Feb. 4, 1905.] 
I FOREST AND STREAM. 
:he western hills when we retraced our steps toward the 
'^ouse, and after supper that night, after cleaning our 
_uhs, yarn-telling waS indulged in until bedtime, when all 
turned in. 
The first one Up the next niorning rushed to the will- 
ow to see the weather and obSerVitlg a flrie sky, shouted. 
do 
in 
10 
bet up boys, it's b o'clock and everything is favorable 
fcr another good hunt." The balance of us needed no 
second nivitation, and there was a tumbling out of bed 
and gettnig into togs ready for breakfast. 
The mornmg meal over, we sallied forth across the 
fields m search of the birds. Count soon found a covey 
and Ned made a pretty back stand. They got up in con- 
cision, but Messrs. Jackson and Rice got a single apiece. 
Mr. Jackson thought the birds came to the ground again 
about fifty yards up a fence, but when we reached them 
:hey were not to be found, and when the dogs did find 
hem they were probably too yards further on. This time 
51X of them fell to our guns, and the rest of them flew 
Dver on to posted land, but as some of our party knew 
he owner of the farm, wg got ovef. The dogs, foutld 
wo floeks oyer here, out of which we got ten birds. We 
yefe not quite satisfied with our number yet, and strayed 
urther on to the edge of some timber, along which ran 
•n old Virginia rail fence, and right along here Ned 
lound another covey. Six more birds were added to our 
■umber, and then we started in the direction of the 
ouse. On the way back a couple of rabbits were scared 
), one of which we killed. 
After supper that night, after lighting our pipes, we 
athered around the old-fashioned fire-place, in which 
'-e logs cracked and stewed, and recounted the pleasures 
: our two days' hunt. 
The next morning, after bidding our host and hostess 
)od-by, and expressing our appreciation and thanks for 
leir generous hospitality, we drove back to Winchester 
n ouf way to Pleasant Level, the country home of Mr. 
feckson. ^ Mr. Riee. much to our regret, was detained 
the eity by law business, so we had to proceed on 
ithout him. The weather for our last dav's hunt looked 
ither gloomy in the morning, and it didn't improve 
luch in the afternoon. It was cold and drizzHiig rain, 
id our spirits were rather low— I don't mean liquid- 
id for some time we were undecided whether to go out 
stay in. However, we tried it for a while, and I think 
e wound up the afternoon with four birds and two 
Ibbits. 
We were entertained at dinner by Mr. Charles McCain, 
ho lives about five miles from town, and late in the 
.ternoon drove to the home of A/fr. Al Rutherford, 
lere we took supper. Mr. Rice Came down and joined 
■s about f o'clock in the evening,- and after spending 
veral pleasant hours with Mr. and Mrs. Rutherford 
id their charming daughters, we started toward Win- 
ester with pleasant thoughts of quail hunt in Old 
irginia. A. T. C. 
VlNCHESTER, Vi, 
Ftom the Bayman's Viewpoint. 
Blue Point, L. L, Jan. 5 —Editor Forest and Stream: 
ssuming that the fire-place crowd of Forest and Stream 
e ppen to both sides of a question, with your permission 
will draw my cider barrel up into the glow and join the 
)od-natured group of duck shooters. 
If you fellows understand the difiference between an 
casional gunner and a man who gets a few dollars out 
the game, you possibly would see the sport from a 
fferent standpoint. The raft of ducks on closer inspec- 
>n would turn, out to be only a bunch. The pair of sleep- 
? black ducks (when you get upon them) would be 
nay be) two pieces of driftwood. The child-like zeal 
the $400 gun owner is an emotion quite different from 
e calm speculation of the parchment-skinned bayman. 
Now will you let me say something about spring duck 
ooting here? Would you believe that last election this 
iasure was made to occupy a prominent position on the 
jiti'orni of all Long Island candidates for political 
nor? Do you know they have promised to do all they 
n to repeal the spring duck law ? Why? Because it is of 
ry great importance to the people of this section, to the 
)ng Island Railroad and the baymen. That political 
erest and legislative ping-pong may interfere and with 
punity occasion considerable inconvenience and financial 
■s to a community, is a consideration; and I think, in 
5tice to those who have been your guides, your cooks, 
ur faithful attendants, to those who have got up in the 
ddle of the night to put an extra rug over you as you 
' in the little bunk in the little hut on the sand dunes, 
due at least a fair judgment. Compared with the bay- 
;n with the battery, what has the man with the gun to 
e? The former a living for part of the year, the latter 
iuck or two. 
Did you ever hear of the man who gets a living at the 
ne objecting to shooting duck in the spring? No. ■ 
ell, that's because he understands the true condition. 
T me to enter into the details would occupy a column 
two. Suffice it to say that the thrifty, provident bay- 
n is not going to "cut off his nose to spite his face ;" 
1_ while I don't want to cast any reflection on myself, 
vish to say that those who know the most about duck 
)oting conditions on the Great South Bay are those 
:o can least explain or bring their argument before the 
per quarter. Those who make the agitation are, to a 
tain extent, masters of the situation because of clap- 
p sentiment. They are the class of duck shooters who 
you that it is easier to kill a duck on the water than 
the wing. 
^he Plaintiff — The calamity monger. 
The Defendant— The quiet, horny-handed man of the 
tery and the point. 
he Jury — The good, kind, what-do-we-care-easy-mark- 
3w-nothing-about-it people of the State o^ New York, 
'ermit a few questions and facts. 
). Suppose you had a full year to shoot, have you ever 
ired the actual number of days it is possible to kill and 
e ducks ? 
Jote.— In the season of 1903-4 you could not have taken 
ing the months of December, January or February fifty 
:ks on the Bay (I say the Bay, assuring you that I am 
:,us5iug this matter absolutely from a local standpoint), 
of the millions that hovered around. the neighbor'ing 
n sea, iiccause of the ice. 
D' rio yoi) figure on the days when the gul! flii's low 
and the ragged water prevents the rigging of a battery? 
tn^rllT'^r^-^i^^^^ ^ hundred dwellings along shore 
landS.n^r '^'1 V th^"- StandinI up from the 
S ™P ^""^ ^PP^^^^ the dull red smokestack 
anchnr^.L^ °i7' 7-,*^ hundreds of oyster fishers 
hZu L., "^"^^ P^y^"^ their trade. Puffing tug- 
an Se^ Iff '^P? ^''V' T^""' "^^^t hurry to and fro-not 
n T J 1 the "haunts of the wild " 
niw! ^""^^ "^"^'"^ °" the Bay to-day than in 
0 hei years, must we attribute the deficiency to the battery 
and the pump gun? 
Statement.-Ducks are wilder while on the Bay to-day 
w?rhX'&'''.' ^'f-^' Incidentally Ae man 
with the $400 shooting iron howls 
nnrSf k'^^"^"^ reliable naturalist will tell you this is 
not the breeding ground of the ducks. That they mate 
r.Z\ ''"^,1^''^^"^ comparable to their vast incalculable 
numbers will require some proving. That eggs in course 
ot formation have been discovered within a dead bird 
aken here in the spring may be true, I'll admit. Again 
the vast proportion, ask of the duck shooters how often 
they have observed this. 
Referring to shooting at ducks on the water, I have 
seen a box of cartridges used up on one on the water, the 
same presenting a passable mark every time it was shot 
a . Had those cartridges been used by the same gunner 
at birds on the wmg at the same distance, I venture to 
say he would have taken at least twenty out of the twenty- 
hve,^ Adepts generally try to scare up birds alighting 
within the radius of the decoys. ^ 
Here there is no indiscriminate slaughter. No traps 
are used, nor nets; and there is very little market-shoot- 
mg. i lie men prefer to hire their outfit to a sportsman, 
t lie bags secured here last season have been a happy, glad 
old average To the adept came the spoils. The canvasback 
hnnter paid his money to the bayman, got in the box, 
missed all that came along, and religiously purchased half 
a dozen pair to take home, where he put on his smoking 
jacket and took out his ink-pot and told Forest and 
i.TREAM that the ducks would have to be protected 
that protection is required for the ducks in these 
waters will require proving, and the proof must come 
from those who know facts. 
If a regiment of soldiers were afloat on the Bay each 
equipped with a first-class battery and the latest lightning- 
like magazine gun at his side to-morrow, they would take 
no more ducks with their thousand guns than we did 
yesterday, forty of us. Ask an old gunner and he will 
tell you why. 
You men who take the train to Albany, see that this 
measure is (as far as Long Island goes) considered with 
intelligence Let us have a fair game. We men of the 
battery and the point are not without sentiment You 
must not be cajoled into believing that ducks are mowed 
down like blades of grass. Do not imagine we do not 
appreciate the full import of the word protection The 
ducks come and go in other waters further north, where 
the cold blue waters lap whole continents of ice on which 
the foot of man has never trod ; to-day countless legions 
ot web-footed fowl flap their wings in glorious ignorance 
ot such a thing as a pump gun. 
All the ducks don't come to the Great South Bay 
ihere are enough for Jersey, for Connecticut, and then 
innumerable clouds of them are left for every other State in 
the Union. Will Graham. 
Deer Hunting in Wisconsin. 
The Doctor is the plague of my life. No sooner has 
lie consumed his last bite of venison than he is ready for 
the next year's outing. The first thought he utters is as 
to how deer v/mtered ; the second, where we will locate 
then how many will be in the party, and how long will 
we stay. Ihese are foundation stones for the building 
that gees on during the summer months, until by the 
first of October he has changed to, "Have you heard 
trom S ? By this time I am getting pretty well worked 
up, and if prevented from carrying out our plans (which 
seem to grow just like mushrooms), something more 
serious would probably happen. 
1 don't believe I am any more, responsible for my love • 
for the camp and the chase than Mother Earth is for the 
weeds that choke the growing crops. (If the reader can 
find any philosophy in the illustration he has me.) Don't 
overlook the fact, though, I said camp as well as chase. 
Camp sounds less bloodthirsty, and presents altogether 
a different aspect. A camp may be located near Mr Kip- 
ling's "raw right-angled log-jam" or his "blackened tim- 
ber, and far removed from anything to chase of conse- 
quence; or it may be in the heart of the wilderness, with 
■ windfalls alternating with swamp. Again, it may be 
pitched by the side of a "babbling brook" or brook about 
which men babble, or on the shore of a lake where in 
the late fall you fish during midday and freeze at mid- 
night. But give me a camp in a sheltered cove, near 
the edge of a lake or the outlet to one, with green woods 
sheltermg me, the ground carpeted with pine needles or 
maple leaves, and — but what's the use— where will you 
find it? If any reader of Forest and Stream knows of 
such an ideal place in Wisconsin or Minnesota, please 
drop me a line. The time was I knew such spots; but 
now blackened stubs and stumps mark the place, briers 
and weeds cover the camping ground, and you can walk 
dryshod down the lake's bank to where my birch pole 
and long line flung the bait eighteen years ago. 
As to the chase — that's different. Deer are easily do- 
niesticated; so are rabbits, pine squirrels, bears, etc., and 
if you care only for the chase, you may locate almost 
anywhere north of the center of Wisconsin, Michigan or 
Minnesota and not be disappointed. The non-resident 
hunter will find the railroads that run through or into the 
game centers his best friends. He will find them ready 
to grant any reasonable request not inconsistent with 
the laws governing the handhng of game or interstate 
commerce. 
On November 8, at 10:30 P. M., we boarded the 
Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul train at Chicago for 
Sayner, Vilas county, Wisconsin. I had arranged with 
I\rr. Sayner to haul us out to Our last year's camp-site; 
also 10 funu.-;h us a table, cock-stove, bale of straw and 
kerosene. We were taking two tents, each i6ft. by 12ft., 
and a sheet-iron box-stove, but we wanted a stove in 
each tent. There were six of us, and we needed the two 
tents; therefore why not two stoves? Besides, the Doc- 
tor had promised me that if we got a cook-stove for our 
cook tent, he would bake some biscuits. Now, biscuits 
are my delight. If there is any one eatable I like better 
ttian a soft, cream-colored biscuit, it is six of the same 
^'th good fresh butter. So a cook-stove we had, 
and the biscuits later. Our train was nearly two hours 
late at Sayner and another party had to be taken down to 
i"lum Lake, so it was nearly 3 P. M. when Mr. S. got 
our nine pieces of baggage loaded and started for our 
camping ground on Lost Creek, nearly three miles dis- 
tant, the straw Mr. S. had ordered from somewhere 
had not arrived, but he brought a lon^-necked quart 
■u% u ^^th oil for our lamp and lantern, and by 
nightfall we had the sleeping tent up on the exact spot 
it occupied in November, 1903. We used the same ridge- 
pole; the same logs protected the bottom of the tent, 
and the stove sat on the same earthen platform, and 
blinked at us through the draft-hole as of yore. We 
had left home at 2:18 P. M. on the 8th, and in spite of 
three delays of from 30 minutes to two hours each, were 
now, twenty-six hours later, eating lunch in camp, over 
500 miles from home and three miles from the railroad. 
With some boughs and the extra tent we made a founda- 
tion for our beds, and the following morning put up the 
other tent m front, opened the back end of it and con- 
nected the two. Toward evening Mr. S. brought out 
the cook-stove and a six-foot table, but brought no stove- 
pipe nor straw. We spent the loth putting our trunks—- 
most of which had Iain out over night— in place, gather- 
ing wood, and viewing the country near camp; getting 
ready, in fact, for the nth, which was the first day of 
the open season for deer. 
The morning of the nth, Hedrick got up at 4 o'clock, 
built a fire, and sat down to wait until time to get break- 
fast He did not wait long, however, for Bender don't 
let daylight find him abed in a hunting camp. Breakfast 
was eaten by lamp-light, and as soon as we could see, we 
scattered out in various directions, the net result being a 
5-Point buck which fell to Spahr's gun. Saturday the 
i2th Bender and Spahr went out northwest, Hedrick and 
Journay (our new man) southwest, but at n A M. they 
began to return to camp without bagging any game. The 
Doctor and I wrote some letters and did the morning 
camp work. Then I prepared dinner, consisting of bean 
soup with a liberal supply of sliced bacon, and a dish of 
stewed apples, bread, butter and coffee. At 11 I helped 
myself, then got into my shooting outfit, got the kero- 
sene bottle, and started for Sayner post-office, nearly 
four iniles distant. The wagon road is a snake-like trail 
around and between hills near our camp, and where it 
circles the second hill I followed an older track over the 
top, and was descending the northern side when a good 
sized buck fawn bounded off to the northeast of me, 
going nearly straightaway. Now, if there is any target 
I would rather shoot at than a running deer I have never 
seen it. It has occurred to me that the shooter who 
can with the average repeating rifle under conditions 
that prevail in the deer haunts of to-day, stop every deer 
he sees, ought to command a high salary as a batter in a 
crack ball team. For the most scientific twirler can 
hardly put up a more difficult proposition than deer do 
for the hunter in the burnt-over land of Wisconsin. I 
had to shoot down through a number of small trees, and 
had worked my gun three times when a second deer 
that had at my first shot sprung from its cover, seemed 
to ofifer a better mark, and I turned slightly to the 
right and threw two balls at it before both were out of 
sight. Then I took time to get vexed at myself. The 
boys told me a few moments later that those five shots 
came thick and fast, and caused them all to jump from 
the table and grab their guns; nevertheless there was no 
deer in sight, and all about quiet reigned supreme. Then 
I counted off one hundred long steps, and found myself 
about two-thirds of the distance to where the deer were 
when I fired my first shot. That was sufficient to 
satisfy me that my judgment was about right when I 
aimed at the deer, and not over them, as I should have 
done if they had been 300 yards distant. The ground was 
extremely dry, but I found the tracks of the first one I 
saw, and soon came to where one of my bullets had 
plowed a furrow some two feet long just in front and 
between the deer's tracks. Evidently I had shot a little 
low. A few jumps further was a drop of blood, and 
about fifty yards further on, and on the crest of a little 
hill, lay a fine buck fawn. He must have fallen about the 
instant I turned my attention to the second one, which 
was further to my right, and some forty yards nearer. 
That second deer was a corker. He was too quick for 
me. and got away, leaving no sign of being wounded. 
The Doctor and Journay came to me, and I asked them 
to take care of the dead deer and I would jog on toward 
Sayner. Journay soon called out that he never saw a 
deer shot like that one. Then he held up the heart and 
told us the bullet had struck near the navel, gone through 
the heart and out between the forelegs. That reminded 
me of a shot I made at a rabbit with the same gun at 
about forty steps. The ball clipped of a portion of one 
of the rabbit's hindfeet, ripped it open and tossed it over 
to the left, while its entrails lay on the ground directly 
under where it was when the ball struck it. It might 
occur to some reader to keep track of that kerosene bot- 
tle, and that thought occurred to the Doctor. My ex- 
planation was that when that first white flag went up the 
bottle was unceremoniously dropped, to be picked up 
later. 
Saturday evening the 12th found us in shipshape. My 
notes read : "This year we seem to be well supplied 
with everything needful for a comfortable, jolly time. 
Now if the deer will just be meek and well mannered, we 
may bag our quota of game and go home happy." But 
we had that evening no idea what fate had dished up for 
us. To read on : "I notice my old friend Hedrick wab- 
bles more and more as these outings come and go, and 
the stumps are more contrary as I try to draw rnyself 
up on them, and when one of us gets into the shin- 
tangle he don't go through so nimbly as he did fifteen 
years ago; but the cool water is just as sweet, the air 
as bracing, and the bean soup and potatoes with jackets 
on taste just as good, and we can handle our rifles and 
shoot just about as straight as before the stiffness came 
into our knees and cramps into pur muscles. As I sit 
