 
As Sept. I approached, my friend and I concluded that 
we would open the shooting season of 1902 by a day with 
the rail and duck of Grass Lake. Accordingly the rising 
sun of Sept. i caught us with our pushers in the middle 
of the lake, anxiously scanning the skyline for duck. The 
birds proved to be very scarce indeed, and we accordingly 
turned our attention to the festive sora and found them 
very abundant. We bagged four specimens of the Florida 
gallinule or rice hen, one bluewing teal, several sum- 
mer yellowlegs and snipe, and the balance of our bag of 
eighty-four birds were sora. 
My partner, who had shot over the famous marshes of 
Essex, Conn., advised that he had never had a better bag. 
Grass Lake is one of the Fox Lake chain, and is fifty-five 
miles north of Chicago. Sora shooting will be good until 
about Sept. 20, and last year the bluewing teal flight was 
very heavy Sept. 15 to 20. Ivanhoe. 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 
A Lawyef and the Game Laws. 
Chicago^ 111., Sept. 6. — ^"Look here, Fullerton," said I 
to the Executive Agent of the Minnesota Fish and Game 
Commission, "here's a mighty funny-looking prairie 
chicken, it seems to me." 
Agent Fullerton stepped up to a bunch of chickens 
which was hanging in the smoking room of a Northern 
Pacific Railroad car bound for St. Paul on Wednesday 
morning, Sept. 3. He turned over the bunch of chickens 
and found another bird similar to the one which I had by 
accident discovered. 
"I should think these were a little funny," said he, with 
indignation in his voice. "They are ruffed grouse. I 
wonder who owns these birds." So saying, he left the 
smoking room and started on a search among the pas- 
sengers of the sleeping car. 
In this bunch of birds which some careless shooter had 
left hanging in the sleeping car there were several pin- 
nated grouse, some sharp-tailed grouse and two ruffed 
grouse. Of the latter, one had evidently been shot sit- 
ting, with a shotgun. The whole back was blown away. 
Now as all good sportsmen know, or ought to know, the 
season on ruffed grouse does not open in Minnesota until 
Oct. I. Evidently, therefore, there was going to be some- 
thing doing, since the product of some unknown sports- 
man's gun thus proved indubitably that the law had been 
broken. 
Presently Mr. Fullerton came back and joined the rest 
of us. "I've found out who owns the birds," said he. 
"It is Stanislaus Donnelly. I never was much more sur- 
prised in my life." 
Now Stanislaus Donnelly, as it transpires, is the son of 
the well-known writer, the late Ignatius Donnelly. Inci- 
dentally also it may be stated that he was the attorney for 
the Fish and Game Commission for the State of Minne- 
sota during the term of office preceding Mr. Fullerton's. 
Agent Beutner was the appointee of Governor Lind, and 
Mr. Donnelly was chosen by Agent Beutner to counsel 
him in all legal matters pertaining to the game laws, the 
enforcement of the same, and violations thereof. Mr. 
Donnelly has never liked Mr. Fullerton, and, in fact, has 
been at some pains to openly proclaim that Mr. Fullerton 
is about the poorest game warden ever known within the 
memory of man. There are a great many of us who do 
not agree with Mr. Donnelly in this regard. Also there 
SOS 
are a great many of us entitled to be glad that we were 
not in Mr. Donnelly's shoes on the morning of Wednes- 
day, Sept. 3. It all came about through the careless 
curiosity of a newspaper man fond of looking at game 
birds. Therefore Mr. Donnelly may primarily blame the 
writer of these lines, as he is very welcome to do. 
Mr, Fullerton said to me, "I would rather pull almost 
auybody else than this man, for he has been unfriendly to 
me, and I would not like it said that I have done this for 
reasons of personal animosity, for such is really not the 
case." I pointed out to him that inasmuch as he had not 
made the discovery himself, and inasmuch as his attention 
had been directly called to the matter, he could not, under 
his own oath of office, faif to make this prosecution. 
As to Mr. Donnelly, he put up the defense of ignorance, 
behevmg that under the circumstances he might better 
prove his lack of standing as a la^vyer than his lack of 
standing as "a sportsman. It was a very hard set of cir- 
cumstances for Mr. Donnelly, and indeed jus«: a little 
humorous, if you are minded to look at it in that way. 
He was very meek. Mr. Fullerton asked him with the 
utmost politeness when it would best suit him to come 
around and be fined, and Mr. Donnelly replied with equal 
urbanity that he was quite at Mr. Fullerton's disposition 
in such matters. Mr. Fullerton politely refrained from 
seizing the whole bunch of birds, as he might have done, 
but stated to Mr. Donnelly Jhat he would be obliged to 
take off the foot of each bird from its hold in the string. 
He carried the two birds openly in his hands out into 
the depot. I state this so that there may be no doubt as 
to the identity of the birds ; for after leaving Mr. Fuller- 
ton, Mr. Donnelly fell into the hands of a newspaper man 
and said that he intended to fight the case to the Supreme 
Courtj that he had not killed any ruffed grouse, and that 
he knew a.ruflfed grouse as well as anybody. 
Opening Day in Minnesota. 
Obviously the place for any one concerned in field 
sport was at St. Paul Union Depot on the evening pre- 
ceding opening day. Reports from all over the Northwest 
stated that the chicken crop was unusually abundant, 
whereas in States like Illinois, Indiana, etc., the crop 
was reported poor. Hence the exodus of sportsmen to 
the Northwest was this year an unusually large one. I 
reached St. Paul Union Depot on the morning of Satur- 
day, Aug. 30, and even at that time the entire platform 
surface, baggage rooms, waiting rooms, etc., were a per- 
fect mass of sportsmen's paraphernalia. There were 
crates and crates of dogs of every known description, and 
I'ack bags, telescopes, trunks, gun cases and the like made 
up a great proportion of the outgoing and incoming bag- 
gage. The men in the baggage room stated that there 
were hundreds of shooters going out on every train to 
the north and west. I never in my life had a stronger 
evidence of the great natural love of the average Amer- 
ican for thp sports of the field, and deep enough is the 
regret one must feel that so limited a territory remains 
for this army of shooters, all of whom are eager for sport. 
As for our own party, it was as stated, made up of 
Mr. Sam F. Fullerton, State Game Warden; Col. Cond^ 
Hamlin, general manager of the Pioneer Press Co.; 
Major W. C. Handy, managing editor of the Pioneer 
Press, and myself. We left St. Paul on the Northern 
Pacific on the evening of Saturday, Aug. 30, and arrived 
at Fergus Falls, our destination, early the next morning. 
Here we met Deputy Stephens, of Detroit, who had 
come in to Fergus Falls for this hunt, and also Deputy 
Warden Jimmie Jones, who now lives at Fergus Falls. 
Both these hustlers told us that there were plenty of 
chickens. Jimmie took us all up to his house for break- 
fast and here we spent most of the morning before start- 
irg out for our ultimate destination, the old Jones farm, 
about eighteen miles out from Fergus Falls. It was at 
this farm, which Jimmie sold later, that he and I had our 
hunt some years ago. There was no one living on the 
place this summer, but the house and barn were there and 
there was a stove in the house. We packed up bedding, 
food, etc.,_ and concluded to make this vacant farmhouse 
our camping place during our stay. This necessitated 
three vehicles, one for our freight and two for ourselves, 
one vehicle being driven by Mr. Chappell, of the State 
Dairy and Food Commission, whose home is in the beauti- 
ful little city of Fergus Falls. 
The weather was good, bright and yet cool, and the 
drive across the beautiful Minnesota prairies and wheat 
fields was one of continual delight. We reached our farm 
late in the afternoon and in possession of evidence that 
Jimmie Jones had held down the violators in his part of 
the world. We put up two or three bunches of chickens 
along the road, one of them apparently two coveys joined 
in one. I presume there were forty birds in this covey, 
and had it been a day later, we should surely have done 
some business with these bird.^, for they flew but a few- 
yards and lit in a bunch of wnns, where they went up one 
or two at a time in such shai e as was most exciting to 
the line of gunless sport-r-en \\lio walked them up. Again 
we started six or tight Urds akng the edge of a corn- 
field, and yet again, hut a r^nv hundred yards away from 
the J'ones homestead, the dogs pointed a half-dozen old 
birds which were out on a stubble field. 
Good Meat Dog. 
Of our dogs, we had five, two Irish setters brought 
out by Mr. Fullerton, a setter owned by Mr. Stephens 
and known as Teddy, an old and somewhat portly black 
pointer owned by Jimmie Jones and named Range, and 
last, if not least, a large, Gothic, ham-footed pointer of 
unknown name, which had been bought for $17 by Mr. 
Stephens, to be conveyed to Mr. Fullerton upon his 
arrival. This nameless pointer was a stray and a pick-up, 
but possessed of a vague reputation as a bird dog. He 
was brought along as a possibility, nothing more. He 
turned out to be a meat dog of the most strictest sort, able 
to hunt all day, of splendid nose and a lot of bird sense. 
In short, he was about my idea of what a dog ought to 
be. Just to show there was no coldness, he took a fall 
out of Teddy early in the morning, seizing that amiable 
canine by the back of his neck and pretty near killing him 
before his jaws could be pried apart, in which latter 
operation Mr. Stephen's fingers- were badly lacerated. 
Later on. Jack, one of the Irish setters, took another 
slice out of the other side of Teddy's neck. At this Teddy 
quietly pulled his freight, thinking things were getting u 
