Little Jeff. 
Little Jeff was - only a dog; a - small liver- 
colored dog that looked like a water spaniel, 
but was a cross between a water spaniel and an 
English setter. • He could nose out more birds 
in a given length of time than any dog I have 
ever hunted over, and although it is thirty years 
since he was my constant companion and friend, 
in imagination I can still see .his pretty pleading 
brown eyes and recall with pleasure many of 
the incidents of hunting trips we took together 
in the long ago. 
Little Jeff was a natural hunter. He had 
learned the trade himself without training, and 
the only way to get along with him was to let 
him have his own way. If you did that he was 
sure to find the birds, and I never knew him to 
make a false point. 
It was about the year 1882 that the little dog 
and I went hunting one very hot afternoon in 
August with a party of three men in a spring 
wagon. Prairie chickens were very plentiful then 
and little time was wasted on single birds or 
even small coveys, so that when we got about 
a mile from town and Jeff pointed at the head 
of a little draw, and then shortly moved on 
down the draw, the other men got back into the 
wagon and insisted on driving on, but I stood 
still and waited. 
The dog followed the little draw down to its 
junction with a larger one, and then turned and 
worked his way carefully back to me and pointed 
again just where he had pointed before. Then 
he went down the draw again and back and 
again pointed in the same place. Then I moved 
up, and standing over him spoke to him, and 
at the sound of my voice two prairie chickens 
popped out of a hole in the side of the bank, 
which was partially covered with grass, and 
started for different points of the horizon, but 
they only started, and it was with a great deal 
of pleasure that I picked them up and put them 
in my medicine sack, and Jeff and I had a nice 
visit while waiting for the wagon to come back 
a quarter of a mile after us. which it had started 
to do when the sound of the double shot reached 
my companions. It was a very unusual thing 
for prairie chickens to take to a hole in the 
ground, but no doubt the great heat of the day 
had made this hiding place desirable, and while 
for a time it was puzzling to both hunter and 
dog, it did not save them. 
It was about this time that I made the ac¬ 
quaintance of an Episcopal clergyman who own¬ 
ed a Gordon setter that had been sent to him 
as a present by a friend in New York. He in¬ 
vited me to go out with him and two of his 
friends to see his dog work. When' they called 
at the house for me he became quite indignant 
when I put little Jeff under the back seat, but 
I explained to him that we might get separated, 
and that while we were together, I would leave 
my dog in the wagon, and so I persisted in tak¬ 
ing Jeff along. To tell the truth I had never 
seen one of those Poland China dogs, as we 
called the Gordon setter at that time, either find 
or point any game, and I knew we would need 
a hunting dog. Lienee I was not at ail surprised 
when we came to a nice piece of stubble ground 
to see his dog go around it with mighty swishes 
of the tail and a side-wheel motion and come 
back to the wagon without finding even a cold 
scent. I then released little Jeff and followed 
him to the center of the stubble where he .pointed 
and I killed six chickens before the other gun¬ 
ners arrived at the scene of action. 
At another time late in December, after the 
chickens were in very large flocks, in driving 
with a friend across the Otoe Indian reserva¬ 
tion, which was then covered with tall grass, his 
dog, a large black one which he told me was 
one of the best chicken dogs in the country, was 
trotting along fifty or sixty yards ahead of the 
wagon. By accident the whip dropped and my 
friend got out to get it, land when he walked 
alongside the wagon two -or three chickens got 
up, then several more, then they began getting 
up all around 11s by the dozen, then by the hun¬ 
dreds, and we found we had been driving 
through the center of one of the largest flocks 
of prairie chickens that I had ever seen, and his 
dog was as much surprised as we were. 
Later in the day, after we had eaten our lunch 
on the grass and were getting ready to drive 
on, the dog quietly lying near us asleep, we 
found we were with n fifty feet of the edge 
of another mighty flock of chickens which arose 
with a terrific roar of wings when we disturbed 
them. 
Like many other good dogs that I have known, 
little Jeff was just like a boy in some respects, 
and if one came along with a gun and whistled 
to him, he was up and away on a hunt. He 
liked to hunt so well that he would go with any 
one. who invited him, and it was no doubt 
through this fault that I finally; lost him. He 
disappeared all at once, and it was eight years 
before I found out the true story of his going. 
He had been taken to the field by a business 
man of my own town, who was entertaining 
some visitors from a neighboring State, and 
after the visitors went home, the business man 
shipped the dog to one of them, receiving fifteen 
dollars for my dog, none of which did he ever 
account to me for. 
Another of Jeff's faults was that he dearly 
loved to kill skunks, and when hunting would 
leave a warm trail to chase and kill one of 
those sweet-scented animals which were very 
plentiful in this country at that time. After 
doing f-or the skunk he would come back, take 
up the trail, and go on with his hunting. Lie 
was the only dog I ever saw that could kill 
skunks and go right on hunting as though noth¬ 
ing had happened. But while it did not interfere 
with his hunting, it made it very unpleasant for 
his companion, and I tried hard to break him of 
the skunk habit, but it was no use. Jeff could 
not be broken to do or not to do anything. He 
was a self-made hunting dog, and did not take 
poinl irs from anybody, but for tireless and cor¬ 
rect r;ork in the field he was a wonder, and 
whei: slight came and we were mi es and mdes 
away from home, there was no such thing as 
getting him into the wagon to ride, and he hunt¬ 
ed every inch of the road to my back door. 
But if he would kill skunks, he never paid any 
attention to rabbits, and I have frequently seen 
him on a point on quail with a cottontail sitting 
in plain sight. No doubt he had early learned 
that he could not catch a rabbit, so forever after 
treated them with supreme contempt. He was a 
wise dog and I missed him sadly, but I have 
long since^ forgiven the man who robbed me of 
him, and there is no resentment in my heart 
now. A. D. McCandless. 
The Wet Spring. 
New York City, June 29.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: This year’s long and cold wet spring 
has been very detrimental to the ground-nesting 
birds. Quail and grouse suffered most severely. 
The early hatched chicks are mostly frozen and 
many starved from lack of natural food. The 
cold nights and rainy weather in general has 
kept the insects and gnats on which young quail 
and grouse feed when in the chick form from 
emerging from their cocoons. 
The severe electrical storm which swept over 
this city on May t8 raised havoc among tree and 
ground-nesting birds. Gamekeeper Miller, who 
looks after the game on the great Wiechers 
estate, reported many dead quail chicks the fol¬ 
lowing morning, also many nests have been 
washed out. Similar reports have come in from 
numerous European game preserves. Among 
the districts suffering most are Switzerland, the 
lower part of Hungary and parts of Bohemia. 
Rivers in many places have swollen to their 
overflowing capacity, and lowlands have been 
converted into seas. The chief suffering of game 
birds fell to the Hungarian partridge. Thou¬ 
sands of nests and young have been destroyed 
and a great scarcity of game will be experienced 
this coming season. 
On the other hand crops should be in abund¬ 
ance. The hay crop should be a very heavy one. 
Garden crops suffered somewhat from too much 
rain, but are doing nicely now. Grain of all 
kinds is in a splendid condition and promises 
to yield a very heavy harvest. Wall street seems 
to be the only place where the crop outlook is 
discouraging. 
We should also witness a very large potato 
crop, as the long cold spring proved to be a 
good antidote for the potato bug. Fruit of all 
kinds should be very plentiful and the entire 
crop should be a large one, if not the largest 
in the history. The wet weather and occasional 
warm days kept the so much dreaded blight and 
San Jose scale in check, which is an ample assur¬ 
ance of a very large apple crop. 
John J. Hemmingsford. 
All the game laws of the 'United States and 
Canada, reznsed to date and now in force, are 
given in the Game Laws in Brief. See adv. 
