Active at Ninety-eight. 
Airship Hunting to be Barred. 
Francisco, Cal., Jan. io. — Editor Forest 
and Stream: I he State Legislature is now in 
session and within a short time several bills of 
decided interest to sportsmen will be introduced. 
Among these will be bills reducing the bag limit 
on ducks from twenty-five to fifteen and making 
it unlawful to offer ducks or geese for sale, 
riie latter measure has been presented regularly 
for several years, but has always failed of pas- 
sage. That it would be a great injustice to pro¬ 
hibit the sale of geese is the belief of a great 
number of farmers engaged in the business of 
grain growing, for these waterfowl are still in 
such great numbers that in the winter time im¬ 
mense damage is done to growing crops, and the 
visits of the market hunters to the fields are wel¬ 
comed. Others are protesting against closing the 
markets to ducks, and it is anticipated that these 
two measures will fail of passage as in the past. 
From present indications California will be the 
first State in the Union to prohibit the hunting 
of wild game from airships or air craft. The 
recent exploit of Hubert Latham in Southern 
California, when he shot a bluebill duck from 
an aeroplane and incidentally frightened thou¬ 
sands of the feathered tribe to such an extent 
that they have not yet returned to the preserves 
over which he sailed, has come to the attention 
of the fish and game commissioners, and a law 
is now being framed that will prohibit in the 
future this form of hunting. The fact that this 
airman broke the law in making his hunt will 
not be pressed, but as Latham is an alien, he 
should have purchased a hunting license before 
going on his trip, and this would have cost him 
twenty-five dollars. 
As soon as the measure designed to put a stop 
to hunting of this character is drafted it will 
be presented to the game commissioners for ap¬ 
proval and will then be submitted to the Assem¬ 
bly and Senate. One member of the commis¬ 
sion expressed himself as follows in regard to 
the proposition: 
"We feel that such a law should be enacted 
as soon as possible because that now one man 
has shot ducks from an aeroplane, we fear that 
others will hurry to follow suit. Aviators have 
done wonders during the past year, and it would 
seem that they stop at nothing. 
"Within a year it might become the fashion 
to hunt ducks and geese in aeroplanes all over 
the State. Every aviator would wish to do it. 
California is a great game State, but it is also 
a State well suited for aeroplane flights, and the 
sport will soon become general here. Now an 
aviator could sail up the San Joaquin and Sacra¬ 
mento valleys on a hunting trip and frighten 
game birds for miles. The birds would soon 
begin to leave the State, it would do no good to 
maintain feeding grounds, and the whole sport 
would be demoralized for hunters who wanted 
to go after the birds in the usual way. Not only 
birds, but all kinds of game, rabbits, bears and 
deer will be protected from aviators under the 
new law. It would be too easy to fly over the 
country, taking in a survey of several miles 
square and pick out game beneath. The law is 
to be a very inclusive one and will effectually 
protect all sorts and kinds of game.” 
Legislators, have been considering the propo¬ 
sition that Latham and others might be excluded 
from shooting game under the provisions of the 
present law which makes it unlawful to shoot 
at any kind of wild duck from any boat pro¬ 
pelled by power. It is argued by some that an 
aeroplane is an airship and therefore a member 
of the "boat” family, but for fear that this 
opinion would not hold good, the new law will 
be passed. 
The lack of rains during the past month in 
California is making it difficult to secure satis¬ 
factory bags of ducks outside the preserves, and 
only a heavy baiting of the ponds will attract 
the birds there. There is but little food to be 
ound in the old time feeding grounds along the 
Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and their 
tributaries, and the result is that the birds are 
migrating to other localities. There has been 
practically no rain in California this season, and 
birds are finding it difficult to secure sufficient 
ood. On San Pablo Bay large numbers of 
birds are to be found, these feeding on the pre¬ 
serves at night and resting on the bay in the day¬ 
time out of reach of danger. Limit bags in any 
of the preserves are now but rarely secured, and 
the birds that have been here for any length of 
time are in poor condition. Numbers of spoon¬ 
bills are coming in from the North and canvas- 
backs are also in evidence now in numbers. 
Owing to the dry season geese are to be found 
m but few localities, but in these places they are 
m large numbers. The best shooting grounds 
are in the vicinity of Rio Vista, although some are 
being secured regularly in the Los Banos district. 
Quail have been found in larger numbers this 
season, perhaps, than for a long time past, and 
m some sections limit bags can still be easily 
secured. In the vicinity of Folson the birds are 
to be found in thousands, and a number of San 
Francisco sportsmen made the trip there during 
the holiday season. 
A number of local sportsmen banded together 
this season and donated the game secured by 
them the day before Christmas to charity or¬ 
ganizations here, and thanks to their generosity 
many unfortunates were enabled to enjoy a fine 
game dinner. 
H. G. Boyes, a market hunter operating in the 
vicinity of Princeton, was arrested recently by 
Deputy S. J. Carpenter for exceeding the limit 
bag of ducks. a p r 
A Butler-Harmony trolley line motorman 
reports having killed seven rabbits while his 
car made a single trip. He says the rabbits sit 
on the roadbed at night and are apparently 
blinded by the headlight, when the car fender 
strikes and kills them. He says he keeps an 
eye open for the rabbits and when one is killed 
stops the car and picks it up. He has had all 
the rabbits he could eat since the season opened. 
—Philadelphia Record. 
Omaha, Neb., Jan. 6 . —Editor Forest and 
Stream: The oldest and most interesting sports¬ 
man in Nebraska is the father of W. H. Barber, 
the well known physician and sportsman of Ful¬ 
lerton, Neb., with whom the old gentleman re¬ 
sides. 
While camped there on the Loup one day dur¬ 
ing the latter part of the month just closed, and 
when the wind was blowing razors down from 
the north and the mercury below zero, Mr. Bar¬ 
ber, who is in his ninety-eighth year, had the 
hardihood to induce his son, the doctor, who is 
no spring chicken himself, to hitch up his bays 
and drive him out to where we were camped on 
the frozen river nine miles away. 
The report that our cook had taken into Ful¬ 
lerton the evening before of the glorious sport 
we were having with the big black geese and 
old red-legged winter mallards was too much for 
the venerable nimrod. His heart was aflame 
with the fires of youth, his eyes sparkling like 
diamonds, and for the time being his limbs as 
sure, strong and supple as in the days of the 
long ago when he trapped beaver and otter and 
shot buffalo on this same old legendary stream, 
and that too in and about the scraggy willow 
woods in which our canvas palace stood. 
Mr. Barber came to Nebraska while the war 
of the rebellion was at its height and settled 
near the Pawnee reservation where the little city 
of Genoa is located, and for years followed trap¬ 
ping and hunting for an existence. In the late 
spring of 1865 he came to Omaha, over the old 
Oregon trail, from his trapping grounds along 
the Loup, with 4,000 muskrats, 100 beavers and 
large numbers of otter, mink, skunk, coyote and 
wolf pelts, and despite the war time depression 
in the markets, reaped a little fortune from the 
same. 
Grandfather Barber has led an exemplary life, 
is a devout Christian, barring an occasional slit) 
of the tongue, a man of much natural intelli¬ 
gence, a most interesting story teller and the 
father of eleven children. Close as he is upon 
the century mark, he is still inordinately fond 
of hunting and fishing, and while incapable of 
going out much himself, can still handle both 
gun and' rod with skill, and his chief enjoyment 
is to sit and listen to the tales told by his son 
and kindred spirits of the woods and streams 
and' fields. He is particularly taken with the 
stories of goose and duck shooting, of which he 
was intensely fond, even in his old trapping- 
days. 
He marvels much over the wonderful fowling 
pieces of this generation, and says that some of 
our kills are at longer range than he used to 
think of trying on deer and bear with his old 
Kentucky pea rifle. Grandfather Barber says he 
is going out with us on the river in March, and 
it is our fervent hope that he will be able to 
make his word good. He is surely a grand relic 
of the old day wild life, and a man who deserves 
a niche in the hunters’ Hall of Fame. 
W. D. Townsend, a popular local sportsman, 
