Sept. 26, 1908.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
495 
, 15, when the quail and snipe season opens. 
Logically, the season ought to correspond with 
that of ducks. The waders are gone by Oct. 
15 and two weeks would be all the chance the 
hunters would have at them. As it is, anyone 
who wants them is apt to shoot them any way. 
The law is so worded it defeats itself and it 
is very doubtful if any judge would attempt to 
interpret the shore birds clause except as doubt¬ 
ful and misleading in tenor. It protects all of 
the order Limicolce, and then goes on to make 
. 
exceptions. 
A steadily increasing number of sportsmen 
here are taking up sixteen and twenty-gauge 
guns. I am satisfied that seventy-five per cent, 
of the crack shots in all the clubs are shooting 
sixteen or tw T enty-gauge guns now and the 
others graduate to them as soon as they become 
at all proficient. Properly loaded they are quite 
as deadly, kill or miss clean, and I believe every 
bit as far, while their greater velocity causes 
them to hold up better on the long, high cross 
shots. I might mention one hundred good shots 
who are shooting sixteen or twenty-gauges on 
ducks in the local clubs now; some clubs, notably 
my own, the Canvasback, being made up of 
small-bore cranks by a two-thirds majority. The 
| small-bore and light-tackle ideas naturally travel 
hand in hand. 
Since the cooler weather set in, the wiser 
members of the deer hunting fraternity have 
j been bringing down some fine bucks from the 
hills. Conditions have been ideal for the most 
comfortable hunting possible. Fogs have made 
the mornings cool and brisk ocean breezes have 
lent a bracing tone to the afternoons. 
I read with interest Mr. Vogelsang’s article 
on the success of the plantings of Hungarian or 
! gray partridges. In common with many other 
sportsmen, I would like some disinterested testi¬ 
mony on this subject. Also, would like to hear 
of the future of these birds whose hatching, we 
are informed, was so successful. It is not all 
of the propagation game to get off a good hatch. 
Any English gamekeeper could vouch for that. 
How are the wildcats, coyotes, skunks and other 
vermin faring? Are they fattening at the ex¬ 
pense of the license fund money subscribed by 
the sportsmen, or do Hungarian partridges and 
Mexican turkeys disagree with their digestions? 
What we w'ant is a few thousand spent propa¬ 
gating and protecting some of the native quail. 
It might be well to try some of the Mexican 
varieties of quail Harry Payne writes so con¬ 
vincingly about. Payne is really something of 
an expert in the line of game propagation and 
1 his experiments always have succeeded. He has 
voiced the sentiment of the sportsmen admirably 
in his slogan “spend the sportsman’s subscrip¬ 
tions for something certain,” and cut out the 
experimenting with alien varieties from unlike 
| conditions, none of which ever have given 
promise of success here. 
Edwin L. Hedderly. 
_ 
The Forest and Stream prize story contest, 
the terms of which are given in full on page 483, 
should interest everyone who handles rod , gun 
or ride, who has felt the charm of untrodden 
| ways, or made the acquaintance of nature in her 
| haunts. Forest and Stream and Forest and 
| Stream readers want to share your experiences 
with you. Nine cash prizes azvait the best tellers 
of true stories of outdoor life. 
Duck Shooting in Oudh. 
Of several good days this is quite the best 
one to look back to and talk over in years to 
come as one of the many pleasant reminiscences 
of my sporting years in the East. 
A bright, fresh December morning, almost 
too cold. Time, daybreak. Scene, a small 
Cabul tent pitched on a grassy plain near the 
banks of a large, shallow lake, or j heel; inside, 
a sahib (mj'self) having his chotahazri, or early 
morning cup of tea, before turning out of the 
warm blankets; outside, the sky red with the 
glow of the rising sun, a touch of frost on the 
grass, and a white mist rising from the waters 
of the j heel; overhead passed strings of ducks 
and w r aders of all sorts, while a perfect babel of 
bird-talk came from the neighboring marshes. 
It was the perfection of an Indian “cold 
weather” day, one when your spirits go up to 
20 per cent, and you feel fit for anything. An 
early breakfast, then off to the j heels, followed 
by four or five coolies laden with cartridge-bags, 
gamestick, lunch, etc., but we had not gone far 
before a flock of geese were seen feeding in a 
stubble field. A dry watercourse ran conveniently 
near them, so, taking advantage of it, I got 
w'ithin sixty yards, then had to crawl flat on the 
ground from tussock to tussock. Unfortunately, 
with the geese were some Sarus cranes, and 
these magnificent birds, standing five feet high, 
have such a command over the ground that they 
quickly detect any suspicious object, as they 
did on this occasion, and their loud, trumpet¬ 
like cry at once put every bird on the alert. 
Every head was up, and they were on the point 
of rising, so, jumping to my feet, I ran in and 
knocked over one, a long train of white 
feathers floating in the air as a second went 
away hard hit. Not a very satisfactory stalk; 
result, only one goose. I hoped to have done 
better, and would have but for the wary cranes. 
Next, shooting down a narrow strip of snipe- 
marsh, I got a few couple, and also a stray duck 
or two; then at the end of the marsh, on a 
splash of shallow water, added four teal to the 
bag, and was busy tying them together when a 
native shouted to me that a lot of geese had 
settled about half a mile away. Off to the place, 
and saw a large flock of ’the bar-headed species 
regularly clearing out a field of young corn. 
They must do an enormous amount of damage 
to the crops at this time of the year. The 
ground from my side was too open to allow of 
approaching them, but by making a wide circuit, 
I saw that I could get pretty close to them 
under cover of a high crop. I let my servants 
wait and hurried round half a mile or more, and 
on reaching the covert found a most convenient 
dyke running through it straight toward the 
geese. Getting into this I crept up, and on 
peering through the grass *at its far end, found 
myself within range of the flock, still busy feed¬ 
ing, quite ignorant of my presence, but on my 
stepping out into the open there arose a tre¬ 
mendous uproar of goose cries and flapping 
wings. Bang! down came four; then as the 
flock made off they wheeled at the sight of my 
natives, and gave me a splendid chance of en¬ 
filading their long line, and down fell five more; 
dead and wounded geese were all over the place, 
and we had a few minutes’ lively work for some 
of the winged birds. 
Seldom does one circumvent the wily goose 
like that, and a grand show the great birds 
made laid out in a row on the ground; it was 
a big haul for a light 12-bore and one and 
one-eighth ounces of No. 2 shot. After all this 
running about, I was pretty hot and thirsty, so 
I got under the shade of a large mango tree, 
while my men tied the geese into bunches and 
slung them over a pole for transit to camp, the 
coolie staggering under his load, for the ten 
weighed quite eighty pounds. 
These bar-headed geese, handsomely marked 
with two black bars across the head and neck, 
are very plentiful in the Cawnpore district dur¬ 
ing the winter, grazing morning and evening in 
the cultivated fields, and spending the day in 
huge gatherings on the open waters of some 
large jheel; in March they migrate north to 
breed in the uplands of Northern Asia. 
Another flock of bar-heads was soon marked 
down in a very open place at the edge of the 
jheel, and it was only with the greatest diffi¬ 
culty that I managed to get a long shot at them 
as they made off, two falling dead while a third 
staggered for some distance, then fell far out 
on the deep water and swam rapidly away be¬ 
yond reach. Would that my old retriever of 
former years had been with me; he would have 
got it if he had been obliged to swim for an 
hour. Unfortunately I was dogless, having lost 
two good ones, victims to climate and hydro¬ 
phobia. and so far had not replaced them—no 
easy thing to do. 
During the rest of the morning I wandered 
round the edges of two big jheels, picking up 
several duck and teal, but the snipe were few 
and far between, most of their haunts being 
dry. 
At 1 P. M. we had a very excellent hot lunch 
—I always took out a cooking canteen—under 
a shady tree by the jheel side, a fresh breeze 
blowing off the water, rippling it into miniature 
waves. A most enjoyable day, and what with 
the sport and good weather, I felt at peace with 
all mankind. After an hour’s rest, I set off 
back to camp with the result of the morning’s 
shoot, then filled up the cartridge bag and made 
a fresh start round the edge of the B jheel, a 
sheet of water nearly two miles long. Owing 
to the want of rain many a good snipe marsh 
had dried up and for some time I did not do 
much good; in fact, at one time was on the 
point of turning back and trying other ground; 
luckly I did not, for about 3 o’clock I came 
across a stretch of very wet swamp, with 
scrubby bushes standing in the water, and 
found it literally alive with snipe, their loud 
“scaipe, scaipe!” resounding all round as they 
rose at almost every step. I splashed through 
the mud and water, and splash one had to, for 
the going was very bad, to say nothing of sev¬ 
eral deep irrigation dykes running through the 
marsh, difficult to detect the shallow water, and 
giving one unexpected duckings. 
The place was of no great extent, but a good 
hour’s sport I had, working it backward and 
forward till I brought the total of snipe up to 
forty couple—fine, wild, full snipe they were, 
too, to say nothing of several duck which 
“flighted” high overhead, affording real sport¬ 
ing shots, sending the water flying when they 
fell with the loud splash which follows a suc¬ 
cessful shot. An hour’s walk and I w T as by no 
means sorry to see the twinkling of my camp¬ 
fire; got out of my wet, muddy clothes and into 
