Oct. 4, 1913. 
FOREST AND STREAM 
427 
In Texas and the Philippines 
By MILTON HECKERT, Q. M. Sergeant, Troop D, Fourteenth Cavalry 
T HERE is one regiment in the United States 
Army that for more than six years has 
been singularly fortunate in the location 
of its stations, so far as hunting is concerned. 
This is the Fourteenth Cavalry, which is now 
doing patrol duty along the Mexican border in 
Texas. And although the men have had some 
practically virgin territory in the Philippines over 
which to hunt, little more than one years ago, 
prospects are right for just as good a year as 
they ever experienced, when the game season 
along the Rio Grande opens this year. 
In the last four years this regiment has beqn 
stationed at Fort Walla Walla in Washington; 
has been marched through Oregon and Califor¬ 
nia; has spent more than two years in Luzon, 
P. I., and has visited Japan, Hawaii and the 
Island of Guam. And in each place the nimrods 
of the various troops have sampled the sports 
of the different countries. 
As quartermaster sergeant of Troop D, 
Fourteenth Cavalry, I have had charge of the 
mess of that organization for four years, and 
have consequently taken keen interest in the re¬ 
sult of hunting trips of the men. In this troop 
the proceeds of any hunt, in the way of game, 
are turned in for the common good, and I assert 
without much fear of contradiction that we have 
had as much and as good game on our mess 
table as any outfit in the United States Army. 
This troop is now located at Eagle Pass, 
Texas, just opposite Piedras Negras, Mexico. 
We have been located here since last winter, and 
alternately with Troops B and F, also stationed 
here, we send out detachments of men for 
twenty days at a time to maintain the river 
patrol and prevent smuggling along the Rio 
Grande. The wildest parts of the territory are 
those especially watched, and it is this that gave 
the men such excellent hunting last year. Our 
patrols extend down the river for nearly one 
hundred miles, when they encounter the riders 
of Troop K and the other troops of the Four¬ 
teenth, now located at Laredo, Texas, who send 
their men up the river while we send them 
down. 
I thought some of the experiences of the 
men might prove of interest to the readers of 
Forest and Stream, especially as the perform¬ 
ance of nearly every kind of sporting arm has 
come under my observation in four years. Near¬ 
ly every man in the troop is a first class shot 
and an enthusiast over hunting, and some of the 
best messes of quail we had last year were made 
by men who carried a shotgun with them on 
their patrols and killed the birds from the saddle, 
the troop horses of course being perfectly accus¬ 
tomed to firing from their backs. 
To begin with, our experiences in the Philip¬ 
pines, when we were stationed at Camp Stotsen- 
burg in the Province of Pampanga and close to 
the Ifugao head hunters’ territory, I will men¬ 
tion the work of the service Springfield with the 
1906 cartridge. This arm was always taken by 
the men who went out on mounted hunting trips 
of several days, although shotguns and .30-30 
rifles were usually taken in addition. We were 
right at the foot of a range of mountains that 
were totally uninhabited except for a branch of 
Negritoes, improperly called Igorrotes by some 
of the men. (The Igorrotes belong to a dif¬ 
ferent part of the islands, but the Negritoes re¬ 
semble them strongly in appearance.) These 
natives had no firearms and still used bows and 
arrows, which disturbed the game but little. Ac¬ 
cordingly, the mountains swarmed with the small 
Philippine deer and with wild hogs. 
On account of the uncertain attitude of the 
Negritoes, the men took their Springfields along, 
as I have mentioned, because they relied upon 
this weapon in case of trouble. For hunting 
purposes they used to clip the point off the sharp 
Spitzer bullet and file little slits in the case. 
This gave a dum dum effect that was especially 
valuable in killing wild hogs. These animals are 
simply descendants of the domestic hog that 
have run wild, but generations of freedom have 
caused them to assume the appearance of the 
European wild boar in many cases. They de¬ 
velop prominent tusks and are thickly covered 
with bristles. Unlike the peccaries of the Mexi¬ 
can border, however, they are of large size, the 
constant admixture of domestic blood from es¬ 
caped swine serving to keep up their size. 
As a hunting weapon, even with the crude 
dum dum bullets, I cannot recommend the 
Springfield very highly. On one occasion, when 
hunting near the border of Batangas Province, 
Sergeant Buchenroth (now in the First Cavalry) 
started an unusually large boar in a hollow 
which lay directly below us. I was on one side 
of the hollow, Sergeant Conely, of Troop D, was 
on the other side, and Buchenroth was at the 
upper end of the dip. When Buchenroth sighted 
the boar, the animal was rooting with his head 
half buried, and about one hundred yards from 
us. He fired, and the thud of the bullet hitting 
the animal could clearly be heard. It might be 
expected that a bullet treated as we had treated 
the Spitzer bullet, when hitting such an animal 
scarcely an inch from the spine and almost over 
the forelegs, as we found from subsequent ex¬ 
amination, would kill it instantly. Instead, it 
passed out on the left side, making a hole about 
the size of a quarter dollar. The boar squealed, 
and, apparently dazed, started on a slow trot 
diagonally toward us. He presented his broad¬ 
side to me, and I hit him twice, trying to strike 
behind the shoulder. Beyond shaking his tail as 
each shot told, and squealing louder, he gave 
no sign of injury, tie did not even accelerate 
his trot. Then Buchenroth fired again and 
brought him down with a shot which struck him 
fairly in the ribs. 
This last bullet passed completely through 
the animal, as did my two shots. But instead of 
expanding, it seemed to have literally turned 
somersaults in traversing the beast’s body. At 
least, the only explanation of the terrific wound 
it made on the opposite side of the boar was that 
the bullet had turned over and over as it passed 
through. The other bullets made clean holes. 
Now we had treated those bullets to make 
them as much like the various patterns of dum 
dum bullets that are featured by some English 
makers as we could. Of course we could not 
cut off much of the point, as the lead core of 
the bullet is exposed at the base, and we were 
afraid of blowing it out completely. Yet the 
projectiles seemed dangerous enough in appear¬ 
ance. 
On several occasions I have seen three and 
four shots with bullets treated this way required 
to kill a Philippine deer, an animal smaller and 
of apparently lower vitality than our own red 
deer. The only explanation I can give is that 
the service cartridge is of too high velocity for 
such game; that it passes through without 
enough resistance being offered to cause it to 
expand, and that the turning over of the bullet 
is what makes it deadly when the animal is not 
hit in an especially vital point. 
In support of this belief I can only say that 
the .32-20 cartridge proved a better killer on 
Philippine game, in my experience, than the 
Springfield. This cartridge semed to have just 
power enough. When the transport Sheridan 
stopped at the Island of Guam, I talked with 
some of the marines stationed there, and all 
claimed that this cartridge and others of similar 
power were best adapted for shooting the hogs 
and deer of the islands. 
We had time for a short hunt while there, 
and although no deer were killed, we landed 
quite a bag of the wild chickens that are found 
in nearly all the Philippine group. These 
chickens, descended like the hogs from domestic 
stock, have become totally wild, live entirely in 
the woods, and have deteriorated in size, al¬ 
though they have become much more brilliant 
in coloring. It may seem like tame sport shoot¬ 
ing such birds, but when their wildness and the 
density of the groves in which they were found 
is considered, I can only say that they kept a 
man busy trying to get them with a little 28- 
bore of English make. 
This same 28-bore shotgun is hardly appre¬ 
ciated in the United States, probably because its 
possibilities are not yet recognized. I have seen 
deer after deer killed with the little guns in the 
islands, a solid ball being used in a cylinder bore 
barrel. As a rule, the 28-bore guns seen over 
there were of English make, coming from the 
firms in Hong Kong. One barrel was usually 
cylinder bore and the other very slightly choked. 
I do not know the name of the firm manufactur¬ 
ing the shells, because there was no imprint on 
the head of the cartridge case, but I purchased 
at Manila, a short time before returning to the 
United States, some shells in which the solid 
ball was seated as in a regular metallic cartridge, 
the ball being the usual conical shape. The 
weight of such a ball seemed to be about 270 
grains or thereabouts, and it gave excellent pat¬ 
terns at 100 yards. I think such a gun would 
be of great service in many wooded parts of 
the United States, where shooting is at short 
range. 
The .32-20 was probably the most popular 
cartridge I encountered, as the .30-30 seemed 
needlessly powerful there. Incidentally, it seems 
singular that the .32-20, developed in 1873 as a 
black powder load, should maintain its place so 
long. It is now forty years since it was de- 
