FOREST AND STREAM 
645 
Yawcob Und Fritz 
How One Killed a Duck and the Other “Shot a Bushel of ‘Bull-Bats” 
wild about here? Personally, I know of a farm¬ 
er in West Newbury who found it necessary to 
build a blind in order to shoot some of these 
obnoxious birds during the last summer- 
I trust that your valued publication will find 
it convenient to allow this communication to 
appear in its columns, as I believe it only fair, 
and in justice to both hunter and public, to 
hear both sides of the question before condemn¬ 
ing it, and I would urge all factions to work t 
gether for the rational protection and increase 
of the game in which both are equally interested. 
EDWARD BABSON. 
RABBIT DAYS IN THE JERSEYS. 
New Jersey, which seems to be a little tired 
of hunting corporations and banging away at 
business, is the happiest little State in the Union 
to-day. Long and passionate, if fruitless, pur¬ 
suit of the Jersey Canary that sings and bites 
has made the Jerseys a community of Natty 
Bumppos and Daniel Boones in khaki and habili¬ 
ments of the hunt. Diana’s licensed rangers are 
said to number 60,000. To-day they begin to 
blaze. Boss Nugent is fallen. To-day the rab¬ 
bit and such small deer will be tracked to their 
lairs. The Jersey Cottontail is not, like his 
brother of North Carolina, a truculent and 
savage beast of prey. He is as mild as milk 
to his human enemies. “So increasing in his 
habit,” as the old song proclaims, Jersey is 
copiously peopled with him; and it is a little 
singular that a Commonwealth so ardent for 
conservation of the woods should be so eager 
to slay their inhabitants. 
But the old Colonial instincts survive. The 
men whose ancestors potted wolf and wildcat 
on their way to church now follow hopefully 
and ruthlessly the rabbit, quail, partridge, 
pheasant. The hand that wields the golf stick 
is the hand that “totes” the “gun.” Perhaps 
the actual destruction of furred and feathered 
life is not of the greatest. The live hunter like 
the true fisher is not to be judged by “results” 
and scorns the count. Ancient Jerseymen can 
remember, before the days of athletics and the 
outdoor fashion that an innocent unloaded gun 
was more or less necessary in a long fall walk 
It served as a badge. It was a protection against 
rural curiosity, which even now is not wholly 
reconciled to pedestrians, and can’t imagine how 
anybody not “a little off” will walk for fun and 
refuse “a lift.” It is not certain that a gunless 
walker escapes suspicion or contempt in too 
urbified Jersey, which more and more tends to 
assume that the natural site of man is the devil 
wagon. Probably only the primitives among the 
rabbit hunters and bird shooters will condescend 
to pop at anything out of range of the car. 
To plod over the country in this keen but un¬ 
nipping air, to avoid hitting one another, to dis¬ 
course of golf scores and politics, to recognize 
a few trees by the right names, to chase fero¬ 
cious appetites with hound and horn—technical¬ 
ly called “pocket pistol”—such amiable fortune 
we implore for the Jersey game destroyers. So 
Robin Hood draws his gun so good: 
“And he that shoteth altherbest, 
The game shall bere away.” 
We look for a notable sagging of the cost of 
living now the foray has begun from Mahwah 
to Bivalve and from Cape May Point to the 
Kittatinnies.—New York Sun, Nov. 10. 
Yawcob und Fritz, as their names will im¬ 
ply, did not belong to the “allies.” These men 
had hearts in them big as Hubbard squashes; 
but, what they did not have about the simple 
life, as exemplified under canvas, and in the 
brush twenty miles from a house, would fill 
one of Andy’s libraries from cellar to skylight- 
Green? Say, those two Teutons were so 
verdant that it is a wonder the lowing kine did 
not grab ’em for “cuds.” 
Yawcob und Fritz might have been shy on 
bird lore as known away from the busy mart, 
but, take it from me, they sure could get the 
“birds” that roost on certain of the disks that 
your Uncle Samuel sends out some time from 
the several mints that are the property of the 
nation. The pair surely could bag the eagles 
in their flight through the business parts! 
The two Germans had scads of money, and 
that is probably one reason they were taken 
into the fold one winter, and finally to camp, 
though by that time they had proved to be 
adepts in cooking, if only a jack pot was the 
implement to be used. Likewise they had been 
filled to the brim during the long evenings with 
a varied assortment of fish and animal lore, the 
joint product of the cheerful liars of the club, 
some of whom could have qualified in the some¬ 
what famous Ananias organization of interna¬ 
tional fame. 
While after cotton-tails in the weeds, some of 
the members discovered that Yawcob und Fritz 
favored the “close formation.” Likewise they 
fired from the hip or any other old position in 
such an exuberant and non-partisan manner, 
that about the only safe place in the field was 
out in front with the rabbit. Yawcob was seen 
to shut the wrong eye, while Fritz, some of 
the hunters say, shut both. At any rate it was 
not safe to be on, or behind, the firing line. 
For weeks and weeks, before the start for 
camp, the pair of innocents bothered the life 
out of the rest of us with incessant inquiries 
as to what make of hooks, size of shot, kind of 
clothes and what not they should take along, 
so in sheer desperation (and probably for an¬ 
other reason) they were “sicked” on to a couple 
of stay-at-home gun collectors and told to bor¬ 
row and save their money to feed the camp 
“kitty.” Allow me to digress long enough to 
say that the “cat” nearly starved to death that 
trip. Yawcob und Fritz certainly could hold 
more threes and other curiosities than any six 
of us! 
To the armament of the twain, one collector 
contributed a foreign revolver of 44 calibre, 
thoughtfully taking out the firing pin, before 
turning the weapon in. Likewise this thought¬ 
ful gentleman, also contributed a double belt of 
perfectly good thirty-eight rim-fires, and the 
combination was thus made as safe to the rest 
of us, as a blind mare in a box stall. 
To the hand-gun outfit was added a depart¬ 
ment-store bowie knife with a near-deer’s foot 
handle, said knife being about as useful as a 
seven wheel go-cart in an automobile race. 
There was a place on the belt for a beautiful 
full-jewelled, nickel-plated axe of uncertain tem¬ 
per; and a compass that would have been all 
right if the needle had not been permanent 
instead of having a vacillating disposition. 
The hip outfit was heavy enough to give most 
any one the appendicitis on the wrong side, but 
Yawcob appreciated it, and I truly believe, slept 
in it. Good thing he never fell out of the boat 
in deep water! Some one gave Yawcob a shot 
gun and a bunch of duck shells but by the kind 
intervention of Providence he had no rifle. 
Yawcob was amply provided by kind Dame 
Nature with a lovely long and luxuriant crop 
of “lace curtains” that draped themselves from 
his ears and chin, to about the third button on 
his vest. To hear the wild wind blow a sym¬ 
phony through these, was Wagnerian. Also 
that spinach was one grand place to insert stray 
tooth-picks and other bric-a-brac—the wearer, 
of course, being asleep when the collection was 
taken up and disbursed. Then again, one night, 
when a skunk—but we are getting a trifle “off 
center.” 
Fritz also borrowed an outfit, partly through 
accident, partly by design. He had proven to 
be so erratic in his manner of handling a scat¬ 
ter gun, that all thoughts of turning him loose 
with the real thing were taboo. Instead a 
kindly (?) friend agreed to furnish “hand load¬ 
ed shells, better than those you buy.” The shells 
were duly loaded with a light charge of powder 
and a fine quality of boxwood sawdust in lieu 
of shot. In Fritz’s outfit was one of those long 
barrelled, tip-up, octagon, Smith and Wessons, 
a peach of a shooter, in the proper hands. We 
all tried to grab this gun for target work, but 
the proprietor wore it constantly. Eke he had 
been given a butcher-knife of generous avoirdu¬ 
pois that proved to be a pippin to scale grass- 
pike with. 
Somehow or other the inspector of small arms 
had overlooked a Winchester carbine 45-70 that 
some unthinking friend had slipped to Fritz, 
and also the fact that he was well supplied with 
cartridges for both carbine and pistol. That 
was a sad mistake! 
Well, camp was made, up in the Michigan 
country, and the two Teutons worked like 
beavers. They sure proved handy men to boss 
’round, and made all kinds of tables and seats. 
When it came to driving in pegs, Fritz was a 
bear! 
Camp settled down to routine, but the dreams 
of Yawcob were filled by flocks of the ducks 
that did not come. His mind was busy with 
ducks all day. He got so he talked with a sort 
of a quack, and the charge was openly made 
that he had pin-feathers on his tongue. Among 
the camp’s impediments was a sack of cedar de¬ 
coy ducks—mallards. Now Yawcob didn’t know 
a decoy from a Dacoit, and the fact that he 
didn’t, and that he was in ignorance of the 
presence of the sack, let the club slip one over 
on him, and hang one on the Dutchman that 
is still told about at the annual banquets. 
The sun, one evening, was just dropping 
through the haze to his bed somewhere to the 
west of the lilac-tinted waters. One of the 
campers, at peace with the world at large, and 
with his system full of blue-gill, huckleberries 
and other provender made for firing up the 
