A Summer Camp in the Ozarks. 
For fifteen years my wife and I had resided 
in a city flat fronting on a well-traveled street 
which connected the Union Station with the 
business section of the city, and where ’buses, 
butcher carts and beer wagons rendered a quiet 
morning nap impossible. Our flat was. on the 
fourth floor with an oyster can prospect in the 
rear and a four-by-twelve awning in front which 
constituted our roof garden. The janitor of this 
particular flat seemed to be an advance agent 
of his Satanic Majesty and delighted in' giving 
us a temperature in excess of ioo degrees in 
winter, to which nature added an even dozen 
during the sweltering months of summer. 
My wife is an ardent lover of flowers and our 
little roof garden usually contained some splen¬ 
did hot house specimens of the geranium or be¬ 
gonia family which made a desperate struggle 
for life against outrageous odds and finally died 
in despair. My office was a full cousin to our 
residence flat and offered absolutely nothing in 
the way of fresh air or floral fragrance to the 
man whose pulses quicken with each return of 
spring and whose heart longs for a return of 
the good old days when, as a barefoot boy, he 
wandered down the field path in quest of the 
festive butterfly or climbed the sleek-barked 
sycamore in search of birds’ nests, having no 
greater trouble in the world than a stone-bruised 
heel or a stumped toe. 
As our bank account grew to comfortable di¬ 
mensions, our desire for life in the open likewise 
increased with the recurring seasons, until at 
last we decided to devote a few months of each 
summer to a life a la Gipsy in some quiet spot 
where the rumble of beer wagons and the clack¬ 
ing of hucksters would be supplanted by the early 
notes of the mockingbird, and where the bill 
collector and the instalment salesman would 
never come. 
Early in May, therefore, we packed our be¬ 
longings and set our faces toward that broad 
expanse of country located in Southern Mis¬ 
souri, popularly known as the Ozark region, 
which consists of a succession of wooded hills, 
deep canons, fertile valleys and beautiful moun¬ 
tain streams. To our surprise and delight we 
found an excellent tract of land containing 
twenty acres, having a desirable water front, a 
splendid spring and an elevated location for the 
camp, which could be purchased for a reason¬ 
able figure. Having secured the location we 
next turned our attention to the building of a 
bungalow. A central room sixteen feet square 
was constructed of logs with openings in each 
direction and to this was added on three sides 
a porch sixteen feet wide covered with canvas 
and inclosed with wire screens. Kitchen, dining¬ 
room, parlor, library and sleeping quarters were 
soon partitioned off, and when the entire bill was 
paid it amounted to less than $600. Here was a 
summer home situated as close to nature as one 
cares to get at an expense within the reach of 
any man who enjoys a salary of $10 per month 
in excess of his actual living expenses. 
A friendly neighbor who was the proud pos¬ 
sessor of a span of mules was employed to plow 
our garden spot, and in less than thirty days our 
little home in the wilderness was blooming as 
a rose, to say nothing of the greens and vege.- 
tables which adorned the garden plot. At an ex¬ 
pense of a few dollars a pasture was fenced in 
and an Arkansas-Jersey cow became its occu¬ 
pant. Fresh milk, cream, butter and buttermilk 
were added to our already increasing menu 
which now resembled a spread at a downtown 
hotel, and which never in our lives before had 
we been able to afford. 
Fifty yards from our bungalow door was the 
boat landing. It was at the mouth of the spring 
branch and at a point where a ledge of lime¬ 
stone rock projected into the river, making an 
ideal spot for the purpose. Being in a wild and 
unsettled country, the fishing was all that 
could be desired. Bass, both large and small- 
mouth, jack salmon, crappie, blue and channel 
cat and other varieties of fish abound in all of 
the Ozark streams, so that fishing at once be¬ 
came a pleasure as well as a pleasant duty. The 
little spring branch furnished an abundance of 
live bait, which is better than all the lures ever 
invented to assist one in the capture of the elu¬ 
sive fish of these dashing, rippling streams of 
the Ozarks. 
As I sat in my camp door looking out upon 
a scene of marvelous beauty, purple hills fringed 
with the verdure of an everlasting spring time, 
quiet valleys filled with the pensive sweetness of 
an unbroken summer, I wondered why men will 
spend their whole life in the dust and din of a 
city office rather than live close to nature, which 
is within reach of all. A. J. Young. 
San Francisco Fly-Casting Club. 
San Francisco, Cal., Oct. 2.— Editor Forest 
and Stream: The results of the members’ com¬ 
petitions, held yesterday and to-day on Stow 
Lake, follow. Weather fair, wind southwest: 
Event No. 1, distance, feet: 
L. G. Burpee. 88 
Event No. 2, accuracy, per cent.: 
C. G. Young . 99 *C. G. Young. 98.14 
Event No. 3, delicacy, per cent.: 
Accuracy. Delicacy. Net. 
C. G. Young . 98.48 98.30 98.39 
*C. G. Young . 98.14 99.4 99 
Event No. 4, lure casting, per cent.: 
C. G. Young . 98.8 
*C. G. Young. 98.4 
L. G. Burpee. 78.2 72 
*L. G. Burpee. 88.3 42 
*L. G. Burpee. 85.1 57 
F. J. Cooper. 110 
*F. J. Cooper. 118 
Oct. 2.—Same conditions. 
Event No. 1, distance, feet: 
Austin Sperry . 95 
Event No. 2, accuracy, per cent.: 
C. G. Young. 98.5 Austin Sperry . 97.14 
*C. G. Young. 98 
Event No. 3, delicacy, per cent.: 
Accuracy. Delicacy. Net. 
C. G. Young. 98.8 98.40 98.24 
*C. G. Young. 98.40 97 97.50 
Austin Sperry .,. 97.36 96.40 97.8 
Event No. 4, lure casting, per cent.: 
C. G. Young. 98.5 110 
*C. G. Young. 97.8 94 
Austin Sperry .,. 96.8 119 
♦Austin Sperry . 123 
♦Re-entry. 
E. O. Ritter, Clerk. 
Fishing in Oklahoma. 
Oklahoma City, Okla., Sept. 2 6 .—Editor 
Forest and Stream: Herewith is a copy of a 
letter recently received from Le Roy E. Nabers, 
of Muskogee, Okla., a friend of mine and an en¬ 
thusiastic fisherman. Paul H. Byrd. 
“On Saturday before Labor Day, Warner and 
I had our fishing tackle and bedding bundled 
nicely and hiked for the Osage country on a 
fishing trip. We had heard of Bird Creek as a 
fishing stream until we were on edge to try it, 
so, it was Bird Creek for us. We left Muskogee 
at 8 o'clock in the morning and arrived at Nela- 
gony at 1 o’clock the same afternoon, about one 
hundred miles distant, hungry and cross, for we 
had been traveling up Bird Creek for ten miles 
and it was a milky, murky color, covered with 
oil. I tried to induce Warner to take a train 
back to Muskogee and from there go to the 
Illinois River, but he said that as he had come 
thus far he was determined to try it. We bought 
some crackers and other stuff to eat and walked 
to the creek, about two hundred yards, where 
\ye lunched and talked about the situation. I 
looked at the water and said that I would not 
wet a good silk line in fluid of that consistency. 
“After lunch we returned to the station and 
sat idly' until about 4 o’clock, when we scraped 
an acquaintance with a farmer who said that he 
lived four miles down the creek, and could show 
us a fine stream for fishing which emptied into 
Bird Creek. We put our traps in the wagon, and 
as he had a fair load besides, we walked the dis¬ 
tance, and found the stream not running but con¬ 
taining many deep holes. Our new friend had a 
son, a bachelor, living on this creek and we 
stayed at his house. 
"We jumped a wild turkey, and this got us a 
little excited. But nothing would come to our 
wooden minnows, and as it was already late, we 
decided to leave off operations for that day and 
try it Sunday morning. After breakfast the fol¬ 
lowing morning we ate some of the bachelor’s 
big watermelon, got our rods and reparted, but 
the fish would not notice our lures and in the 
afternoon we substituted grasshoppers and with 
them caught some good-sized perch but no bass. 
I had fun catching these, with a hopper on a 
snelled hook, a yard of gut leader above and 
without bob or sinker I sat on a rock about ten 
feet above the water, allowing the animated bait 
to disturb only the surface of the pool, when a 
big perch would take it in a jiffy. 
“Warner and the bachelor went to the upper 
end of this hole of water and there Warner had 
some bad luck. He had a strike on a wooden 
minnow and the fish must have been a whopper, 
for it wrecked his reel. Warner said it hap¬ 
pened in a place where dead treetops and stumps 
were almost everywhere, and that he did not 
have more than twenty feet of open water in 
any direction in which 1 to play the fish, and that 
when it struck he tried of course to keep it 
away from the treetops. Immediately the fish 
made a wild leap from the water and followed 
