Aug. ii, 1906.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
215 
The New Home of the Uneasy Club. 
Burley, Idaho, July 16.—To break the busi¬ 
ness ties of twenty years, get out of the rut you 
are in, convince your wife that it is the proper 
thing to do, pack up all your belongings and 
leave a large city for what may develop in a 
wilderness of sage brush and most of the con¬ 
ditions attendant to real pioneering, requires 
monumental nerve. 
Unless you are sure of yourself, likewise “the 
lady,” don’t try it, but continue to work your 
nerves to a frazzle, live artificially, die and for¬ 
get your day dreams of a simple life in the big 
open. 
To those who stick, and can stand the attend¬ 
ant work and worry of establishing themselves, 
soon comes the assurance of a fairly successful 
business that promises to grow and prosper under 
conditions which are the reverse of those in the 
turmoil, artificial light, smoke and bad air of the 
average city office, and they become optimistic., 
With the prospect of success shining in one’s 
eyes, the tendency is to see success for all the 
friends who are slaving their lives away and im¬ 
mediately to try and induce them to pack up and 
do likewise. 
However, nothing of the kind should be done, 
for if you are unfortunate enough to have to 
nurse some well meaning friend through a siege 
of homesickness, and see his courage grow 
weaker, it would be better to ship him and his 
apparently fatal malady back to his dear Chicago 
—or other port—before the contagion of disgust 
fastens upon you. 
Every fellow with a little granite in his spine, 
to whom the temporary loss of modern con¬ 
veniences means little and the mixing it with 
nature means much, should have an opportunity 
to come into the “desert” and live. To such 
there is, here in the Snake River Valley of Idaho, 
a warm welcome and business prospects of the 
very best, with the assurance of good clean sport. 
for years to come. Indeed, to a tenderfoot, now 
bronzed and tanned and unlike the individual 
who was compared to a milky angleworm by a 
kindly native upon my arrival, the prospect^ is 
so attractive that it would be extremely selfish 
not to tell of it. 
A country bank is not the worst place to get 
information, and as I sit in my two by four 
“counting room,” looking for prospective de¬ 
positors, I incidentally hear that at the mouth of 
Raft River, thousands of young ducks can at 
this moment be seen in the sloughs and marshes. 
“Chickens” as the grouse and sage hens are 
called, will be plentiful as soon as the hay, gram 
and alfalfa are cut; when every stubble will roar 
with fluttering wings, and we will recall and 
live over again those days when the prairie 
chickens were so plentiful" in Iowa and barbed 
wire the exception. 
Doves! To tell the facts about them would lay 
one open to the suspicion of having romanced; 
but it is no exaggeration to say that within five 
blocks of our home is a patch of five acres of 
“wheat grass” in which one could flush a thou¬ 
sand of these birds, which in their flight and 
actions resemble much the quail and jacksnipe 
and are totally unlike their eastern cousins. _ 
Fishing in the Snake River has been indiffer¬ 
ent—due to the “elements” I am told by an old 
fisherman here, who also says that when condi¬ 
tions are normal, trout of large size are the rule. 
Within a day’s ride by rail, or better still, a trip 
overland at leisure, is Yellowstone Park,, and a 
trip to that wonderland is one of the anticipated 
pleasures of the club when we finally get to¬ 
gether here. 
Bob is uneasy, Burt is uneasier, George is ac¬ 
cessible by telephone, and I am sitting in my den 
where I can gaze upon the mountains, twenty 
miles away, under their crown of silvery snow, 
all dressed in velvety green, where the ever 
changing beauty of light and shade are beyond 
expression or description. 
When the club enter these hills next fall, as 
they expect to, and try out the known trout 
streams where the waters rush and tumble 
through canons; where all day it is twilight; or 
climb to snowy peaks where at least a glimpse 
of a big-horn may yet be had; or wander through 
the parks in search of elk or deer and incidentally 
flush a bear, there should be material for a narra¬ 
tive more interesting than any recorded doings 
of the club heretofore. 
Meanwhile the Mud Hen and the Hell Diver 
ride the waves of the beautiful Snake River 
and the Flying Dutchman, which is nearing com¬ 
pletion, will be rigged with mast and sail and 
put in readiness for the fall campaign. 
George and I, who are patiently waiting for the 
open season and the arrival of the others of the 
club, pass our leisure hours, which are mostly on 
Sundays, in searching for arrowheads, which are 
not plentiful. 
The quest for these records of, the past is in¬ 
tensely interesting and not without suitable re¬ 
ward to the persistent hunter, who with a stick 
and sharp eye pokes and looks about the remains 
of ancient Indian camps that are well defined on 
the sheltered side of the sand hills along rivers 
and other water courses. Each new find is re¬ 
corded with a whoop of delight, until the 
searcher, tired out from peering at the glaring 
sand, sits down to rest the aching back and take 
stock. 
Specimens of obsidian, beautiful in design and 
in several colors—jet black, cholocate or deep 
• greens, which are the commonest, are spread out 
for inspection and comparison. 
Transparent opalescent flint vies with the 
smoky topaz or the denser material, which to 
my eye resembles amethyst, and all' are judged 
as to artistic design and construction, and the 
hunters wonder if these implements could speak 
would the tale be of grand hunts and bloody 
wars, or that some careless worker had dropped 
and lost them in the shifting sand where they 
have lain in the broiling sun for the centuries 
since, until some faddist found them and lugged 
them off in triumph to decorate his den! We 
give it up! Some day we may construct a legend 
for each one and be able to tell its age to a day. 
At present we shall try and complete our collec¬ 
tion and enjoy every moment of the quest. 
There are a few drawbacks here as in every 
other place, and one of them, the sand storm, 
is not the finest thing that ever happened; so, 
in the midst of one a few days since, a native 
who rivaled the proverbial miller in appearance, 
remarked that he “guessed I would like to be 
back where I came from.” 
I smiled, and mentally ran over the above 
stated offsets to the breezes with soil in them 
that whisked about until the very air was a dense 
yellow, and trust I may be pardoned in replying, 
“You had better guess again.” Noynek. 
Automatic Gun. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I used a pump gun for a while, because it fits 
a left-handed shooter better than a double gun, 
unless he has a special stock made. I gave it 
up because it is noisy, the second barrel is slow, 
and you can’t shift your hands quickly and quietly. 
Besides, like all hammer guns, it is unsafe. It is 
little, if at all, more destructive titan a double 
gun. The waste of game is, a question of the 
man, not the gun. I have had no experience 
with the automatic gun. Aztec. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
It is evident from Mr. Kennedy’s letter (page 
54, July 14) that he has never used a repeating 
shotgun, and he probably never used a repeat¬ 
ing rifle. He has, therefore, written an attack 
upon and proposes legislative-enactment against 
a style of firearm with which he is utterly un¬ 
familiar. 
With the rifle it is probably safe to say that 
one hundred repeaters are now sold to one 
single shot when the repeater started. Most all 
of our best rifle shots are using repeaters for 
target shooting as well as hunting. 
MR. LYLE’S MOOSE HEAD. 
