160 
FOREST AND STREAM 
March, 1918 
THE MOST IMPORTANT BAG OF THE YEAR 
WHEN A HUNTER STARTS OUT AFTER RABBITS WITH AN ANTIQUATED SHOTGUN AND 
RETURNS WITH SIXTEEN GERMANS, IT BECOMES A PRETTY FAIR DAY AFIELD 
By C. L. GRANT 
T HE biggest and 
most important 
bag of the year: 
There isn’t a bit of 
a doubt but that all 
honor goes to a 
French peasant who, 
out in the early 
morning to pot a rab¬ 
bit or two, single 
handed, bagged the 
entire crew of the 
Zeppelin L-49 and 
marched them off to 
the village jail. When 
one starts out after 
rabbits with an anti¬ 
quated shotgun and 
returns an hour later 
with sixteen Germans 
walking single file 
ahead of him, it be¬ 
comes a pretty fair 
day afield. # Moose 
and bear are all right in their place, but 
they are hunting bigger game “over there” 
these days, and within a short time our 
own khaki-clad men will be showing the 
world and the world’s enemies, the Huns, 
that they are marksmen not to be despised. 
I visited Bourbonne-les-Bains shortly 
after the huge Zeppelin and its crew was 
captured. It was a cold, raw day, snowing 
and raining at intervals, the car skidding 
on the turns or crunching its way through 
the five or six inches of snow covering the 
higher places. A turn to the left, down a 
country road, the hills rising on either side, 
and suddenly the huge Zeppelin loomed up 
before one’s eyes, fairly staggering in its 
immensity, stretching from where one end 
was buried in a group of evergreens, across 
a tiny valley, over a brook, until the other 
end was close beside the road. Portions 
of the giant death dealing machine had 
collapsed under its own weight. French 
soldiers stood guard, though perfectly will¬ 
ing to slip the visitor a piece of the oil 
skin or the aluminum framework for a 
small piece of the coin of the realm. 
I wanted to hear the story of its capture 
from the lips of the peasant himself, the 
hero of the hour. I sought him out in the 
little village a few kilometers away. There 
was no trouble in finding him. A group 
gathered around as, in simple language, 
unassumingly, he told me of his day’s 
“hunt” and his great capture. 
' He had started out in the early morning 
in the hope of getting a rabbit for the 
noon day meal. It was a foggy morning. 
Hunting was not good. An hour passed 
and he had failed to so much as start a 
single rabbit. He wandered through the 
fields, beating the brush along the fences, 
but without success. He started to work 
his way through the swamp grass that bor¬ 
ders a little stream when the heavens be¬ 
came suddenly darkened and there de¬ 
scended through the thick fog an unknown 
thing, black, with propellers and many 
strange devices, terrifying in its size. 
The Zeppelin L-49, the “biggest bag ” of the year 
A S a member of the New York 
ul. State Overseas Election Com¬ 
mission the author of this article 
visited Bourbonne-les-Bains shortly 
after the Zeppelin L-49 descended 
and there heard first hand the story 
of the crew's capture. In an auto¬ 
mobile, loaned him by General 
Pershing, Mr. Grant covered the 
American camps in France, traveling 
over 2,000 miles and later journeyed 
some hundreds of miles along the 
British and French fronts where, as 
he says, the hunting, if one was to 
judge from the amount of powder 
burned, was fairly good, but not 
the sort one relishes .— Editors. 
The hunter concealed himself in a little 
clump of trees. He had seen pictures of 
Zeppelins. He realized that one was before 
A sportsman of France 
him. The machine 
came lower and lower 
until it settled, one 
end in the trees on 
the knoll of a tiny 
hill, the other buried 
in the embankment 
close beside him. 
Blonde men clam¬ 
bered excitedly over 
the side. 
Realizing that they 
were in the enemy’s 
country, they debated 
for a minute. One 
stepped forward to 
apply the light that 
would have left the 
Zeppelin a smoking 
mass of ruins a few 
minutes later. The 
hunter realized that 
bigger game was in 
sight than any rabbit. 
He stepped from his concealment. Bring¬ 
ing the old shotgun with its load of 4’s to 
his shoulder, he ordered the crew to throw 
up its hands. There was no mincing of 
words. One fellow reached for his re¬ 
volver.' The hunter’s finger fairly trem¬ 
bled on the trigger as he repeated his com¬ 
mand. Up went sixteen pairs of hands; 
up the slope and straight down the muddy 
road to the right, marched the crew, the 
hunter with the old hammer gun still at 
his shoulder, bringing up the rear, caution¬ 
ing those before him that he would in¬ 
stantly shoot the owner of the first pair 
of hands to descend. 
Half an hour later the village jail held 
the crew and the world was hearing of the 
capture, intact, of one of Germany’s big¬ 
gest and most modern air machines. The 
bravery and quick action of that rabbit 
hunter has given the Allies a knowledge 
of Zeppelins constructed and also a code 
book taken from the commander’s cabin, 
so quick was the capture. Honors took 
the place of the rabbit for that dinner. 
In journeying to the American training 
camps in France, I frequently scared hares 
from their hiding places beside the road, 
while on more than one occasion a proud 
pheasant strutted in the open or careened 
his way through the air to some neighbor¬ 
ing shrubbery. Game did not seem to be 
scarce in many sections. It was not an un¬ 
common sight to see an old Frenchman, 
sometimes with his dog, beating over some 
likely ground in search of game. Both 
rabbits and pheasants are quite plentiful in 
the markets of Paris, commanding a higher 
price, it is true, than before the war, yet 
not as scarce as one would imagine. 
American soldiers, who back home prized 
a day with dog and gun, are finding an oc¬ 
casional few hours now and then to try 
for a rabbit or a bird, but as one told me. 
a captain from New York State, that while 
it isn’t the equal of “back home” it serves ' 
the purpose of keeping one’s hand in, and 
(continued on page 181) 
