486 
FOREST AND STREAM 
ft) tec. to, 1904. 
mm™, 
In Missouri. 
When Jemima, M.D. (Meat Dog), discovered, from 
my attire, that I was going shooting, she approved of 
the measure with delicious enthusiasm. Momentarily 
forgetful that it is against the law to paw me, much less 
embrace me, she did the latter, after which she fetched 
me the morning paper and bothered me all the while 
I was reading it at breakfast, by beseeching me to hurry 
up, although it was barely daylight and there was an 
abundance of time. A lady of quality and a member 
of a learned profession, as above indicated, she never- 
theless, when not afield with her master, works by the 
day as a gopher-digger, whereby she has acquired the 
strength of a mule; and when she nudges a fellow at 
his breakfast it means something. On the whole, I 
prefer that kind of dog — or man. Several men had 
assured me that it was too dry to go quail shooting; 
that the scent was bad, and I would not find any 
birds unless I stumbled across them, .and that a dog 
could not even find dead birds. And, I confess, the 
outlook was not encouraging, when later it happened 
that the train was late and the day turned warm and 
dry; but we were in for it now, hopeful on my part, 
sanguine on Jemima's, and must make the best we could 
of it. 
It was after 12 o'clock when we got off the train, and 
so, when we were fairly out of the small town, I sat 
down in the sun at the top of a hill and ate my lunch. 
Below stretched a valley leading off to a farmhouse, 
presided over by a lady who, being a Pennsylvania 
German, is the best cook in that part of Missouri, and 
where I intended to stop that night. 
Teams were hauling gravel from the bed of the 
stream, and when we got down there and were close 
to them, Jemima pointed a covey of quail in a patch 
of underbrush, which I flushed, but did not shoot at, 
because of the horses. I marked them down and went 
to where the teams were, and found the man there 
who owned the land on one side of the stream, who 
said I might shoot on his side, and on the other side 
also, since the farmhouse on the other side was vacant, 
and that the horses would not be frightened. 
. And then Jemima and I began to have fun, and to 
put to shame the prophets of evil, for she found those 
birds again in a jiffy. I never touched a feather! I 
apologize to the readers of Forest and Stream for 
not being able to say I made a nice double; but the 
fact is, I have not written any shooting stories for 
some time, and the truth slipped out before I knew it. 
The birds flew toward a side thicket across an old 
field. One of them lit in this field and Jemima pointed 
it, and I made a very pretty single miss — that is, it was 
a single bird, but there were two barrels! I began to 
commune with myself then and, after I had struggled 
with my feelings for a moment or two and apologized 
to the dog, I laid it all to the circumstance that the 
Judge had asked me to bring him two birds for two 
members of his family who were ill. I was too anxious 
to get those first two birds. . It was the same way 
week before last. We had visitors at our house, and 
I went a lew miles out of the city on a suburban train 
to just get enough quail to go around. I knew birds 
were scarce there, but thought I could make it. 
I made a good many misses, in spite .of which, by dint 
of naming each bird for some member of the house- 
hold, politely beginning with the visitors, I got every- 
body checked off, except the hired girl. I missed her 
bird five times in succession, and began to think it 
was not meant that hired girls should eat quail. So, 
when the dog was not looking, I shot her a rabbit; 
and right away, after Jemima hurried in to see what 
I was shooting at (which she didn't), she found me 
that girl's quail again, and I killed it as nice as any- 
body's quail. I examined the bird critically, but so far 
as I could discover the markings were the same. It 
was, apparently, of the same variety as our own and 
our visitors' quail. Joking aside, I missed more birds 
that day than I often do, and those I killed often flew 
some distance before falling; and so I cut open one of 
my shells. They had been on hand upward of a year, . 
arid as they were some of the "factory loaded" shells 
you brag so much about in your advertising pages, I 
wanted to see what was the matter— and I think I saw. 
The powder (nitro) was caked in one compact mass, 
so tight that I could only pick it apart with my knife. 
Another shell proved to be in the same condition, and 
I concluded that some of the powder detonated and 
some of it only burnt up. Anyway, they were deficient 
in power, for they did not kick, some of them, and 
when there is no recoil to speak of there is very little 
penetration. 
It was not the fault of the ammunition on the present 
occasion, however, for I had brought only twenty of 
the old shells with me, and had fifty newly purchased 
ones, and was missing with both kinds. Directly a 
bird got up in the thicket, and by dint of a certain 
expedient of mine, I killed it. It is a difficult ;hing to 
do, and especially difficult with a man of a nervous 
temperament;, but, after many years' experience in field 
shooting I have concluded that, it is the. secret of 
good shooting. It consists in an almost imperceptible 
pause before pressing the trigger. : It is the hardest 
easy thing to do I know of, but it counts. When I can 
manage to strike a streak of doing that, I kill like 
clockwork, whether at ducks, snipe or quail; and, as 
for prairie chickens, one can shoot thus all day without 
a single miss. It results in three things: First, it 
enables you to get your eye down on the rib of your 
gun; second, to get your gun on the bird if it is going 
away, and third, to get it ahead of the bird if it is 
crossing rapidly. 
After this digression upon the art of shooting, I 
proceed to state that I missed two more birds. Each 
time the bird popped up, my vaunted expedient popped 
out of my head. And then a thing happened, which I 
shall never forget. Jemima went in the field beyond 
the thicket and got on a point, and when she failed to 
respond to my whistle I knew what was up and began 
to hunt for her. The weeds were as high as my head 
and, when I approached her at length, the noise started 
two birds, one of which came skimming over the tops 
of the weeds straight at me, and as I threw my gun 
up in the air, expecting to turn as the bird passed me 
and shoot it if I could, the poor thing darted squarely 
into the gun barrels and dropped lifeless at my feet. 
To shoot a game bird and put it in one's pocket is one 
thing;/ but to have a tragedy like that at one's door 
is a vastly different one. I stood there, shocked more 
than I can tell, feeling like a murderer, until Jemima 
came and picked it up and gave it to me. 
I left that place and went across the creek to a corn- 
field, where the dog began to walk; and when that dog 
walks in a cornfield, I know it is time for me to 
climb over the fence and follow her. She has a way of 
conjuring up a bevy of quail at the end of such a 
saunter, and if she gets out of sight you have to hunt 
her. It was not two minutes on this occasion before 
she stopped with a high head, indicating that the birds 
were some distance down the rows. When I got to 
her they arose and I had time to shoot at one bird, 
which dropped with a broken wing. After I had my 
way for a few moments and had her to hunt where I 
thought it was, I let her have hers, whereupon she 
proceeded some sixty yards further and pointed and 
then picked up the bird in a ditch. I got through a 
hedge over which the birds had flown, suspecting that 
some of them had stopped there, which was the case, 
Jemima finding two, both of which I killed as they flew 
toward a th'cket. Following up this clue, we found the 
remainder of the covey therein, and when they rose, 
I got more, Then I missed one, and then killed one; 
then three other hunters appeared on the scene. I had 
heard then shooting for an hour past, and as they 
were coming from up the valley, where I expected to 
shoot on the morrow, it augured ill for the morrow. 
They turned out to be a pseudo dog trainer, who lived 
near the village and who had three young and poorly- 
trained dogs, one of them gunshy; and two men from 
the city, neither of whom could shoot very well. They 
had killed but ten quail, and this pleased me so much, 
that I let them have my scattered covey to chase around 
and shoot at, and started back across the creek to the 
cornfield below the vacant house, killing one more bird 
as I left. 
I now had ten birds, and in half an hour it would be 
time to think of my farmhouse and supper. I sat on 
the fence surrounding the cornfield, and Jemima started 
to work it out at a clipping gait, and then all at once 
dropped to that eloquent tip-toe trot of hers, and, as 
I hustled down off the fence, I said to myself, "Here 
is where I have a little cornfield practice," for the corn 
was of the typical Missouri variety — eight or ten feet 
high. "One bird at a time now, son," I said to myself 
as the dog stiffened out, and I kicked up the covey 
and stuck to my rule, the bird dropping at the first 
barrel. Retrieving it, we went to the upper side where 
the dog pointed, and the same process was gone 
through with with the like result. Following them 
around the upper edge she pointed again, and as she 
did so, a single bird darted up in the open where I 
stood, which I killed and marked against the fence, 
and slipped in a shell just as Jemima's bird got up, 
which I killed. She then reluctantly retrieved the two 
birds, after which she went on a few rods and pointed 
two more, one of which I missed, and, while my gun. 
was empty, several more birds followed the missed one 
into the stubble field. When she was making this last 
point, where I missed one and killed the other, I re- 
marked to her as I walked up to flush, "Well, Miss 
Jemima, you certainly are doing yourself proud in this 
cornfield, not to mention any other member of the 
family." We then followed in to the stubble field, 
where she made four more points on single birds, two 
more of which I missed. But we had seven birds out 
of the covey, and seventeen in all for the afternoon, 
and the sun was setting, so we went on to the farm. 
When I had made my salutations, I took a big, 
generous package of raw meat from my back game 
pocket and fed my good dog good, after which supper 
was in order, followed by an early retirement to the 
best room — the one with the bed in one corner and 
the melodeon in the other, and the tidies on the chairs, 
and fancy lamp, that is never lighted, on the center 
table. Jemima, M.D., slept on my coat by my bed, 
but woke me up with her cold nose about 2 A. M., to 
say, "Let's go out after 'em again." I gave her a 
piece of my mind and turned over and finished my nap. 
In the morning we went down toward the saw-mill, 
and just as we came in sight of it, I heard quail whistling 
in the woods, just over the fence. I climbed over and 
the birds got up and I missed them. I soon discovered 
that I had another missing spell, but managed, never- 
theless, to get five more birds, making twenty-two in 
all. I had determined to stop shooting when I got two 
dozen, as that would be enough for this trip; but the 
covey, what remained of it, had gotten scattered and I 
could not find them. I had to put in the time until 
noon some way, so I went up to the saw-mill and 
watched the men working there a while, and then a 
man told me he had flushed a "large gang" of quail 
the evening before, which had lit in an old field, even 
pointing out the exact spot where he assured me the 
birds were to be found. 
I went over there after a while, accordingly, and 
discovered that this corner of the field was where that 
covey made it a habit to roost. They must, therefore, 
be in one of the adjacent cornfields. The first field 
was a blank, and while I was taking it easy at the 
edge of the other field, Jemima thrashed it out pretty 
well before I missed sight of her. I knew she must be 
behind some corn shocks at a certain corner, and I 
stood watching them, expecting, if she did not soon 
emerge, to go down and see if she had found them. 
After a minute or two a large covey came from behind 
the shocks, followed apologetically by the dog. She 
had been pointing them as they had been feeding, and 
they had taken alarm at something. To make a long 
story short, I followed this covey up a few minutes, 
struck another hitting streak, and before I could get 
to the house and eat my dinner and walk to the train 
back along the valley which I had traversed the after- 
noon before, my total had been swelled to thirty-two 
birds. I felt satisfied, and Jemima evidently felt proud, 
for every dog that came near me and my bulging 
pockets had to take a licking, her dog fight score for 
the trip home being one village setter, one greyhound 
in the baggage car and a hound she met on the way 
home from the train. As an example of inherited traits, 
this is the third dog of this strain which I have owned, 
and every one of them would fight any dog that came 
near their quail, although perfectly peaceful at other 
times. They seem to have a sense of personal in- 
terest in birds shot over them. George Kennedy. 
P. S. — The last covey but one, on the way home, I shot 
but one bird out of; and the last covey I did not molest 
at all. I just flushed them in order to get Jemima off 
her point. Enough is plenty; and I know where there 
will be plenty more next year. Not that I am to 
shoot no more until then, heaven forbid, but that I 
try to go to a different locality each time. The next 
place, for instance, is to be in "Happy Valley," where 
I expect to make the best bag of the year. 
Floating Down the Mississippi. 
A Journey Through the Swamps. 
On the afternoon of Dec. 10, Mr. Mitchell took me 
up the river into the St. Francis Lake. Our boat was 
a little steel one, rather wabbly; but Mitchell drove it 
along as only a man of the swamps can do. I have 
always found the sensation of sitting in the bow of a 
paddle-driven boat one of the pleasantest there is. 
One sees himself sent headlong at stumps, or the 
bank, or swift water, wondering if the turn will be made 
or not. Of course it is, and just in time. Here, I was 
going into one of the most interesting places in 
America. It is like Reelfoot Lake, but more diversi- 
fied, and presenting a score of problems to all sorts 
of nature investigators. Flocks of wild ducks sprang 
out of the flag grass at intervals along the way. They 
rose above dead tree trunks like those of Reelfoot, 
surrounded by yellow grass, or growing trees instead 
of deep water. On either side was a swamp wilderness, 
while underneath flowed a stream of the clearest water 
imaginable. At the bottom were masses of giant 
or cattail moss, growing on half-buried victims of the 
New Madrid earthquakes. With these logs were oc- 
casional white flakes of pearl shells. The water in 
places came through numerous channels, and the canoe- 
man would find new difficulties trying to make his way 
down the main channel in low water. In high water, 
some chutes lead far back into a wilderness so dense 
that "the geese get lost in it." In low water, the 
problem is to find any channel at all. 
Mitchell pointed out pools from which he had taken 
messes of black bass. The local paddlers sometimes 
explained to one another the difference between lake 
trout and brook trout, using bass as the specimens. 
On the Mississippi the perch is called "speckled trout." 
Three years ago the first bass flies were introduced to 
local knowledge by Johnson of the Cossitt Library at. 
Memphis. His light rod, and leaders and flies are the 
wonder of the region. _ One may guess the fishing to 
be had there from this late introduction of modern 
bass lures. 
A feature of the swamps that sportsmen must con- 
sider, is the law which prohibits hunting by non-resi- 
dents. The cause of the law is explained in a thousand 
stories which the native tells. Game was exceedingly 
numerous only a few years ago, and there was no 
difficulty in getting an ample supply at any time. 
Hordes of shooters were attracted, and "head hunts" 
