Nov. 29, 1902.] 
FOREST AND * STREAM. 
4^7 
of a local officer, arrested three ferreters last Saturday- 
night and had them in court yesterday. In this case the 
judge gave the defendants all the benefit of doubts, for 
he convicted only the one who had the ferret on him, 
Fred Hall, vi'ho was fined $20. 
When we add to the above three Sunday hunters ar- 
rested and convicted by Depiities Burney, Nixon and 
Rausch, and three others arrested and convicted at Fitch- 
burg by Deputies Gibson and Proctor, for hunting last 
Sunday, it will be seen that the way of the transgressor 
is hard in this neck of the woods, even if some are able 
to escape the pinch of the law. 
Nov. 21. — Since I wrote you on Tuesday there were 
arrested enough that I know of to bring our record for 
the week up to fifteen. On Ttiesday, Nov. iS, Deputy 
C. 0. Gibson, of Fitchburg, secured the conviction of 
Henry F. Boutwell and Clayton Morse for trapping troUt 
out of season. They were fined $10 each. Yesterday 
(Thursday, Nov. 20) Deputies Bent, Dickerman and 
Stackhouse caitght George AV. Wilbur, of Norton, in the 
act of removing a partridge from a snare. Wilbur was 
convicted to-day at Attleboro and fined $30. In default 
of payment he was sentenced to sixty days in jail. As 
you will see thirteen of these arrests were for violations 
of the game laws — a pretty good record for one week, I 
think. Bay State. 
San Francisco as a Big-Game Center 
Mow many cities of one-third of a million population 
are there in the civilized w^orld, from which an unpre- 
tentious sportsman may start in the morning, with gun 
and dog, travel twenty miles or so by boat and train, and 
return by 8 P. M., say, weary to be' sure, but with a fat 
four-pointer of his OAvn killing? 
"But, stay!" cries Didymus. "This buck was surely 
killed in some preserve or other, where he and his fellows 
itre fed and housed and generally molly-coddled during 
the close season, until they become as tame as sheep or 
cattle?" 
Nay, not so, thou eloquent evangel of the scatter gun! 
The buck — ^he is but a symbol, standing for his kind — 
was wild enough ; the brushy, rock-ribbed fastness that 
was his natal spot, his home, and served him as a death 
touch, wfas, and is, private property, doubtless; but land 
Over Avhich any sportsman, any well-conducted man — the 
fbriner term embraces the latter — may hunt freely for the 
asking. 
Come, members of Forest and Stream's big family, 
far scattered over land and sea, speak up ! How many 
large cities are there in North America or Europe where, 
within twent)'*or twenty-five miles of the municipal build- 
ings, the plain, every-day man may be reasonably cer- 
tain to bag his deer — yes, and enjoy a fox hunt, too, if so 
minded, after foxes that have never known the inside of 
a bag? Enjoy it — that is, if he can sit a horse on rugged 
ground. How many such cities are there, where the 
suburban resident may go lynx hunting Avith terriers any 
day, and feel sure, before he starts, that he will get at 
least one lynx? Or, where, with more time at his dis- 
posal, but still within the twenty-five-mile radius, he may 
get a shot at a bear? Or, less frequently, a panther? 
Marin knows but one — San Francisco. 
The proof? Fish out your atlas from the lowest book 
shelf, where it lies wedged between the encyclopedia and 
the ponderous Greek, Latin. French and German diction- 
aries you used at college. Ttirn to the map of California. 
Mark San Francisco on her rock-bound peninsula, girt by 
bay and ocean. Measure oil" twenty miles to the south, 
and you are in the mountains of San Mateo; a scant 
twenty, eastward across the bay and from Mt. Diablo's 
summit (3,064 feet), you may survey a marvelous scene, 
a great cx'vj with the shipping of all nations within its 
portal on one hand ; on the other, a wilderness of gulch, 
fen and forest ; a bare twelve miles due north and you 
stand upon the slopes of Tamalpais. looking for all the 
world to-day as it appeared to Sir Francis Dralce when, 
in the long ago, he careened his ship, "The Golden Hind," 
within the little bay named for him, embraced by its 
giant arms. 
It startles even an "improved Easterner"-^i. e.. one 
Who has been transplanted in salad days to California 
soil — to pick up his morning paper and read that such a 
one has been lost in the cafion (about twenty-two miles 
from the City Hall), and has wandered around for two 
days trying to get out! And yet such items frequently 
appear, and, unlike much that the daily papers publish, 
these are facts. Marin knows this, for he floundered 
about in one of the eighteen gulches which lead into this 
same canon all one afternoon and the greater part of the 
night; and he has swapped experiences with other vic- 
tims of the "getting-lost" habit. 
Tamalpais, and especially the canons, ridges and spurs 
to the north and northwest of this grand old mountain, 
form one of the finest natural game preserves in the 
world. The old Spanish grants, if they served no other 
useful purpose, by fostering endless litigation and keeping 
out settlers, have' served to preserve the primeval wilder- 
ness as God made it. As it was before the Gringo came, 
so is it to-day— cattle raising is the chief, almost the 
sole, industry of this region. One cannot walk a quarter 
of a mile along any of the trout streams there, without 
seeing deer tracks ; nor take a five-mile tramp over the 
hills in close season, without seeing a deer; probably two 
or three. A man named Bourne, living at Bolines, a 
small watering place twenty miles from San Francisco, 
has made a practice of hunting bear Avith hounds every 
v/inter, save last winter. Two years ago he killed three 
in abmU as many himts. On the first day of tlie trout 
season this year, Marin saw fresh bear sign, not twenty- 
five miles from San Francisco. Some five years ago, on 
a foggy morning, when he was after quail, he saw a 
panther within the corporate limits of San Rafael, a town 
of 3.500 inhabitants, about sixteen miles from the city. 
He has seen their ?poor repeatedly. The custodians of 
Golden Gate Park, in order to save the quail which fre- 
quent that haven of refiige. make a regular business of 
poisoning and trapping Avildcats, raccoons, foxes and 
coyotes. These animals are so common to the north of 
the bay that it is of almost daily occurrence to run across 
one or more of them when quail shooting. Whenever in 
Avinter there is a phenomenally high tide, the duck hunters 
ftnd drowned mink in the tules, Onge Marin saw otter 
sign by a little stream on the slope of Tamalpais ; and, 
upon another occasion, he caught a glimpse of what he 
took to be a fisher, beside a tiny pool among the red- 
vvoods, not eighteen miles from the city. 
_ Is ^the evidence strong enough to support San Fran- 
cisco's claim as a big-game center? "mit," cries some 
doubting Thomas, "surely San Francisco's wealthy citi- 
zens who are fond of field sports have obtained exclusive 
contiol of the shooting privileges of this big-game terri- 
tory at their very door, and the man of modest means 
stands about as much chance of getting his deer there as 
of bagging an elk in Central Park?" Not so; or rather, 
only partly so. There are three clubs of sportsmen, it is 
tuie, which control thousands of acres of good deer, 
quail, dii%.k and snipe ground in the Tamalpais region; 
but there .-^re tens of thousands of acres equally good 
wiiere the yririns. professional or business man Avho can- 
not afford heavy club dues, or the mechanic or artisan 
with only a Couple of recreation days at his disposal, may 
go and, if his legs and lungs are sound and he can shoot 
straight, return with his quarry. DAvellcrs in this pent-up 
East can scarcely realize the condition of affairs that ob- 
tains here. Perhaps it may help them to state that there 
is one fanch in this Tamalpais district which is said to 
contain 70,000 acres! Plenty of elbow room on that one 
tract for a dozen clubs, one would think. The result: 
Every Californian boy learns to shoot a rifle about the 
time he learns to wallc, as sundry Filipinos found out to 
their physical detriment, and, let us hope, to their moral 
enlightenment as well. ' 
By the by, has it ever struck brother Didymus that the 
real end and object of all this floundering through Maine 
woods, all this hard riding and harder scrambling over 
Rocky ]\Tountain ridges, is not the securing of a moose or 
elk head. Were this all, then Marin for one Avould lay 
aside his rifle, and advocate with all his might the passing 
of a law prohibiting totally the killing of big game within 
the United States for the next ten years. But there is a 
purer, nobler, less personal purpose that the big-game 
hunter, if he be a thoughtful man, keeps ever in view 
He seeks— not a trophy— but new health and strength, to 
persevere on his alloted life task to the end: the whisk- 
nig away of mental cobwebs, citv spun, by brushing up 
against nature in her more rugged mood; the broadening 
of his intellectual compass by close personal communion 
on trail and in camp with men, whose stock of book lore 
may be scant indeed, yet who are good men and can teach 
him many wholesome lessons — for example, that patriot- 
ism and good citizenship do not always walk abroad in 
broadcloth, and that there is a deal of hard-headed com- 
mon sense stored away in odd nooks and corners of our 
country, where the screech of the demagogue never 
reaches. He returns from his outing mentally and physic- 
refreshed: a stronger, clearer-headed man for it; a 
better husband and father: a better, because a more en- 
lightened, citizen ; a stauncher American, because his pride 
has been appealed to and he says to himself, if this man 
Avith whom I have shared mv camp and who, judged by 
worldly standards, is mv inferior. l9Ves our country so 
well that he would freelv give all he possesses and his 
very life ere the minutest speck of dishonor should rest 
upon her, how much the more is it my duty, in my larger 
sphere of usefulness, to cherish her fair name, and upbear 
the arms of her elected and appointed guardians. The 
purpose of the vounger hunter ought to be. and no doubt 
is to train his eyes and nerves, to harden his muscles, to 
inure himself to hunger and fatigue, to learn to shoot in 
fact— for that includes the others— so that he may the 
better defend his home and the Republic, should she need 
him Any attentive reader of the story of the Anglo- 
Boer war, need not be told that military marksmanship 
cannot be taught on a rifle range, nor that it can be taught 
most effectively by a life-long pursuit of big game— but 
Marin has straved far afield. . . , 
On Fridav afternoons and Saturday mornings 't.is a 
pleasant sight to see the ferries thronged with bright- 
faced, clean-cut youngsters, with gun and hound or 
pointer, or collie, perhaps, bound for the woods and 
pulches of old Tamalpais. in quest of deer. Mann, albeit 
no chicken, tried it himself last week, and just to demon- 
strate the truth of the proposition that San Francisco 
can make good her claim, here follows the story of that 
little hunt. , , ' , 'j' 
Accompanied bv a voung Southerner who had never 
,=hot a deer, he took the ferry, then the tram,_ and m one 
hour after starting, thev were seated in a light Arehicle» 
bound for the Jory ranch, on the north slope of Tamal- 
pais. Distance to ranch from San Francisco, as the Ciow 
flies about sixteen miles. At three that afternoon, they 
sallied forth, Marin. Dixie and Jorys twelve-year-old 
bov. with a pair of two-year-old dogs— half fox hound, 
half fox terrier, a likelv combination. As the dogs had 
never hunted. Marin took them through several gulches, 
first stationing his companions on the ridge. The first 
three canons proved barren of deer. About 6 o clock the 
1)itch— she was the better dog— jumped a very large buck 
in thick timber at the head of a sm.all gulch and ran him 
through the short brush, past Dixie, who did not shoot, 
for reasons Avhich will be at once apparent to anybody 
who recalls his first deer hunt. Five minutes later, from 
the same gulch, the dogs jumped two deer— a doe and a 
.<^pike buck. Marin caught a glimpse of the spike, hred 
through the trees at him and missed, He turned up the 
ridge, and almost ran into the kid, who bowled him over 
with a nice, clean shot through the foreshoulder. The^, 
as he kicked a little— it was the boy's first deer— he 
emptied his Winchester into him and hallooed for help! 
When Marin reached that spike he was very dead— two 
shots through his heart, a broken back, to say nothing of 
four minor wounds. Then Eddie learned his first lesson 
in deer hunting: "When the deer ^ is down in open 
ground, quit shooting — ^he's your deer." 
Sunday they did not hunt, but on Monday morning 
Dixie and Marin were up betimes and about 9 A. M. thg 
good little dog ran a buck across the brushy ridge upon 
which they were standing. Dixie .saw him first and fired 
three shots, which turned the deer, and then Marin's 
armament came into action and his second shot broke 
the buck's neck. The post-mortem disclosed that one 
of Dixie's shots,, probablj' the third, had scored his right 
forehoof. He was a nice fat buck; his antlers irregular, 
3-2. A horse was procured ; but it was a wearisome job, 
getting the horse on the ridge and packing the deer out. 
They reached San Francisco hefgre 8 o'clock that night 
with their qnarr/. 
Surely, enough has been said to prove San Francisco's 
case? Plaintiff rests. Marin, 
San Rafael, Cat 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST, 
Game Laws and Game Birds. 
The Gmne Laws in Brief came pretty near trouble, 
this week here in Chicago. A tall stranger from the 
lower part of this State, the country more or less com- 
monly described as "Egypt," appeared in the gun de- 
partment and asked to see the man who sold Game Laws 
in Brief. He was met by that interesting gentleman, 
Mr. Hirth, who blandly inquired his wishes: 
"Do you-all sell these game law books?" said the 
stranger. 
"We do," said Mr. Hirth, politely. 
"They're wrong," said the stranger. "What's the use 
in puttin', out game laws and not doin' it right?" 
This remark raised the sporting blood of Mr. Hirth 
to the boiling point, and he at once dived into his 
trousers pocket for the roll of bills which usually re- 
poses there. 
"I'll bet you a hundred dollars to your shirt stud," 
said he, "that the Game Laws in Brief are aU right, and 
I can prove it." 
The stranger didn't relish the sight of so much money 
and backed out of the store, but two days later he 
showed up again. 
"I've got you." said he, "and I'll show you how." 
"Do it," said Mr. Hirth, reaching again for his roll. 
"Why," said the man from Egypt, "I've looked it all 
over, and it don't say a word about the 'possum." 
You should have seen the scorn upon Mr. Hirth's ex- 
pressive countenance at that moment. "Sir," said he, 
with icy dignity, "in the best sporting circles of this 
country the 'possum is not rated as a game bird. It may 
be in your country, but not in Chicago." 
And yet the stranger was not convinced. "Any book," 
said he, defiantly, as he departed, "which don't take 
account of the 'possum is dead wrong, and that's all 
I've got to say about it." 
Lhre Fox H«nt In Chfcago. 
It is known to at least a few Chicago sportsmen that 
there are red foxes to be found once in a while in the 
sand hill country along the shore of Lake Michigan be- 
low this city. Perhaps it was from this wilderness of 
sand dunes that there came recently the red fox which 
yesterday morning came well nigh to disintegrating the 
police force of Chicago. Policemen McGrath and Mc- 
Namara, of the South Chicago station, saw this fox in 
Jackson Park and caught it, confining it, on the charge 
of vagrancy, in the police station. True to its nature, 
the fox verified the charges by continuing its vagrant 
life, jumping through a window and pulling its freight 
toward the open woods. The entire police force of that 
part of the city was notified and joined in the chase. 
"You're all wrong." said McNamara to McGrath. 
"Pfwhy?" said the latter. 
"Ye didn't ought to wear a blue coat in a fox hunt." 
"And phwat sort of a coat, thin, should I be wearin'?" 
said McGrath. 
"Pfwhy, a rid one, to be sure," said McNamara. 
"That's Brirish," said McGrath. 
"It don't make any difference," said McNamara, "if 
it is British. It's right in a fox hunt. They do it in 
Boston, too." 
"There's nothin' British that's right," said McGrath. 
Whereupon they clinched, and for a time delayed the 
operations of the fox hunt. There were enough offi- 
cers left, however, to pursue the vagrant, and finally 
he was cornered in the prairie adjacent to South Chi- 
cago and taken off in the patrol wagon. As a sport- 
ing^ center Chicago still continues not without interest. 
^•vo Exciting Jackscipe Hunt. 
• Our jacksnipe flight seems all to have left us for a 
warmer and wormier land, and the most we can do is to 
sit _ around and talk about or write about the days 
w'hich. used to be. This sort of thing brings to mind 
Jie famous jacksnipe hunt, which was a few years ago 
engaged in by certain personages of this city, no less 
than the Hon. Hempstead Washburne. formerly mayor 
of Chicago: Mr. J. V. Clarke, President of the Hi- 
bernian Bank and formerly president of the clearing 
house here, and Mr. Charles Spalding, son of Mr. Jesse 
Spalding, one of the heaviest lumbering operators in 
this part of the country. These three gentlemen went 
to the snipe country adjoining Shelby, Ind., and pur- 
sued their sport during the first day with varying suc- 
cess. It was the first time Mr. Spalding had ever been 
shooting, but he didn't shoot anybody that day, and 
all were happy in the evening when they reached town. 
It seems that there was a political campaign in prog- 
ress at Shelby, and anyone who knows the exceeding 
hotness of the average Indiana political campaign can 
get an idea of the local enthusiasm which obtained at 
that time. In some way or other the names of thes© 
distinguished visitors got out, and forthwith they were 
waited upon by the local committeemen, who insisted 
that nothing would do but that each and every one of 
the Chicago men must make a political speech at the 
giant mass meeting which was to occur at the town 
hall that very night. Mr. Washburne was to speak upon 
the virtues of an enlightened government of the people, 
for the people, and by the people, and that sort of 
thing; Mr. Clarke was to speak of the gold standard in 
our national currency; Mr. Spalding was to make a 
stirring address upon the evils of free trade as applied 
to the lumbering industries of the State of Wisconsin. 
All this was nuts to Mr. Washburne, who is an old war 
horse in a political campaign, but it didn't go so well 
with Mr. Clarke or Mr. Spalding, who promptly ex- 
pressed a desire to take the first train for Chicago. The 
committeemen, however, would not take no for an 
answer. 
Ere long there was heard the sound of the local brass 
band, headed by an oompah horn, wliich fairly made the 
sidewalks rattle when it went off. ^.ong lines of cheer- 
