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MEXICAN "FLIVVER" HUNTING Game Aplenty Near Settlements and No Hardships in the Chase. All Kinds of Animals Outraced by Automobiles and Easily Shot at Short Range. "By the way, speaking of hunting in Mexico." writes a hunting man recently from there, in the Saturday Evening Post, "the world certainly do move in Mexico as well as elsewhere and one proof of it is the new way of hunting the prong-horn antelope. The Old-time hunters stalked thein, flagged them or lay jn wait for them at tlie water holes, and occasionally the cowboys ran them down and roped them, but it took a good horse and a fancy roper to do it and those killed in that way made but a slight decreasem their numbers. Now long-range, finely sighted rifles, steady nerves, keen eyes and a- knowledge of the habits of the game one hunts all have been thrown- Into the discard so far as antelope hunting is concerned on the plains of Coahuila, where this rarest and shiest of American big game still is comparatively abundant. "Here the veriest dub of a sportsman provided with proper equipment now finds them as easy to bag as cottontails. "The necessary equipment is a flivver and a double-barrel twelve-gauge shotgun loaded with buckshot. Any man who with a shotgun can hit a mark as large as a six months calf at thirty or forty yards is eligible to the post of the hunter. The driver of the car should be both expert and reckless. The game is played best in a borrowed car borrowed at that from a rich and good-natured owner, for accidents are apt to happen to the car. "A few miles back from the llio Grande on the wide level plains that are characteristic of the region antelope may be found In bands of from two or three up to twenty-five or thirty. When a baud is sighted the hunters approach as near as possible without alarming the quarry, which as yet has not learned to recognize a flivver as one of its natural enemies. Their curiosity satisfied, they dont stand on the order of their going but go while the going is good. Then the chase is on. "An antelopes best speed is thirty-five miles an hour, as flie speedometers have proved time and agiiin. Over a smooth track free of holes or obstructions there is nothing especially thrilling in traveling at that rate and to the speed demon it must be positively funereal, but over a prairie, where old buffalo wallows, badger holes and eartli cracks are irregularly and impartially distributed, it is quite a different matter. The chance of a smash -up by reason of a broken axle or punctured tire looms up as a possibility at any moment. FEW CHANCES FOR ESCAPE OF QUARRY. "The smaller the band the longer the chase. A solitary old buck antelope may give a run of half an hour or more and then make his escape by picking out country where tlie flivver has difficulty in following him, whereas a large bunch of bucks, does and fawns are easily overtaken as in their fright they impede progress by crowding together like a flock of sheep. Usually a chase lasts from ten to thirty minutes, and then the poor brutes, exhausted and out of breath, with their tongues hanging out, come almost to a halt and.arc shot doun-at short buckshot range. "In a recent antelope hunt four men left their office at 2 p. in. in a fliver and were back again at 5 p. m. witli four antelope does piled on the car. They had sighted and followed a bunch of eight, killed four, and a large buck with a broken hind leg swinging and his rear covered with blood, together with three more does, had escaped by the uuusiial strategy of running through an island of inesquitn brush anil prickly pears, where the fliver could not follow them. Two of these gentle hunters had never seen an antelope before in their lives and were it not for their more experienced companions might have had difficulty in distinguishing them from jack rabbits. "In the timber islands of live oak. mesquite and scrub oak brush that dot the plains here and there, white-tall deer have their haunts as well as herds of peccaries and droves of wild turkeys, to say nothing of less important small game such as squirrels, rahbits, fox. wildcats, racoon and opossum, while bobwhites whistle in the cultivated lands and on the antelope range blue quail are to be found miles away from water. "Many of the timber islands have springs of living water that, almost without exception contain large mouth bass and several varieties of the perch family. The bass rarely run over four pounds and far more of them are under a pound, but they strike at fly, spoon, wooden minnow or live bait. Farther to the southwest, in the eastern Sierra Madrcs at i.000 to 9,000 feet above sea level, there are streams that contain an abundance of cutthroat trout, but along the Rio Grande they are unknown, though the natives of Texas often call the bass a trout. "A camping trip in this, region does not require the complicated provisions for comfort indispensable to a hunting trip in the north. There is often an interim of four or five months between showers." That sounds easy. While as yet the unsettled conditions in Mexico disincline .American sportsmen to go into that country to any great extent, there is great likelihood that Mexico will come more and more into the hunting plans of American sportsmen. Of late I have heard of more sportsmen going to old Mexico than to Alaska. Lower California is now more or less popular as a big game country, and no mountain sheep hunter can call his seres of heads really complete unless he lias killed his Mexican bighorn also. Among several friends of mine who have gone into that country. Col. Dale Bumstead of Chicago is the latest to report from Lower California. He got four good rams on his hunt there in the fall of 1919.
