March 27, 1909.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
495 
Nebraska Spring Shooting. 
Omaha, Neb., March 20.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: The indications all point to a won¬ 
derful spring shooting season. Already the 
duck shooters are at work and have been for 
a week, and big bags are reported. The birds 
came in much earlier than usual, and many 
good bags of pintails were reported even before 
there was the slightest tinge of spring in the 
air. During the past week there has been one 
continuous flight of birds in all parts of the 
State. And it is quite certain that there will be 
no let-up until the last stragglers have passed 
northward. Until the icy fetters are broken 
on the lakes and marshes, the haunts of the 
birds will be along the river valleys and in 
the fields. In the sandhills the waters are still 
frozen hard, but when the conditions are right, 
there are no better ducking grounds in the 
world. 
Probably the very best canvasback shooting 
to be had anywhere in the country is in central 
Deuel county, about 340 miles from Omaha, on 
the string of beautiful lakes and marshes which 
bisects that county. 
A few days ago. Dean Beecher, of Trinity 
Cathedral, and myself, were on the big over¬ 
flowed flats below Waterloo, twenty-eight 
miles from Omaha, and with Ben Stenglien 
and Louis Handcock, killed one hundred birds, 
almost all mallards, in three hours’ shooting. 
On the same day A. L. Moehler, Ward M. 
Burgess, P. J. Plindrnarsh, and Mark Woods, 
were on the Platte at Ashland, and bagged their 
hundred from dawn until 4 o’clock. Another 
day Charles Mack and E. Robertson killed fifty 
ducks, largely redheads, and six Canada geese 
on the Stillwater up the Missouri. Bill Kruse, 
an old-time ducker, and a friend, yesterday and 
the day before, brought in just 139 birds, in¬ 
cluding two geese. Kruse said that the flight 
Sunday was the most tremendous spectacle in 
the wildfowl line he has witnessed since the 
early ’80s. Charlie Crabill and George Lamb 
bagged thirty-seven pintails and thirteen green- 
wings at Hinton the other morning, and Bob 
Grauner made the limit on a little open slough 
not two miles from the confines of Omaha. 
Thus the story goes. No party comes back 
empty-handed. 
One cause of this unprecedented influx of 
birds is that the conditions as to both food and 
water could not be better. In the sandhill 
regions the waters in all the lakes and marshes, 
though yet bound in ice, are in the best of con¬ 
dition and at more than normal depth. Last 
fall’s wild rice crop was a most abundant one, 
the celery beds never flourished as luxuriously 
and the growth of wapolo and Indian corn was 
never more exuberant. All of the stream bot¬ 
toms are inundated, and myriads of pintails 
have been frequenting them ever since the 
middle of February. Old duckers also say that 
there never have been so many redtail and 
sharp-shin hawks seen about the waterways as 
this spring, and when the hawks are plentiful 
the ducks never fail to be. 
Harvey Brown, a noted wolf hunter in 
Stanton county, one day last week caught on 
Haymow Creek two big gray wolves and three 
coyotes. Brown has one of the best trained 
packs of wolf hounds in the State, and seldom 
fails in pulling a wolf down after once sighting 
him. Up to Feb. 22, Brown and his dogs had 
killed twenty-eight wolves this winter. 
Dr. J. H. Mackay, of Norfolk, writes me 
that the winter has been a tough one on the 
Plungarian partridges along the Niobrara. He 
said that a local firm of taxidermists has two 
pairs, sent from Valentine, that succumbed to 
starvation long before the winter storms set 
in. They were so emaciated that only skin and 
bones remained. He also said that one flock 
of seventeen birds was reported on Willow 
Greek that had done finely. 
Quail have fared badly in the northern part 
of the State. After one of the recent blizzards 
a farmer north of Norfolk found in his wind¬ 
break, eight dead birds frozen together and six 
in another pile. 
Antelope are quite plentiful in the nortfi- 
NEW BRUNSWICK COW MOOSE ON THE WEST BARREN. 
western tier of counties in this State this 
spring for the first time in twenty years. They 
have been driven in by the terrible snowfalls in 
the mountains. Nelson Merchon,a cattleman from 
Aloomaw, Box Butte county, told me recently 
that while looking up some drifted cattle, he 
ran on three bunches of antelope, the largest 
herd containing thirty-three head, and the 
other two from eighteen to two or three 
dozen. For several years Mr. Merchon says 
he has not seen an antelope in that region. 
Some whitetail deer have also come into the 
low valleys of that section, and a week or so 
ago, a rancher at Long Lake killed a young 
buck weighing nearly 200 pounds, with No. 5 
shot. He was in a hole watching for geese, 
when the buck with two does came out of the 
thick tides where they had been lying down, 
and he got the buck. His experience will cost 
him no little peace of mind or money, for 
Game Warden Dan Geilus is on his trail, and 
determined to bring him to justice. 
Sandy Griswold. 
All the game laws of the United States and 
Canada, revised to date and now in force, are 
given in the Game Laws in Brief. See adv. 
A Rocky Mountain Game Haunt. 
Montreal, Can., March 19.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: During the coming season some of 
your readers will probably be taking a trip after 
mountain sheep and goat. It may be rather 
early for information of this sort, but in order 
to locate satisfactorily with the right people, 
arrangements must be made early. 
In Alberta for the last two years the shoot¬ 
ing of sheep and goats has been absolutely pro¬ 
hibited. The closed season ends this year. I 
have just received most gratifying information 
from a district which previous to 1906 was a 
great resort of these animals. On the last day 
that sheep were allowed to be shot—the date, 
Dec. 14, 1906—an expedition was made from 
the ranch at 8:30 in the morning and before 
ten we had two sheep, both with excellent heads. 
It did not take long to go back to the ranch, 
get a jumper and go for these sheep, which we 
had hung up in the stable by 4 P. M., and while 
we were getting these sheep out we saw twenty- 
eight more further up on the ridge. This shows 
what the country was like in the old days; in 
fact, in the years 1904-5-6 my friend killed his 
limit—seven sheep—all within two hours’ ride 
of his house, and four of them within half an 
hour s ride, only taking the pick of the rams 
and none of the heads were under sixteen 
inches. It then seemed unnecessary to those 
who pursued hunting in those parts that the 
two years’ period of protection be insisted upon. 
However, those years are over now. 
The spot I am writing about is situated among 
some of the finest scenery in the world. In 
front the cultivated portion of the ranch and 
timber, and on the horizon some of the most 
beautiful peaks in the Rockies, make a picture 
once seen never to be forgotten. There is the 
finest kind of fishing in all the lakes, both 
speckled and bull trout, and Wall Lake, on the 
Divide—a magnificent sheet of water about 7,000 
feet above sea level—is alive with trout, and 
the scenery thereabouts is almost terrible in its 
extreme wildness and grandeur. The lake lies 
at the head of a secluded valley, at the foot of 
a gigantic wall-like cliff 3,000 feet high, and so 
perpendicular that it seems to bend forward 
over the lake, and when its head is covered with 
clouds one wonders whether it will not fall over. 
My friend’s latest report is as follows: “I 
have just been on a trip with the object of as¬ 
certaining the extent of our game, which I find 
very plentiful, indeed; in fact, to-day I saw 
twenty-one sheep between leaving the house 
after dinner and arriving back at 6 o’clock, and 
I reckon that during the last two months I 
have seen two or three hundred sheep. Mule 
deer are also plentiful, but not so numerous as 
the sheep, while goats are to be found in satis¬ 
factory numbers on certain mountains, especially 
around the upper Waterton and Wall lakes. 
Black and brown bear are plentiful in all the 
canons, while there are a few grizzlies in some 
of the larger ones.” 
If this country appeals to anyone I shall be 
glad to give my friend’s address, an enthusiastic 
hunter, and as one of his troubles is that he 
is often without a companion, he will take in 
sportsmen at very reasonable rates, his main 
idea not being to make money, but to induce 
his brother sportsmen to visit him and give him 
news of the outside world. C. F. Lane. 
