
















































































































gods 
PORE SIAN Drs Wi Eaves 

[SEPT. 7, 1907. 

the 
who 
round me in the woods, and the other in 
open, “wiping the eyes” of my companions, 
had each taken a shot at him. 
My next weapon was one of a very 
pattern. During my three years in 
I got one or two autumn vacations and came 
into possession of an old family relic in the 
shape of a gun, once belonging to my great 
grandfather, David Matthews, major of New 
York, before the Revolution, with which his 
brother Philip Matthews used to shoot plover 
on Long Island. This gun, apparently of krench 
manufacture, from the f#eur de lis proof marks 
different 
Lawrence 
on the barrels, had barrels just five feet long 
and was said to have been used from a chaise 
when driving after the birds. My great grand- 
father, a loyalist refugee, carried this gun to 
Nova Scotia where one of his daughters married 
my grandfather, Francis Green, another loyalist 
refugee, who had been an officer in the colonial 
army at the siege of Louisburg, and the taking 
of Havana, and refused to fight against either 
his old flag or his country. I have heard my 
grandfather tell of the capital shooting he used 
to have in Nova Scotia Returning after the 
Revolution to New England the gun came to 
my uncle, Henry F. Green, of Bellows Falls, 
Vt., in course of time, and he had it aitered to 
a percussion lock. I have shot gray squirrels 
and partridges with it with great but 
it was too long to carry about in the woods com- 
success, 
fortably, and my last season’s shooting before 
going to Europe was with a fourteen gauge 
double barrel which I hired of an old gunsmith 

in Lowell, and which was entirely satisfactory. 
\fter my return from Eurcpe in 1851 I began 
with my new purchase, a heavy twelve gauge 
of thirty-four inch barrels, which has lasted 
1e to the end of my shooting days, but had 
the stock was too straight and 
i have seen a flock of pli ver 
ne great fault, 
often over shet 
1 Plum Island drop a foot in their flight as 
ie shot whistled over them. The gun was all 
ght for squirrels when I fired up into a tree, 
it had not drop enough for level shooting. 
I afterward added another twelve gauge which 
d been cut down ‘to twenty- t inch barrel, 
d had more drop, and this completed my bat- 
ry. 


One summer, lowever, I used a fourteen gauge 
ide by Kirkwood, of Boston, and which,. I 
ink, was the best gun I ever shot. It was 
ined me by an old Boston friend who had 
fen up shooting and I made some great shots 
ths 1t: 
{ have pretty 
m the small 
well run the gamut of gauges 
bores of my boyhood, to my 
er No. 12s and the No. tos, which some of 
friends have adopted, and on which I find 
m going back to No. 16 and 20, and have 
come to the conclusion that for ordinary up- 
land shooting I should come back to Frank 
Forester’s old favorite, a fourteen gauge, or 
three-quarter inch diameter of bore, with two 
and a half drams powder and one ounce of shot. 

Nos. 6, 7 or 8, according to the game. I gen- 
eral-y used No. 6 in one barrel and No. 8 in 
the other as seemed most appropriate. I hope 
this may please some of your younger. readers, 
though jit tells nothing new to the older ones. 
Von. W. 

Squirrels in Missouri. 
DoNIPHAN, Mo., 
Stream: The 
farmer has to 
the gray 
Aug. 24—Editor Forest and 
greatest enemy the bottom land 
contend with in this section is 
squirrel. His depredations are so 
great in the cornfields, that the ravages of 
wolves among the young live stock of the 
ranges hardly cause such great financial loss as 
those of these small terrors to the bottom lands. 
Squirrels are generally thickest in the heavy 
hickory timber, and in the big tracts of overcup 
oaks. When these crops have borne but 
slightly, the squirrel transfers his feeding 
grounds to the willow oak flats, where an 
abundance of these small acorns make up for 
the lack of other dainties. But if a farmer has 
plcwed up a tract of rich swamp land and planted 
it to corn, then the gray squirrel feels as though 
the nut crop was but a very common diet, and 
levies tribute day after day on the farmer who 
has had the audacity to invade a territory that 
Las been sacred to him for centuries. 
Some time ago I noticed an article in one of 
the foremost sportsmen’s publications in which 
the writer took exception to the statement that 
gray squirrels pulled up young growing corn or 
in any way bothered it until the roasting ear 
period had been reached, closing his article by 
intimating that it was merely a ruse by some to 
secure an opportunity to kill squirrels a few 
months earlier than the law allows. 
Either this gentleman’s experience was con- 
fined to an ofhce chair, or he never |:ved near 
the wilder tracts of bottom lands of the South. 
While they may not do it further north, they 
certainly do it here, and every means has fa led 
to put a stop to it. The most successful 
guardian has been the farmer boy with a gun 
on the rail fencing ready to stop their ravages; 
but he is only slight help, for these gray fel- 
lows are early risers, and they can do much 
damage ktefore the farmer boy has rubbed the 
mist out of his eyes. 
In 1901, two weeks of sleet stayed with us 
and the gray squirrel became very scarce in 
our section. In that same year the S. M. & N. 
A. put a ralroad through these lands four 
miles east of me. Squirrels appealed to the con- 
tracting bosses as an article of cheap fresh meat 
for grading crews, so hunters were kept at work 
every day killing this game for the camps, earn- 
ing the sum of five cents apiece for them and 
usually securing four or five dozen in the morn- 
ing hurt. These pot-hunters cut a wide swath 
in the squirrels’ ranks, and these denizens 
of the swamps moved further in to the wilder 
tracts, and for a few years it took a: good lot 
of territory to show fifteen or twenty for the 
morning’s hunt. 
In the fall of 1905 the squirrels began to re- 
turn in countless numbers, and have been with 
ts ever since, hanging along the Little Black 
River and the hickory and willow oak flats near 
the swamp ponds. and even at this time of the 
year, when the fol'age is at its densest stage, 
you can see enormous numbers, if you have 
pluck enough to. stand the attacks of the 
millions of mosquitoes. 
Gray squirrels are out stirring from the first 
gray of dawn until the hours of ten A. M. 
After that they are not seen again until 4 P. 
M. On very windy days few stir about. Dur- 
ing the rutting season they are very gentle, and 
during the latter part of January, while watching 
the mallards ‘drop into the willow oak flats, 
they scampered all around us, and hardly a tree 
but held a band of these running varmints. 
Often they boldly returned within ten yards of 
us. In the fall they are more wary of man, and 
make good shooting as they run and jump from 
tree to tree—as they seldom lie still and permit 
one to walk all around their tree. like fox 
squirrels of the hills. 
Our hill squirrels, namely, the big fox 
squirrels, seldom venture into the bottoms, and 
it is a rare sight to see one. The gray squirrel 
i warrior and comes right up into the 
feeding grounds of his enemies with perfect im- 
punity. In the hill lands adjacent to the bot- 
toms, the fox squirrel is fairly plentiful, and 
does not increase in proportion of his gray 
The fox squirrel usually makes his 
1S a 

brother. 
home in large post oak trees, invariably those 
that have a dead top. He will venture out at 
all hours of the day, but generally alone. Ex- 
cept in the rutting season, they do not appear 
to run in bands like the gray ones. They are 
not successfully hunted without a dog, for they 
are always on the alert to hide, and when treed, 
they remain quiet in some fork until killed. 
Locw LAppIEz. 

Massachusetts Game Associations. 
30ston, Aug. 31.—Editor Forest and Stream: 
Last Thursday the officers, members and friends 
of the Wannamoisset Fox-Hunters’ Club held 
a clam bake at Milford Grove, Swansea. The 
wives and daughters made up the gathering to 
the number of some 350. After dinner the men 
of the party had a shoot at the traps. The 
officers of the club expressed the opinion that the 
organization would become affiliated with the 
State association. 

On Aug. 24 the North Brookfield Fish and 
Game Association held its annual clam bake at 
Lashaway Grove, East Brookfield. Dr. Prouty 
told me that while the latter part of last winter 
was hard for the birds he knows of several 
coveys of quail in the town. CENTRAL, 
New England Game Notes. 
Boston, Aug. 26.—Editor Forest and Stream: 
Forty square miles of woodland on Cape Cod 
have been burned over by forest fires. It would 
seem that some action could be taken to stop 
at the beginning these devastating flames which 
of late years have become almost an annual visi- 
tation. They are tremendous destroyers of 
game birds and do more harm in this respect 
than can be repaired in years. It would 
not seem a difficult matter for the State to 
organize and maintain an effective fire warden 
and patrol service for three or four months in 
the summer when the danger is imminent. The 
Ontario government maintains such a service 
over the forest lands of the Algonquin National 
Park, and while on this preserve last fall, I saw 
two or three ugly looking fires along the only 
line of railroad speedily put out of business. 
The Cape fires have driven large numbers of 
black ducks out of the ponds in ‘the’ burnt 
district and many of them have taken up a new 
residence around Chatham on the back of the 
Cape, where—for the last few days—the sports- 
men who happened to be on the ground have 
had good sport. They have also been driven 
by flames and smoke to the neighborhood of 
Green Harbor and Duxbury. 
The shore bird shooting is on dlong the 
Massachusetts coast, but the birds have not yet 
arrived in numbers. It will take a couple of 
good northeast storms to drive them in, and 
tor this the shooters are waiting with some 
impatience. A few bags of chicken, plover, 
peep and ring-necks have been taken. A Bos- 
ton man just returned from the Maine coast 
tells me that the birds are beginning to come 
in, and at Cape Porpoise he had some very 
good shooting. While there he saw six black- 
breasted plover, a rare bird indeed along these 
shores nowadays. He tried to get a shot at 
them, but they were too shy. HACKLE. 
A Procession of Quail. 
Point Loma, Cal., Aug. 24.—Editor Forest and 
Stream: This morning at 6 o’clock I heard close 
to my tent the call repeated five times, ‘Come 
back soon.” “Quail,” I said to my wife, and 
no sooner said than a quickly moving procession 
of little top-knotted fluffy fellows came into view, 
a bevy of as pretty a lot of maturing young quail 
as ever you saw. There were fifteen. They 
stopped at a sandy spot and picked up little 
grains of sand to fill their crops and help grind 
their food, darting here and there, always giving a 
look around first and then a peck at the sandy 
soil. No wonder, when under the wild sage and 
yerba santa bushes, they lead man and dog such 
a merry dance! They seem to know when they 
are well off and keep to cover. 
From all over the chaparral comes the call, 
“Come back soon!” “Hurry! get well!” “Bully 
for you!” and again following the first bevy 
now lost to view, over the same runway comes 
another of eighteen, and a third bevy comes, a 
big one of twenty-two this time, and all the 
young birds as big as the old ones. 
Here I lie and see the procession go by, and 
further than to admire their sleek, graceful lines, 
their smoky garbs, the plumes and little hooked 
bills at the point, and their tiny, slender legs, cut 
out for speed, little steel pins as it were; and 
compare them in my mind with our little white- 
meated, brown Bobwhites of the stubble and the 
warm sunny briar-encased snake fence corner— 
every quail hunter knows that corner on an In- 
dian summer day—I feel no desire to go out, 
like the Englishman because it is a beautiful day 
and all nature smiles upon him, and kill some- 
thing. 
And so the little quail procession passes by 
and I look on and there is no lust for killing in 
my heart. CHARLES CRISTADORO, 



