Forest 
Stream 
Vol. LXXXII. 
March 21, 1914 No. 12 
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The Good Old Days at Ozatanka Are Gone Forever—But the Shooting Was Fine While it Lasted 
Shooting On A Vanished Lake 
By Edward T. Martin. 
O ZATANKA LAKE in Southern Minnesota 
was twenty miles from the nearest rail¬ 
road station, out of the road of amateur 
shooters, unheard of by professionals, and the 
writer believes he was the first, the last and 
probably the only seller of game who 
ever shot there. 
It was in this wise: He was chicken 
shooting late one fall in Minnesota. 
There were birds aplenty. They were 
fully grown, fat and wild enough to 
make the sport interesting; then one 
night a prairie fire swept through the 
country like a red plumed army, de¬ 
stroying every vestige of grass and 
cover on much of the best hunting 
ground, leaving only here and there a 
round patch of slough grass either too 
green to burn or saved by some fire 
freak. These spots stood out, little 
oases of green in a desert of black, and 
gave shelter to the chickens until there 
seemed to be one for every blade of 
waving grass. 
In approaching one of these places 
some of the birds would flush with the 
gunner a hundred yards away and 
others would get up a few at a time, 
until the last half dozen had to be 
kicked from under the very nose of the 
dog. Both the shy ones—shot-scarred 
veterans, survivors of many a deci¬ 
mated covey—and the tame—fire driven 
refugees from the big prairie—instead 
of flying a few hundred yards and 
lighting, as all well-behaved chickens 
were then supposed to do, these, wise 
and foolish alike, rose high in the air. 
headed straight south, and flew and § 
kept on flying as far as could be seen through 
a strong pair of field glasses. 
Towards three o’clock no more green spots 
were to be found and plowed land succeeded 
prairie to a considerable extent. For miles noth¬ 
ing was to be seen on one side but blackened 
burning without a leaf of green; on the other 
the equally black plowed fields with no break in 
their dark monotony of color, and the only game, 
a multitude of golden plover, following the fire. 
Since soon after noon, we, that is, the writer 
and Ed, his driver—a bird-wise young man of 
sixteen—had noticed a constant flight of ducks 
high up and coming from all directions, but 
headed one way as spokes to a hub. Mallards 
they were, working in from cornfields and wheat 
stubble to water. But where was the water? 
Time and patience alone could tell. There was 
no trouble in tailing on behind the flight, for 
fields were unfenced, and soon we came to a 
good highway running in the right direction, 
along which-we followed for several miles; then 
from a rise of ground we saw the water—a 
muddy cane-filled lake of perhaps a thousand 
acres. 
The horses were turned toward a farmhouse 
a little way off the road, and when the owner 
came out to greet his visitors, the first question 
asked was: “Do you know where we can hire a 
boat?” 
His discouraging reply came: “Ain't no boat 
3«9 
on the lake but mine, and her bows is busted. 
Ed hitched the horses and' we went to investi¬ 
gate. Sure enough, the boat was a sight to be¬ 
hold. A sixteen-foot, slab-sided, coffin-shaped 
contrivance which seemed dangerous, even for 
navigating a mud-puddle in a calm day. 
Moreover, the sides had pulled away 
from the rotten piece of wood serving 
as a stem, leaving a wide opening, and 
to think of shooting from such a thing 
seemed foolishness. 
Ed came to the rescue: “Guess we 
can fix that break before morning, if 
you can keep us over night,” he sug¬ 
gested. 
“Dunno’s you can stay,” the man an¬ 
swered. “Have to see the woman about 
that.” So while they were discussing 
the repairs I went to the kitchen door 
and talked with the lady about board 
and lodging. 
She was doubtful. Didn’t “like them 
tormented hunters nohow.” But at the 
sight of real money—some silver dollars 
—she gave in, and became as agreeable 
as a person with a chronically curdled 
disposition could, and hurried to kill a 
chicken for supper. 
Ed and the farmer, by free use of 
paint, white lead, cotton batting and by 
making a new stem, finally got the boat 
so it wouldn’t swallow half the water 
in the lake at a single gulp, and thought 
it might do; then but one thing re¬ 
mained in the way of a good day’s 
shoot on the morrow. There wasn’t 
ammunition enough. All told, only a 
hundred and five shells remained, two 
loaded with buckshot, about a dozen 
with nines for snipe and the rest with my fa¬ 
vorite sevens which I used for everything from 
geese to gophers. 
“Reckon you’ll have to go after powder and 
shot,” the writer said to his driver next morn¬ 
ing. 
“Better wait and see if you get any shooting, 
hadn’t I?” the boy responded, continuing: “It 
will take all day for the trip, and the best I can 
do is to get the stuff here so you can load up 
for to-morrow.” 
This seemed reasonable and I assented; then 
cautioning him not to forget loading tools and 
