FOREST AND STREAM 
December, 1919 
ARLINGTON-GOOSE TOWN 
WHEREIN THE HUNTER DISCARDS DECOYS AND GUNNING 
PUNTS AND CLIMBS TO A ST.RANGE HUNTING GROUND 
By W. R. MacILRATH. 
666 / 
Enjoy Winter Sports in Comfort 
mth 
Taplex Warmers 
■RTien off in the distance you sight a covey of 
wild-ducks, warm hands will help you to steady 
your aim, or when you are waiting on these 
cool, cyisp days for the “musky” and the perch 
to take your bait, what you want is a TAPLEX 
HANDY "warmer to keep your hands comfort- 
ably warm. 
When you He down on your cot at night, the 
wonderful TAPLEX BED WARJIER and BODY 
WARMER will hold off the snappiest, coldest 
winds, and let you sleep with all the comfort of 
your rteam-heated home. 
THE TAPLEX STICK DOES THE TRICK 
This is a most wonderfully ingenious fuel 
composition that is smokeless, flameless, a 1 
odorless. Its many thousands of users represent 
individual attestors to its absolute safety, econ- 
omy, simplicity, and efficiency. 
LIGHTS WITH A MATCH 
This phrase symbolizes Taplex all-a-round 
simplicity. Just place a Taplex Fuel Stick in 
the container, touch it with a lighted match, 
and in a few mVnites a soft, soothing, pleasant 
glow of heat will be generated, and which will 
radiaie warmth for from six to eight hours 
without requiring attention. 
This space forbids the detailing of the 
countless number of useful purposes that Taplex 
•erves so efficiently in camp and home. 
TAPLET BED WARMER, 
asbestos lined, wrapped in 
sanitary flannel napkins — » 
$ 1 . 00 . 
TAPLEX BODY WARM- 
ER, asbestos lined, with 
spring holder for the fuel 
sticks, in flannsl bag — • 
$ 1 . 00 . 
TAPLEX HANDY WARM- 
ERS, from 35o to $1.00. 
TAPLEX FUEL, 12 com- 
pressed sticks in a box — 
35o. (A single stick lasts 
six to eight hours.) 
If you cannot obtain at your druggist or sport- 
ing goods dealer, drop us a card giving ns his 
name and address, and wo will see that you are 
anpplied. 
TAPLEX CORPORATION 
B7 35!h Street Brooklyn, N. Y. 
and 
THE CANADIAN DISTRIBUTING CO. 
591 St. Catharine Street, West Montreal, Canada 
I F you will look at the map of Oregon, 
about the middle of the state from 
east to west, on the Columbia, not far 
from Pendleton of round-up fame, you 
will see the little town of Arlington. A 
small dot and small type suffices. Be not 
deceived. Arlington has importance out 
of all proportion to its size. 
Its one main street, running up a side 
canyon from the Columbia, not so many 
years ago was the center of a great cattle 
industry; and after the cattle were 
crowded out by the wheat growers, and 
the cattle kings, themselves reluctantly 
started raising wheat, Arlington was the 
market place and shipping point to which 
wheat was freighted in wagons drawn by 
from six to twelve horses, from all the 
high, rolling, semi-arid country to the 
south. This was before the railroad 
which now taps the wheat country of 
Gilliam County was built. 
But with the coming of better trans- 
portation much of Arlington’s grandeur 
vanished. Her trade has fallen away 
from her. The wheat barons now go to 
Portland or to San Francisco when they 
want to celebrate, and even to trade, 
when the local merchants in the little 
towns all up the wheat country do not 
have what they want. But while the lit- 
tle town in the canyon has lost some, of 
its local patronage, it still has an asset 
for which sportsmen come from hundreds 
of miles around to enjoy, and that is the 
goose shooting. It is a sort of specialty. 
Not waterfowl; geese! Very few ducks 
come there. Not even all kinds of geese, 
there being comparatively few Canadas. 
But brant are there by the thousands. In 
this inland, semi-desert country, the 
specialty is goose shooting. 
Above the Cascades the river changes 
radically in character. The lofty moun- 
tain shores, covered w'ith evergreen trees 
and practically evergreen grass, which ex- 
tends from the Cascades to the sea, give 
way to bluffs of drab monotony. Instead 
of leaping cascades and cataracts flowing 
into the Columbia are dry canyons filled 
with rocks and stunted soapweed. 
The sight of ferns, and the smell of 
green growing things give way to a con- 
sciousness of dust and heat (if it is in 
summer), and the consciousness that one 
is entering a country of volcanic forma- 
tion. Great black and chocolate volcanic 
rocks stick up out of the river and 
threaten the little steamers as they strug- 
gle with the increased speed of the cur- 
rent. The bluffs are of the same material. 
The narrow bottom between the bluffs 
and the river is studded thickly with 
chocolate and black lava boulders, among 
which some little grass grows and a few 
cattle graze. When a canyon opens up a 
view of the country beyond it is dry and 
sear sage country that doesn’t look as if 
it was worth ten cents a township. Yet 
here is the home of bumper crops of %2 
wheat. 
The Columbia above the Cascades is a 
game preserve and no shooting is permit- 
ted on the river itself. So great flocks of 
brant gather there and remain all winter. 
They stay on the river at night and fly 
out on the great empire of wheatfields in 
the daytime. The preserve insures pro- 
tection and the vast fields food. There is 
a famous feeding ground some ten miles 
south of the river known as Shutler 
Flats, a vast flat wheat country, and 
about the first large’ body of wheat land 
south of the river. The geese are very 
partial to this tract; the majority of them 
going .there- to the exclusion of thousands 
of acres of Wheatland all over that part 
of the state, of -Ore^n. 'That gives the 
geese a definite local habitation which is 
all the better foi’ the gunners. ■ 
In the town where gamblers aad rioting 
cowboys were wont to foregather in .time 
agone, there now collects a more sober 
and circumspect aggregation of goose 
shooters, which in the minds of some 
people are no less "crazy” than their 
predecessors. "What does anybody want 
to shoot geese for, anyhow? I don’t see 
no fun going out aud settin’ in a hole in 
the ground all day and freezin’ to death,” 
said one old woman to me. "I do wish 
my boy could get enough of it for onct.” 
With comfortable quarters in the little 
town, the nights are spent around the 
usual gathering places where yarn spin- 
ning is the order of the day and the 
“old timers” hold forth. Retiring to bed 
in a regular house, the tourist shooter 
can have choice in the morning of shoot- 
ing on the bluffs of the river, or taking an 
auto to Shutler Flats. The shooting at 
Shutler Flats is over decoys and in no 
essential way different from shooting on 
the grain fields anywhere, except the 
4 full-fledged Christmas dinner. 
