January 3, 1914. 
FOREST AND STREAM 
17 
The Season Just Over 
A S all good and happy things in this enig¬ 
matical life of ours must leave us, so has 
another glorious epoch in the life of the 
angler and shooter gone hence and again the 
long winter nights a little later than has been 
the case in late years, however, are here. And 
now while the old Parker has been nicely cleaned 
up, oiled and laid away for, perhaps, an unbroken 
three months’ rest, what better can we do than 
gather round the open grate or office stove, and 
in joyous conversation, live over once more the 
exhilarating scenes and life-prolonging excite¬ 
ments, of the days of yore; I am pleased to say 
that I have accumulated, this fall the data for 
many a good hunting story to be reeled off dur¬ 
ing the dreary months ensuing, and I am certain 
to derive as much pleasure in the writing of them, 
mayhap, a good deal more, than the majority of 
you will in perusing them. 
It cannot be denied but what the shooting for 
the season just closed has been fairly satisfactory 
as to both wild fowl and chicken, and so it would 
have been on quail, also, if the season had been 
prolonged through the month of November, but 
we are given only the two first weeks of the 
month which is equivalent to eliminating the sea¬ 
son altogether. It is more than gratifying to be 
able to say that all kinds of game has thrived un¬ 
usually well, not, however, by reason of the new 
Federal game laws, in any manner or detail, but 
because our state laws have been ample and sen¬ 
sible, yet more extensively has this condition 
been due to natural causes and the better preser¬ 
vative spirit, which is fast possessing all true 
sportsmen. The effects of the Federal ,law will 
come later. The desire to wantonly invade the 
field in advance of the legal season is disappear¬ 
ing before the deep detestation of such a culpa¬ 
ble practice. We are beginning to feel keenly 
the quality of true sport, and savagery is fast be¬ 
coming a crime. This quality is not ascertained 
by the quantity of results, the bag plethora, or 
the swine appetite of him who is forsooth, privi¬ 
leged to bear a gun. Rather is it determined by 
the rare emotions, the sights and scenes of every 
hour, the new pictures and olden retrospect of 
earlier sessions with nature and its entertaining 
touch, the freshened vigors of manhood, its skill, 
its fascinating moods and tenses with the dog, the 
gun, the rod and line. 
These are the signs of modern sportsman¬ 
ship ; this is the gentility afield which we emu¬ 
late; this and its boon to body and mind should 
be the bestowal of balmy, life-infusing spring 
By SANDY GRISWOLD 
days, of summer days, and those, too, of fall and 
winter. 
The chained-to-business philosopher who 
never goes fishing or shooting, but who would 
like to, and who makes the best of it by perusing 
the columns of the Forest and Stream, may find 
in these wintry, indoor days a redundance of 
reading for the equal of which in extent, variety 
and quality, he might look the country over. The 
fact is, the Forest and Stream, gives an amount 
of material interesting to the sportsman that few 
other papers in the west, or east, either for that 
matter, comes within hailing distance. This is 
not said unfairly, but facts are facts, and only 
good can come by being made familiar with them. 
But, as I stated in the start of this article, 
the shooting days of 1913 are past, yet there is 
still some little excitement to be had in this line, 
for those resolute and hardy enough to go after 
it. While the late cool winds hurried the last of 
the lingering birds scurrying precipitously off to 
the south, many of them will return, especially 
the enduring old mallards and cold loving Can¬ 
ada geesp. ^ with the first thaw under the recur¬ 
rence of sunshiny weather and warming winds. 
Winter mallard shooting along the Platte is 
and always has been a theme worthy of more at¬ 
tention than it receives and a theme that will be 
found most refreshingly interesting to all lovers 
of wild fowl shooting. But this year the season 
also ended on December 16th, as prescribed by 
the new Federal law. 
However, for the average duck hunter, as I 
before intimated, the season has been run down. 
The cool days of a week ago, although they were 
transient, clapped the lid on, and there it will re¬ 
main until the once again fall days roll around. 
It is a well-known fact that many of those 
old red-legged mallards, and sometimes many 
greenwing teal, linger along the frozen Platte all 
through the winter, no matter how rigorous the 
weather, and I myself five years ago, made a 
handsome kill out on Crook’s island, below 
Clarks, during the second week of December. 
Every fall these sturdy birds seem loth to 
leave so favored a stream, and while they spend 
most of their time in the barren corn and pasture 
fields, the flight up and down the ice-fettered river 
is quite a stirring one both in the early morning 
and late in the evening, but particularly in the 
morning. Shooting on the Platte in the evening 
has never been, that is in the past decade, even 
fairly good, save on rare occasions. 
At this season the birds are finer and more 
beautiful than at any other time. They are al¬ 
most exclusively cornfed and so big and fat they 
look more like geese than they do like ducks, and 
in their heavy winter coat of black velvet, emer¬ 
ald and iridescent bands of blue, are indescribably 
beautiful. 
On the 17th day of December, which would 
be a date late under the new law, 1894, I spent 
with Sam Richmond, the former sage of Clarks, 
but now of Fullerton, in a blind on the famous 
stream, and we killed twenty-nine of the grand¬ 
est birds I ever saw, bagging the most of them 
before 9 o’clock. I shall never forget that morn¬ 
ing. It was clear and bright and keen as a razor’s 
edge. The air sparkled like champagne and the 
experience alone was more than sufficient to pay 
for the trip. It wouldn’t have mattered much if 
we hadn’t got a feather. 
The sprawling and fretful old torrent gur¬ 
gled and rippled and rushed on her way as if 
under some spell of enchantment. The more than 
refreshing southwest wind played over her ruffled 
gloss and the splintered sunlight kissed the rag¬ 
ged masses of floating ice, as the night before 
had been just like April, and snow covered bars 
in radiant smiles. 
But truly, as all of you old hunters who have 
seen it, will bear me out, the Platte river in the 
early winter time presents an enchanting picture, 
as it flows with a mighty impetuosity that the 
most frigid weather sometimes fails to check, 
over its shallow beds, onward and downward, 
through what has become, in recent years, one of 
the grandest agricultural regions in the world. 
So lonely, just at this season, yet so romantic in 
its surrounding details, so impressive in its sweep 
of grandeur. As we gazed that morning we saw, 
far to the east, the dim outlines of the barren 
and windswept uplands, with their frozen lacus- 
tral borders, where the cottonwoods stood naked 
and spectral, but gleaming like marble in the 
wintry sunshine; to the west innumerable tow- 
heads, and islands dark and gloomy, in the sha¬ 
dows reared the splotched outlines. And stretch¬ 
ing before us, through a net-work of moving ice 
and snow-laden floes, was the wild and savage 
stream, a gleaming, glittering, glistening expanse 
of rushing waters, dim artery of all the vast coun¬ 
try stretching away in solemn majesty to the dis¬ 
tant Black Hills, everywhere offering an inviting 
haven to laggard goose or mallard, as well as the 
coyote, redtail hawk and marauding skunk. 
From time immemorial, the grand old Platte, 
most beloved of all my hunting grounds,' has 
been one of the most wondrous roosting places 
