The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 3, 1898, Page 18

= A N Ly 4 ( — By 5 S, “]F YOU'RE CRAFTY AND QUICK AND ACCURATE YOU CAN SOMETIMES BRING DOWN'SEV- ERAL OF THE SCARY BIRDS BEFORE THEY GET OUT OF RANGE. BUT A FEW OF 'EM PAYS BlG'”—DAV'D W. BENNETT, PROFESSIONAL EGRET HUNTER. Orleans a few months later. Our nex door neighbor was a wholesale milline —David W.Ben- OMO? t experienced and r in the world for and he said he would buy such stuff business, I}\nn everywhere . r N i herons, has been for $5 for each plume and take all I gions I have been in and‘ have ever wild eg 1d herons, ha could get. 1 could have easily got and heard about a rapidly growing scarcity in Los Angeles and in his orange {0y onla over 500 such heron Of egrets Is evident. grove in the San plumes, and, of course, I resolved to go “I am suge that in a dozen years or week. s been r back to Central America the very next more, if the fashion for feathers in ia for a month, and he will go back year to hunt egret feathers. That is Womens millinery _prevails to hunting egrets off the coast of Mex- how 1 came to get into this business. there will be very few egrets left on “The first two years I was hunting 1 America ne time in first e in Yucatan and Honduras I ico and C May. continent. red, over and above expenses and Who used to hunt egrets and herons in Once in a year or two he may go to living, the sum of $6000, but the marsh lands and bays of New Orl great egret and that was when there was no one who the United States of Colombia, heron feat appointm competed with me in egret hunting, ex- Ecuador for the Paris and other Euro- Parisian 1 An ave ta lot of lazy, stupid drunken na- bean markets, and they tell me that ST semi-ant tives of Central America, and there the birds have been so thoroughly oo AR emi-annual ZVER 1 RS of egrets more in those Wiped out down that way that it is a trips to San Franciscc than now. On some days I used loss of time and money to try to get or $3000. That this to get as many as twenty herons or 2 living by hunting egrets or herons. riety of h egrets, and I have never found’any oc- _ “Egret feathers are now sold entirely Mr. weight. When I uable cupation so profitable as getting thirty by of more egrets a week at about $4 for each of their plumes and feathers. “IWhere do I hunt now? Off the west coast of Mexico, near Tepec and Sina- nd and San Ga- Ben shooting and her- we made the birds mighty scarce down there before we got through. I began hunting down in the Gulf of California and later in the bays and lagoons on the Pacific Ocean side of Mexico in 1888, and I belleve there's enough birds itan. I shot a dozen t were wading about and the long white ate and filmy-like in New plumes w that I too dealers. ness, began to buy egret feathers by the ounce, and that prac- tice was quickly followed by New York and Philadelphia ornamental Under the McKinley law there is a duty of 10 per cent ad in that region to keep me busy as long . as I care to stay by the egret hunting in the re- the west coast of the whole western I have talked with went into ting the feathers as a business I sold them at so much a plume, and so much for smaller or discolored feathers. The Parisian milliners, who rule the orna- since said Mr. o 1 hunted for fifteen years in every mental feather market of the in the su mer of 1878 part of Central America, and 1 had make and unmake all the fashions, and prospecting for silver mines off the natives wc for me at times, so create demands in our line of and heron valorem on all my egret feathers sent to New York, but now they are ad- mitted free of duty, and we hunters get the 10 per cent difference. The price for my feathers depends upon the con- dition of the stock and the manner and place in which I market it. I have to take several things into considera- tion.in selling a season’s shooting of some $3000 or $4000 worth of egret feathers. “If I go to the City of Mexico and walit for a buyer from Paris I may get $24 an ounce for plumes and $9 an ounce for egret fe_thers. If 1 send the stock to New York or San Francisco I get $28 an ounce for my plumes, if I am dealt with fairly, and from $9 to $11 for the common feathers. “Years ago I used to have some tough experiences with some of the whole- sale feather dealers of New York, but now that I have learned to know my men and have made a reputation for my wanes I seldom get cheated. In 1884 I lost a whole season’s harvest of feathers and plumes, amounting to $4500, because of a rascally buyer in Philadelphia. “Soiled egret feathers and plumes are dyed and then used on millinery goods. The least discoloration of the milky whiteness of an egret plume will bring its value down from 30 to 50 per cent. ‘When a feather buyer looks over fine feathers he uses a large magnifying DAY, APRIL 3, 1898 glass and scrutinizes each plume with all the nicety of a bird examining a flower. A background of white is al- ways used with each plume, so as to make the faintest discoloration more perceptible. That is the time that the hunter or seller has to put in his best bits of fine work, for a shrewd buyer will find some defect in color, shape or filminess in the whole of a man'’s stock and knock the price down $1000 or more unless the seller ‘raises a rumpus at such proceedings and acts independent. “‘A good season’s harvest for one who is in the egret feather business on the scale I am is about fifty-five ounces of plumes and one tundred and thirty ounces of small feathers. The best sea- son I have ever had was in 1882, when I had four good shooters at work for - me among the lagoors of Nicaragua. I got about $6000 that year clear, after seven months’ work. I sold the whole feather crop to a buyer from Brussels, Belgium, that year, and he paid me $30 an ounce for my finest plumes. “Only a very few feathers are avail- able on the egret. On the heron there are three times as manv. but heron feathers are worth less than half as much as egret feathers. The expe- rienced feather buyers know the differ- ence in the feathers at a’ glance, and many feet away, tco. It is useless to mix heron and egret feathers together and try to palm them off on a buyer who knows his business. A full-grown egret will yield about one-fourth of an ounce of feathers and one-sixth of an ounce of plumes. None of the other feathers are touched and it takes much experience for a hunter to know just what will be marketable. All the avail- able egret plumes are on the'bird’s back just back of the ‘zil, but the heron has marketable feathers on both back and breast. “We generally reckon that an ggret that is got without damage to the feathers is worth about $3 20, and each heron 81 85. “Although the wholesale feather buy- ers are wonderfully sharp and exact- ing with the hunters as to the different prices for egret and heron feathers, there is almost universal deception of the consumers and the general public on these points. I have been in first- class millinery stores in San Francisco, New York and other cities and have seen heron feathers and plumes sold by apparently honest saleswomen for genuine egrets. I have been on Fifth and Madison avenues in New York, and on the promenade streets in San Fran- cisco many a time to observe, and it is seldom that I have seen first-class egret plumes worn. I know, too, that many of the rich and fashionable women whom I passed thought they were wearing the best egrets. “How do we hunt egrets and herons? ‘Well, we have to live on the.outskirts of civilization when we go after these birds. For days and nights at a time we make our homes in little rowboats, built cance-shaped for fast traveling, and we live among the marshes and reeds of the lagoons and bays under a flerce semi-tropic sky. It is the hardest sort of life, and no one, however robust, could keep at it for more than a few months at a time. The miasma of the water and the poisonous atmosphere all about us at night soon fills one's blood with rheumatism and fevers. We hun- ters take our potien of quinine and whisky at regular intervals several times a day. We have canned foods and metal boxes for our feathers and our ammunition in the boats with us. We use the very best shotguns and No. 5 shot, which does effective work with- out mangling the birds. An egret hun- :er must be the foxiest kind of a hun- er. 1 “Talk about the artifice and skill of duck and squirrel hunting! Why, both are boys' play by the side of shooting egrets or herons for a living. These birds are the most cautious and wary of any I have ever known or heard of. I have known herons to desert a whole nest of young, because they saw an old hat lying near the reeds where the nest had been made and their suspicions were thereby aroused. “Egrets seem to almost smell the presence of a man with a gun. I know of no decoy that could be used with egrets or herons, but even if it could once be used, that would be the last of that trick in that locality, for by some sort of freemasonry all the bird’s family and cousins for miles around would be warned of the delusion. “When we go out for a fortnight's or a month’s shoot we never leave our boats even for an hour. We get our birds either at early evening or at the first break of day. We seldom get birds at evening and then the follow- ing dawn, for at the report of a gun every heron or egret in the region flies straight away, and will not come back to that particular spot for four or five days. Even then they return with won- derful caution. So we move from one part of a bay or lagoon to another at midday, when the birds are off feed- PLUMES OF THE WHITE HERON. at the shoals along the shor m‘g‘We get our craft in posmo;, cg:«_a man in a boat, before 4 p. m- an e el r boats with ceal ourselves and ou reeds and foliage just as duck hunters H s or 6 o'clock the 0. Along about ] Soeds come back to_teir se aorlxxg camping grounds. Then we Wa opportunity for shots, and, by long experience, I have learned DerfeCt?_' When it comes. Just at the proper moy ment I will shoot, and in 2 fljal(l:t;ofiow a second my hired shooters wil aO ! With their guns. Generally I cah &0 three or four successful shots %ut of frightened birds before they mfeh( id range, for they are so easily frigl f?)r . that they are powerless of flight 5 moment and make good tarsets themselves. fif- “Sometimes we get as many as teen birds at one evening’s shooting, but more often the number is seven or eight. Years ago, when egrets fl“l herons were very plentiful in Centra America, T have killed nine birds in ni many shots before they got out © my reach. When we have delivered our volleys, and the unharmed birds have flown away, we row about and gather the harvest. “Extreme carp must be exercised to get the feathers and plumes as free as possible from discolored water or the stain of weeds. Every week we have to throw away the carcass of an egret or heron because the feathers and plumes are blood-stained or twisted out of shape. “After we have got our birds and have picked the few feathers we want from each we plan another onslaught in another locality. If we are lucky we may soon get located four or five miles away amid reeds and foliage un- der cover of darkness, so as to be ready for more shooting the mnext morning. We row about with rare caution, we seldom speak in loud tones and we do not even smoke while we are hunting, because of the extraordinary wariness of the birds. Many a time I have lain in one position for hours beneath my little roof of tules or rushes, because 1 saw that a flock of egrets was suspi- cious of the presence of an enemy. “The shores . f the lagoons of Central America and the southern part of Mex- ico abound in alligators, while all man- ner of pestiferous stinzing flies, gnats and mosquitoes are in the air. We have suffered tortures from insect pests, and one of my hunting men died in agony from the poison of gnats several years ago. When we are on shore we have danger at night from the puma or mountain lion, and we always sleep with fires burning on all sides of our camp. “I brought up with me on this trip to Los Angeles eleven puma skins, for sale to fur rur-makers. I have lost several jackasses by the mountain lons. “One dav T caught a lion in the very act of attacking one of my donkeys. The lion, which is simply an enormous cat, had sprung at the soft flabby neck of the donkev. and had torn away the flesh, preparatory to sucking the blood of the jugular vein. The lion had evi- dently knocked the donkey down at one spring and had cuffed the animal into insensibility. The donkey was dead be- fore I got to it. The lion gave some of the most extraordinary leaps ever made bv any beast as I shot at it. T meas- ured the distance between the prints of the forepaws as the jumps were made and they were about forty feet apart. “The egrets and the herons are of the crane family of birds. The egrets are small, much like the bitterns and boat- bills of the same family. THE C 2, 4 /7 50,7 4/ HEERFUL KIND OF BOMB THE AMERICAN PRESS FIRED AT SPAIN LAST WEEK