642 
FOREST AND STREAM 
November, 1918 
with ducks. Where the prairie had been 
broken and sown to wheat, we would see 
from time to time great flocks of geese feed¬ 
ing on the tender grain. Being of many va¬ 
rieties, some of them white, at a distance 
they looked like droves of sheep. The prai¬ 
rie chicken was ever present; they would 
spring from the grass beside the track and 
sail away like meadow larks, or, it being 
November, they had begun to “pack” and 
would rise from the corn fields, sometimes 
two hundred or more in a flock. The sight 
of so much game threw us into a genuine 
shooting fever and our trigger fingers 
itched to get at them. From Topeka on¬ 
ward the railroad was a single track and 
newly laid; on the sidings would stand long 
trains of cars loaded with long horn Texas 
steers. The handling of the great amount 
of traffic over the new and uncompleted 
road was a serious problem, causing de- 
some places nearly shoulder high. The 
water ranged from a few inches to nearly 
knee deep, with a small pond clear of grass 
near the center of the tract. This basin 
was the “roosting place” of great quantities 
of geese and ducks, which fed during the 
day in the surrounding grain fields. 
George had made livery arrangements 
for us, and on the afternoon following our 
arrival we were on our way to the basin 
to “spy out” the land and try our luck. 
Our livery “rig” was a stout two seated 
Jaeger wagon drawn by a wiry pair of bay 
mustangs and our driver was a character. 
He had been one of the original settlers 
and at one time had owned the principal 
part of the present town site; but “booze” 
had been his ruin, and he had slowly but 
surely descended from ease and comfort to 
be the “town soak” and driver of a livery 
rig. Y/e reached the Basin shortly before 
of the beauties after the bombardment. 
G AME was so plenty that there was no 
uncertainty about it, no matter what 
kind of game you were after, or 
where you sought it, or what the weather 
conditions, you were certain of at least a 
moderate bag. In the town market, wild 
geese sold for from ten to twenty-five 
cents each; canvas backs, mallards, etc., 
from five to ten cents each, according to 
condition, and prairie chickens from five 
cents. Maggie had expressed a desire for 
a feather bed, and during our stay we 
killed enough geese and ducks to make her 
a bed with bolster and pillows complete. 
The day following a shooting trip would be 
devoted to picking wild fowl; we would 
pick until our thumbs were sore, then 
George would shoulder the game, and de¬ 
liver it among his friends until they cried 
“Enough, don’t bring us any more.” We 
could easily have killed more, but for what 
purpose; and I am very much opposed to 
destroying game that cannot be utilized. 
The quality and condition of the game was 
superb; many of the canvas backs we shot 
were so fat that a thumb pressed on the 
breast would leave an imprint like in a pat 
of butter. Maggie under the tuition of her 
dear departed mother had become an “art¬ 
ist” in game cookery* before she went west, 
and the game dinners she served for us 
were beyond compare. Roast canvas back, 
goose, mallards, teal and spoonbill, with de¬ 
licious Missouri cranberry sauce, quail on 
toast, broiled jack snipe and prairie 
chicken, and all the other accessories, truly 
we lived on the fat of the land. 
We made numerous successful side trips, 
notably to Turkey Creek where we ran into 
splendid quail and prairie chicken shooting. 
The Sloughs, where we found superb can¬ 
vas back shooting, and the Arkansas River 
where we saw a phenomenal flight of geese. 
Uncle Billy’s cut foot finally healed and 
he joined Andy and me at the sport, the 
constant outdoor exercise bringing its- re¬ 
ward in renewed health. With the constant 
practise our shooting steadily improved, 
and the desire as steadily waned. At last 
the time set for our return arrived and I 
was so sated with shooting that I did not 
take up my gun again until the next year. 
We made one final trip to the Sloughs, 
one final “picking bee,” one final delivery 
of game by George to his friends in town, 
and then we were off for the distant At¬ 
lantic Coast, leaving behind us hanging in 
Maggie’s larder, twenty-eight head of the 
very choicest “gilt edge” geese, canvas 
backs, and other ducks selected from the re¬ 
sults of our last trip. 
Nothing stands still in this world. As 
civilization steadily advances, God’s wild 
creatures as steadily recede. Under the 
steady march of improvement that great 
acreage of the Sloughs and the Basin have 
been largely drained. Great fields of bil¬ 
lowy wheat and serried ranks of tasseled 
rustling corn grow where Uncle Billy and 
Andy and I waded through the luxuriant 
marshes and flushed the quacking mallard, 
or crouched in wait for the waving lines of 
geese coming into roost; and those great 
myriads of wild fowl, like the buffalo, have 
utterly vanished from that land and are 
now but a pleasant memory. 
layed trains and long waits for even the 
passenger service. Under these conditions 
the suffering of those poor beasts held on 
the sidings without food or water were pa¬ 
thetic ; scores of them died in the cars. 
A T last we reached McPherson, our 
journey’s end, at ten o’clock. My 
brother-in-law met us at the depot. 
As we neared his home, I could see 
the form of my dear sister in the lighted 
doorway, and soon we were in each other’s 
arms. Maggie had a bountiful supper pre¬ 
pared for us, to which we did ample justice 
and then to bed. You who have travelled 
in those days some 2,000 miles without a 
sleeper, will understand how delightful 
those beds felt to our tired and aching 
bodies. Uncle Billy had a reputation as a 
snorer and that night he fairly made the 
windows rattle. McPherson, then a town 
of about one thousand inhabitants, had re- 
recently been made the county seat, and 
was built on the four sides of a “square 
park” newly set in shade trees. A few of 
the more pretentious buildings were built 
from a beautiful cream colored stone from 
Osage County. The “lean” grasshopper 
years were an unpleasant memory, and the 
place was growing fast. The soil of the 
surrounding country was a very rich black 
clay, sticking to your feet very tenaciously 
in wet weather, while in the spring the 
roads were practically impassible. The 
country was so new that only a few miles 
from town were great stretches of prac¬ 
tically unbroken prairie. 
About four miles from town was a de¬ 
pression in the Prairie called the “McPher¬ 
son Basin”; this basin was some thousand 
or more acres in extent and covered with 
a luxuriant growth of sedge or grass, in 
sunset and drove out nearly to the “Clear 
Pond” in the center, for the bottom was 
fairly hard. Uncle Billy’s foot would not 
yet permit him to wear a rubber boot, so 
Andy and I left him in the wagon, and with 
our guns and a small box to sit on made 
our way to the edge of the Pond. We each 
arranged a slight blind for the evening 
shooting. Shortly after our arrival, two 
men in a buggy drove out and while one 
prepared a blind the other sat in the buggy 
beside the pond, and as the wind was light, 
of course he frightened away all birds that 
intended to come to us. They staid until 
dusk, and while numbers of ducks and 
geese circled around us, none came within 
shot. Of course, we made some forcible 
remarks, but they made no impression on 
those “tenderfeet” duck shooters. Shortly 
after their departure a flock of fifteen geese 
came in, and while they were not handy 
Andy and I were fortunate enough to bring 
down three, and in the next half hour be¬ 
fore it became too dark to shoot, secured 
an even dozen of mallards, so we started 
on our drive back to town in great good 
humor. We made frequent trips to the 
Basin during our stay. We would drive 
out shortly after dinner; our driver 
“Aleck” would leave us at the edge of the 
marsh and return to town. We would then 
walk out abreast through the rushes to the 
pond, and from time to time mallards and 
teal, etc., disturbed at our approach, would 
spring from the coarse grass and give us 
splendid shots. At dark Aleck would re¬ 
turn to the edge of the Basin and wave a 
lantern to us. Here one evening we en¬ 
joyed the unique experience of shooting 
English snipe by moonlight. The moon 
was nearly full and shining brightly; there 
was very little wind and but few ducks 
flying, and we were just about to quit when 
a flight of English snipe came in. There 
were numbers of them, and they pitched all 
around the shore of the pond. It was a 
great novelty, and very uncertain shooting, 
and if my memory serves me we had eleven 
